It is an interesting question. Certainly she is grateful for the protection Hastings has advanced, and without young Grylle there is no question that they would be dead. But she is aware of Margaret’s gold coins in her bag. With them they could pay their way without incurring any obligation. They might not have had to witness the slaughter on the fields south of Wigmore Castle, when Edward’s men used the naked Irishmen for archery practice, or forced them into the river with spear thrusts and axe blows and laughed at their clumsy attempts to swim. They might not have had to see men such as Tudor beheaded in the marketplace.

‘So I wondered if we ought not to stay with Hastings’s household?’ Thomas is saying. ‘He has shown great kindness, and to be with a household, to have someone looking out for us – well, we need it. We cannot just go about the country on our own again.’

She feels a flare of anger.

‘It is very well for you, Thomas,’ she says. ‘You have cast off your previous life all too well and anyone can see how useful you have become. But what about me? I cannot put aside my sex forever. I cannot join William Hastings’s household just like that and with no purpose. You seem to forget I am Lady Margaret Cornford.’

And she places one hand on her headdress and enacts the sort of curtsey she has seen other women perform. He stares at her, stricken.

‘Great God above,’ he says, ‘you don’t – You don’t believe you can keep up the pretence? No? Surely?’

She doesn’t know either, and God knows she does not want to, but fury makes her reply:

‘I do. I disguised my sex for a year, living among you all and not one of you suspected. Not one. It will be that much easier to pretend to be a woman no one knows.’

Thomas is astonished.

‘What if someone who knew Margaret sees you?’ he asks. ‘You recall Dwnn?’

‘Dwnn is just one man,’ she says. ‘And he is back in Kidwelly. So long as I never go back there again, who is there to know I am not who I say I am?’

‘And what about who you really are? Have you not thought about that? The family that placed you in the priory?’

She has thought of them.

‘I’ve told you,’ she says. ‘There is nothing for me there. That truth lies beyond me.’

‘But it is just so dangerous! What about Riven? So long as you live, he will want you dead!’

She nods. His concern for her softens her temper slightly.

‘I know,’ she says, calmer now. ‘That is why I cannot do this without your help.’