He wonders if he should say something: tell her that though the thought of her becoming Margaret Cornford is bad enough, the thought of her becoming Richard Fakenham’s wife makes him feel sick. He does not care about the lies he has already told to William Hastings and to the Earl of March; he does not care about keeping the dead girl’s name alive; he doesn’t care about Sir John’s plans for Cornford Castle: all he wants is for everything to return to the way it was.

They find an inn at Worcester, near the cathedral, but he cannot share the bed the innkeeper offers her, and instead he sleeps by the hearth in the hall where the stones in the floor retain the fire’s heat. He watches her take the bed, hesitantly, confused by the way he is behaving, and he wishes he could behave as he has always done, or that she would insist he comes with her, or she with him, but she does not, and he turns and feels his spirits twist into a savage little knot.

The next day is better and though they hardly speak, their silence is almost companionable, and they ride to another inn in another town where they must sleep in the hall, and they do so, her back to his chest, though Thomas will not touch her. The next morning he finds he has wrapped his arms around her, and her linen-capped head is just below his nose. He gets up before she wakes and hurries to wash in the well outside while rain falls from a leaden sky.

That day they find the road the locals call Rikeneld Street, where they turn north, and the next day they come across the first signs of the Queen’s army’s passing: a village where the houses are missing roofs and walls are broken down or burned black. Fences have been pulled apart, hovels destroyed, ovens dug up and windows carried off. The land lies in ruins, and smells of rot and spoil.

So Thomas stops to strap on his leg armour and the plate gauntlets, things he’s bought in Hereford, probably looted from the field above Mortimer’s Cross, but good enough. The helmet is gouged and the chinstrap stained and when Katherine sees it she wonders aloud what Richard Fakenham would have said if she’d ever have let his plate get so rusty when it was in her care in Sangatte. Thomas says nothing. It is too painful to think of that happy time. After a while he unstraps his bow and warns her to keep her little knife to hand. She does so, and they ride on.