‘I don’t know,’ Thomas says. ‘Her army is without supplies or friends down there, and, as you can see, it is cold. If the city aldermen do not open the gates, she might retire northwards, back to York, to make the Earl of March come to fight her up there.’

This is how he has heard it from William Hastings, and the men of the Lincoln Watch think that fair enough, and they let Thomas and Katherine through to the city. Thomas and Katherine walk their horses up the hill past the pardoner’s house, still silent and ghostly, and up past the cathedral where the stationers have cleared their stalls and the doors are barred from within. They pass out through Bailgate and under the old arch on to the Roman road that cuts north. They climb up into their saddles again, and as they leave the city behind, there are crows cawing and loose balls of mistletoe in the trees and old snow on the fields.

They have travelled this road many times, often in happier circumstances, and once more he asks himself the same question he has been asking for the last four days: why? Why are they doing this? Of course he wants to find Sir John and Geoffrey, to find the others, to see if they are still alive, and of course he needs to tell them about Dafydd and Owen and Walter, and if that was all they were doing, then that would be bad enough, but Thomas must also lie to Sir John and Richard, tell them that Kit is dead, and that here is Lady Margaret Cornford to marry Richard. He can imagine Richard’s face when he sees her. How pleased he will be that she is not plain, but in her own way beautiful . . .

And he – Thomas – will have to lie again, and again, and again. Forever.

‘We should have brought an escort,’ she says. ‘Some men from Lincoln at least. What if there are still some of the northerners about?’

Thomas drops from the saddle and nocks the string of his new bow and then sticks some arrow shafts in his boot, in the style of Walter. He can feel the steel bodkin heads against his ankle and he wishes he still had the pollaxe. He mounts up again and they ride on, Katherine with her cloak around her ears so that all he can see of her is her red-tipped nose, sharp, like a beak.

Eventually they reach the turning and she stops her pony.

‘Thomas,’ she asks. ‘What are you hoping for?’

He looks blank, as if he has no idea, but she does not believe him.