King's Gold

It had been a hard ride, but their reception was unfriendly. As soon as they entered the town, he felt the curious stares of the men and women. In fact, Alured got the impression that this town wasn’t part of England at all. The people spoke in some weird tongue. They weren’t like the folks of Kent or the men from the far north. These fellows actually spoke a whole different language, and it was disconcerting.

He felt out of place here. He was a London man. Those little alleys and streets were to him the essence of freedom. Without them, he felt lost.

His mood had not been improved by the way Matteo’s nervousness had increased, the closer they came to Wales. Alured had not wanted to come here in the first place, but it was not his choice. What did he want with a four- or five-hundred-mile journey?

Alured could at least appreciate Matteo’s alarm, having heard his suspicions about his brother Benedetto’s murderous plan to wrest power from others at the bank. Alured himself doubted that Matteo’s fears were justified, since Benedetto didn’t seem like a killer to him. Still, it explained his trepidation. That and the fact that he was here to see Sir Roger Mortimer. No one would meet that man without a sense of grave danger. Sir Roger had not achieved the most powerful position by affability.

Yes. If Matteo was correct, Alured would have to be careful in the presence of Benedetto Bardi, but for his money, the more dangerous man was the one in the castle, Sir Roger Mortimer, not Benedetto.

Hunilege

Ham smiled at the man’s jokes, but there was something about him that Ham didn’t like. Dolwyn’s smile, which appeared as easy and unforced as a taxman’s while demanding more money, it was enough to make any man suspicious, he reckoned. What’s more, as they travelled along, Ham noticed that his companion’s eyes were all over the countryside.

Dolwyn caught him staring and gave him one of those long looks of his.

‘What?’ Dolwyn said.

‘Nothin’,’ Ham protested feebly, feeling doubly foolish for blushing like a maid. ‘It’s just, you remind me of an old soldier I knew once. He always had his eyes on the hills about us when we were travellin’.’

‘A man with sense, then. For I tell you now, when I look around here, all I see is danger. It’s full of trees to hide a bowman, and old holes in which a thief could lie, and the hills themselves could hide a hundred outlaws.’

‘So you were a soldier?’

Dolwyn looked at him. ‘I have served the King. In peace and in war.’

‘But now you’re without a master?’

‘Seems like it,’ Dolwyn said. He saw no reason to mention the Bardi. ‘There are many of us in the same position.’

Ham nodded to himself. It was no surprise to him. ‘Are you married?’ he asked next.

He half-expected the man to laugh at him. The idea of a warrior for the King having a wife and children was ludicrous, somehow, but to his faint surprise, the man gave him a slow, considering stare. ‘Why?’

‘Just wondered. I have a daughter. Lovely girl – little Jen. She makes my life whole. I’d die for her.’

Dolwyn turned to look at the road ahead. ‘I did have a daughter once,’ he admitted. ‘But she died.’

‘Well, I am sorry to hear that. A child is a comfort.’

‘Yes. I . . . I envy you.’

They did not speak again. Ham walked alongside the cart, guessing how many days from the vill he had travelled, but occasionally throwing a look at Dolwyn, increasingly convinced that if he remained with this man for too long, he would pay dearly – possibly even with his life.

Dolwyn himself was back in the past: seeing his cottage lighted by the flames, the smoke billowing above the thatch, and hearing from inside the screams of Julia and Rose until at last they were stilled, and he was allowed to drop, weeping, to his knees.

Saturday before the Feast of the Annunciation

Road south of Beausale

It had happened when they had stopped last night. Ham, the fool, had been setting about the horse as though to unlimber him from the cart, and Dolwyn had carefully clambered down, stiff and uncomfortable from the day’s journeying. He was still thinking of Julia and Rose, and his flight after the terrible fire . . . when Ham struck him hard on the back of the head with a branch.

He’d slumped to his knees instantly, and heard a muttered apology, before Ham clubbed him again – and suddenly he was lying in the grass, uncaring about Ham, his horse or his creaking eyesore of a cart, which was currently rattling and clunking into the distance.

He had eventually managed to climb to his feet, but weakness forced him to sit with his back to a tree and doze through the night. Collecting firewood was impossible; the thought of cooking made him want to vomit. And he had no food anyway. The carter had taken the lot.

However this morning, although his poor head felt like a dented kettle, he was still alive.