Miles looked on with loathing as Bishop Morton heaved his huge bulk down the steps from Brecknock keep. Treasonously liberated against King Richard’s orders, Harry’s newest counsellor halted in the bailey and stared about him with smug satisfaction. Harry’s rebel army was about to leave Brecknock.

Fifty mounted soldiers were saddling up, and beyond the castle walls, untidying the priory fields, four hundred foot soldiers, mostly Welsh, sweaty-shirted in their quilted jacks, were waiting morosely. Eleven wagons, bulging beneath roped canvas with breech-loading iron guns, cooking pots, weapons, ladles, tents and oatmeal, waited behind thick-limbed horses, while their shafts and wheels were checked again for damage. Sumpters, slung with armour, shifted their plumy hooves uncertainly beside the caparisoned destriers, their flanks already moist with sweat and drizzle.

Oh, to be sure, the rebellion looked well on parchment: two hundred English soldiers, coerced from cider making and carting sheaves, were appointed to meet the duke at Hereford. Breton mercenaries and Lancastrian exiles – the channel winds permitting – were under sail with Henry Tudor. Their exorbitant professionalism had been purchased by the stolen treasury money, courtesy of Sir Edward Woodville. And it was hoped that when King Richard, yelling treason, came thudding out of his heartland, Margaret Beaufort and Lord Stanley’s Cheshire retainers would close in. With God’s good grace, the rebels hoped the king would be caught on the east coast between the claws of the two armies and scooped to oblivion, or a beggarly exile. That was if the south-eastern rebels battled successfully against the new Duke of Norfolk, who was guarding London and the reaches of the Thames.

With a heavy heart, Miles hastened up the steps to the battlements, casting an anxious gaze towards the south. Incandescent shafts of light were dappling the nearby hillsides greenish-gold but over Pen-y-Fan the clouds were purple, and to the east the Black Mountains were a sinister breaker frozen against a seething sky. The odds were that it would start raining before sundown and the road to Hereford would be churned into a mire.

‘Miles.’

His despairing lady was waiting, her lily cheeks veined with tears. If only … Oh, he had a cupboardful of those!

‘My love.’

Poor Heloise. She had used every persuasion short of destroying his kneecaps with a mallet to make him turn traitor, cursing his sense of duty and misdirected honour. But she had spent hours of loving labour stitching him a battle surcote. ‘To keep you safer from arrows.’ Had she sewn charms and spells between the silk layers? Miles glanced down at the family of roused sable snakes, with their golden flick of tongues, festooning his ribcase, and smiled at his seamstress.

What did you give a fey wife as a parting gift? He lifted the folded parchment from his leather purse and held it out to her. She must have felt the magic within for she opened it as though it hid a fragile crystal. Her pleasure filled him with a delight beyond all price.

‘Upon my soul, oh, Miles!’

A four-leaf clover, kept through boyhood. ‘Three leaves for the Trinity, see. And the fourth, changeling?’

The sweet, sad smile Heloise beamed at him nearly destroyed his courage. ‘For Our Lady or …’ She watched the husbandly indulgence crinkle his eyes.

‘Or your tylwyth teg? Who knows? But this is special, never wished on since its finding fourteen years ago.’

‘If you found it, then it is your right to do the wishing.’

‘Which I surrender to the mistress of my heart.’

‘Oh,’ exclaimed Heloise, love shining in her eyes, ‘Then I wish—’

‘No,’ he kissed her, ‘’tis ill luck to speak it. Close your eyes now.’ With his right hand holding hers, he watched her turn her heart-shaped face with reverence to the distant hills, drew breath and held it. It was the image he would take with him, the charm that would help him withstand the executioner’s fire and the heated irons. Imagination, the pressure of her fingers, might have accounted for the tingle of reassurance, hope – God knows how else to describe it – that suffused his veins until it found his mind. Was this how a blessing felt?

‘I love you,’ he whispered, raising his left hand to furl her cheek with tenderness, ‘I love you more than I can ever show you and whatever happens, remember that.’ Then he drew back from her and lifted a chain from about his neck. ‘This is the key to the coffer in our bedchamber. Within it is my will and sufficient money to keep you through the winter. Sell the other things if you need to.’ He still wore his rings. They might buy him a passage to Brittany or Ireland, or a last chance to speak with her before they hauled him out to the gibbet.

As if Heloise received that image from his mind, her beloved face went grey as ashes. Someone whistled at them urgently from the courtyard and suddenly her fingers were unpinning a brooch from her collar. He had not seen it before. A little unicorn.

‘Would you wear this for me all the time, whatever happens?’

‘Close to my heart, hmm.’ Not to his taste. But how could he deny her? It was a struggle to fasten it to his shirt beneath his hauberk. His fingers trembled, his gaze misted and it was she who finished the task. By the time she looked up, he had control again but his voice was ravaged. ‘I must go.’ He set a gloved finger beneath her chin.

Her eyes blazed defiantly now, as if willing him one last time to turn his cote. ‘King Richard speaks of justice. What does Harry Buckingham speak of, but Harry Buckingham?’

It was true, except the harsh trumpets brayed and his esquire had started up the steps to fetch him. ‘Heloise, I beg you,’ he protested, gathering her against the freshly stitched Rushden serpents. ‘Sing a more loving song, my nightingale. Would you have me ride to war with your anger in my ears?’

She drew her head back, her lovely eyes shimmering like sunlight on water. ‘Promise you will come back to me, Miles, even if it is a hundred years hence, even if it takes all eternity. For I shall still be waiting for you, and all my love is yours and yours alone.’

With the unstudied grace that was so much part of him, he raised her hand to his lips. ‘If only in your dreams, my love. Whatever is within my power, I promise,’ and was gone. Disabled by stinging tears, she listened helplessly to the ring of his spurs on each stone step.

‘Miles!’ Her strong, wonderful man turned. ‘Check the wheels of the third cart.’

The raven eyebrows arched. ‘A premonition?’

‘No.’ Her smile was watery, ‘I saw a fellow lurking by it last night.’

Laughter creased the corners of his eyes. She would remember him thus. Even if they never met again, she would live out her life knowing that he had believed in her, loved her for what she was. The rope and the fire could not take that from her.

He is not coming back, is he? Risking the anger of tylwyth teg, she opened her mind, pleading desperately to see the future so she might arm herself against it. Her back braced against the battlement, she closed her eyes and waited for the unsteadying vision. Nothing.

Nothing looked down on her but the darkening sky. She had broken their rule and hers. Guiltily, shakily, she left the wall. The bailey was still full of soldiers and Miles was sitting astride Traveller. He saluted her, and pointed; the third cart had been pulled to the side and its load was being spread amongst the rest. Yes, this was where she needed to be, where he could see her, not trying to use her sight for her own selfish purposes. Biting her lip, she stood stoically; garnering his image, reaching out her arms through the air, telling him she understood, telling him of her pride in him.

Buckingham’s speech was brief; so were the tepid cheers that followed, before the sarsynett pennons and the fringed banners bearing the golden loops of cord, the flaring Catherine wheels, the swans collared with golden coronets, finally dipped like lances beneath the jagged teeth of the portcullis and were gone into the void. The courtyard slowly wasted its manhood out into the precarious world. The women, dabs of colour against the sombre doorways, withdrew, but Heloise, mute against the battlemented parapet, stayed, a drooping silken flag with nothing to move her until a small, sugar-sticky palm, crept into hers

‘Do not cry, my lady,’ said Ned responsibly, adding with a perfect imitation of Sir William. ‘It sets a bad example, you know.’

Not until Heloise crept between the sheets miserably that night did she discover a letter of love from Miles tucked beneath her pillow; but before she had leisure to read it twice, her bedroom door opened and a disgruntled Dafydd landed, paws braced. The door shut abruptly and the cat, glaring daggers at her, attempted to remove his furry head from the inconvenient ribbon burdening his neck. Though he clearly blamed her, he permitted her to assist and at last she carried the ribbon to the candlelight. The tiny parcel which belled it contained a piece of thin rag with an ink message signed with ‘E’. Emrys?

‘Leave Wales, lady of Y Cysgod, arianlais, as you value your virtue and your life, your devoted servant, “E”.’

She sent for Martin next morning and, as a contingency, gave him a little of the money from the coffer and bade him discreetly take Cloud and his hackney for stabling at the priory, and then see if he might find Emrys. The news Martin brought back later from the town was disturbing. The able-bodied men who had been lying low to avoid recruitment had not yet returned. Why?

It was raining steadily by the time the duke’s company reached Bronllys, but already there had been several suspicious incidents. Someone was deliberately slowing them, and today was Monday and they needed to be across the Severn well before Saturday 18th October, the day decreed for the common rising.

When Harry’s destrier stumbled and the Llanddew blacksmith’s lad muttered that it was a portent, the duke ordered the poor wretch to be hanged from the nearest oak. Miles protested, but the double mischief was done. The Welshmen were all at it then, cursing their betters and babbling of misfortune. One man swore by his very soul that he had glimpsed an ugly gwyllian astride a forked branch. Not a hanging offence, thank Heaven, but the men started to scan the roadside for St John’s wort to keep the dwarfs away, and a whole sheath of prayers went flying off to Saints Alud, Brychan and Cynog. Then a Newport halberdier made a sign against the evil eye at Nandik and the scholar edged his horse closer to the duke. Miles uncharitably wished that they would pull the fellow from his horse and dispatch him quietly behind the hedgerow, for yesterday, to please Harry, Nandik had seen a king’s death in his astral charts.

Matters could not be worse, Miles thought. The rain ran relentlessly down the sloping nape of his helm, trickling onto his lower back. Grey fog swallowed up the hills, the trees along the road were ghostly shadows and the sky ahead was bleak. Ditches overflowed, horses stumbled in the hidden holes; wheels jammed in the squelching furrows and the complaining drivers had to cut sodden brushwood to wad the ruts so the horses could haul the carts onto solid ground. Staybraces broke; a sweep-bar jammed. The first of the food wagons unaccountably fell sideways, blocking the road, and the oatmeal became a porridge far too soon. A wheel came off a weapons cart.

Miles, whose soldiers had inspected each cart before they had left Brecknock, rode down the columns with his carpenters plunging after him to check again. Past Glasbury, the wagon with the mended wheel had not caught up.

And the straggling column was growing thinner.

It was not the thud of a stone cannonball against Brecknock castle’s wall at first light next day which woke the sentry, but the unperfected weapon’s explosion as it killed its gunners.

Heloise, roused by the alarum bell, held a large square of cered leather over the disbelieving duchess to keep the rain off as they stood above the gatehouse watching the trebuchet being hauled up Castle Lane. A mounted knight was bawling orders at the enemy archers and billmen assembling along the banks of the Honddu.

‘Should we not shoot them or hurl boiling pitch on their heads or something?’ Catherine demanded as the acting constable arrived red-faced to join them.

‘Yes, I suppose so,’ he panted. ‘It is the Vaughans, madam. They have just delivered a message demanding the garrison surrenders you and the children, or they will bombard us. They have requested your person too, Lady Rushden.’

‘Jesu!’ muttered Catherine, flouncing swiftly downstairs out of arrow range and mustering the few officers left to her in the great hall. On a head count, they had more musicians and children than soldiers.

‘Sirs, how many of you could handle a bow?’ Heloise asked, and when all the musicians cheerfully raised their hands, she had to explain that it was longbows she had in mind.

‘I hardly think a few shawm players and a couple of lutanists are going to be much use,’ she fumed to the despairing Constable. ‘We could garb everyone in the discarded livery and spare helmets. They might think we still have a reasonable garrison.’

The garrison commander’s messenger to the duke, dispatched to advise him of their plight, had already been apprehended and displayed by his captors from across the moat as a wriggling tangle of thrashing legs. And Buckingham’s army was marching further from them with every hour.

‘My lady,’ the Constable muttered, drawing Heloise aside some half hour later, ‘her grace is talking of surrender. It is important that Lord Stafford does not fall into their hands. King Richard, as you know, is a man for hostages. We must hold out as long as we can.’

‘He would not harm the child.’

‘No, he would not, but the Vaughans nourish a bitter hatred of our duke and the child may suffer for it.’ She tried not to think of such horrid possibilities. ‘I also mislike it that their request includes you, my lady.’

‘I think you had better see this message. Someone sent it to me last night as a warning.’ Heloise watched the commander’s growing concern.

‘Christ have mercy, virtue! They will rape you, madam.’ A reprisal against y Cysgod.

‘How long can we hold out, then?’ She tried not to show her fear; it was necessary to be practical.

‘A day or so, perhaps longer, with God’s grace. A week if their bombards are ineffectual, and providing no one within the castle betrays us.’

‘If … if we could light a huge bonfire on Pen-y-Fan, would his grace see it, do you think?’

‘If our forces are still in the vale, he might, but the mist is too heavy.’ His tired smile was polite. ‘But, my lady, can you imagine the likelihood of getting a man out of the castle alive, let alone heaving timber up to the beacons and keeping it dry in this deluge? Or that the duke could even send sufficient men back to investigate? He will have enough labour to make Hereford, let alone return here.’

‘So we need some means of sending Lord Stafford to safety before the castle is taken. What if we were to disguise one of the other children in his clothes and let him be seen with her grace upon the battlements, and meanwhile smuggle him out to his father? I have horses stabled at the priory.’

‘Yes.’ He rubbed his fingers across his upper lip. ‘That notion has merit. I will think on’t.’

Miles sheltered in the porch of St Andrew’s at Bredwardine and felt sick to the bone. Behind him in the church resting their sodden feet, his men’s faces showed it too – water-soaked brigandines wrapping rusting metal around hearts engrained with mould. Courage there might be still, but it would go puff like toadstools leaving flabby shells of emptiness. Was it only on Harry that God was pouring out his wrath? Was the sun shining on Tudor’s sails out in the Channel or on Woodville blades taken down from the walls at Ightham or Maidstone? You could not hurry through mud. What if the fleet were becalmed; what if …

‘A word with you, Miles.’ Knyvett set an urgent hand to his shoulder, drawing him down to the churchyard gate. ‘Bad news. A messenger has come from the prior at Brecknock. The Vaughans have looted the castle in the king’s name and taken her grace and the children prisoner.’

‘Godsakes!’ Death scraped his fingernail down Miles’s spine. ‘My wife, is she—’

‘The fellow did not know, Miles. Rest easy, the duchess will let no harm befall her.’

‘Cat could not defend a sandcastle!’ Miles slammed his right fist against his palm. ‘Heloise is … is vulnerable.’ Vulnerable enough to be hauled to the stake. ‘They know how to hurt her.’ He angrily shook off the older man’s restraining hand. ‘I must go back.’

‘Oh no, you shall not!’ Knyvett spun him back to face him. ‘By Christ, man, if you leave, the entire army will desert.’

‘Maybe they should!’

‘Miles, Miles,’ Knyvett shook him. ‘Wait until you know more, eh? You always had a cool head. Don’t lose it now. That is better. Now, listen to me! It sounds as though the Vaughans were all ready to lay siege the instant we were two days’ march away. By St George, we are in dung to our necks! Do you see, if King Richard has knowledge of our plans, he must know about the rising in the south. Now come and hear the messenger for yourself.’

God ha’ mercy! Dung indeed! One of the duke’s scouts had already brought warning that Sir Humphrey Stafford, the king’s man, was felling trees along the road to Hereford and setting bowmen to hold the bridges. A second scout had reported back that Hereford had shut its gates and the king had issued a proclamation of a pardon to all deserters and a reward of one thousand pounds for Harry’s capture.

Harry was still interrogating the elderly messenger from Brecknock.

‘Trapped!’ growled the duke. ‘Humphrey Stafford’s men have been stalking us, picking off the slow ones. Sweet Christ, if this news from Brecknock leaks out, we shall lose the rest of them!’ He hit his mailed fist against the tree. ‘They knew! The Vaughans knew! Was this your wife’s doing?’

Miles gulped at the sudden accusation. Heloise could be straddled by some vicious whoreson or left for dead among the smouldering ruins and Harry had the gall to …

‘No!’ Miles turned his back, his fists clenched. The leash of service around his neck was straining fit to break.

‘No?’ sneered the duke. ‘If they can set a leech beneath my underbelly, why not yours?’

‘Are you demented, my lord?’ Miles swung round, the training of years harnessing his icy rage. ‘King Richard only needed to set watch on the Beaufort woman’s messengers to know something was afoot. A rising planned from Wales to Kent?’ His tone grew scathing. ‘Christ Almighty, it has more holes than a pauper’s stocking.’

‘It could have even been you!’

Miles’s hands slammed against Harry’s chest, sending him crashing back into the tree trunk. The ducal armour jarred against the lichened, pillar-thick trunk and his grace of Buckingham slithered downwards to land in a painful straddle across the roots. The kernel of the old Harry showed in a brief crinkle of a grin as Miles pulled him up.

‘Perhaps you had better hang me,’ Miles suggested dryly, brushing the leaves from the skirt of Harry’s hauberk. ‘It might be more convenient than being ripped apart at Smithfield. Is there a map to hand, friends?’ He jerked his head round at de la Bere and Sir Nicholas Latimer who had come instantly to intervene. There was appreciation in the younger man’s expression.

‘Of course, Miles.’ De la Bere drew a leather-wrapped package from his breast. ‘Shall we return to the shelter of the porch, your grace?’

His grace, jarred in the place where Satan would fasten a tail on him, was sulky and, for once, silent.

‘What the men need is action, food and a place to dry out, not necessarily in that order,’ observed Miles.

‘Or pay.’ The smooth voice of Morton insinuated itself into their midst. ‘I have just been doing a count. Buckingham, the men are falling out like the hairs in your comb.’

On Friday eve, with Ned – disguised as a girl in coif and skirts – huddled against her back like a baby creature clinging to its mother’s fur, Heloise hit her crop on a broad front door and hoped she had reached the village of Weobley. It was not worth dismounting to shelter beneath the overstorey; the entire road in front of the house was sheeted with water and Cloud’s hooves were awash. Bess backed her horse away, staring up at the carved gables. ‘I saw a movement up there at the side window. Smite again!’ But it was Benet who slithered off from riding pillion with Bess and splashed stolidly across to hammer his fist upon the shutters.

‘We are seeking the castle,’ Heloise told the hard-faced creature who tardily came. Beyond the narrow crack of the door, she could smell griddlecakes and the steamy warmth of a kitchen.

‘Up there, past the Salutation,’ muttered the woman cryptically, abruptly closing the door on them.

Around the next bend, they found a prosperous village of half-timbered houses, but only the smoke, curling from each chimney pot, moved in the drizzle. At the end of the street squatted a tavern displaying a scarlet lion below its dripping garland, and beyond the next corner, candles flickered behind the shuttered windows of a cidermaker’s with a unicorn sign, but there were no army wagons crowding the side lane.

In her male garments, Heloise had no heart to brave either establishment nor dared she send slow-witted Benet. She urged Ned to scramble across to Bess’s arms and, dismounting, let herself into one of the tiny gardens. The indifferent cottager gave them directions; the castle lay beyond the alehouse. Instinct told her that this was not the answer, yet she dared not let Bess know that it was not just the highway, churned by an army’s tramping feet, nor any villager’s counsel that had led them to Weobley, but her own fey instincts seeking out Miles.

The path turned out to be only bridle-width and little used, but they kept going for a hundred paces more to discover only tumbled stones. Naught but nettles and hawthorn reigned here now.

‘Oh mercy,’ exclaimed Bess, close to weeping. ‘We shall be benighted soon.’

Heloise clambered up the grassy mound. Mayhap she might see some campfires; though weather like this could swallow up an army.

‘Let us go to the church as we arranged and see if Martin is come with any news.’

At least there would be some brief refuge from the rain, Heloise sighed, as they led their horses past the preaching cross and drew them beneath the shelter of the church’s southern porch. Bess set Ned to count the flowered panels above her head, while Heloise ventured in. The doorlatch echoed loudly in the semi-darkness. A light moving to the left of the chancel behind the rood screen glimmered palely on a knightly tomb.

‘Martin?’ she called as she drew a cross of water on her dripping forehead and distractedly genuflected. Her voice sounded feeble in the eerie, pillared gloom.

The voice that answered came from above and she nearly swooned with the shock of it. A taper flared; a thin parson stood upon the rood screen beneath the great wooden cross, his intimidating flare of nostril and eye sockets lit from below. Heloise rallied; out came the gasping half-lie of Brecknock’s farms and castle being torched and the need to seek the child’s father who was with the duke’s retinue.

But it seemed they had found help. St Miles, the patron saint of lost armies and other movables, had answered her prayers. The priest, now he could see she was no pilfering soldier, came down from his refuge. Yes, he told them, an army had entered the village and then gone east to seize the empty manorhouse belonging to Lord Ferrers, a Yorkist lord. Perhaps they would like him to guide them there before nightfall? Hungry, shivering in their wet clothes after a day spent searching, all the while anxious to safeguard Ned’s health and freedom, the two young women and Benet were at the end of their strength, but what was half a mile or so more? At a side altar, Heloise lit all the prayer candles so Ned might warm his cold little hands while they waited for the parson to bridle his mule.

Perhaps the saints were warmed by the child’s courage also, for Martin arrived back from his scouting, red-mired and sodden. The news was bad: the high road to Hereford was held by King Richard’s men.

‘But be of good heart, my lady. They have insufficient numbers for a battle yet.’

Woonton Devereux was hardly the jewel of Lord Ferrers’s barony. The outline in the gloom was of an unembellished building in a sloping field flanked like a mother pig by a progeny of byres and barns. Judging by the noise and flickering lights, it was populated by more than oxen. They had found someone’s army.

‘Who comes?’ Pikes challenged them.

It was then Ned inconveniently asserted himself: ‘I am here to speak with my father, his grace of Buckingham,’ he announced, snatching off his shameful female cap and veil before Heloise could stop him. ‘Go and announce me, sirrah. Straightway, if you please!’ It was such wondrous mimicry of his father that one of the sentries saluted.

Green timber was smoking Ferrers’s hall. Heloise wiped her stinging eyes and gaped. It was like stepping through some hunting pique-nique held in Hell. Scores of half-clad men crammed tight as flagstones lay amidst a mess of drying jackets and prostrate weaponry. The offensive stink of the overused garderobe fermented in air already musty, and the vapour from a hundred breaths oozed down the bare, speckled walls. Some knave whistled and poor, tired Bess found herself whooped at on all sides with bored hands tweaking her hem. The furore grew and the women almost tumbled through the solar door that Sir William Knyvett flung open to investigate the hubbub. The noise died in an instant.

‘The Vaughans have taken Brecknock, my lord father,’ exclaimed Ned in his piping voice and was snatched inside by his father like a pipit seized by a sparrowhawk.

‘Did you have to let him blurt that out in front of them?’ exclaimed Buckingham, shoving his son to dry before the blazing fire, and then he realised who else stood behind the tall, hunched parson.

Another time Heloise might have succumbed to crazed laughter for against a firescreen of glistening hauberks and steaming quilted jackets, the duke, stripped down to a rust-stained shirt, was fish-eyed with astonishment. He did not recognise her. She stood smiling foolishly at her husband, her muddy hose crusted with mud, perspiring profusely into Miles’s third best shirt in the steamy heat, with her dyed, hacked hair dripping onto spreading stains across her padded shoulders. There had been little point in changing into the simple robe she had brought with her.

‘Oh my God!’ said a beloved voice, disturbing the good parson’s equanimity and Miles’s arms lifted her shoulder high as though she had won a tourney, his shining hair tossed back, his cheeks dark with the growth of beard, his eyes ecstatic.

Bess, however, was eyeing the empty platters. ‘Would it be possible to feed Lord Stafford?’ she asked, conscientious to her fingertips and with a little self-interest too.

‘Yes.’ Buckingham’s voice emerged in a strangled squeak; he had noted his son was shorn of curls and wearing skirts. ‘Yes, yes, Pershall, see to it.’

‘Come to the fire, Elizabeth.’ De la Bere conducted the bedraggled young woman to the hearth as though he were a Westminster courtier escorting a foreign princess.

‘I do so enjoy a family gathering,’ observed the Bishop of Ely, his cathedral voice unpleasingly acrid. ‘A pity that it will be over so soon.’