It was one thing for your family to acquire a castle but it was quite another to be accepted by the nobility. And if your grandsire had been a crossbow dealer and your father had gained his temporal power by swaggering around London, buying himself a baron’s younger daughter, donating liberally to royal funds and doing disgustingly well in the world, then you were definitely to be ignored. What made matters worse for Heloise and her younger sisters after they had settled into Bramley with their timid stepmother, Matillis, were the tidings that Phillip, Lord Rushden, was disputing their father’s right to the castle. He had already journeyed from Dorset with an armed force, seized one of the dwellings in the nearby manor of Monkton Bramley and was trying to collect rents from her father’s villagers by coercion. Vowing vengeance, Sir Dudley had taken every able man and was gone down to Bramley village to put a stop to such effrontery.

Sir Dudley’s daughters were used to their sire charging off in a pother as if he had been stung by a gadfly, and Matillis, who was scarcely older than Heloise, was too dreamy to be anxious, so the women gathered in the solar, the castle’s warmest chamber, and deliberately busied themselves with Dionysia’s departure for Middleham.

Growing uncomfortable from the huge fire, Heloise gazed forlornly at the thick glass panes dribbling with moisture. The chamber smelt stiflingly of woodsmoke, beeswax and the lavender perfume that her stepmother had dabbed on too generously that morning. Heloise’s day had begun poorly: her father, expecting her to be more omniscient than God, had scolded her not only for the red cloth, left in the laundry, that had turned his underdrawers rosy, but also the hole in his boot sole and her youngest sister’s cut knee. A wonder he did not blame her for the Rushdens!

With a sigh, she rearranged the fireguard and dutifully knelt again to finish pinning Dionysia’s hem, but her discontent was contagious. Their old nurse, darning by the window, was muttering about her eyesight, and at the small table, despite Matillis’s attempt to hold the peace, Heloise’s youngest sisters were growing peevish, squabbling over scraps to clothe their dolls.

‘Are you nearly done, Heloise?’ asked Dionysia with a seventeen year old’s impatience, draping an uncut sweep of emerald satin across her perfect bosom and squinting to see what a lock of her golden hair looked like against the green.

‘How can I finish this if you fidget so?’ Heloise chided, trying to make the hem flow gracefully into the short train so that they could start sewing on the embroidered border.

‘Pah, a few rucks will not show when the border is on. Can we set this lower?’ Dionysia poked discontentedly at the broad band of honey-hued silk that edged her bodice and reassessed her reflection.

‘No, Didie, we cannot. It took me all last evening to shape it.’ Heloise rose wearily to her feet, picking off the wisps of thread that clung to her fine wool skirts. ‘I have never known a fabric slither so.’

Behind her, Nurse set the darned woollen stocking aside. ‘Them Rushdens,’ she declared, with a tone that promised gossip, and all the sisters turned towards her. ‘Slitherin’ is what put me in mind of it. The Rushden serpent story.’ Matillis, unused to these utterances, looked perturbed, but Nurse continued: ‘They say that over two hundred years ago in the days of King Edward Longshanks, the Lady Dyota Rushden cuckolded her husband by making a pact with the Devil.’

‘What does “cuckolded” mean?’ asked Lucretia, the youngest at ten years old, and was dispatched immediately from the chamber to find a non-existent bag of mending.

‘What kind of pact?’ whispered Dionysia as soon as the door closed.

‘The fiend lay with her as a serpent.’

‘Better than a bull,’ muttered Heloise, wondering just how snakes mated. ‘Would it not have been more sensible for the Devil to keep a human form?’

‘Perhaps he likes variety. I should prefer a swan myself,’ giggled Dionysia, glancing around as if Lucifer had ventured out of Hell to note her name.

‘Please go on, Nurse,’ urged Clio, thirteen years old, still smirking at the petty victory over her younger sister.

‘And in each generation ever since that day,’ the old woman lowered her voice, ‘there has been a Rushden with the soul of a serpent.’

‘No more, Nurse,’ protested Heloise. This talk of the Rushdens was stirring up unease – a foreboding – not exactly that something calamitous would happen, rather, that Fortune had shifted the wheel and a change had occurred.

‘It’s no gossip, bless you, my darling. There’s wicked black serpents on the Rushdens’ insignia to prove it.’ The old woman was well versed in the heraldic flauntings and genealogia of her betters.

‘Hmm, that story is not in the least original.’ Heloise picked up Lucretia’s doll from the small table and plucked at its veil. ‘The Plantagenets claimed to be descended from the Devil much further back than that. Mayhap we should invent a legend to give ourselves respectability.’

‘Do we know any lusty swans?’ Dionysia flounced across to tuck her arm through Heloise’s and beam at Matillis. ‘Or fiendish serpents? A fiend for Heloise to match her elfin hair.’

‘I think you are mixing up Jupiter and the Devil.’ Matillis crossed herself for good measure. ‘And no more talk of the Rushdens.’

‘I just pray Sir Dudley thwacks them right out of the shire.’ Nurse grabbed another stocking from her basket. ‘Them Rushdens are said to be murderous thieves to have truck with, and the heir as ugly as sin, and a cold-hearted knave withal. Leastways your father has a temper on him hot as Tewkesbury mustard and it will be a brave man who will cross him.’

‘Or woman,’ muttered Heloise.

Nurse set down her mending. ‘You poor sweeting,’ she clucked. ‘’Twas not fair you took the brunt of it this morning. Well, never you mind, there’s a good man out there somewhere for you, mark my words.’

‘Is there, Nurse?’ For once, Heloise did not hide her feelings. ‘Must my fortunes depend on finding a husband? I hate the way the world is tilted so that fathers and husbands have all the authority. They treat us as though we are breeding stock to be sold at market.’ She might have added more, but the horns sounded and a chorus of barking heralded Sir Dudley’s return.

‘Well, I am back,’ he exclaimed, striding into the silent solar some moments later, two grinning hounds, reeking with pond water, at his heels.

‘Yes, we can see that, sir,’ muttered Dionysia, swishing her new skirts out of the dogs’ path. Heloise stepped in front to shield her and shooed the beasts to the hearth where they settled appreciatively. At least her father could have ordered the servants to sluice them down, but he clearly had another matter foremost in his mind for he was wearing the familiar smug expression that usually boded ill. Warming his hands behind his back at the fire, he beamed at them like a general about to announce a victory.

‘You would have been proud of me, my wenches. The bailiff was right. We came across Rushden trying to force rent from the villagers and, when I demanded he depart, he had the hide to call me a scoundrel and a disgrace to the shire. It was so close to the alehouse that half the village heard him. There was nothing for it but to toss my glove at him.’ His eyes lingered on his new wife. Matillis was beaming admiration – at least on the outside.

‘You challenged him to combat!’ Heloise stared at her parent in disbelief. Her father’s anatomy could hardly be described as muscular. Puny might be a better word. However had her beautiful mother been given to such a man?

‘Indeed, I did.’ Sir Dudley’s grin was as gleeful as the Devil’s when signing up a soul. ‘That man is a traitor to the king’s grace if ever I saw one. Scratch the fellow and I will wager you find a Lancaster sympathiser. The cur looked daggers at me when I said I had King Edward’s favour and had supped with Lord Hastings. Just because I was knighted in a palace, whoresons like Rushden think they can sneer at me. Well, tomorrow at noon, that plaguey fellow shall learn that I am not a man to bear insults lightly.’

‘Lord Rushden never picked up the gauntlet, surely?’ Heloise exclaimed.

‘Indeed he did. Went as red as a cock’s wattle with every jack man of ’em watching and agreed to meet me tomorrow at the edge of the wood outside the village of Oakwood, a mile from here. Potters Field, the place is called. You need not gape at me like that, all of you. Rushden’s sword is rusty in its scabbard, mark my words. The fellow is at least sixty. Stooping and stupid.’

Useless to tell her father this was utter lunacy. Humiliating a baron of ancient noble family! Not only would this intensify the quarrel over Bramley, but it would send all the local nobles flocking to Rushden’s banner. The Ballasters would be shunned like lepers. Oh, why must he bluster so? Challenging an enemy to personal combat belonged to the make-believe world of Sir Lancelot.

‘You had better put in some sword practice after dinner, sir,’ Dionysia suggested lightly, her covert glance at Heloise implying their father would find some excuse to withdraw before the morrow. But this issue was more than skin deep; not only was it about old nobility versus new money, it contained a political challenge too.

‘Pah, you do not imagine that I shall fight Lord Phillip. Sir Hubert can be my champion, of course.’

‘Will Sir Hubert agree to this?’ Heloise queried. Her sire’s retainer – a galumphing, good-natured, old carouser with the frame of a colossus and the brain of a caterpillar! Oh to be sure he would!

‘Aye, of course, and don’t you go a-meddling, trying to make him say no, girl! It is about blessed time he paid me back for all the ale and victuals over the years.’

It was despicable of him to load his quarrel onto poor Sir Hubert. This was not a matter of little boys playing with wooden swords. ‘Please, sir,’ Heloise protested, risking a scolding. ‘I have a fearful feeling about this and it is foolish to …’ She faltered as the humour ebbed from her father’s face.

‘A fool, am I?’ He snatched up some discarded sewing and shoved it at her. ‘Keep to your stitching, girl, and mind your manners.’ Thrusting up her hands defensively, she winced as the needle in the fabric jabbed her. ‘Changeling!’ he sneered. ‘No wonder her grace of Gloucester could not find a suitor for you. You want to take care that Holy Church doesn’t get to hear of your babblings and lock you up.’

Or worse.

‘Giving your opinions,’ he continued, ‘sticking your nose into men’s affairs, mouthing tomfoolery. At least she …’ he grabbed Dionysia’s wrist and jerked her towards him, ‘she has the sense to keep a still tongue in her head and please a man.’ Then his foul temper abated, his breathing steadied. He gave his new wife a reassuring glance, but there was no kindness for his oldest daughter. ‘Go and talk to the faeries, Heloise. Ask them if they will have you back.’

‘Pickled as a soused herring,’ muttered Martin, Sir Dudley’s groom, next morning at dawn as he stood gloomily with his master and Heloise, staring down at Sir Hubert’s great bulk, snoring on the straw of the byre. ‘Sir ’ubert couldn’t slay a flea between his thumbs, let alone bestride a horse this morning. What’s to be done, master? On my faith, I’ve tried burnt feathers and slappin’ ’im but we’ll not have ’im sober in time.’ As if to add emphasis, the rooster pattering on the tiles above their heads opened his throat and shrieked.

For answer, Heloise’s sire picked up a pail of water and hurled its freezing contents at the knight’s head, but Sir Hubert merely rolled over like a happy dog.

‘God damn you!’ fumed her father. ‘This is your fault, girl! You should have kept the old fool sober.’ He strode out into the yard. ‘Bring my breakfast to my bedchamber and announce that I have been taken ill with the measles.’

‘But our family honour …’ Horrified, Heloise grabbed up fistfuls of her skirts and hurried along beside him.

He halted to glare at her. ‘What if I truly have the measles and am fevered and delirious?’

‘That is acceptable, sir.’ She shivered, wishing they might finish the argument indoors.

‘Amen to that. I truly have the measles.’

‘Oh, sir,’ Martin dutifully snatched off his cap to address his employer, delaying him further. ‘Forgive me sayin’ so, but folks’ll say you are craven if you do not fight this mornin’.’

‘Then Bramley shall close its ears to the gossip. You will inform the household I am contagious, daughter. Now see to my breakfast!’

‘But if you eat heartily, sir, they will think …’

‘Cease whining, you useless creature, and make sure the beef is not overcooked at dinnertime, nor the mustard runny.’

‘I know my duty, sir,’ she flared and slackened her pace lest he cuff her.

‘Fie, your mother’s father would turn in his grave at such behaviour,’ muttered Martin, shaking his head at Sir Dudley’s back. ‘’Tis not the way of the nobility.’

‘I know it.’ Heloise led Martin into the warmth of the kitchen, her thoughts skittering over the consequences as she gave orders to the kitchen servants for breakfast. The groom was right; once the gossip rippled out, her sisters would fetch no husbands, poor Matillis would be shunned, and they would never ever find acceptance among the Somerset nobility. She rubbed her hands before the fire, wondering how she might amend matters. If Lord Rushden was elderly, she would wager her best gown that he would hardly be spoiling for a fight on a bleak morning. It was fit to snow again out there.

‘Try the pottage, mistress,’ pleaded their head cook. ‘The master threw it over poor Thomas yester morn.’

Heloise took a long-handled spoon and dipped it into the pot, which was suspended over the embers. ‘What if I dress in Father’s armour and go in his stead?’ she whispered to Martin, and paused in her ladling. Could she? Dare she?

‘Nay, mistress,’ he protested, clapping a hand to his balding pate, but the outrageous idea tempted Heloise as she set a small loaf of fresh white bread beside the bowl upon a wooden platter.

‘But, Martin, it might serve.’

The groom hastened after her as she carried the tray into the great hall and he waylaid her at the foot of the wooden staircase leading to her father’s chamber.

‘Godsakes, mistress, a gentlewoman cannot do such a thing.’

‘Why not? I have my father’s inches and if I keep the visor down, no one need know. I will write an apology here and bear it with me so you may carry it across to Lord Rushden at the field and there is an end to the business. Save,’ she glanced towards the upper room, ‘Father will have me beaten for it, but …’

The groom looked as though he were struggling against a fit of apoplexy. ‘If you are discovered …’ he spluttered, the wooden banister wobbling precariously. ‘The scandal, mistress. It will be worse than cowardice. Your honour—’

‘Since my father tells me I shall never find a man to offer for me, it does not worry me, but you are right, we must take care to keep this secret. What matters is that my sisters shall one day find worthy husbands and escape his temper.’

‘But what if you have to fight, mistress?’

She sensed the faeries listening, hidden high in the beams of the hall, and felt no disapproval. ‘It will not come to that.’ Besides, she had watched combat practice at Middleham with the other maids of honour, and years ago Sir Hubert had let her test the feel of a sword and shown her a few tricks. Her instincts told her this was right. Even sensible Martin was wavering. ‘Will you help me, Martin? Set out my father’s armour, saddle Sir Hubert’s destrier and come with me as my esquire? Oh please … and pray you say nothing to my father. Will you do it?’

‘Aye, mistress, fool that I am.’

‘Does no harm for a noblewoman to know what a husband must carry into battle,’ Sir Hubert had once said to the giggling Ballaster maidens when they had been trying on his plumed jousting helm. But today it was not just the helm. Inwardly Heloise trembled like a maiden about to be sacrificed to a dragon; outwardly she pretended serenity as Martin gradually buckled on piece after piece of steel over the quilted brigandine and leggings. Not all the pieces matched, but with one of the servant’s tabards tugged down over her chest and hips, only an expert would have noticed.

Save for her heels, every clattering inch of her was encased in metal, from shiny insteps to the polished gorget about her neck. She felt extremely protected until she tried to move and found her limbs stiff, slow and weighted as if her body were remote and it needed a carrier pigeon to reach her fingertips with the message to bend her gauntleted fingers round Sir Hubert’s swordhilt.

‘If this t’were a tournament, the winner might demand your armour and your horse,’ Martin clucked after fastening the old knight’s belt about her. They had guiltily made extra holes in the leather to keep it from slipping down over the tassets that encased Heloise’s thighs. ‘Easy now.’ His young lady was wobbling precariously on the small upturned barrel and he steadied it so she might step across into the saddle.

‘There will not be any tournament,’ Heloise muttered.

‘Don’t you change your mind, mistress, after all this labour.’ He heaved her leg across the shiny leather and then handed up the helm. ‘Aye,’ he noted her grimace, ‘riding astride will be strange for you but I’ll keep good hold of the leading rein and Chivalry’s a valiant beast.’

She lowered the helmet over her coif and clanked down the visor. Instantly the wintry world was reduced to muffled sounds; her vision to a horizontal slit. The inside air about her face was damp from her breath yet stifling, and she swiftly pushed the grille up again, preferring the chill wind on her cheeks. So this was what it felt like to ride into battle. God help her, it was like carrying three large sacks of grain. Well, such torture may have been preferable to being pierced by a fatal arrow on the bloody fields of Wakefield or Towton, but this was agony.

By the time they emerged from the woodland track, the clouded sky was tinged with orange, promising sleet to impair Heloise’s vision even further. And they were late. Unfamiliar with the roads, they had missed the track to Oakwood and had to turn around. Potters Field proved to be a fist of cleared land thrusting into the woodland at the edge of a common. No doubt Lord Rushden had chosen it for its flatness. A ditch drained it on one side, a hedgerow edged it on the other and a small scatter of bleating sheep were glaring at the horsemen that huddled within the fringe of oak and hazel. To the side of the track, just before it ventured into the wood, stood a dilapidated hovel and, tethered to the small broken-down manger propped against its wall, was a donkey. A plump little man, clad in a long houppelande, emerged from inside, rubbing his hands up and down his forearms to keep warm. Seeing Heloise, he hallooed the Rushden company, and they immediately rode out into the open.

As she identified her foe through the grille of her beaked visor, Heloise found her courage ebbing. Lord Rushden sat straightbacked in the saddle, his formidable visor already down. Even though she knew the steel shell hid a crabbed and elderly man, her enemy looked unnaturally huge and incredibly defiant. The black rondels on his argent surcote seemed to be taunting her like arcane eyes across the meadow, and then as Heloise drew closer she recognised the circles’ imperfections – they were coiled serpents. Two of Rushden’s henchmen were laughing at his groom’s efforts to shoo the unshorn sheep through the gate to the side of the meadow. The fat man caught at his stirrup by the hovel, but her enemy took no notice; his gaze was firmly fixed on her.

‘Take him the apology, Martin.’

The groom grimly ran across the grass that separated them. Heloise saluted haughtily as Lord Rushden raised his head from scanning the parchment, and then gasped. This was her nightmare! The black knight! Of all the fools in Christendom! God protect her! She had invited herself to her own death!

In a daze, she watched Martin running back to her as if he were a creature no longer of this world. Lord Rushden’s answer was already in her mind.

The groom’s eyes were round as turrets, his fear great. ‘Says it be too late for an apology. ’Pon my soul, mistress, you have to tell ’im who you are.’

She shook her head. This was meant to be. At least if she died, there would be no more complaints, no more beatings. ‘I acquit you of all blame, Martin.’

Because it was not a proper jousting field, there was no wooden tilt to keep the horses apart. Heloise took the wooden lance, swallowed nervously as she kneed her charger round and then rode to the edge of the field. She had one last chance for survival. If Lord Rushden knocked her from the saddle, she could pretend that she was stunned and mayhap there could be an end to it. She moistened her lips and signalled her readiness. Her enemy saluted her mockingly and lowered his lance. The Rushden groom raised a kerchief and, as he cast it down, Heloise spurred forward with a prayer to St Catherine. She instinctively swerved as the malevolent lance came at her. Her own weapon went astray, missing Rushden entirely, and she quickly withdrew her feet from the stirrups and, as if hit, toppled off the horse into the deep grass the way she had been taught to fall. All breath burst out of her as she crashed in an untidy sprawl. Her nightmare had not told her what came next.

Her head was still ringing as the thud of hooves returned. Lord Rushden dismounted and clanged purposefully towards her. She blinked up at him through the slits. He was not pointing his sword to her throat! Plague take it! He was waiting for her to fight him on foot.

Groaning inwardly, already badly bruised, she turned onto her knees, awkwardly staggered to her feet and reluctantly drew Sir Hubert’s sword. Rushden made an assault. That Heloise parried it was a miracle. It happened twice and he began to circle, forcing her to stagger and turn to keep him in her sight. He was assessing her, exploring her speed, mobility, skill, and each blow became more testing. Cursing beneath her breath, Heloise made a lunge, but she found it hard to raise the sword with sufficient strength to bring it down upon him. He was taller than her and moved aside easily, not with an old man’s lumbering gait but with a younger man’s energy. If only it were over, she prayed, as he began to tease her, making feints here and there. And it was beginning to snow, marring her sight further. She felt like a hapless beetle fronting an agile ant. Each sparking blow, as her foe’s blade struck hers, jarred her whole body.

‘Where did you learn the use of arms, dotard, in the market?’ jeered her enemy. The malicious serpents on his breast blurred as she reeled at his voice. St Catherine protect her! This was not the blustering voice of some ancient but the strong, mocking tones of a far younger man. Blinking back tears of fury and frustration, she cast her wooden shield away, clasped the sword handle with both hands and swung the blade with all her strength, but the stranger parried it easily. His blows grew lighter, playful, as he drove her back.

His taunting laugh as she almost tumbled backwards over a molehill made Heloise break her silence. With a fierce whoop of female anger, she charged at him. For an instant he dropped his guard, and her blade caught his helm. She might have taken further advantage of his surprise, but sweat from her brow blinded her and weariness and cold were addling her mind. More was unbearable. She crumpled to her knees and the world vanished.

Miles grabbed off his helm and flung it aside as he knelt down in the long grass. He cautiously lifted off Ballaster’s helm only to rock back on his heels in astonishment. He had fought a boy! The linen coif framed a young face and no hint of beard sat yet upon the frozen downy cheeks. Certes, a very pretty boy, more suited to the choirstall than a destrier’s saddle. Cowardly Ballaster! Sending a codling to fight. If only he had guessed earlier for it called his honour into question. Should word of this leak out …

‘Stay back all of you,’ he roared as his people and the fat barber–physician came running. He needed to protect his foe’s identity let alone save himself from ridicule.

‘Sir!’ It was the leech, venturing closer, anxious for business.

‘Stay back, I said! You there, give me a hand.’

Snowflakes glistened on his adversary’s lashes as Miles and the Ballaster esquire carried the youth into the dark, windowless hut. God’s Rood, the lad’s armour probably weighed more than he did! They laid their burden on an old palliasse set on a wooden frame. Miles stood back frowning as the esquire crouched, anxiously feeling for a pulse in his young master’s neck. Reassured, the fellow unclad the boy’s hands and began to chafe them.

‘He will live,’ Miles asserted derisively, drawing off his gauntlets. ‘Who is he? Ballaster’s son, I suppose.’ The esquire did not answer but the lad did – with a groan. ‘Wait outside, fellow!’ Miles snarled, nudging the door open with his armoured shoe and stood there while the esquire edged past him uneasily. ‘So, are you groggy, boy?’ Miles taunted, fastening the latch. It amused him to stay in the shadows, to deliberately make himself formidable. ‘You are fortunate I did not run you through.’

‘Who are you?’ whispered the youth, straining to see in the gloom.

‘Sir Miles Rushden.’ Pacing across to the ancient hearth, Miles turned his back on the lad with a menacing rattle of hauberk. He knew how to frighten his prisoners. ‘Your family is occupying my inheritance.’

He almost heard his captive swallow. ‘Are … are you going to ransom me?’

Miles swung round arrogantly to see that the youth was now leaning on one elbow, staring miserably at the ground, shoulders hunched. Circumstances warranted frightening him further. ‘Oh no, boy.’ Miles’s voice was laced with contempt. His foe evidently had no understanding of the rules. ‘I cannot be bothered. Perhaps I should just give you to my men for a beating.’

The prisoner’s head whipped up defiantly. ‘Then you are no true knight.’

Inexplicably, the taunt stung Miles, bringing the blood to his cheeks. He had been playing on the lad’s fear, determined to teach him a lesson, but young Ballaster did not lack courage even if his father did. ‘Why did you take your father’s place?’

‘He was sick, so he chose Sir Hubert in his place. Sir Hubert was a mercenary. He fought against the French at Nancy.’

‘The siege of Nancy was a defeat,’ retorted Miles witheringly. ‘And what happened to the legendary Hubert this morning? Did he suddenly vanish in the night?’

‘He was sick too,’ the boy admitted, staring at his toecaps.

‘Ha! Or drunk.’

The coiffed head jerked defiantly. ‘Where is your coward of a father then?’

For answer, his captor fiercely slapped his gauntlet in ugly fashion against its fellow. ‘Do not be insolent with me!’ Miles snarled, watching in satisfaction as the boy recoiled. He strode to the door and halted. ‘I should take my belt to you.’ He fingered the buckle, his pause perfect as his young enemy’s jaw gaped. ‘Save that I want my breakfast and it would take too long to strip you to your arse.’ For a few heartbeats, he waited menacingly and then he unlatched the door and slammed it back against the wall so that the whole dwelling shuddered. With a powerful hand, he grabbed up Ballaster’s esquire by the collar as though he were a discarded cote and dragged him inside. ‘Take your young master and be gone!’ he growled, loosing the man so violently that the fellow went sprawling towards the boy.

‘It is not his fault.’ The youth put a steadying hand out to the terrified fellow and the pair of them turned their faces to Miles, uncertain and fearful whether they should try to leave.

‘What are you waiting for?’ Being malevolent had been quite amusing but now he was weary of playing the tyrant. The servant replaced the youth’s gauntlets before he helped his master to his feet, then he hesitated, afeared to pass the grim silhouette half-blocking the threshold.

The boy – Miles could see now how narrow-shouldered he was – unsteadily set his hand on the esquire’s sleeve. ‘Pass me my helm, Martin.’ The husky young voice was in command, but the groom’s hands shook as he obeyed.

The boy took the helmet calmly, his leather fingertips smoothing the plume as if he derived calm from the action. His eyes shimmered as he cocked his chin proudly. ‘If we ever meet again, Rushden, it will be I who will take delight in it, believe me.’ With that, he bowed his head, not out of humility but so he might set the steel helm back on.

‘Oh, I am trembling already,’ mocked Miles, highly amused. He jabbed out an arm to block the boy. ‘Tell your yellow-livered sire that if he must ape his betters and play the knight, then he had better learn the rules. I do not fight children,’ he patted the steel cheek of the visor, ‘but if you cross me again, lad, as I said before, I shall take my belt to you.’

‘I am trembling already.’ His own words were hurled back at him with such sarcasm that Miles was hard put not to laugh and prod him further. Now the varmint thought himself reprieved, he was showing the insolence of a tiny lapdog yapping at a wolfhound.

Leaning against the doorway, arms folded, Miles watched with the lazy grace of a victor as the loser was helped clumsily into his saddle. The visor jerked round at him as if the eyes behind it were etching his enemy’s face into memory. Miles curled his fingers in an insolent farewell and the lad angrily touched his spurs to the horse’s flanks and galloped away.

Someone gave an obsequious cough at his elbow; the leech had come seeking payment. ‘You were not needed nor were you bidden here,’ growled Miles.

‘A very unusual combat,’ persisted the man, lurking like a distasteful smell, as Traveller trotted over at Miles’s whistle. ‘It will make good gossip in the alehouses.’

‘The point of all this, Master Surgeon?’ Miles asked irritably.

‘The point, Sir Miles? Ah now, any one in their right wits could see it was not Sir Dudley Ballaster you fought.’

‘No,’ muttered Miles dismissively, anxious to shed the armour and warm himself before a fire. ‘It was his son. The boy was incompetent. What of it?’

The man’s eyes glittered with the prospect of a bribe. ‘But Sir Dudley Ballaster does not have a son,’ he said.