‘Le Bret?’ The archer nodded. ‘I knew him, briefly. He left St Clair. Must have been two years back.’

‘That fits. At least he showed sense. Thank God you can rely on some folk. Your change of heart shook my faith in human nature. Warmth, indeed,’ Otto snorted. ‘Tell me, what happened to the stripling with an unruly conscience – Ned...Fletcher, I think it was. Is he at Kermaria?’ Now there was a handsome lad. Otto had never met a better-looking boy than Ned Fletcher. Though he had found a friend at Huelgastel and was fond of him, this new lad could not touch Ned Fletcher on looks. A sturdy lad, with rosy cheeks. Otto sighed, he had always regretted not being able to get closer to young Fletcher.

‘Ned Fletcher’s still there.’

Mouth full, stained teeth grinding his meat like a mill, Otto grunted with satisfaction. ‘Aye. That fits too.’

***

‘Maman?’ Groping his way through the half-light on the landing outside the Dowager Countess’s bedchamber, François pushed the heavy door-curtain aside with a shove that set the curtain rings rattling.

‘Who’s that?’ Marie de Roncier’s voice came querulously from the bed. She had slipped on the worn flags in the bailey a month ago and damaged her hip, and had been carried up to the round tower room she’d converted to her private use. She was a truculent patient, and she had gone unwillingly, fighting every step of the way and invoking curses on anyone within range. She did not know it, but she was not likely to leave her chamber on her own feet again.

‘It’s me, Maman.’ François’ foot caught on something on the floor. A leather mug. ‘God’s Blood! Why doesn’t that maid of yours light more torches? It’s blacker than Hades in here.’ He bent for the mug, setting it on the stone ledge which ran partway round the wall.

‘Hades is the right word for it,’ came his mother’s bitter response.

‘Maman, don’t be like that.’ His mother’s tireless complaining was one of the reasons François had been avoiding her company of late. He knew it was hard for her, a vigorous woman, to be so cooped up, but if she sweetened her tongue, he might beat a path to her chamber more frequently.

‘You should come to see me more often,’ she said, unaware that her plaintive echoing of her son’s guilty conscience merely served to alienate him further. He would not be visiting her now if it were not for the tidings from Kermaria. ‘My hip aches. I’m bored. No one comes to talk to me.’

‘You’ve got Lena,’ François pointed out. His mother recited complaints as lovingly as a priest mouthed the Creed.

‘Lena! That girl’s got a skull made of wood. How would you like to be laid up in bed with only a foolish chit of a girl for company?’

A grin flickered across François’ dissolute mouth. It was quickly repressed, but not before his needle-eyed mother had spotted it. A reluctant light gleamed in her black eyes.

‘Ever the ladies’ man, eh? I should have thought getting that whey-faced Countess of yours with child was enough to keep you fully employed.’

‘Maman, please,’ her son replied, in pained tones. For all that Eleanor was barren and he must have a son, he had a fondness for his Countess, which bade him take her part. ‘You should not speak of Eleanor in so disparaging a manner.’

Marie laughed. She wanted her son to have a male heir as much as he did, but there was a perverse pleasure to be derived from his discomfiture. ‘Don’t bother to deny it, François. Do you think I don’t know why Lena never answers my calls in the long, dark hours? She never answers because she can’t hear me, not being in her own bed but warming another’s.’

A look of remorse flitted across her son’s face. ‘I’m sorry, Maman. I never thought you’d have need of her in the night.’

‘I do have need of her in the night. It’s not that I mind your copulating with my maid–’

‘Maman!’ The florid cheeks brightened with colour. François found his mother’s coarseness a constant embarrassment. It was not seemly that a dowager countess should use such language.

‘But will you at least ensure that someone else is put in Lena’s place, so my calls don’t go unheeded?’ François’ coppery head dipped in brusque agreement and, feeling that she had emerged from the exchange the victor, Marie was able to regard her son with a touch more warmth. ‘What brings you to my lonely tower today, François?’ She was unable to resist one final dig – it made her feel so much better. ‘Missing me, were you?’

‘I received word from Kermaria.’

‘And?’

‘Waldin St Clair is coming home.’

Marie furrowed her brow. ‘Why should that worry you? Waldin is but one man. What can one man do?’

François shifted impatiently. ‘From a military point of view it could be disastrous. Waldin is bound to attract recruits.’

‘So?’ Marie shrugged. ‘You weren’t thinking of laying a siege? We agreed to let St Clair and his hatchlings moulder away in their stinking bog. They cannot topple you from your perch.’

‘I wouldn’t stake my life on that, Maman.’

Marie examined her son’s expression. ‘You’ve learned more. Don’t spare me, I can shoulder it. It’s my hip that’s weak, not my spine.’

‘He’s going to marry Yolande Herevi.’

‘That strumpet!’ She responded scornfully, unable to perceive why her son’s hazel eyes were so strained. ‘I don’t know who your informant was, François, but he must have been mistaken.’

‘I have every confidence the man was telling the truth. And God’s Teeth, Maman, you know the blood that flows through Yolande Herevi’s veins also flows through ours. It’s not as though she crawled out of the gutter.’

Marie bridled, and her dark eyes snapped. ‘My sister threw herself in the gutter when she married below her station!’

‘Gwionn Herevi was a squire and bound for higher things, if I heard the story aright. He was no nameless beggar.’

‘I will not discuss my sister’s marriage.’ Marie’s damaged hip twinged, and delicately she kneaded her side. ‘Oh, let St Clair marry his whore, the matter’s beneath contempt. We should ignore it.’

François was galled by his mother’s indifference, but he had saved the juiciest morsel till last. Casually, he threw it at her. ‘My informant tells me she’s breeding.’

His mother’s body jerked. ‘What?’

‘Another case entirely, eh, Maman?’

The pallid lips worked. ‘That bitch could not be in pup – she must be turned forty!’

The vulgar turn of phrase made François flinch. ‘She’s thirty-five,’ he said, mildly.

‘Saint Félix protect us!’ Age-spotted fingers clenched on the bed furs. ‘What if she produces another boy?’

‘Exactly. If Yolande Herevi becomes Yolande St Clair, and has a son, that son would have a claim to half my lands would he not?’

Marie lay motionless. Her face was glazed, her eyes burned. Her pupils were tiny, hard and shiny as jet beads on a rosary. Down in the inner bailey, François could hear the drumming of many feet as the castle guard drilled in the yard. Rooks cawed on the battlements. But in his mother’s chamber, there was only a stifling, oppressive silence. The window slits were too slim to allow much sunlight in, and in the eternal twilight of the room, his mother could easily be mistaken for a corpse.

François repressed a shudder and, blaming the suffocating sick-room atmosphere for his dark imaginings, went to the window splay to breathe in fresh air. An unlit torch was propped against the log basket by the fire. Dipping the flambeau into the fire, he jammed it in a wrought-iron wall sconce. His hair brightened to flame in the light. ‘Maman, what do you advise?’

‘Nothing. We should do nothing.’

The heavy jaw sagged. ‘Nothing? But we cannot allow them to marry!’

The bedridden woman gave a slender smile. ‘Yes, we can. And we will. There is nothing else we can do. We have no cause to take action against St Clair, and it might prove to be needless.’