Men-at-arms swarmed over the heath with spears and battle-axes. The bewildered peasants could not resist. The armoured men - who had already been at this work since dawn - grabbed them, bound their ankles with leather thongs and flung them to their knees on the trampled grass near the King.

The village women and Katherine were not harmed, though they were shoved roughly out of the way, but Katherine, as dumbfounded as the helpless rebels, presently pushed through the milling mass of soldiers, intent on speaking somehow to Richard, when she saw amongst the captives who had been caught earlier that day, the matted flaxen hair and meagre body of Cob o' Fenton. Cob's wrists were tied and he had a rope around his waist that was fastened to some soldier's saddle. He had been dragged behind the horse for several miles, sometimes on his feet, more often on the ground. His jerkin and leather trunks had been torn off him, his dirty little body, bruised and bleeding, was quite naked.

"Cob!" Katherine cried, trying to get closer to him, but one of the armoured men pushed her back and told her to shut up, adding out of deference to her pilgrim habit, "Can't ye see the King is speaking?"

She did not hear what the King had said, but he had pushed his gilded visor up and she could see a cruel half-smile on his girlish pink and white face, and she heard what one of the new captives, the blacksmith, called out from the ground. "But sire, ye gave us all our freedom at Mile End! Don't ye remember? Ye promised us we'd all be free. See, here's the charter they gave me!" The man waved a ragged piece of parchment towards Richard, who began to laugh and turning, said something to his Uncle Thomas, who also laughed. Richard backed his horse around, then, standing high in the stirrups, shrilled out, "What fools you be - what dolts - you traitorous ribauds be!" His high voice crowed with triumph. "You thought to frighten your King! You had it all your way for a time, did you not? That time is past!"

Richard spurred his horse and cantered near the bound blacksmith, he leaned over and plucked the charter from the blacksmith's hand. Richard drew his jewelled dagger and sliced through the parchment until he could tear it to a dozen fragments. He flung the fragments over his shoulder. "Now you see what use I make of your charter!" he cried. He touched his horse's flank again and rode up and down along the line of kneeling men. "Serfs you are, and serfs you shall remain till doomsday! Is that through your thick skulls now?" He tossed his head and shouted, "Some of you'll return to your own manors and whatever punishment your lords wish to mete out to you. But those of you who've dared defy me openly shall be brought to trial today - and dealt with - ah - fittingly, that I promise."

The King's words rang out into a deathly quiet, but when he finished speaking there came from the bondsmen a long sobbing gasp. Katherine saw Cob put his hands up against his face and slump forward on the rope that held him.

Her heart pounded in her throat, sweat prickled her scalp. She darted around the man-at-arms, who had forgotten her, and ran out into the open space by the King.

"Your Grace!" she cried. "Sire! A boon!"

Richard looked down in amazement at this poorly clad widow with the pilgrim scrip and staff.

"What is it, dame?" His squires drew near fingering their sword hilts.

"Your Grace," said Katherine, "I want that serf that you've got tied to yon rope." She pointed to Cob. "He's mine!"

"By Saint Jude, the woman's crazed," said Buckingham contemptuously, beckoning to his page for wine. "Get rid of her, Richard. 'Tis hot here, and we've much to do."

"You don't know me - Your Grace?" said Katherine very low, looking steadily up at the King. "Yet last Christmastide we shared wassail at Leicester Castle." She saw blank impatience in Richard's eyes. She opened her scrip, fumbled quickly inside and brought out the Duke's sapphire signet ring. "You remember this, my lord?" She held it up so that only he could see the carved Lancastrian crest.

Richard stared at the ring, then into her wide grey eyes. "Christi!" he cried, pleased as a child that has found answer to a riddle. " 'Tis Lady Swy - -"

"Your Grace, for the love of God, don't name me!" she whispered frantically, "No one must know - it is for penance."

Richard's capricious fancy was caught. He would have questioned her except that it was forbidden to infringe upon a penitential vow and brought ill luck to the offender, but he leaned down close from the saddle and whispered, "You want that naked churl? Is he truly yours, lady?"

"Ay," Katherine said, "from Kettlethorpe, a fugitive. I would deal with him myself."

"I would have drawn and quartered him, and hope you do," said Richard, his eyes sparkling. "When my men caught him back there in the forest, he screamed out all manner of treason. But you shall have him."

"Grand merci - most Gracious Majesty," whispered Katherine. "Wait my lord, I pray you. I have a daughter, Blanchette, of your own age. Do you remember her at Leicester?"

"I think so," answered Richard, puzzled and losing interest. "She was small with ruddy curls."

"Have you seen aught of her since then?"

"Nay, lady, I have not - how odd a question."

"Forgive me." She curtsied and kissed the boy's gold gauntlet. "Christ's blessings on your generosity, sire."

Richard smiled graciously.

There were murmurs of astonishment and one of sharp protest from Buckingham as the King ordered that the end of Cob's rope be untied from the saddle and given to the pilgrim widow, but Richard, who loved a secret, did not explain except to say that it was part of a penitential vow. Buckingham, who had as little possible to do with his brother of Lancaster, had never seen Katherine close, and, suspected nothing.

No one impeded her as she led her stumbling dazed serf away from the heath, and they were at once forgotten when Richard and his army returned to the congenial punishment of the captured rebels.

She led. Cob out of sight and off the road into the forest, until she saw a rainwater pool in a glade of holly bush and beeches. The pool was fringed by a mossy bank, dappled with golden light that filtered through the rich leaves of a huge sheltering beech. Katherine gently tugged at the now resistant Cob's rope, and pointing to the soft turf, said, "Rest here, Cob."

His pale-lashed eyes stared at her with numb hatred. But he collapsed on the edge of the pool and plunged his swollen purplish-black hands in the water. The leather thong that bound his wrists had bit so deep that the flesh was puffed in ridges. He rested his elbows on the turf and bending his face to the pool lapped up water avidly while the knobs of his little backbone stuck out like walnuts beneath his dirt-caked bleeding skin.

Katherine unclasped her scrip again. In it she carried all that she possessed, the few jewels she had seized that Thursday in the Savoy, the change that remained from the gold nobles, a comb, a coarse towel, a cup and a bone-handled knife.

She took out the knife and kneeling by Cob said, "Keep your arms steady - Sainte Marie, I pray this knife is sharp enough."

Cob jumped back, staring in terror at the knife. He tried to get up on his quivering legs, but the dangling end of his waist rope caught in a holly bush and yanked him down.

"Oh Cob, Cob - poor wight," said Katherine. "How can you think I'd harm you? I want to cut that thong for you."

He sucked at his lips, darting at the surrounding forest glances of beastlike wariness; his hands drew up tight against his scrawny chest.

"Look at me, Cob," said Katherine. His eyes shifted slowly and raised to her grave sorrowful face. She smiled at him, took his bound hands in hers and pulled them away from his chest. He held himself quiet, ready to spring. Katherine slid the knife carefully between his jammed arms and working it upwards sawed on the thong. It frayed at last, and she threw it on the turf. "When you can use your hands again," she said, "you must help me get that rope off you too."

Cob swallowed, staring at the cut thong. Then he winced, his teeth began to chatter from the pain that throbbed through his freed hands. "What d'ye mean to do wi' me?" he gasped.

"I'll get away from ye again, I'll - -" He clamped his lips on the threats he had nearly uttered. For sure, she'd not be so calm did she not have men hidden behind the beeches over there, or the King's men might have followed. That was it. What else had she been whispering to the King? God's blood, the clodpolls they'd all been to have believed the King's word. serfs you are and serfs you shall remain. 'Twas clear enough now. Swynford serf. Her serf. Just as it had always been. Branded once for running away, and this time there'd be an end to it - a length of rope from the gibbet on Kettlethorpe green, like Sim the reeve. Unless - Cob glanced at the knife Katherine had left lying on the bank by a clump of purple bell flowers, while she soaked her towel in the pool.

He tried to flex his throbbing fingers but they were still useless.

Katherine came to him with the wet towel and began to cleanse the blood and dirt off his little trunk that was sharp-breasted and bony as the carcass of a squab. Cob hunched himself tight. She cleaned as best she could the raw abrasions, the stone-cuts on the taut skin and said at last, "Oh Cob, Cob, have you had naught to eat? We must get you food at Waltham."

"Eat!" he cried, twisting out from under her hands. "Ay, I've had crusts from the monks and fern fronds i' the forest, and thought me well fed, whilst I still had me freedom!"