Julitta hopped from foot to foot and never took her eyes off him. Mauger could be moody and difficult, but more often than not she could cozen him round.

'Oh come on, quickly then,' he capitulated with a sigh, and swung her up across Apollo's broad, dappled back. The horse snorted and glanced round at her as if to ask what she thought she was doing. Julitta patted him and giggled. From the vantage point of his withers, she could see far more of the world and in turn let the world see her. Mauger obligingly untied the horse and with a click of his tongue, began to lead him on a circuit of the ward.

'Give me the rein,' Julitta commanded. 'Let me ride on my own.'

Mauger shook his head, I don't think that is a good idea, young mistress.'

Just for a minute.' She tossed her head. 'Papa lets me, you know he does.'

Mauger sighed again, 'just one circuit,' he said, 'and then you go straight back to your mother.' He handed her up the reins and Julitta took them competently, her small face filling with pleasure. Her father had introduced her to a saddle almost before she could walk. When she was two, he had bought her a tiny Hibernian pony in London and by the time she was three, she was riding the larger animals he had brought from the north with total confidence. A warhorse was still slightly out of her scope to adult opinion, but Julitta had no such reservations. Besides, she and Apollo were old friends.

She trotted him around the palisade and reached the far side away from the gateway. Turning him, she was in time to see her father, Aubert and Benedict coming back from their ride. Julitta bounced up and down and shouted across to them, but they were too wrapped up in their own conversation to pay heed. Her high-pitched cry startled Apollo. He half-reared, and took off as if a bee had stung his rump. Julitta clung to the reins and gripped with her thighs. His bare back was slippery and her legs were short, making her seat more than precarious. She saw the ground blurring beneath his hooves, saw Mauger's white, horrified face, his mouth open in a square yell. The grey thundered past him and he was forced to jump aside or be ridden down.

Now she had the attention of the company by the gate. Her father's expression was one of furious incredulity, Benedict's one of astonishment. Squawking hens scattered frantically. A woman flattened herself against the side of the well, her hand cupping her mouth. Someone screamed. Julitta pulled on the reins to stop the horse, leaning back, using all her weight, but she might as well have been a feather on his back. Apollo swerved to avoid a wheelbarrow of dung, struck the side of a storage shed and stumbled. Julitta was flung from the saddle to the dusty bailey floor. By a miracle the horse kept his feet, and staggered to a halt, sweating and trembling.

Julitta lay stunned, unable to move. She had bitten her tongue, and a thin trickle of blood ran from the corner of her mouth, convincing the onlookers that she was more badly hurt than was the case. In a daze she saw Benedict's worried face bending over her. She tried to smile at him and speak his name, but her wits were still numbed and all that emerged was a bloody croak. Then the boy was pushed roughly aside by her father.

'Princess?' he said, and then she heard him swear softly under his breath. He ran his hands over her, the way he did over his horses, gently but firmly seeking for broken bones. 'Can you sit up?'

'I… I think so, Papa.' She took his hand and pulled herself up. The world tilted up and down a few times, then settled on a level. A pile of stable sweepings had cushioned her fall; the smell of dung and urine overpowered her nostrils. 'Open your mouth.'

She did so, and saw a look of relief cross her father's face, followed swiftly by a darkening anger. 'Little harm done to you at least,' he pronounced. 'What were you doing riding Apollo in the first place?'

Julitta stuck her finger in her mouth, touched the bitten edge of her tongue, and then looked at the thin streak of blood. She saw Mauger's bleached face among the crowd of onlookers and knew that she had got both of them into terrible trouble. Then, beyond him, she saw her mother forcing her way forwards, her gown dusty with flour. Julitta started to sob for Ailith, knowing full well that the more she could manipulate her mother's heartstrings, the less severe the punishment was likely to be.

Ailith snatched her daughter up in her arms and Julitta clung to her like a little limpet, burying her face in the soft haven of her mother's neck.

'Can't you keep that child in your sight for more than a minute!' Rolf snarled at Ailith. 'God's sweet life! First you let her wander off by the dew ponds, now I come home and find her almost killing herself and a costly warhorse into the bargain. Don't you have eyes in your head, woman?'

Ailith recoiled from the force of his anger. 'I asked her to feed the hens for me. When I looked out she was holding the empty bowl and talking to Mauger, so I judged it safe to go and put some bread to prove.' Her reply was calm, but her body trembled with the effort of remaining so. Her eyes flickered to the crowd of witnesses before whom she was being humiliated.

'Not safe enough, it seems.'

'My trust was misplaced.'

This time it was Rolf who recoiled as if she had slapped him. Ailith turned her back on him and walked with dignity towards the kitchens. Julitta perched on her mother's hip, one frightened blue eye peeping out from sanctuary at the havoc her impulsive act had wrought. The witnesses to the incident quickly melted away. Aubert took Benedict by the shoulder and tactfully withdrew.

Rolf cursed and dug his fingers through his hair in exasperation and anger, more than half of it self-directed. He ought to go after Ailith and make peace between them, but in his current state of defensiveness and tension, that was impossible. He would only bellow at her. Her remark about misplaced trust had struck at the core of his hidden guilt. If she could not trust Julitta, how much less could she trust him after what had happened earlier this morning at Inga's cottage? In his mind's eye he saw Inga lying upon her narrow bed, her body drenched in the sweat of pleasure, a frown contorting her face as she twisted and writhed. It had been a battlefield, each sound and gesture of need a blow, and neither of them willing to be merciful. Even to think of it now made him shiver.

Swallowing manfully, Mauger stood before Rolf to take his punishment. 'It was all my fault, my lord,' he owned, standing to attention. 'I should have known better than to let her ride Apollo.'

'Yes, you should.' It would have been easy for Rolf to vent his rage upon Mauger's hapless shoulders; too easy. He bit his tongue and began to examine the grey for damage.

'She… she said that you permitted her.'

'Not without a leading rein, but I do not suppose she told you that.'

'No, my lord.' Mauger cleared his throat. 'I'll know better in future.'

'We all will,' Rolf said, and left it at that.

The day continued to be fraught with near-disaster and frayed tempers. Scarcely had Rolf checked Apollo and found him none the worse for his experience than the royal representative arrived to look at the horse, and turned out to be none less than King William's eldest son Robert. He brought with him a sizeable entourage of young knights and hangers-on, all of whom had to be extended Ulverton's hospitality. They were clients and future clients, the men who put the bread on Rolf's table. That occasionally they must eat it was well understood.

Ailith, still simmering from the altercation in the yard and with Julitta underfoot, was fit to be tied. Rolf avoided her, apart from issuing curt instructions concerning the provision of a meal for their guests. She snapped at him that she was perfectly capable of preparing food without his interference, after which everything conspired against her. The milk curdled, the griddle cakes burned, the meat was as tough as saddle leather. Stony-faced, Rolf presided over a meal that had nothing to commend it apart from the mead which was served at the merciful end with fresh fruit and nuts which at least could not be ruined.

Robert of Normandy was a charming young man, light-hearted and exuberant. He treated the shortcomings of Rolf's table as a huge joke and being familiar with the superb order of the household at Brize-sur-Risle, baited his host mercilessly about the differences.

'I suppose heaven is all the sweeter when you've experienced hell,' he grinned, eyeing a charred griddle cake, and then a flustered, red-faced Ailith. 'But you're a strange one to prefer the second for ten months of the year.'

'It is not always like this,' Rolf muttered, feeling thoroughly humiliated beneath Robert's heavy-handed jesting. He glowered at Ailith. His wife would never have been caught out like this. Arlette, whatever the difficulties, would have provided a superlative meal and maintained her grace before the guests. Felice was doing her best, but her efforts only made Ailith appear all the less competent. She looked as if she belonged in a byre, and Rolf was ashamed.

By the time Robert of Normandy departed, Apollo in the care of one of his grooms, Ailith was tearful with exhaustion and Rolf was ready to explode. Instead of comforting her and trying to mend the breach that had opened between them, he saddled up a horse and rode out alone, shunning all company.

'Forget today,' Felice advised, and with her own hands prepared Ailith a calming blackberry tisane and made her drink it in the quiet of the solar. Despite Ailith's worried protest, she sent Julitta out with Benedict to play. 'You cannot cage the child,' she gently admonished. 'Rolf only shouted at you from his own fear this morning. It was unjust and he knows it.'