'You have a bold tongue to say that when you are scarce out of tail-clouts!' Rufus growled. It was significant that it was a growl, not a full-throated bellow. It meant that for the moment he was prepared to find Benedict's insolence intriguing. 'I wonder how bold you truly are.' He tapped his forefinger against his square front teeth, and abruptly jerked to his feet. 'Come, show me your horses,' he said. 'I need one fit for a king.'

Benedict rose too. 'A destrier, Sire?' he enquired. 'Or a palfrey?'

Rufus shrugged and hitched at his belly where it hung over his embossed belt. 'I want a beast that will make my brother Robert's eyes pop out with jealousy,' he said, and his pugnacious jaw jutted. 'The best.'

Benedict discovered that the King's taste in horses was about as dubious as his taste in clothes and cronies. Gaudy not good, brash not brilliant. He was drawn too much by markings and colour, and all the superficial cladding that meant nothing when it came to stamina, quality, and endurance. Benedict tried to interest Rufus in a young dappled grey stallion of sound conformation. The horse was alert and confident without being too spirited to handle, but Rufüs dismissed it with a wave of his hand as being 'naught but a peasant's nag' – a totally unfair remark, since even the meanest horse on the stud was worth more than a peasant might earn in an entire year.

Rufus tried several animals, and declared them all unsuitable. Finally his eye settled upon a steel-grey stallion which was giving the grooms a deal of trouble, backing and sidling, rolling its eyes. Foam lathered its neck, matching the glittering white of its mane and tail, the latter switching angrily from side to side.

'That one,' Rufus said, and his lower lip joined the outward jut of his jaw. 'I want that one.'

'His temper is uncertain, Sire,' Benedict warned.

'So is mine, we'll match well.'

Benedict could not argue with that. 'He is not saddle-trained, Sire,' he said, adding a rapid 'thank Christ' beneath his breath. The last thing he needed was for Rufus to try the brute out and get tossed into the midden.

'I've got grooms enough to break him.' Rufus approached the stallion and despite being held by two attendants, it still managed to lunge at him, teeth bared, one forehoof pawing in threat. Rufus laughed buoyantly. 'Satan!' he cried. 'I will call him Satan!'

His paramour tittered behind his hand. Benedict knew the King's reputation of disrespect for the Church. There was even the whispered rumour that he followed the old religion. Still, the name was more than appropriate to the animal. The only way to remove the devil from his nature was to geld him, and he very much doubted that Rufus would do anything so sensible.

The King went on to examine the destrier herd, and then the ponies which Rolf had brought out of the north so many years ago, and for which Ulverton was now justly famous. 'Ponies!' Rufus snorted, eyeing the sturdy, ugly little animals which contrasted so strongly with the proud, graceful warhorses. 'What in the world possessed your father-by-marriage to invest in them?'

'Is it not better to have more than one dish on a table, Sire?

Rich and powerful men come to purchase warhorses, palfreys and coursers from our stock. Between times, we take the custom of merchants and carriers. And in times of war, rich and powerful men return to us to buy our ponies for sumpter work. They look nothing, I know, but they have an endurance beyond all believing. I would wager with confidence that one of those ponies bearing two pannier-loads of rocks could outpace a destrier in the course of a day, and still be fit on the morrow for another dawn-to-dusk trek.'

Rufus looked thoughtful. 'In times of war,' he repeated and eyed Benedict. 'Does Rolf breed ponies at Brize?'

'No, Sire, only at Ulverton.'

'Then I will buy what you have.' He nodded to himself with satisfaction, a gleam in his eye at having access to something that his brother Robert did not.

His paramour loudly cleared his throat to attract the King's attention. 'Sire, would I not look divine beside you on this one?' He pointed a lily-white finger at a horse which had been grazing among the ponies and now had come in curiosity to examine the visitors. It was a mare of a good average size, with neat, sharp ears, intelligent liquid eyes, and proud carriage. Her colouring was a glorious golden dapple, beautiful and rare.

Rufus just stared, his small eyes widening and widening in covetous greed. 'Saving the best until last?' he said, and moistened his lips. 'I should have expected such. You horse-traders are all the same, whatever your rank.'

The effeminate young man made kissing noises at the mare and she snorted gustily at him before walking directly up to Benedict with a nicker of greeting. Benedict stroked her cheeks and rubbed her soft muzzle. 'She is not for sale, Sire.'

'I want her,' Rufus said as if that was the end of the matter. 'Name your price.'

'There is no price, Sire. Even if you offered me her weight in gold, I would not sell. I purchased her as a gift for someone else.'

The King's eyes narrowed. 'You seem eager to bring hardship upon yourself. I could take my custom elsewhere.'

Benedict braced his shoulders as if to withstand a blow. 'That is your prerogative, Sire,' he said quietly.

Rufus glared. His pretty boy pouted. 'Make him give you the horse, Sire,' he challenged in a light, spiteful voice, and posed dramatically with his hand on one hip, his white, pretty fingers tapping on the decorated hilt of his eating dagger. The King's eyes flickered from Benedict to his favourite.

'Be quiet, Godfroi,' he snapped, and took a step nearer to Benedict. 'So, you deny me this horse?' If he had intended to intimidate the younger, slightly built man by the force of his presence, he was disappointed.

'With regret, Sire, I do,' Benedict answered without flinching. He could smell the wine on the King's breath, see the broken veins spidering the ruddy cheeks, and the dewdrops of sweat in the receding chestnut hair. Godfroi was looking at his fingernails, his cheeks sucked in to display his affront.

'You will do more than regret,' Rufus snarled, and barging past Benedict, called for his grooms. Benedict watched him warily. He did not believe that Rufus would order anything so crass as an armed assault upon Ulverton, but one did not stand in the path of a wild boar with impunity.

The King mounted up and thrust his feet into the stirrups. He snapped his fat fingers and two equerries fetched the steel-grey destrier. Ignoring their struggles to control the beast, he turned his own horse in a semi-circle and reined him in hard before Benedict. Rufus's eyes were narrow and bright, his nostrils flared with a mingling of choler and lust, and it was all Benedict could do to stand his ground. 'It is a fine line between honour and stupidity,' Rufus said, and slapped the leather down on his horse's neck. The horse lumbered forwards and Benedict was forced to leap aside to avoid being trampled.

The King cantered out of the keep gates. His bon ami followed at his heels, nose cocked high, chin puckered.

Benedict held himself straight until the last man had ridden from sight, and then sat down weakly on the lowest step of the mounting block, and closed his eyes.

Julitta crossed herself and rose from her knees. Before her, on the altar in the chapel of Arlette's convent, the creamy wax candles gleamed with translucence. Between them, a cross of silver-gilt, amethyst and rock crystal commanded the congregation to worship. Father Jerome, resplendent in robes of scarlet and crimson silk damask performed the blessing, his fingers eloquent and lean, contrasting with the bull-like solidity of his body.

The chapel itself was a place of contrasts, of practical, sturdy arches and intricately decorated columns, the reliefs brightly painted to war with the natural gloom of the thick stone walls. And yet everything blended with harmonious individuality. Julitta's attitude to religion was dutiful rather than devoted, but here, today, at the convent's consecration to the Magdalene, she felt uplifted.

At her side, Mauger was listening intently to Father Jerome as if he understood every word of Latin spilling from the priest's lips. She glanced at her husband sidelong. He was wearing his best blue tunic with the red braid, and his pale hair gleamed like barley in the chapel's soft light. He had been different of late, more at ease, she thought, and her own life was more bearable because of it. Mauger was still gruff and brusque, not given to conversations beyond the practical, but he permitted her a larger degree of freedom than in the early days of their marriage, and their bed was no longer a battlefield on which he sought to subjugate her to his will. Indeed, sometimes Julitta even derived pleasure from the encounters. If she could never come to love Mauger, then at least she no longer hated him. The thought of Benedict was like an aching tooth that could not be pulled, but she was disciplining herself to live with the pain.

Benedict was not here now for the consecration of the convent's chapel, and she was both disappointed and relieved. What would they say to each other after their last meeting? She had not seen him after that incident in Arlette's garden, not even to bid farewell before she returned to Fauville the following morning. He had not come seeking her again and she had avoided him. It was safer that way. Even a meeting of their eyes would have betrayed them.

The witnesses to the chapel's consecration had all been standing throughout the ceremony. Arlette, due to her frailty, sat on a bench at the front of the nave. Her condition had improved a little recently, but it was caused more by the knowledge that her convent was close to completion than by any return to health. She was painfully thin, her bones almost poking through her skin, and her eyes were feverbrilliant in their sockets.