The man took the letter, and bowed from the tent. Owain came forward and unobtrusively began to clear the shards of broken jug from the tent floor. ‘Shall I bring you a fresh jug, my lord?’

Renard shook his head and drew another sheet of parchment towards him, indicating that he wanted to be left alone. The parchment was beaded with wine, the colour of rain-diluted blood. He shovelled his thoughts impatiently to one side like an overworked groom attacking a pile of soiled straw, and with brisk decision trimmed another quill.

Moments later Owain burst back into the tent, Guy d’Alberin hot on his heels and both boys quivering and wide-eyed as a pair of young deer. ‘Sire, come quickly! The scouts have sighted the rebel army drawing nigh the river!’ cried Owain. ‘Thousands of them!’ A rapid swallow garbled the last word.

Renard dropped the quill, left his stool and the doubtful warmth of the brazier, and went outside. Cold needles of sleet stung his face and the ground underfoot was as treacherous as a butcher’s shambles. Men were leaving tents and watchfires to view the approaching army, their faces a mingling of expressions ranging from bored ‘seen it all before’ cynicism, through frank, fairground curiosity, to excitement and gut-wrenching dread.

Owain’s ‘thousands’ proved to be a vanguard of less than thirty mounted knights with perhaps twice that number of footsoldiers, and all of them spreading out along the far bank of the swollen Witham, searching for a suitable fording point. Renard narrowed his lids the better to see the shapes busying themselves below, industrious as aphids colonising an orchard leaf. Tents were being pitched and more men were riding to join them through the gathering afternoon murk.

‘How’s the fire in your belly, Renard, hot enough for a battle?’ asked Ingelram of Say, one of his fellow barons.

‘What fire?’ Renard hunched into the thick wolf-skin lining of his cloak. ‘To whom do that lot belong?’

‘Robert of Gloucester, so the rumour flies.’ Ingelram sleeved a drip from his narrow beaky nose and sniffed loudly. ‘Alan of Richmond’s sent a detail down to guard the ford. I hope he’s chosen doughty men or we’ll have that lot over our side of the river faster than a whore can lift her skirts for business.’ He jerked his head at the cath — edral. ‘Are you coming to the King’s Council of War? Give your pennyworth of advice to our beloved sovereign for how much notice he will take?’

Renard bestowed a tepid nod on the garrulous Ingelram. ‘In a moment.’

Ingelram shrugged at him and disappeared. Renard stared through the drizzle at the activity below and saw a figure on a raw-boned, spotted horse pacing along the river bank. The soldier, helmeted and grey-clad, was indistinguishable from any other of his kind, but the horse was all too sickeningly familiar.

Overnight the sleet turned to snow, a white curtain hissing silently into the fast-flowing river, blanketing one side’s view from the other. In a freezing dawn, breath wreathing the air, feet stamping to preserve some vestige of circulation, Stephen’s barons gathered in the cathedral, first to celebrate a special mass commemorating the purification of the Virgin Mary, and then, that dealt with, to hold another Council of War and plan their next move now it was known for certain that a huge rebel army was gathered on the opposite bank of the Witham and seeking a way across.

The candles were as cold in the hands as stalagmites, the wax inferior and as flaky as scurfy skin. Stephen’s flame sputtered with blue flickers of impurity as he followed Bishop Alexander up the nave. Cloth-of-gold shimmered on ivory and crimson wool. Jewels and link mail alternately twinkled and extinguished as the procession moved. Supplicating breath chanted heavenwards, sweetened with incense that blocked the more earthly smells of last night’s wine and garlic-seasoned salt-fish stew.

Renard uttered the familiar responses through chattering teeth. The candle wobbled in his frozen fingers, the flame fluttering and ghosting. The vast, cold, vaulted glory struck no answering chord in his soul. Bishop Alexander of Lincoln was a man too bogged down by temporal concerns to enthuse a spiritual uplifting in others similarly bogged down, beset by chilblains and varying lacks of piety.

The incense tickled Renard’s nose. He stifled a sneeze before it could disturb the chanting or blow out the precari — ous, coddled flame of his candle. The mass progressed, and responses learned by rote left his mind free to wander.

The besiegers besieged. Matille, behind her battered but still intact castle walls must be celebrating this mass with a heart as light as thistledown. Her husband, whatever his faults, was a good soldier and strategist when not over-reaching himself with ambition. What might have seemed like over-reaching this time was now shown as an audacious gamble about to pay its reward.

Renard slipped a surreptitious glance at some of his fellow barons. Alan of Richmond caught his look and gave him an uneasy smile and a half-shrug in return. William of Aumale, Earl of York stared stonily at the altar, the candle in his huge fist as steady as a rock. Renard knew without looking further round that Henry was not among the lesser barons thronging the nave. The duty of guarding the fording point had fallen to him, his men and a detail of Richmond’s knights.

Renard had tried to speak to Henry before he went down to the river. Still full of pride, temper wearing the residue of drink, Henry had shrugged him away, his movements jerky as he buckled on his swordbelt. Renard had recognised that it was not the right moment, but with a battle looming on their threshold, there might never be another one, right or otherwise. In the end, he had embraced Henry and been forcibly rebuffed. No less than he expected, but it had still hurt.

The King’s candle sputtered in a draught from an open doorway. Stephen tilted the taper to try to make it burn better, but only succeeded in dripping the glossy, boiling wax on to his hand. Reacting instinctively, he exclaimed and dropped the candle. It hit the flags, spat, flared and died. The King sucked his burnt flesh and stared. One of his squires bent to pick up the candle and rekindle it from his own flame, and discovered that it was impossible, because the fallen one was broken in three places.

Men exchanged looks, the more superstitious among the company already reading evil portents into the incident. Richmond, not one of them, took a pace forward and calmly presented Stephen with his own clean-burning taper, then bowed and turned away to take a fresh taper from one of Bishop Alexander’s chaplains.

Stephen inhaled deeply. The lines between nostril and mouth corner were more deeply engraved than usual, perhaps a trick of the deep shadows, but his hands were steady on the fresh taper, even if one of them did display a hot red streak, overlaid by an opalescent film of wax.

No difference could be detected in the Bishop’s expression, but as his habitual face was that of a shocked rabbit, that was no reassurance. He continued the mass smoothly enough, however, and, lulled, men began to sigh out the nervous breaths they had drawn, and to relax.

However, God had not finished with them. Whether by accident or design, and Renard very much suspected the latter, one of the silver-gilt chains suspending the pyx above the altar gave way and the whole thing came crashing down. Sacramental wine splattered the King’s face and stained the Bishop’s ornate vestments. A gilt candlestick fell over and fire suddenly licked along the embroidered edge of the altar cloth.

Renard doused his own candle and ran to beat out the flames before they could take proper hold. Already he could hear the rumours winging forth from the cathedral — of how the pit of hell had opened up immediately beneath the King’s feet as he celebrated the mass.

The stink of singed linen overrode that of incense. The pyx was badly dented and the wafers it contained were strewn everywhere like giant flakes of snow. Had the light within the cathedral been less gloomy, Stephen’s pallor would have been obvious.

Renard righted the candlestick and stepped back from the altar. Bishop Alexander fussed over the pyx like a parent over a badly injured child.

Alan of Richmond looked sideways at Renard. ‘At least we’re in a cathedral,’ he murmured from beneath the cover of his full, russet moustache. ‘It’s as good a place as any to pray for our lives.’

‘Or to claim sanctuary?’ Renard said.

The assault by the rebels on the guarded ford was swift, brutal, and entirely effective. The men attacking were either adventurers and routiers out to line their own pockets, or the bitter dispossessed who had nothing to lose and everything to gain.

Henry had been spared the watery death of the common soldiers because someone had decided that his clothes were rich enough to make him a reasonable gamble for good ransom money and because the leaders of the rebel forces wanted information. Consequently he was knocked senseless, disarmed and sent backwards through the lines.

If Henry’s skull had been splitting with a drink megrim before, when he opened his eyes now he felt as if his brains had burst through the top of his head. He felt so sick that he dared not move. To move was to retch. To retch was to increase the agony to unbearable proportions.

‘Christ’s arse, when’s he going to wake up?’ snarled a voice he thought he recognised and hoped against hope that he did not.

‘Your knight should not have hit him so hard.’ This was a woman’s voice, throaty, rich and bored.

‘When I want your opinion, I’ll ask for it!’

Skirts swished and a strong, spicy scent wafted and caught in Henry’s throat. He struggled valiantly not to vomit and through narrowed lids caught a swirl of blue embroidered fabric and a woman’s hand lifting it free of a stamped mud floor. Her fingers were long and graceful with manicured sharp nails. The Empress Matilda, he thought hazily, and, despite himself, widened his gaze to see if he was correct. As usual, as in all things, he wasn’t. The woman was tall and slim like the Empress, but her curves were more pronounced and her hair was not brown, but the colour of sun-bleached corn, and flowed abundantly to her hips. Their eyes met and he had the briefest instant to see what an incredibly lush blue they were before she tossed her head and turned away. She said nothing about his conscious state to Earl Ranulf, but then she did not have to. The movement of his eyes to meet hers had been too much for Henry’s stomach. He raised himself up and spewed.