Adam tried without success to look crestfallen. ‘Mea culpa.’

‘So,’ said Judith with a hint of asperity that reminded Adam for a moment of her half-sister the Empress, ‘what brings you to the sanctuary of home comfort when you could be preening at court?’

Adam spread his hands. ‘My task was fulfilled and the King gave me leave to attend my lands until Christmas.’

‘Henry is back in England?’ Judith took his arm and began to walk with him to the keep. ‘Last we heard he was in Rouen.’

‘Yes, and in fine spirits. He gave me letters for you and your lord. I have them in my baggage.’

Lady Judith sighed and looked ruefully at her husband. Letters from Henry were rarely social. Frequently they were commands or querulous complaints, and usually they elicited ripe epithets from her husband who had perforce to deal with them. ‘Can they wait until after dinner?’ she asked with more hope than expectation.

Guyon gave a caustic laugh. ‘They’ll either spoil my dinner or my digestion. What’s the difference?’

Judith shot him a reproving scowl. ‘The difference is that you can decently wait until Adam has settled himself. If the news was urgent, I am sure he would have given it to you immediately.’

‘Scold!’ Guyon complained, opening and shutting his hand in mimicry of his wife’s jaw, but he was grinning.

Her eyes narrowed with amusement. ‘Do you not deserve it?’ Turning her attention from him, she looked around the hall. ‘Where’s Renard?’

‘Training the falconer’s daughter to the lure I very much suspect,’ Heulwen replied. ‘That new hawk of his is past needing his full attention.’

Judith cast her glance heavenwards. ‘I swear that boy has the morals of a tom-cat!’

‘He’ll settle down soon enough once the novelty of what he can do with it wears off,’ Guyon said, unperturbed. ‘The falconer’s lass is no innocent chick to be devoured at a pounce. She’ll peck him where it hurts if he dares beyond his welcome.’ He nodded down the hall at the knot of men clustered at a trestle and deftly changed the subject. ‘Sweyn and Jerold are still with you, I see, but I don’t recognise the other two or the lad.’

‘I’ll introduce you,’ Adam answered. ‘The boy’s my squire, Ferrers’s bastard. His father had him marked out for a career in the church, but he was thrown out of the noviciate for setting fire to the refectory and fornicating in the scriptorium with a guest’s maidservant. Ferrers asked me to take Austin on and fit him for a life by the sword. He’s shaping well so far. I might ask to keep him when he’s knighted.’

Guyon, thirty years of winnowing wheat from chaff behind him, looked the men over with a critical eye. Sweyn, Adam’s English bodyguard, was as dour and solid as ever, his mouth resembling a scarred, weathered crack in a chunk of granite. Jerold FitzNigel had been with Adam for more than ten years — a softly spoken Norman with rheumy blue eyes, a sparse blond moustache, and the lankiness of a sun-drawn seedling. His appearance was deceptive, for he was as tough and sinewy as boiled leather.

The two new men were a pair of Angevin mercenary cousins with dark eyes and swift, sharp smiles. Guyon would not have trusted either one further than he could throw a spear. Ferrers’s lad was a compact, sturdy youth with intelligent hazel eyes, a tumble of wood-shaving curls, and a snub nose that made him look younger than his seventeen years and a good deal more innocent than his history.

The group also numbered a dozen hard-bitten men-at-arms, survivors of numerous skirmishes across the patchwork of duchies and principalities lying between England and the German empire. A motley collection, but all wearing the assurance of honed fighters.

‘They’re good men to have at your back in a tight corner,’ Adam said, as they left the soldiers to arrange their belongings out of the way of the trestles that were being set out ready for the evening meal.

‘Were my doubts so plain?’ Guyon looked rueful. ‘I must be getting old.’ He glanced sideways at Adam. ‘Will they not grow restless without battle?’

‘Probably, but I don’t foresee a problem. I’m not expecting there to be much peace.’

The glance hardened. ‘In that case, you had better let me see that letter now,’ he muttered.

Adam shrugged. ‘I can tell you and spare my squire’s feet. I know what’s in it because I was there when Henry dictated it to his scribe. You are summoned to attend the Christmas feast at Windsor, and your family with you.’

Guyon relaxed, and with a grunt led Adam to the small solar at the far end of the hall, which was screened from the main room by a fine, carved wooden partition and a curtained archway. ‘Not just for the joy of seeing his grandsons, I’ll warrant,’ he said cynically as he sat down on a pelt-covered stool. ‘Since the death of his heir, Henry’s been so eaten up with envy of my own brood that it hasn’t been safe to make mention of them, let alone set them beneath his nose, William in particular.’

Hardly surprising, thought Adam. King Henry had fathered over a score of bastards, Lady Judith among them, but his only legitimate son had drowned and his new young wife showed no signs of quickening. The White Ship had been a magnificent vessel, new and sleek when she was boarded in Barfleur on a cold November evening by the younger element of the court, intent on catching up with the other ships that had left for England earlier in the afternoon. The passengers were well into their cups, the crew also, and the ship had foundered on a rock before she even cleared the harbour, with the loss of almost everyone on board. Guyon’s firstborn son and heir had also been a victim of the White Ship disaster, but there were four other boys to follow, the last one born only a month after the sinking. ‘He’s inviting everyone else too, for the purpose of binding their allegiance to Matilda as his successor.’

Guyon rubbed at a bark stain on his chausses. ‘Bound to come I suppose,’ he sighed. ‘She is, after all, his only direct heir, but it won’t be a popular move. Is he expecting a rebellion?’

‘Reluctance, yes. Rebellion no.’

The lines at the corners of Guyon’s mouth deepened. ‘Some will come very near to it,’ he said, frowning. ‘It’s going to stick in the craw to have to render homage to a woman — a foreign woman at that — and from what I hear of her, Matilda won’t offer them a sweetener to help them swallow their bleeding pride. She’d rather see them choke on it.’ He cast Adam a speculative look. ‘What about William le Clito? He’s the King’s nephew by his older brother, and certainly has prior right to Normandy, if not to the throne.’

‘Are you one of le Clito’s supporters?’

‘God’s balls, no!’ Guyon gave a short bark of laughter. ‘What do you take me for? The lad’s no more set up to rule than a blind hawk’s capable of bringing down prey! He’s done nothing all his life but dance to the French King’s schemes! If I favoured anyone, it would be one of Henry’s other nephews, Stephen of Blois, and even then I’m not so sure. He’s too good-natured and not enough iron in his soul to be strong like Henry.’

Adam nudged a sprig of dried lavender among the rushes with the tip of his boot. ‘What about Robert of Gloucester? He’s Henry’s son, and he’s got the stamina that Stephen lacks.’

Guyon dismissed Adam’s candidate with a wave of his hand. ‘If we allowed ourselves to think of him as our future king, we’d have to consider all the other royal by-blows, and they number as many as the years Henry’s been on the throne, and include my own wife. Besides, Gloucester’s not like that, and I know him well enough to trust one of my sons in squirehood to him. He’s not the kind to desire the weight of a crown on his head, and he used to worship the ground Matilda trod on when they were small children.’

Adam dipped his head. ‘Point taken.’

Guyon looked shrewdly at Adam. ‘But, if we swear for Matilda, then we also swear for her future husband, whoever he might be — or do we have a say in that? Knowing Henry for the slippery creature he is, I think not.’

Adam took a mental back-step, realising from whom Renard had inherited his sudden thrusts of perception.

‘Do you know who he might be?’ Guyon pursued. ‘No clues on your long tramp from Germany?’

Adam felt his ears burning. ‘No, sir.’ He watched his toe crush the strand of lavender and all the little dried balls fall off into the rushes. A pungent, herbal smell drifted past his nostrils.

‘Fair enough.’

‘It’s not that. ’

Guyon shook his head. ‘If you cannot speak, then so be it. Doubtless I’ll learn soon enough. Suffice to see that you are keeping your fighting men. I know what to expect.’

‘I’m not keeping them so much for that purpose as for the Welsh.’ Adam uttered the half-truth, half-lie with what he hoped was plausible sincerity. After all, it was only what he had inadvertently overheard between the King and the Bishop of Salisbury, whose tentative discussion had been more an examination of possibilities than anything solid. ‘Heulwen said that there is a new lord across the dyke causing trouble?’

‘Davydd ap Tewdr,’ Guyon said with a grimace. ‘And trouble is not the word. Either that or I’m slowing down. He’s been running rings around me and the patrols. He claims that my tenants and Ralf ’s have encroached beyond his boundaries. Well, you can’t stop the farmers grazing their beasts where they see good pasture, and the animals can’t tell the difference between Welsh grass and English grass — it all tastes the same. There’s bound to be some encroachment, and I’d be a naïve fool if I believed it was all one-sided. I suppose I should take my troop across the border and hunt him down, but he’s skilled in woodcraft, and I’d not be assured of the victory. I’ve even toyed with the thought of offering him a marriage alliance now that Heulwen’s a widow. She’s Welsh on her mother’s side and part of mine through her namesake my grandmother, but I’ve as good as committed myself to de Mortimer’s offer when it is made official.’