Perhaps, Corbett thought, I should leave the royal service now – follow the example of Gurney and retire to my manor, raising crops and tending sheep, and turn merchant and sell the wool to the looms of Flanders. He smiled to himself. When he had said as much to Maeve, she had shrieked with laughter, falling back on to the bolsters, her silver hair fanned out around her. She had giggled so much Corbett couldn't even kiss her quiet. 'You a farmer!' she'd teased him. 'I can just imagine that. You'd be drawing reports up on what the rams were doing, how the apples grew and whether the orchard was in the best place.'

'Sometimes I tire of my job,' Corbett had replied heatedly.

Maeve had sobered up. She lay in the four-poster bed, hugging the blankets around her.

'You don't like your job, Hugh? You may hate the tasks the king assigns you but perhaps that's what makes you so good at it?' She leaned over and took her husband's dark face in her hands. 'Whatever you say, Hugh Corbett, you have a hunger for the truth and…'

'And what?' Corbett had asked.

Maeve had giggled.

'As Ranulf says, a very long face!'

Corbett looked up as the moth beat against the window pane.

'It's very dark,' he muttered. 'God knows when we will see the light again.'

Ranulf looked at him strangely. He wondered whether his master was talking about the weather or the mysteries that now confronted them.

Chapter 2

Marina was running for her life, eyes wide, heart pounding, mouth dry. The icy gorse caught her legs and clutched at the brown robe she wore. She stopped, chest heaving, cursing the mist. She stared round like a frightened doe. 'Where can I go?' she moaned to herself. The mist closed in more thickly around her. She crouched on all-fours, sobbing for breath. She had to get to safety. She squatted like an animal, ears straining into the darkness. An owl hunting over the flat headlands made its sombre cry and a vixen prowling near the village yipped in frustration at the mist-covered sky.