'Shall we go in, Master?' Ranulf whispered.

'No, no.'

Corbett followed the path round, kicking his horse into a gallop. He did not want to stop until he had spoken to Sir Simon Gurney. Ranulf followed suit. He was sure he had heard a shout behind him, but Corbett waved him on and they trotted through the mist towards the lights of Mortlake Manor. At last the path turned inland, then slightly downwards. Ranulf could have shouted with joy as the gates of the manor, with fiery sconce torches lit above them, came into view.

'Maltote had better be there!' he shouted. 'I hope the lazy bugger told them we were on our way!' 'He'll be there,' Corbett replied.

Ralph Maltote, the clerk's messenger, may have nothing in his brains but he was a superb rider with a hunting dog's instinct for threading his way along the twisting roads and paths of England. Ranulf dismounted and hammered on the small postern door in the main gate of the manor.

'Come on! Come on!' he muttered. I'm freezing to death!'

The door swung open. A busy-faced porter peered out and beckoned them into the large cobbled yard that stretched before the fortified manor house of Sir Simon Gurney. Grooms hurried up and took their horses. A servant collected their saddlebags and the porter led them in through the main door of the house. They went down a sweet-smelling, stone-vaulted passageway past the busy kitchen, the smells from which whetted Corbett's and Ranulf's hunger, and into the solar where the grey-haired Sir Simon Gurney and his wife Alice waited to greet them.

The old knight, one of the king's former companions, smiled and rose from his chair by the fire; his petite, sweet-faced wife stood smiling behind him.