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make it.’
    Hooves heavy in the muffled muddy world outside, and furtive calls.
    A murmur through the damp shelter. ‘General Middleton? A rider, General.’
    Middleton had been silent. Now he glanced at the Duke, and scowled. An undignified scrambling, and he pushed his way out of the shelter on hands and knees, swearing at the water on his neck.
    The Duke, head a little forward, stared at the damp wall where Middleton had gone, watching through it, straining for his return.
The things I have suffered for Charles Stuart.
    The General was back within a minute, a sudden shuffling beast in the gloom of the shelter, shaking head and shoulders like a dog. He brushed the water from his face and rewrapped himself in his cloak before he spoke.
    ‘Sir Henry. . .’ – he saw the anxiety in the Duke’s face, and his shoulders and voice dropped – ‘Sir Henry Lingen is beaten, your Grace. On the same day as yourself.’
    The Duke’s eyes narrowed, and he pushed his head back against the trunk. ‘Then Herefordshire is lost to us also.’
    ‘It is lost to us, your Grace.’
    Outside, the shapes of indeterminate beasts drifted unhappily in the darkness. Across the unmixed black of the land, the faint foggy lantern glow coming through the drenched blankets floated in the void.

    Mary and Rachel Astbury ambushed their father when he was ten feet short of his bedroom, two translucent ghosts in their nightshirts, and his surprise was immediately irritation: ‘I told you—’
    Mary had retreated a little, but Rachel was still square in front of him. ‘Father, who is that man? What’s happening?’
    He focused properly on her face, the beautiful eyes angry, the skin glowing in the candlelight, and then on her older sister beside her, dark and watchful.
    ‘I have news.’ He tried again. ‘I have sad news, girls. My brother – my brother George is dead.’ He looked into their eyes again, wondering if he was supposed to say more. He found that each of his hands was being held. He tried to form more words, swallowed them down again with difficulty. ‘He was killed in a great battle, for the King.’
    He pulled his hands away, touched a white slender shoulder with each, and stepped back.
    ‘I’m sorry, Father.’ Mary.
    ‘I’d rather not—’
    ‘Who is that man, Father?’
    Rachel again, of course.
    Sir Anthony Astbury gulped for words. ‘I regret to have to say that he is your kin,’ he managed eventually. The eyes fell for an instant. ‘Kin to your poor late mother, at least.’
    He could see the surprise in their eyes, the interest. ‘Pay heed to me, girls! That man will not stay here long; I shall see to it. You are not to speak to him, nor give him opportunity to speak to you, nor on any account to allow him to be alone with you.’
    With his sudden vehemence, their interest had become bewilderment. ‘To your beds now. In the morning all will seem easier.’ He was talking as much to himself. He looked up, and was visibly irked to find his daughters still gazing at him. They turned quickly to go.
    ‘He—’ They stopped, and the two faces turned back to their father; two re-conjurings of his beautiful young wife, come back in the storm to haunt him, along with her strange and troubled family history.
    ‘He is Sir Mortimer Shay.’ The voice dropped to a mutter. ‘Mortimer Shay in England again, and in our lives.’

    The Groom of the Stool. Early in his reign, His Majesty, being a less convivial man than his father, had decreed that he would be accompanied at his most intimate proceeding by only one of his attendants.
    William Seymour, Marquess of Hertford, was accordingly alone with the King as he knelt to complete the refastening of the King’s breeches.
    His Majesty, Seymour had learned – and this was the subtlety that had made Seymour the most trusted of the King’s attendants – did not like to receive ill news when with many men, not caring to have his vulnerabilities or frustrations observed, this