Philip was struck by an idea. “Why did Henry send you to England?” he said.

“To survey the kingdom.”

“What have you found?”

“That it is lawless and starving, battered by storms and ravaged by war.”

Philip nodded thoughtfully. Young Henry was duke of Normandy because he was the eldest son of Maud, who was the only legitimate child of old King Henry, who had been duke of Normandy and king of England.

By that line of descent young Henry could also claim to be king of England.

His mother had made the same claim, and had been opposed because she was a woman and because her husband was an Angevin. But young Henry was not only male but had the additional merit of being both Norman (on his mother’s side) and Angevin (on his father’s).

Philip said: “Is Henry going to try for the crown of England?”

“It depends on my report,” said Francis.

“And what will you tell him?”

“That there will never be a better time than now.”

“Praise God,” said Philip.

II

On his way to Bishop Waleran’s castle, Earl William stopped at Cowford Mill, which he owned. The miller, a dour middle-aged man called Wulfric, had the right to grind all the grain grown in eleven nearby villages. As his fee he kept two sacks in every twenty: one for himself and one for William.

William went there to collect his dues. He did not normally do this personally, but these were not normal times. Nowadays he had to provide an armed escort for every cart carrying flour or anything else edible. In order to use his people in the most economical way he was in the habit of taking a wagon or two with him, whenever he moved around with his entourage of knights, and collecting whatever he could.

The surge in outlaw crime was an unfortunate side effect of his firm policy on bad tenants. Landless people often turned to theft. Generally, they were no more efficient as thieves than they had been as farmers, and William had expected most of them to die off during the winter. At first his expectations had been borne out: the outlaws either went for lone travelers who had little to be stolen, or they carried out ill-organized raids on well-defended targets. Lately, however, the outlaws’ tactics had improved. Now they always attacked with at least double the numbers of the defending force. They came when barns were full, a sign that they were reconnoitering carefully. Their attacks were sudden and swift, and they had the courage of desperation. However, they did not stay to fight, but each man fled as soon as he had got his hands on a sheep, a ham, a cheese, a sack of flour or a bag of silver. There was no point in pursuing them, for they melted into the forest, dividing up and running all ways. Someone was commanding them, and he was doing it just the way William would have.

The outlaws’ success humiliated William. It made him look like a buffoon who could not police his own earldom. To make matters worse, the outlaws rarely stole from anyone else. It looked as if they were deliberately defying him. William hated nothing more than the feeling that people were laughing at him behind their hands. He had spent his life forcing people to respect him and his family, and this band of outlaws was undoing all his work.

Especially galling for William was what people were saying behind his back: that it served him right, he had treated his tenants harshly and now they were taking their revenge, he had brought this on himself. Such talk made him apoplectic with rage.

The villagers of Cowford looked startled and fearful as William and his knights rode in. William scowled at the thin, apprehensive faces that looked out from the doorways and quickly disappeared again. These people had sent their priest to plead for them to be allowed to grind their own grain this year, saying that they could not afford to give the miller a tenth. William had been tempted to pull out the priest’s tongue for insolence.

The weather was cold, and there was ice around the rim of the millpond. The waterwheel was still and the grindstone silent. A woman came out of the house beside the mill. William felt a spasm of desire when he looked at her. She was about twenty years old, with a pretty face and a cloud of dark curls. Despite the famine she had big breasts and strong thighs. She had a saucy look when she first appeared, but the sight of William’s knights wiped it off her face, and she ducked back inside.

“She didn’t fancy us,” Walter said. “She must have seen Gervase.” It was an old joke, but they laughed anyway.

They tied up their horses. It was not exactly the same group that William had gathered around him when the civil war began. Walter was still with him, of course, and Ugly Gervase, and Hugh Axe; but Gilbert had died in the unexpectedly bloody battle with the quarrymen, and had been replaced by Guillaume; and Miles had lost an arm in a sword fight over dice at an alehouse in Norwich, and Louis had joined the group. They were not boys anymore, but they talked and acted just the same, laughing and drinking, gambling and whoring. William had lost count of the alehouses they had wrecked, the Jews they had tormented and the virgins they had deflowered.

The miller came out. No doubt his sour expression was due to the perennial unpopularity of millers. His grouchy look was overlaid by anxiety. That was all right: William liked people to be anxious when he turned up.

“I didn’t know you had a daughter, Wulfric,” William said, leering. “You’ve been hiding her from me.”

“That’s Maggie, my wife,” he said.

“Cow shit. Your wife’s a raddled old crone, I remember her.”

“My May died last year, lord. I’ve married again.”

“You dirty old dog!” William said, grinning. “This one must be thirty years younger than you!”

“Twenty-five-”

“Enough of that. Where’s my flour? One sack in twenty!”

“All here, lord. If you please to come in.”

The way into the mill was through the house. William and the knights followed Wulfric into the single room. The miller’s new young wife was kneeling in front of the fire, putting logs on. As she bent down, her tunic stretched tight across her rear. She had meaty haunches, William observed. A miller’s wife was one of the last to go hungry in a famine, of course.

William stopped, looking at her bottom. The knights grinned and the miller fidgeted. The girl looked around, realized they were staring at her, and stood up, covered in confusion.

William winked at her and said: “Bring us some ale, Maggie-we’re thirsty men.”

They went through a doorway to the mill. The flour was in sacks piled around the outside of the circular threshing floor. There was not much of it. Normally the stacks were higher than a man. “Is this all?” William said.

“It was such a poor harvest, lord,” Wulfric said nervously.

“Where’s mine?”

“Here, lord.” He pointed to a pile of eight or nine sacks.

“What?” William felt his face flush. “That’s mine? I’ve got two wagons outside, and you offer me that?”

Wulfric’s face became even more doleful. “I’m sorry, lord.”

William counted them. “It’s only nine sacks!”

“That’s all there is,” Wulfric said. He was almost in tears. “You see mine next to yours, and it’s the same-”

“You lying dog,” William said angrily. “You’ve sold it-”

“No, lord,” Wulfric insisted. “That’s all there ever was.”

Maggie came to the doorway with six pottery tumblers of ale on a tray. She offered the tray to each of the knights. They took a mug each and drank thirstily. William ignored her. He was too wound up to drink. She stood waiting with the one remaining tumbler on the tray.

“What’s all this?” William said to Wulfric, pointing to the rest of the sacks, another twenty-five or thirty piled around the walls.

“Awaiting collection, lord-you see the owner’s mark on the sacks…”