“They do what I tell them,” Aliena said with a toss of her head.

She led them across the bridge to the lower compound and told them to wait outside the kitchen while she went in. Martha whispered to Jack: “Isn’t she pretty?” He nodded dumbly. A few moments later Aliena came out with a pot of beer and a loaf of wheat bread. She broke the bread into hunks and handed it out, then she passed the pot around.

After a while Martha said shyly: “Where’s your mother?”

“My mother died,” Aliena said briskly.

“Aren’t you sad?” Martha said.

“I was, but it was a long time ago.” She indicated the boy beside her with a jerk of her head. “Richard can’t even remember it.”

Richard must be her brother, Jack concluded.

“My mother’s dead, too,” Martha said, and tears came to her eyes.

“When did she die?” Aliena asked.

“Last week.”

Aliena did not seem much moved by Martha’s tears, Jack observed; unless she was being matter-of-fact to hide her own grief. She said abruptly: “Well, who’s that woman with you then?”

Jack said eagerly. “That’s my mother.” He was thrilled to have something to say to her.

She turned to him as if seeing him for the first time. “Well, where’s your father?”

“I haven’t got one,” he said. He felt excited just to have her looking at him.

“Did he die, too?”

“No,” Jack said. “I never had a father.”

There was a moment of silence, then Aliena, Richard and Alfred all burst out laughing. Jack was puzzled, and looked blankly at them; and their laughter increased, until he began to feel mortified. What was so funny about never having had a father? Even Martha was smiling, her tears forgotten.

Alfred said in a jeering tone: “Where did you come from, then, if you didn’t have a father?”

“From my mother-all young things come from their mothers,” Jack said, mystified. “What have fathers got to do with it?”

They all laughed even more. Richard jumped up and down with glee, pointing a mocking finger at Jack. Alfred said to Aliena: “He doesn’t know anything-we found him in the forest.”

Jack’s cheeks burned with shame. He had been so happy to be talking to Aliena, and now she thought he was a complete fool, a forest ignoramus; and the worst of it was he still did not know what he had said wrong. He wanted to cry, and that made it worse. The bread stuck in his throat and he could not swallow. He looked at Aliena, her lovely face alive with amusement, and he could not stand it, so he threw his bread on the ground and walked away.

Not caring where he went, he walked until he came to the bank of the castle wall, and scrambled up the steep slope to the top. There he sat down on the cold earth, looking outward, feeling sorry for himself, hating Alfred and Richard and even Martha and Aliena. Princesses were heartless, he decided.

The bell rang for mass. Religious services were yet another mystery to him. Speaking a language that was neither English nor French, the priests sang and talked to statues, to pictures, and even to beings that were completely invisible. Jack’s mother avoided going to services whenever she could. As the inhabitants of the castle made their way to the chapel, Jack scooted over the top of the wall and sat out of sight on the far side.

The castle was surrounded by flat, bare fields, with woodland in the distance. Two early visitors were walking across the level ground toward the castle. The sky was full of low gray cloud. Jack wondered if it might snow.

Two more early visitors appeared within Jack’s view. These two were on horseback. They rode rapidly to the castle, overtaking the first pair. They walked their horses across the wooden bridge to the gatehouse. All four visitors would have to wait until after mass before they could get on with whatever business brought them here, for everyone attended the service except for the sentries on duty.

A sudden voice close by made Jack jump. “So there you are.” It was his mother. He turned to her, and she saw immediately that he was upset. “What’s the matter?”

He wanted to take comfort from her, but he hardened his heart and said: “Did I have a father?”

“Yes,” she said. “Everyone has a father.” She knelt beside him.

He turned his face away. His humiliation had been her fault, for not telling him about his father. “What happened to him?”

“He died.”

“When I was small?”

“Before you were born.”

“How could he be my father, if he died before I was born?”

“Babies grow from a seed. The seed comes out of a man’s prick and is planted in a woman’s cunny. Then the seed grows into a baby in her belly, and when it’s ready it comes out.”

Jack was silent for a moment, digesting this information. He had a suspicion that it was connected with what they did in the night. “Is Tom going to plant a seed in you?” he said.

“Maybe.”

“Then you’ll have a new baby.”

She nodded. “A brother for you. Would you like that?”

“I don’t care,” he said. “Tom has taken you away from me already. A brother wouldn’t make any difference.”

She put her arm around him and hugged him. “Nobody will ever take me away from you,” she said.

That made him feel a bit better.

They sat together for a while, then she said: “It’s cold here. Let’s go and sit by the fire until breakfast.”

He nodded. They got up and went back over the castle wall, running down the bank into the compound. There was no sign of the four visitors. Perhaps they had gone into the chapel.

As Jack and his mother walked over the bridge to the upper compound, Jack said: “What was my father’s name?”

“Jack, the same as you,” she said. “They called him Jack Shareburg.”

That pleased him. He had the same name as his father. “So, if there’s another Jack, I can tell people that I’m Jack Jackson.”

“You can. People don’t always call you what you want them to, but you can try.”

Jack nodded. He felt better. He would think of himself as Jack Jackson. He was not so ashamed now. At least he knew about fathers, and he knew the name of his own. Jack Shareburg.

They reached the gatehouse of the upper compound. There were no sentries there. Jack’s mother stopped, frowning. “I’ve got the oddest feeling that something strange is going on,” she said. Her voice was calm and even, but there was a note of fear that chilled Jack, and he had a premonition of disaster.

His mother stepped into the small guardroom in the base of the guardhouse. A moment later Jack heard her gasp. He went in behind her. She was standing in an attitude of shock, her hand up to her mouth, staring down at the floor.

The sentry was lying flat on his back, his arms limp at his sides. His throat was cut, there was a pool of fresh blood on the ground beside him, and he was unquestionably dead.

III

William Hamleigh and his father had set off in the middle of the night, with almost a hundred knights and men-at-arms on horseback, and Mother in the rearguard. The torchlit army, their faces muffled against the cold night air, must have terrified the inhabitants of the villages through which they thundered on their way to Earlscastle. They had reached the crossroads while it was still pitch-dark. From there they had walked their horses, to give them a rest and to minimize the noise. As dawn cracked the sky they concealed themselves in the woods across the fields from the castle of Earl Bartholomew.

William had not actually counted the number of fighting men he had seen in the castle-an omission for which Mother had berated him mercilessly, even though, as he had tried to point out, many of the men he saw there were waiting to be sent on errands, and others might have arrived after William left, so a count would not be reliable. But it would have been better than nothing, as Father had said. However, he estimated he had seen about forty men; so if there had been no great change in the few hours since, the Hamleighs would have an advantage of better than two to one.