Merthin said: “I’m the alderman of Kingsbridge, Merthin Bridger. How is Earl William?”

“He is very ill, and both my brothers have been laid low.” Merthin recalled that the earl and countess had two boys of nineteen and twenty or thereabouts. “My mother asks that the lady prioress should come to them immediately.”

Caris said: “Of course.”

Odila went up the stairs. Caris took from her purse a strip of linen cloth and fastened it over her nose and mouth, then followed.

Merthin sat on a bench to wait. Although he was reconciled to infrequent sex, that did not stop him looking out eagerly for extra opportunities, and he surveyed the building with a keen eye, figuring out the sleeping arrangements. Unfortunately the house had a traditional layout. This large room, the great hall, would be where almost everyone ate and slept. The staircase presumably led to a solar, a bedroom for the earl and countess. Modern castles had a whole suite of apartments for family and guests, but there appeared to be no such luxury here. Merthin and Caris might lie side by side tonight, on the floor here in the hall, but they could do nothing more than sleep, not without causing a scandal.

After a while, Lady Philippa emerged from the solar and came down the stairs. She entered a room like a queen, aware that all eyes were on her, Merthin always thought. The dignity of her posture only emphasized the alluring roundness of her hips and her proud bosom. However, today her normally serene face was blotchy and her eyes were red. Her fashionably piled hairstyle was slightly awry, with stray locks of hair escaping from her headdress, adding to her air of glamorous distraction.

Merthin stood up and look at her expectantly.

She said: “My husband has the plague, as I feared; and so do both my sons.”

The people around murmured in dismay.

It might turn out to be no more than the last remnants of the epidemic, of course; but it could just as easily be the start of a new outbreak – God forbid, Merthin thought.

He said: “How is the earl feeling?”

Philippa sat on the bench next to him. “Mother Caris has eased his pain. But she says he’s near the end.”

Their knees were almost touching. He felt the magnetism of her sexuality, even though she was drowning in grief and he was dizzy with love for Caris. “And your sons?” he said.

She looked down at her lap, as if studying the pattern of gold and silver threads woven into her blue gown. “The same as their father.”

Merthin said quietly: “This is very hard for you, my lady, very hard.”

She gave him a wary glance. “You’re not like your brother, are you.”

Merthin knew that Ralph had been in love with Philippa, in his own obsessive way, for many years. Did she realize that? Merthin did not know. Ralph had chosen well, he thought. If you were going to have a hopeless love, you might as well pick someone singular. “Ralph and I are very different,” he said neutrally.

“I remember you as youngsters. You were the cheeky one – you told me to buy a green silk to match my eyes. Then your brother started a fight.”

“I sometimes think the younger of two brothers deliberately tries to be the opposite of the elder, just to differentiate himself.”

“It’s certainly true of my two. Rollo is strong-willed and assertive, like his father and grandfather; and Rick has always been sweet-natured and obliging.” She began to cry. “Oh, God, I’m going to lose them all.”

Merthin took her hand. “You can’t be sure what will happen,” he said gently. “I caught the plague in Florence, and I survived. My daughter didn’t catch it at all.”

She looked up at him. “And your wife?”

Merthin looked down at their entwined hands. Philippa’s was perceptibly more wrinkled than his, he saw, even though there was only four years’ difference in their ages. He said: “Silvia died.”

“I pray to God that I will catch it. If all my men die, I want to go too.”

“Surely not.”

“It’s the fate of noblewomen to marry men they don’t love – but I was lucky, you see, in William. He was chosen for me, but I loved him from the start.” Her voice began to fail her. “I couldn’t bear to have someone else…”

“You feel that way now, of course.” It was odd to be talking like this while her husband was still alive, Merthin thought. But she was so stricken by grief that she had little thought for niceties, and said just what was in her mind.

She collected herself with an effort. “What about you?” she said. “Have you remarried?”

“No.” He could hardly explain that he was having a love affair with the prioress of Kingsbridge. “I think I could, though, if the right woman were… willing. You might come to feel the same, eventually.”

“But you don’t understand. As the widow of an earl with no heirs, I would have to marry someone King Edward chose for me. And the king would have no thought for my wishes. His only concern would be who should be the next earl of Shiring.”

“I see.” Merthin had not thought of that. He could imagine that an arranged marriage might be particularly loathsome to a widow who had truly loved her first husband.

“How dreadful of me to be speaking of another husband while my first is alive,” she said. “I don’t know what came over me.”

Merthin patted her hand sympathetically. “It’s understandable.”

The door at the top of the stairs opened and Caris came out, drying her hands on a cloth. Merthin suddenly felt uncomfortable about holding Philippa’s hand. He was tempted to thrust it away from him, but realized how guilty that would look, and managed to resist the impulse. He smiled at Caris and said: “How are your patients?”

Caris’s eyes went to their linked hands, but she said nothing. She came down the stairs, untying her linen mask.

Philippa unhurriedly withdrew her hand.

Caris took off her mask and said: “I’m very sorry to have to tell you, my lady, that Earl William is dead.”

“I need a new horse,” said Ralph Fitzgerald. His favourite mount, Griff, was getting old. The spirited bay palfrey had suffered a sprain in its left hind leg that had taken months to heal, and now it was lame again in the same leg. Ralph felt sad. Griff was the horse Earl Roland had given him when he was a young squire, and it had been with him ever since, even going to the French wars. It might serve him a few years longer for unhurried trips from village to village within his domain, but its hunting days were over.

“We could go to Shiring market tomorrow and buy another,” Alan Fernhill said.

They were in the stable, looking at Griff’s fetlock. Ralph liked stables. He enjoyed the earthy smell, the strength and beauty of the horses, and the company of rough-handed men engrossed in physical tasks. It took him back to his youth, when the world had seemed a simple place.

He did not at first respond to Alan’s suggestion. What Alan did not know was that Ralph did not have the money to buy a horse.

The plague had at first enriched him, through the inheritance tax: land that normally passed from father to son once in a generation had changed hands twice or more in a few months, and he got a payment every time – traditionally the best beast, but often a fixed sum in cash. But then land had started to fall into disuse for lack of people to farm it. At the same time, agricultural prices had dropped. The upshot was that Ralph’s income, in money and produce, fell drastically.

Things were bad, he thought, when a knight could not afford a horse.

Then he remembered that Nate Reeve was due to come to Tench Hall today with the quarterly dues from Wigleigh. Every spring that village was obliged to provide its lord with twenty-four hoggets, year-old sheep. They could be driven to Shiring market and sold, and they should raise enough cash to pay for a palfrey, if not a hunter. “All right,” Ralph said to Alan. “Let’s see if the bailiff of Wigleigh is here.”