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her a pretty fairing – some ribbons, a bolt of fine cloth – to make amends.’
    ‘She’d probably much rather you just left her son alone,’ Marie remarked shrewdly. ‘Although, me, I tend to agree with you. There’s a little too much petticoat government round here, when you’re away.’
    ‘You’re the senior wife,’ Josse said. ‘And surely Agnès would support you, even if Pascale didn’t.’ Agnès was married to Patrice, and Pascale was wife to Honoré; mother of a sickly child, Pascale was usually too preoccupied with caring for him to enter into family arguments. ‘Can’t you improve things?’
    ‘Hmm.’ Marie looked thoughtful. ‘Possibly. Only you know what Theophania’s like. When she’s crossed, she gets one of her sick heads.’ She paused to bite off a thread; round and placid with advancing pregnancy – a state that suited her well, Josse reflected – Marie was sewing some small garment made of fine linen. ‘And when Theophania has a sick head, we all suffer,’ she concluded. ‘The whole household.’
    ‘Quite.’ No wonder I don’t fit in here, Josse thought sadly. My four brothers and this sensible woman, the eldest of my sisters-in-law, all let themselves be led by the nose by the least sound person in the house. All for the sake of a quiet life!
    ‘Where’s Theophania now?’ he asked presently.
    ‘Feeding the baby,’ Marie said.
    ‘But I thought she’d have engaged—’ He broke off. It was Theophania’s business, after all.
    ‘You thought she would have engaged a wet nurse?’ Marie looked at him. ‘Ah, no peasant woman’s milk is good enough, not for the child of Theophania.’
    ‘Oh,’ said Josse.
    Marie bent her head over her sewing; tactfully, Josse did not pursue the matter.
    I’ll buy Theophania a gift, he resolved, and repeat my apologies. I was unforgivably rude, and to a woman to whom, even if I don’t actually like her, I owe respect.
    But, when I’ve been forgiven, I shall go.
    Even if the refurbishments to his new manor house were still incomplete, even if the rain came in and he had to sleep in a barn, it would be better than life at Acquin.
    For the time being, anyway.
    *   *   *
    King Richard Plantagenet had given Josse his English manor house in the winter of 1189, in gratitude for a certain service which Josse had been able to do for the King.
    Richard, in that cold January season, had been preoccupied with planning his great Crusade; Josse often thought that it was only because Richard’s mother, the good Queen Eleanor, had reminded her son of his obligation, that the manor had come Josse’s way at all.
    The manor had formed part – quite a large part – of the rich estates of the late Alard of Winnowlands. Josse’s gift was a stoutly built but dilapidated house, which, so he was informed, had been constructed a good seventy years ago, some distance from the main hall, to accommodate a particularly sour-tempered mother-in-law. The house had a small walled garden, an orchard, and several acres of pasture, some of which gave on to a swift flowing river bordered by willow trees.
    It was a splendid gift. Josse was thrilled with his new property, and thought it a more than fair exchange for swearing fealty to the new King; Josse was already a king’s man anyway. He had inspected the house with a builder, who came highly recommended by Josse’s neighbour, Brice of Rotherbridge. The builder, after sucking his teeth for most of the morning and gloomily shaking his head in the general manner of builders, finally announced that there was a great deal of work to be done, but that, yes, he agreed with Josse that the house was fundamentally sound. And that it would, in the fullness of time, make a fine dwelling.
    Back then, almost eighteen months ago, Josse hadn’t quite realised just how full that time was going to be.
    Over the months that the builder and his men had worked on the house and its outbuildings, Josse had made several visits to