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to be joining your grandfather to help guard against the queen's invasion. Instead they seized the money he’d brought to Leicester Abbey for safekeeping. If he’d only kept faith—” He shook his head. “Anyway, that's our plan. Between you and John de Felton, Caerphilly will be in good hands. I know you’re capable of defending it.”
      “Thank you, Father.”
      His father shrugged. “Who knows, perhaps the king is right and we’ll soon defeat the queen. In which case it’ll be high time to find you a pretty, rich bride. All else being equal, who would you like? A blonde or a brunette? Not all that many redheads like your mother.”
      “A dark brunette,” Hugh said, thinking of the silver blond queen.
      So was his father. “Aye, we’ve had enough of the fair Isabella, haven’t we? Very well, a brunette she shall be. With a magnificent bosom.”
      Hugh blushed, remembering a particularly buxom fishmonger he’d admired at the Tower just a few weeks before. “I didn’t realize I was so unsubtle.”
      “You are, but I’d have you no other way.” Hugh's father managed a half smile, then stood. Hugh, following suit, realized with a start that he was a couple of inches taller than his father. Long accustomed to having to look down to speak to his petite mother, he must have only recently gained this height over his father. “Hugh…”
      “Father?”
      “If—if anything goes awry, look after your mother and the children.”
      “Of course, Father.”
      “And look after yourself. Don’t do some of the fool things that I did.” His father sighed and headed toward the door. “We’ll be ready to leave at first light tomorrow.”
      And so they were, accompanied by an entourage far smaller than most royal hunting parties Hugh had seen. The king smiled at him as they mounted their horses. “High time you were knighted, Hugh. When I come back I’ll do it. I’d do it now but you deserve more ceremony.”
      In spite of Hugh's misgivings, his spirits lifted. Sir Hugh! “Thank you, your grace.”
      “My pleasure.”
      Astride his own chestnut horse, his father reached over and ruffled Hugh's hair, a gesture he had not used since Hugh was a small boy. “God keep you, son.”
      “God keep you,” Hugh echoed. From a guard tower a few minutes later, he stared at the king's party as they rode away from Caerphilly Castle, until at last he could see them no longer.
      Weeks passed, during which Hugh and his companions at Caerphilly heard only rumors, most of them contradictory and none of them readily verifiable, about the whereabouts of his father and the king. Then toward the end of November, Hugh, preparing for bed, responded to a knock on his door and found John de Felton, the castle constable. “There is news at last of your father and of the king. News from one whose information can be relied upon.”
      “Yes?”
      “The last rumor we heard was true; the king and Sir Hugh were captured not far from Llantrisant. The king has been taken to Kenilworth, where he will be kept in honorable captivity. Master Hugh, it grieves me beyond measure to tell the rest. Your father was taken to Hereford. On the day before the feast of St. Catherine, he was executed.”
      November 24, less than a month after his grandfather had been killed on October 27. Hugh felt himself begin to shake. Trying to regain some mastery over himself, he said, “He was used as they did my grandfather?” He saw Felton hesitate. “Tell me!”
      “They used him—as he did Llywelyn Bren.” Drawing, hanging, disemboweling, beheading, and quartering. Felton put his hand on Hugh's shoulder, but nothing he could do stopped the world from whirling around, and something in Felton's face made Hugh realize that he was still holding something back. After a while he said, “I hesitate to tell you the full story, but it would be an ill thing if you were to hear it from a foe instead of a friend.”
      “Yes.