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of conversation had started again. He was aware of being scrutinized with a mixture of hostility, contempt and curiosity. On the dais, Leicester’s expression was one of cold anger. Giles had succumbed to the wine, his head flat on the board, his mop of fair hair trailing its edges in the finger bowl.
    FitzRenard lifted his boot and permitted Ralf to regain his feet but displayed no inclination to return the dagger. Ralf was breathing heavily. His expensive tunic was ruined by the wine stain and stubbled with bits of floor straw.
    ‘One day I’ll kill you, I swear it!’ Ralf gasped at Joscelin. He was white and shaking with rage.
    ‘Then I’ll make sure to guard my back,’ Joscelin retorted. ‘It’s the only direction from which I fear your attack.’ Wiping a thin trickle of blood from the corner of his mouth, he stormed out into the humid summer evening. His breath came unevenly and tears of fury and humiliation stung his eyes. He was aware of having failed himself, of not wanting to care and of caring too damned much.

5
     
    The mouse sat on its haunches, industriously manipulating an ear of grain in its forepaws, sharp teeth nibbling through the husk to reach the sweet, starchy kernel. Sunlight wove through the crack in the stable door, patterning the straw, splashing up the wattle-and-daub walls and gilding the hide of a dozing liver-chestnut stallion.
    Joscelin watched the busy rodent with the myopic gaze of the newly awakened. His head was throbbing and his mouth was dry and tasted of kennel sweepings - payment for last night’s sins of which, after the fight with Ralf, he remembered very little - nor wished to.
    A blur of rust and gold suddenly shot past the tip of his nose and pounced in a flurry of straw. Startled, Joscelin jerked upright, heart thrusting vigorously against his ribs. The tabby stable cat regarded him, a mixture of wariness and disdain in its agate-green eyes, a mouse dangling from its jaws like a moustache. Then, keeping him in view, it slunk across the stable and undulated through the narrowly open door into the courtyard.
    Joscelin exhaled with a soft groan and put his head down between his parted knees. Outside he could hear the sounds of his father’s house coming to life in the bright summer morning - two maids gossiping at the trough, the cheeky wolf-whistle of a soldier and the good-natured riposte. Hens crooned and scratched in the dust. Feet scuffled immediately outside the stable door, voices consulted in low tones, one adolescent, the other mature.
    ‘I have to tend the horses, sir, but he’s still asleep in there.’
    ‘Not surprising, the state he returned in last night,’ commented the older voice. ‘All right, go and break your fast. I’ll see if I can rouse him up.’
    ‘No need,’ Joscelin pushed open the stable door to the full light of morning and squinted blearily at the groom and his wide-eyed lad. He raked his hand through his rumpled hair and plucked out a stalk of straw. ‘I would have made my way to bed in the hall but the stables were closer and I wasn’t sure my feet would carry me the extra distance.’
    A grin widened the groom’s weather-brown face. ‘You were a trifle unsteady, Messire Joscelin,’ he agreed.
    ‘I was gilded to the eyeballs,’ Joscelin replied, ‘and I’ve a head to prove it this morning.’
    The apprentice sidled away to get his food before the groom had a chance to press him to his duty now that there was no longer an obstacle.
    Joscelin loosened the drawstring of his braies and relieved himself in the waste channel that ran the length of the stable block.
    ‘Messire Ralf didn’t come home at all,’ the groom volunteered and, picking up the dung fork, looked round in exasperation for his lad. ‘Your lord father’s not best pleased.’
    Joscelin adjusted his garments and went to wash his hands and face in the rain butt against the gutter pipe. His cut lip stung and his ribs ached. His lord father was going to be even