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always brought a smile to her lips. Not today. She had baptised him Vigil – the Watchful One – because at first light he liked to perch on the ridge beam of the manor house, cooing and watching the day break. He was the only bird who had a name. Yet another gift from her half-brother, who had brought the animal from Normandy the year before to inject new blood into her dovecote. He stretched out his muscular dark-pink neck, flecked with mauve, and she favoured him with a brief caress before leaving.
    It was only after she had returned to the great hall at the manor that she realised Clément had cleverly avoided answering her question. It was too late now. The boy had disappeared again,and she would have to wait to ask him to explain the nature of what was increasingly keeping him away from the manor.
     
    Eudes, too, was exhausted. He had only slept for an hour between Mabile’s thighs. The strumpet was unstinting when it came to taking her pleasure. Happily – since her engagement in Agnès’s household had yielded precious little else of any interest to her master. Unable to trap the mistress, he had tupped the servant. Scant compensation for the handsome piece of silk and the morsel of sweet salt, which alone had cost a small fortune, but it would have to do for the time being.
    God, how his half-sister detested him! In Agnès’s eyes he was insufferably conceited, boorish and depraved. He had come to realise that she loathed him some years before when she believed herself finally rid of him thanks to her marriage. The passion, the corrupt desire he had conceived for her when she was just eight and he ten had changed into a consuming hatred. He would break her and she would grovel at his feet. She would submit to his incestuous desire – so repugnant to her that sometimes it made the colour drain from her face. He had once hoped to conquer her love and that it would be strong enough to make her commit the unpardonable sin, but this was no longer the case. Now he wanted her to submit, to beg him.
    He took out his vicious ill humour on his page, who had fallen asleep and was threatening to topple forward onto his gelding’s neck.
    ‘Wake up! Why, anyone would think you were a maid! And if indeed you are a maid I know how to make a woman of you.’
    The threat had the desired effect. The young boy sat bolt upright as if he had been whipped.
    Yes, he would break her. Soon. At twenty-five she had lost noneof her beauty, although she was no longer a girl. And anyway, she had given birth, and it was well known that pregnancy spoiled a woman’s body, in particular her breasts – and he preferred them pert, as was the fashion at the time, like little rounded apples, their skin pale and translucent. Who was to say that Agnès’s had not been ruined by purple stretch marks? Perhaps even her belly was withered. In contrast, Mathilde was so pretty, so slim and graceful, just like her mother had been at her age. And Mathilde adored her extravagant uncle. In a year’s time she would come of age and be ripe for the taking.
    The thought cheered him no end, and he gave a loud guffaw: two birds with one stone. The worst revenge he could imagine taking on Agnès was called Mathilde. He would caress the daughter and destroy the mother. Of course, she would not leave the way clear for him. Despite his general lack of respect towards the fairer sex, Eudes was forced to acknowledge his half-sister’s intelligence. She would strike him with all her might. A pox on females! All the same, the challenge could be exciting.
    Upon further reflection, this particular stone would kill not two birds but three, since the Larnay mine, which assured his wealth and relative political safety, would soon be exhausted. Certainly, the earth’s depths contained more hidden riches, but to get at them would require deep mining and neither his finances nor the geological conditions were favourable. The clay soil would give way at the first attempt to