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sound of clattering hooves on the cobblestones.
    They died down, and a thin, nasal voice called out, ‘Francis Ingoldsby, master of this house. You are a wanted man!’
    His father burst out of his room and strode out into the farmyard. He looked angry, and yet also … guilty. His father always was too honest a soul to be a player. He stood bow-legged and broad-shouldered before his front door.
    ‘Crake,’ he muttered.
    Crake did not dismount, but looked down his thin nose at him, and coughed his usual little dry cough.
    ‘To horse, sir. You are coming to the county jail, and perhaps thence to London.’
    ‘On what charge?’
    Crake’s smile was as warm as the midwinter sun on ice.
    ‘The very gravest. High treason.’
    The villagers lined the lane that led out to Shrewsbury, silent and white-faced. Many of them had taken bread and wine from Father Matthew’s hand. But among them was evidently one who preferred to take a silver shilling from the hand of Gervase Crake.
    As Ingoldsby stepped onto the old, moss-grown mounting block, suddenly looking an old and weary man, Crake called out, ‘Halt! This one knows how to handle a sword. Shackle him!’
    It was then that Nicholas saw red, a furious tide of anger flooding through him. That his father should be treated like a common felon.
    ‘No!’ he cried out, and flew at the soldier who had dismounted to hammer the shackles onto his father’s bony old wrists.
    What happened next was a terrible, blood-dimmed blur.
    Hodge was near, trying to restrain Nicholas. A soldier lashed out with the butt of his sword hilt, and struck Hodge, perhaps by accident. The sturdy servant fell back with a muffled grunt and lay dazed. Nicholas seized the bridle of the soldier’s horse and wrenched it with all his might. His father was stepping off the mounting block again, shouting, trying to calm him. Two more mounted soldiers crowded round, and above the noise Crake’s thin voice shouted orders. At last he drew a matchlock from his cloak and took a smoking fuse from one of the soldiers. He raised it in the air just as the powder exploded in the pan.
    A horse whinnied and reared. A soldier rolled to the ground with a cry. Another swung his sword. Sir Francis tried to seize his son and drag him clear, as the rearing horse came down again. Even amid all the noise and chaos, Nicholas heard the hollow, sickening sound of an ironshod horse’s hoof meeting human bone. His father reeled aside and crumpled to the muddy ground at the foot of the mounting block.
    Everything went still then. The horses were pulled back, soldiers remounted, dropped their drawn swords down by their sides. Yet the still air screamed.
    Nicholas knelt by his father’s side. His skull was shattered, there was blood, mess, shards of white bone. Blood poured down over half his face. Nicholas gripped his hand.
    ‘Father!’
    His father could not see. The world was fading. It mattered not.
    ‘Had I more hair,’ he murmured, ‘perhaps the blow had been less grave.’ He smiled faintly. ‘Grave indeed.’
    A cold terror clutched the boy’s heart. ‘Father! Speak to me!’
    The old man had some last sorrow for his children. Something dreadful had happened, he could not remember what … Yet God would provide.
    He spoke the words of the Scriptures that he loved, the words of David to Solomon as he lay dying. Nicholas leaned close to hear him, his words a whisper on the wind. ‘ I go the way of all the earth. Be strong, and show yourself a man .’
    One last effort in this world. ‘My son. Such tales I could have told thee, such things. But … Care for your sisters. Be just, be faithful. To the very end.’
    Then the old man’s hand no longer returned his grasp.
    The boy’s howls filled the village. His sister Susan stood near, so stricken with grief and bewilderment she could not cry. She pressed the faces of the two trembling little ones into her pinafore so they could not see.
    The soldiers waited for orders to