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midwife held out the swaddled infant.
    Alix looked curiously at the little girl. She had dark downy hair and resembled neither her husband nor John. Would that change? She felt the fear rise up in her again. What if the dense shock of dark hair were to fall out and reddish Plantagenet hair were to grow in its place?
    “She has your gentle features, my lady.” The midwife bowed. “Her father’s strength and her mother’s beauty.”
    Alix sighed. Perhaps fate would be kind to her, and the secret would never be revealed.
    “Your husband.” The midwife dragged her from her gloomy thoughts.
    “My dearest.” Richard, who had stepped into the chamber, was obviously rather moved at the sight of his young wife with the infant in her arms.
    Alix held her daughter out to him, and he kissed her on the forehead, thus accepting her into the family.
    “It’s a girl,” Alix said softly, looking down, not wanting to see her husband’s disappointment in not having a son.
    “A girl!” His voice was tender and not even slightly angry. He took the infant uncertainly, inspected her, and then kissed her.
    “She’s beautiful, just like you, my darling Alix.” He stroked her cheek tenderly. “We should call her Marguerite, like my late mother,” he suggested, kissing the child’s forehead again.

Just outside Saint Edmundsbury, 1185
    S itting in his room, William unwound the filthy bandage, sucking in through his teeth the cold, damp February air. His malformed foot hurt, and the pinky-toe side was bleeding again. The skin on this side was always dry and regularly developed particularly painful cracks. Nevertheless, at night and when he was working in the smithy, William would strap his foot to a narrow wooden board that reached from his heel to his toe. He hoped that this would straighten out his foot over time.
    He had been subjecting himself to this torture for weeks, but every step still hurt, for the wooden board chafed against his skin. Standing for hours while he worked was difficult, too. But since he wanted to become a falconer one day, trying to straighten his foot was his only choice. Hopefully one day he would be able to run as fast as other boys his age, perhaps even faster. To prove what he had in him, he would have to last at least as long as other hunt assistants, but that was going to require a bit more effort.
    The king’s visit lay several months in the past. William had hoped so hard that a messenger would come, but nothing had happened. And yet he clung to his dream. If the king did not help him, he would handle this on his own. One day everyone would marvel when William would step out in front of the king with his head held high and a magnificent falcon on his fist. His mind made up, he dabbed a slightly rancid-smelling mixture of herb-infused fat on the inside of his foot first and then over the wound. William winced, for the ointment stung. Then he kneaded andmassaged his foot until the blood was flowing properly and the skin turned pink. He pulled at each toe, wiggled his ankle, and finally wrapped a strip of clean bandage around his foot. This was a delicate process: if the binding was too loose, it would come off as he ran; if it was too tight, his foot would start tingling and then go numb, and then running would hurt even more than it did normally.
    William pulled his shoe on over the binding and stood up. Dawn was breaking. Everyone else was asleep. Only Rose, who was always the first one up in the morning, met him in the yard.
    “You look a little green about the gills. Are you going running again?” she asked anxiously.
    William just nodded and ran off.
    “I’ll give you a cup of fresh goat milk when you get back—that’ll give you strength for the day,” Rose called after him, keeping her voice down.
    William started off along the narrow path at the edge of the forest and then ran behind the sheep pasture and around the wheat field until he reached the hay meadow, at which point he turned