War Cry

Book 0: de Norton trilogy

by Ian Ross

Genres: Action & Adventure; Medieval; War & Military

Synopsis

Sir Adam de Norton gained his knighthood and his lands for fighting for de Montfort at Lewes. Now de Montfort calls in that debt and Adam must once more in this gripping historical adventure.

1265

England has a new master.

Simon de Montfort's victory at the Battle of Lewes has made him king in all but name. He has vowed to restore the rights and liberties of the kingdom, but now even his friends grow wary of his power.

As old alliances break down, new rebellions gather strength. The captive king's supporters muster, vowing to overthrow the new regime.

Meanwhile Adam de Norton, who won the honour of knighthood on the field at Lewes, has reclaimed his ancestral lands. A peaceful and prosperous future lies before him - until he receives a summons he cannot refuse.

War is inevitable. But this time, will Adam be on the winning side?

(c) 2023 Hodder & Stoughton Limited

Release date: December 7, 2023

Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton

Print pages: 400

Sample

Chapter 1

September 1264

The Forty-Eighth Year of King Henry III

The riders emerged from the dappled shade of the woods onto the dirt track that led towards the manor. Pigeons rose from the shorn stubble of the fields, fluttering against the autumn sky. At the edge of the village, men were working at the threshing floor. The percussive thudding of their flails fell silent, and the women alongside them ceased winnowing the grain. Chaff drifted on the breeze. The riders passed on up the track, and the villagers gazed warily after them. Travellers seldom came this way, and these men were armed.

In the lead rode a man dressed in a dusty green tunic and mounted on a palfrey. His gilded spurs and the fine sword belted at his side marked him as a knight, no less than the powerful warhorse he led behind him. He was young, barely more than twenty, with dark curling hair, but his narrow features had a weathered look that belied his age. Four other riders followed him, with three loaded packhorses and a pair of Franciscan friars striding along beside them.

They rode onward, the hooves of their horses thudding, their bridle trappings clinking. In the far distance figures ran from the fields towards the village, little dark specks of movement. As the riders passed the boundary fence of the hall a dog began barking, then another, and then a frenzy of noise erupted from the kennels. The horses came to a halt, tails whisking. Nobody spoke.

Before them, across the yard, three men stood in the angled sunlight before the cob and timber hall, so alike they could only be brothers. The foremost of them laid one hand on the hilt of his sword. His spreading beard was dense and black, and his close-set eyes seemed to glare out across the top of it.

‘Fulk Ticeburn?’ the leading rider said.

The bearded man nodded. His two brothers remained standing, one of them carrying an axe and the other with a growling mastiff heaving at the end of a short leash. From the kennels the fury of the other dogs had dropped to a steady low growl.

‘Then you’ll know who I am,’ the rider continued. ‘And what I’m here to do.’

Fulk Ticeburn stared back at him for a long moment. His beard twitched. ‘Not sure about that,’ he said, in a voice like grinding millstones. ‘All sorts of folk hereabout, in these troubled times. Robbers and disturbers of the peace, ravaging with horses and arms.’ He paused, scuffing the toe of his shoe in the dirt. ‘I even hear,’ he said, ‘that the King of England has been seized by a band of them, and made to do their bidding.’

‘Goodman!’ the younger of the two friars called, emerging from between the horsemen. ‘Goodman, let us have no violence here, in the name of God! We have come to see justice done.’

‘You think there is justice in England, friar?’ one of the brothers said with a scoffing laugh. ‘You’re mistaken. Swords are the only law in this kingdom now.’

‘Fulk Ticeburn,’ the older friar declared, stepping forward to join his colleague, ‘we swear upon our oath that Adam de Norton, son of James de Norton’ – he gestured towards the young man in the dusty green tunic – ‘has done homage for this manor before King Henry, and is the rightful holder of this land and all the estates and tenements attached to it, just as his father once was. Three times you have been ordered by the sheriff to vacate this place, and yet here you remain!’

‘Here we all remain,’ the third Ticeburn brother replied.

‘I’m the appointed bailiff of my lord, Hugh de Brayboef,’ Fulk said, raising his voice, ‘and he has ordered me to hold this manor in his name until he returns—’

‘Hugh de Brayboef is an enemy of England!’ the friar broke in. ‘He has abjured the realm, and his lands have been seized by the king—’

Adam de Norton held up a gloved hand, silencing him. ‘Enough idle words,’ he said. ‘They know full well what we’re about.’

He slipped his foot from the stirrup and dismounted. Keeping his eyes on Ticeburn, he walked across the yard to face him. Three more figures lingered in the shadowed doorway of the hall, perhaps another two just visible within. At the margin of his vision Adam could make out a slack-jawed man near the stables, holding a bow with an arrow nocked to the string. Fulk remained motionless as Adam halted before him. A fly circled in the still air between them.

Adam drew off his leather riding gloves and tucked them beneath his belt. ‘My name is Adam de Norton,’ he said, ‘and I am the rightful possessor of this land. I gave you many chances to depart, and you ignored them. So now I must tell you in person, man to man.’

Fulk Ticeburn narrowed his eyes. He was a big man, bigger even than he had appeared from horseback, with a barrel chest and a wrestler’s arms. ‘I take orders only from my lord, Hugh de Brayboef, and from the Almighty,’ he said, shrugging. ‘Not from you, boy, and not from your master Simon de Montfort either. From my lord I’ve heard nothing. Perhaps I should wait for a sign from God?’

Adam felt the man’s gaze pass over him, then saw the glint of a smile through the black beard. Yes, he thought, Fulk Ticeburn was a big man. But he had not fought at the Battle of Lewes, nor had he stormed the breach at Rochester Castle. He had not spent most of the past three years on the tournament fields of France and the Empire, learning how to fight, and to win. A spike of cold anger fixed Adam’s nerves. He had not wanted this confrontation. No honour to be gained here, and only humiliation or bloodshed if he failed.

From behind him, he heard a dry click as one of the two mounted serjeants accompanying him cocked his crossbow. Adam’s other companions, a plump man wearing a broad-brimmed hat, and a boy who carried a lance over his shoulder, were keeping well back from the confrontation. Fulk’s brothers had moved slightly closer. Warin and Eudo were their names, although Adam could not tell them apart. But the figures lingering in the shadows of the hall showed no inclination of joining them, and the archer had not yet bent his bow. Adam smiled, exhaling slowly and letting his muscles ease. Then he took two long strides forward.

Ticeburn snatched for the hilt of his sword, but Adam was faster; with his right hand he drew his own sword up from its scabbard at an angle, slamming the heavy iron pommel into the bridge of Ticeburn’s nose. As Ticeburn staggered and fell backwards, Adam reversed his blade. Standing over the fallen man, he levelled the tip of the sword to his neck.

‘You have your sign,’ he said.

Ticeburn sprawled in the dust, blood in the crease of his brow, his own weapon spilling loose from its scabbard. For a few gasping breaths he appeared too stunned to react, then he pushed himself up on his elbows, blinking. Clenched teeth showed through his beard.

‘I give you until the sun drops below the trees,’ Adam said, motioning with his head towards the wooded hillside to the west, already dark against the afternoon sky. He turned the sword again and slid it smoothly back into the scabbard.

A last glance at the other two brothers, both poised and glaring, and the men lingering in the shadowed openings of the house, then Adam turned his back and walked slowly, deliberately, towards the horses. Only now did he see the people gathering at the far side of the open ground. Men and women from the village; at least a score of them already, Adam estimated. He forced himself to walk with a nonchalant swagger, but his breath was tight in his chest, his heart punched at his ribs, and his shoulders were clenched. At any moment he expected to hear the sound of charging steps from behind him, or to feel the searing impact of an arrow. But he walked on, one hand lightly on the hilt of his sword, repressing the fierce urge to turn and look back. When he reached the horses, he took the reins from the boy and continued towards the great oak that spread its shade at the top of the village.

The manor oak, it was called. Adam knew it well. Even through the glaze of nervous tension came the flash and dazzle of memory, like the splintered sunlight through high leaves and branches. Ten years, was it, since last he had seen this place? He walked on, and the assembled villagers drew back as he approached.

By the time he reached the tree he felt breathless, and his body was running with sweat. But as he turned again to face the house, he maintained his composure.

‘That was coolly done, by God,’ the plump man said, taking off his hat and fanning himself. Hugh of Oystermouth was his name, and his voice carried the accent of his native Wales. ‘The size of him! – a beast! But you put your foot upon his neck, right enough. Sir Robert himself could not have made a better show, I think.’

His companions were dismounting beside him, saddle leathers creaking. Adam fought down a quick shudder of anxiety. Yes, he thought, it had been a show – he had not been himself out there, facing down Fulk Ticeburn and his brothers; instead, he had imagined himself to be Robert de Dunstanville, once his master, then his mentor, now his friend. A man whom Adam had come to respect and to admire. A hard man to emulate, nonetheless.

‘Then again,’ said Hugh, who had been de Dunstanville’s herald before he joined Adam’s own retinue, ‘perhaps Robert would simply have killed the fellow, and put an end to the problem?’

One of the friars, overhearing, cast a disapproving glance. Adam coughed a laugh, feeling the lock of dread shift in his body. But this was not over yet. The anger was still there, burning inside him. It flared suddenly, and he felt the killing urge. He could mount his horse and ride straight up to the house, cutting down anyone who dared to oppose him. Was that really what Robert de Dunstanville would have done? Should he do that now?

Adam felt the heavy scrutiny of those around him. Of those in the house as well; he knew the Ticeburns were watching him carefully. The knot of villagers had drawn closer. They peered at Adam’s weapons, the dress of those who accompanied him, and the heavy leather bags slung across his packhorses. Several of the men had threshing flails over their shoulders, while the women still carried their broad winnowing baskets. They carried the rich smell of the earth with them too, of the fields and the beasts they raised, of the sweat of labour. Some were dragging benches into the shade, bringing bread and cheese and jugs of ale for the newcomers.

One of the older villagers pushed his way through the throng and dropped to kneel before Adam. He had a creased brown face and a ploughman’s massive shoulders. ‘The sheriff’s men said you were coming, lord,’ he said. ‘Many days we’ve been expecting you. My name is John Ilberd, and I was reeve here in your father’s day, as my father was before me. If you’ve come to drive out these Ticeburns, then all our people here are with you.’

‘Their hounds kill and maim our animals, lord,’ said a hefty young man, who so closely resembled Ilberd that he must be his son. ‘They give us no justice!’

Adam nodded, scanning the faces gathered in the shade or further back in the bright sunlight. Not all, he thought, looked firmly decided in their allegiances, for all the old reeve’s claims. Doubtless there were some who felt loyal to Fulk Ticeburn and his brothers, and to their master Hugh de Brayboef. Once or twice on the ride here from London, Adam had felt a pang of distaste for what he had to do: this place had been home to the Ticeburns for many years, and now he had to evict them. Having seen them with his own eyes, though, he felt no unease in his task. And from the mood of the majority of those gathered to watch the eviction, Adam could guess that the Ticeburns had not used this manor gently.

‘Is it true, lord,’ one of the villagers said, raising his voice above the murmuring of the throng, ‘that you are Simon de Montfort’s man, and you fought beside him at Lewes, against the king’s evil advisors?’

Adam said nothing, but he heard one of the friars shushing angrily.

‘Is King Henry truly a prisoner now, lord?’ one of the younger men called, as the others around him began to speak out too. ‘Does the Earl of Leicester really lead him about on a golden chain?’

‘Don’t be daft, boy,’ a stout woman in a straw hat told him, ‘that’s not the king – it’s Lord Edward that’s led on a golden chain.’

‘Will the foreigners still come to invade us, lord?’ another man asked anxiously, and crossed himself. ‘Or have they been repelled, by the blessing of Christ?’

‘The danger’s not departed yet!’ an older woman rasped. ‘Have you not seen the fiery star crossing the sky each night? God sends these signs as a warning, for those who have eyes to see and brains to understand!’

Adam remained silent, unmoving as the clamour of questions died down once more. For a moment he saw himself as the people of the village must: an emissary from another world. A world of finery, perhaps, and bold deeds. A world of blood too, and sudden inexplicable violence.

More than four months had passed since Simon de Montfort’s great victory at Lewes, when the king and all his forces were overthrown and England made new. Now Henry sat on his throne once more, but Lord Simon directed the kingdom in his name. That fight at Lewes had been a personal victory for Adam too; he had been knighted on the field of battle, by de Montfort himself. And he had captured the Earl of Hereford, one of the greatest magnates in the kingdom, in whose household he had once served as a squire. The earl’s rebellious son, Sir Humphrey de Bohun the Younger, had purchased his father’s ransom from Adam for five hundred marks; already he had paid a portion of that sum in coin, and Adam had brought some of it with him in the leather bags on his packhorses, a great weight of new-minted silver pennies, each one stamped with the head of King Henry. The rest he had stored safely at the treasury of the Templars in London; Sir Humphrey would deposit the balance of the ransom fee there too, once he had secured his lands in the Marches of Wales.

But the money paid so far had allowed Adam to equip both himself and his small retinue in proper style, and to pay the fee for taking possession of his ancestral lands from the king. Three months ago, Adam had knelt before Henry in the hall of the bishop’s palace at St Paul’s and sworn his oath of homage. He would have hastened back here to claim his lands as soon as the sealing wax had dried on the parchment, but knighthood brought duties, and England had dire need of warriors.

Queen Eleanor, so the heralds proclaimed, had fled to France after her husband’s defeat at Lewes, and had petitioned King Louis to lend her troops and money to retake England. Together with the Earls of Pembroke and Surrey, the queen had assembled mercenaries from Flanders and France, from Brabant and the Empire, from Savoy and from Spain, and filled the Flemish ports with the ships of her invasion fleet. And on the downs of Kent the men of England had assembled to repel them, knights and barons bringing their retinues, the militia of the countryside pouring in from every village and every shire within reach of the royal summons. Such a host, men said, had not been seen in England since the day when William the Bastard led his troops to Hastings.

For the past fifty days, Adam had served with that army on Barham Down, awaiting the invasion from across the sea. Through August and most of September they had waited, tense with nerves and fractious with the anticipation of battle. But the great winds that roared across the downs, creaking the sails of the windmills and whipping sparks from the campfires, roared also in the narrow straits of the Channel. Weatherbound, the ships of the invasion fleet had remained sheltering in their anchorages, and Queen Eleanor had remained in Bruges as her treasury drained away. Without food and fodder and ready coin, her army had drained away too, and by the middle of September it was clear that England would be saved from the storm. For this year, at least.

Adam had not been the first to leave the muster. Plenty had departed before him, militiamen slinking back to their villages, keen to throw off helmet and gambeson and pick up their sickles for the harvest. Some of the northern barons, too, had already gathered their men for the long march home. Adam had served ten days longer than the forty that was his duty as a vassal knight, but he needed to ensure that the claim to his lands was settled before Michaelmas, when the manorial accounts were drawn and the year reckoned up. No man could begrudge him that.

Hugh de Brayboef, who had married Adam’s widowed mother and then claimed his father’s estates when she died a year later, had also been with Queen Eleanor and her army of invaders across the sea. He had fought for the king at Lewes, and fled after the defeat. But a change of fortune’s wind, Adam knew, and his enemies would return and seize everything from him. Men like Hugh de Brayboef, and his follower Fulk Ticeburn, would rule the land once more.

After so many years longing for knighthood, his own manor to hold, and the chance to prove himself in the world, Adam felt uncomfortably exposed and vulnerable now.

Beneath the great oak the shadows moved, and he stood and stared across the open ground and the empty yard towards the house beyond. No sound came from within, and no figure showed at the doorways. The two serjeants that Adam had hired back in London were lounging at the base of the tree, drinking ale with great enthusiasm, but both kept their weapons close at hand. The grave-looking boy, Adam’s groom and servant, remained with the horses, directing a forbidding gaze at anyone who approached the baggage. Hugh of Oystermouth, meanwhile, was sitting on a bench, eating and drinking and appearing entirely pleased with the world and everything in it.

‘Lord,’ one of the villagers asked Adam, sidling closer and nodding warily towards Hugh. Adam caught a warm gust of his oniony breath. ‘Is this follower of yours truly a Welshman? My brother told me that the Welsh are a terrible savage people, with bare red legs, who eat nothing but raw meat. But this one sits there properly shod and eating bread and cheese like a Christian . . .’

‘What marvels the world holds, eh?’ Hugh of Oystermouth called from his bench, pausing as he chewed. ‘I do believe your brother must have met my father!’

*

The sun was glinting through the treetops on the western heights when the first signs of movement came from the house. Adam drew a breath, his gaze sharpening instantly. A man ran from the hall door to the wagon-shed on the far side of the chapel. A moment later other figures appeared, running between the buildings. A slow ripple of sound passed among the watching people, an exhalation and then a suppressed cheer. A few of the assembled villagers called out mocking words, now that their persecutors were showing their heels at last.

From inside the house came the crash of wood and the snarl of raised voices. The dogs began their furious barking once more, the noise merging into a steady ragged pulse. As Adam watched, a pair of servants dragged the wagon from the shed and began flinging things into it: boxes and bales, furniture, sacks, quilts and straw mattresses. One of the friars gave an angry start, but the other restrained him. The Ticeburns were leaving, that was the important thing. Only at the last moment, with the barest gleam of sun showing above the hilltop, did Fulk Ticeburn and his two brothers emerge from the hall. They took the larger dogs from the kennels and secured them in the cart among their piled possessions, then mounted their horses. With a gang of servants on foot, more dogs running behind them and two women perched on the cart’s tail, they rode out across the yard and turned onto the track that led northwards. Fulk Ticeburn reined in his horse and waited until all of them had passed. He stared at Adam, who stood in the last of the sunlight with his shadow stretched long across the ground.

‘You’ll see us again,’ Ticeburn called. ‘Before Saint Francis has come and gone, I promise, you’ll see us. I swear upon the blood of Christ.’

Then he tugged angrily at the reins, kicked his heels, and rode on after his brothers, their servants and their wagonload of women, dogs and piled belongings.

‘Doubtless they will return indeed,’ the older and wiser of the two friars said, once the Ticeburns were gone. ‘We must leave you on the morrow, but I suggest you maintain at least one of these goodmen to watch over your lands.’ He gestured towards the two serjeants.

‘I will,’ Adam said. ‘And I thank you, brother.’

Together they walked across the open ground and into the yard. The muck of dogs and horses lay caking in the dust, circled by flies, and the doors of the house hung open.

‘I shall carry word of your possession of this manor back to Waverley Abbey, and the court in London,’ the older friar said, and pursed his lips for a moment in thought. ‘You also hold lands of William de St John of Basing, I believe? You should pay your homage to him as soon as you can. He is a powerful man in this district, and he may be able to keep the Ticeburns and their savage ilk from your throat.’

‘I’ll do that,’ Adam said.

Leaving the friar in the yard, he stepped across the threshold into the gloom of the house. From the passage, he turned and entered the hall. It was smaller than he remembered, although it was open to the blackened rafters high overhead. Smaller and darker, and a lot dirtier too. The Ticeburns had broken what they could not carry away with them; shattered furnishings, ripped rags and broken pottery lay amid the wrack of churned straw underfoot. Adam sniffed, then winced.

‘They’ve cleared out the buttery and the pantry,’ Hugh said as he entered the hall, ‘and even tried to rip out the painted altar screens in the chapel . . .’ He paused, then coughed.

‘Not so sweet, is it,’ Adam said.

Beside the hearth, a spreading puddle of urine darkened the earthen floor.

*

Night had fallen before the work was done. Hall and hearth were swept and scrubbed, the mess of rubbish and filthy straw cleared into a heap in the yard for burning. John Ilberd the old reeve and his people had all given their assistance, and Adam had sent to the priory for a keg of good ale to refresh them. Even now, with the work done, the fire burned down and the villagers departed, the house felt grimy, ill-used and sour with resentment. It would be many days before the last traces of the Ticeburns were scoured from it, and Adam could feel that this was truly his home.

Hugh of Oystermouth was sleeping in the hall with young Matthew and one of the serjeants – poor lodgings, but they had known worse. Adam had offered to share the upper chamber with the two friars, as they would be leaving early the next morning. They lay on the floor now, wrapped in their cloaks beside the wreck of the bedframe, one of them letting out whistling snores with every few breaths.

Quietly, Adam opened the window shutters to the cool breeze. He listened for a moment: the other serjeant, and two village men and their dogs, were outside keeping the night watch, and he could just make out the quiet stir of their voices. Then he turned his head to the sky. For a few moments he stared into blackness. Then he angled his head again and his breath caught; there it was, directly above him and as clear as a line drawn in chalk upon a black wall.

The comet had appeared back in August, at first in the hours before dawn but then steadily earlier, until its trail was clear to see as night fell. Hugh of Oystermouth, who had studied the heavens, said that it was tracing a course towards Mars in the sign of Taurus, and that it was a harbinger of great violence and turmoil to come. Many agreed with him, and every night as the burning line in the sky grew starker and stronger their dread had increased. The men of the great army gathered on Barham Downs that summer had seen it, and spoke anxiously of what it foretold. The comet was a heavenly spark, they said, igniting all that lay beneath its course and spreading the flames of war and bloodshed.

Surely, Adam thought, with the threat of invasion from across the sea now fading, the comet should fade too? And yet there it was, as fierce and proud in the night sky now as ever. Perhaps, then, the true danger lay not across the sea, but closer to home? Perhaps it was from England that the threat came?

Abruptly Adam dropped his gaze from the skies and stared into the darkness. Something out there had caught his eye. Something moving – a man, perhaps, or a beast – out beyond the boundary fence and the ditch. Tensing, he stared and felt another presence staring back at him. Almost he could make out a shape in the darkness, and as his vision sharpened, he believed it was a human figure, a man, motionless and staring back at him. His right palm itched, and he closed his fist. His sword lay in its scabbard on the floor behind him, but he dared not move. The darkness seemed to pulse as he stared into it.

A long moment, then Adam exhaled. He blinked, and saw only the yard beyond the boundary fence, empty under the troubled stars. Somewhere outside a dog whined, and a watchman’s gruff voice spoke a soothing word. In the darkened chamber, one of the sleeping friars let out a slow throaty snore. Adam stepped back from the window, then dragged the shutters closed and fastened them against the night, and all that it concealed.

Chapter 2

They came five days later, on the Feast of St Remigius. The church bell was ringing for evensong, and across the fields the plough teams were returning from their work breaking the fallow ground for the autumn sowing. Adam stood before the manor house, just as Fulk Ticeburn had done, and watched the riders approaching from the hazy calm of evening. Matthew passed him his sword belt, and he fastened it and settled the familiar weight on his hips. There was no time to put on armour. Five days. The Ticeburns had not even waited for St Francis.

Since the morning after his arrival Adam had toured his lands, from the main manor of Selborne Norton and the attached estates of Hawkley and Blackmoor to the smaller manors of Wyke and Neatham, meeting his tenants and assessing their holdings. At Michaelmas those same tenants, both freemen and villeins, had sworn their yearly fealty to them, kneeling before him as he clasped their hands between his palms. They had paid their taxes and given their gifts, the newly reappointed reeve John Ilberd had settled the accounts, and Adam had laid on a feast for all that had worked on his demesne lands over the harvest, feeding them on roast pork washed down with good ale while Hugh of Oystermouth sang in Latin and his native Welsh.

The following day, Adam had summoned his first manor court to meet beneath the oak, and presided for several hours over the deliberations and disputes of a year’s worth of local grievances – the Ticeburns having cared nothing for such matters. In truth there had been little reason for his presence; he was a symbol, that was all, a representation of good lordship and authority, like the sword he had placed on the tabletop before him. But he was trying to do right by those he sought to govern, and to stitch himself more closely into the weave of life in this place. And now, he told himself as he watched the file of mounted figures crossing the field from the edge of the woodland, it was all about to unravel.

Hugh of Oystermouth strolled from the door of the hall, then made a choking sound as he spied the horsemen and stepped back indoors again. William Tonge, the serjeant that Adam had indentured to remain in his service, came from the stable with a spanned and loaded crossbow.

‘They’re carrying weapons,’ said Matthew. ‘That’s a destrier one of them’s leading too.’ There was a question in his voice that Adam took a moment to notice.

Now that the riders had crossed the field and were moving up the track towards the house Adam could see that there were only four of them, with a riderless warhorse, sure enough, and several loaded pack animals behind them.

‘Is it . . .?’ Matthew asked, lifting his palm to shade his eyes.

Adam squinted, his chest tightening. The leading rider wore a travelling cloak and a hood pulled over his face, only the tip of his beard showing. But the destrier he led behind him was distinctive enough. Adam would know that iron-grey horse anywhere. He grinned.

‘Strange welcome in these parts,’ the hooded rider said as he drew to a halt. His beard twitched in the direction of the serjeant with the loaded crossbow, then back at Adam standing with his hand on the hilt of his sword.

‘If you’d only sent word, I’d have hired some minstrels,’ Adam replied. He signalled to William Tonge, who lowered his bow and loosened the cord.

Robert de Dunstanville swung his leg over his horse’s rump and dismounted stiffly. He paused to flex his shoulders, wincing, then threw back his hood.

‘Lord of the manor, then,’ he said, studying Adam through narrowed eyes as he paced across the yard.

‘As you see me.’ Adam shrugged and spread his hands. Then Robert’s face creased into a smile and he closed the distance between them, catching Adam in a rough embrace.

Robert de Dunstanville was more than a decade older than Adam, and did not wear the years lightly. But there was a sinewy vigour about him all the