21. Phoebe

P HOEBE Northallerton, Yorkshire, the same night

I KNEW WHAT I HAD seen.

There had been riders in that field – men who'd been galloping towards us with their swords in hand, as though they meant us harm.

The fact that no one else had seen them, and that they had vanished on the wind, did not make them the products of my mind. I knew I'd been awake, I'd not been dreaming. Which meant they'd been, as Logan had suggested, ghosts of men who'd lived in ages past, who'd fought upon that ground and fallen there. And that thought was disturbing.

For if ghosts could haunt a field by day, then where else might they walk?

Alone within my bedchamber, I drew the blankets to my chin and watched the squares of moonlight angling through the room's small window slowly creep across the floor. This was not an old house, it was near to my own age, and yet tonight it seemed as full of creaks and groans as an old woman settling in her bed, and each new noise, however slight, stirred my imagination and chased off all hope of sleep.

The mouse that scuttled in the corner became a phantom skirt. The branch that scraped against the roof tiles was a blade drawn from its scabbard. My own hair against my neck felt like the touch of someone's hand.

‘You're too easy to fool, there's no sport in it,' Valentine teased me once.

He was right, I was too credulous.

Easing my grip on the blankets, I folded my hands on the top of them, forcing myself to be calm. I'd not thought about Valentine for… well, for more days than I could remember. I tried to recall his face, but it was like chasing chickens. I couldn't quite grasp it, and others would get in my way.

And when I tried imagining what Valentine might do if he were in my place, that, too, was useless, because I could not imagine Valentine in any of the places where I'd been since leaving London, doing any of the things I'd done.

He was too fond of luxury to eat his meals outdoors and sleep with nothing but a woollen blanket on the cold, rough ground, beneath the stars. And he would have viewed Hector as a servant, and not sat with him upon the stairs to see he was not frightened by a storm.

Which left me wondering if Valentine and I were as alike as I'd always believed we were. When my mind was this full of thoughts, I could do nothing for it but to give it focus. Had we not been in a private home, with our hosts and their family sleeping only walls away, I might have risen from my bed and done as I was wont to do and gone downstairs and walked awhile, or paced within my chamber.

There was something very calming about pacing. Even Logan had surprised me by indulging in it in the hour after supper when Sir David had gone out.

I wasn't certain of all that had happened there. I knew the landlord of the local inn had come to speak with Logan, and Sir David had excused himself and gone to follow them, and Logan had returned alone.

My father, startled, had told Logan, ‘But your orders…' No doubt meant as a reminder of the fact that Logan had instructions not to leave Sir David unattended.

Logan had said, ‘All is well,' and his tone had left no more room for argument, but while the rest of us had talked after our meal, he'd walked the room, arranging all the items on the mantelpiece, and straightening the pictures, setting things in order.

He was usually so self-contained and in control, I'd wondered at his restlessness. I'd watched him until he had caught me watching him, and then I'd looked away, perhaps too sharply.

Then Sir David had returned.

He greeted all of us, but his gaze went to Logan first when Mistress Metcalfe asked him if he'd like a glass of sherris sack.

‘I thank you,' he said, ‘but I have drunk too much wine already.'

Metcalfe asked him, ‘Is your business at the Fleece all settled?'

‘Aye,' Sir David said, his eyes still locked with Logan's. ‘It is finished.' Then he looked at Hector, and at me. ‘Sleep well,' he told us. And he went to bed.

Close by the window, Logan had not changed his stance nor his expression, but I'd thought he drew a freer breath than he had drawn since supper. He told Mistress Metcalfe, ‘I will take that sack, if it's on offer.'

I should have done likewise. Sherris sack was strong, and made me sleepy. If I'd joined the others in a glass of it, I'd not be here now staring at my ceiling, with each one of my attempts to conjure Valentine erased by the remembrance of a larger man with steel-grey eyes who stood upon the stairs and held his hand outstretched towards me.

I finally took his hand and let my eyes close. He was smiling.

‘I'll not let ye fall,' he promised.

And I slept.

Something had altered in the interplay between the men. I felt it the next morning, and I could not help but notice it as we continued heading south the next few days through Yorkshire. I would not have said that Logan had relaxed, but where once he'd clearly been Sir David's jailor, he behaved now more as a custodian, as though the mission weren't to hold the older man a prisoner but simply to safeguard his welfare.

The change was not entirely one-sided.

Five days after that evening in Northallerton, as we were making ready to depart our inn, the Black Bull, in the market square of Doncaster, the landlord offered to pack us a dinner we could take and eat upon the road.

Sir David said, ‘That sounds an excellent idea, and most kind. What say you, Logan?'

Logan thought it excellent as well, and paid the landlord, and with Hector, went to make space in the portmanteaus.

But I looked at Sir David.

Quizzically, he asked, ‘Is something wrong?'

‘You called him by his name, not merely "Messenger".'

‘Did I? I must be getting soft.' But he continued to do it. Midway through our journey that day, when the sun sat high overhead, Sir David drew the mare close alongside us and commented, ‘Logan, I wonder that you are still wearing your borrowed clothes. Surely, now that we're not being followed, you can wear your own?'

I'd not yet heard this news. I asked, ‘We are not being followed?'

Sir David nodded. ‘My cousin called off the chase in Northallerton.'

I nudged my hand into Logan's broad back. ‘Were you not going to tell us?'

He half turned his head. ‘Let's just say I've less faith in his cousin than he does.'

Sir David smiled. ‘I think,' he said, ‘you like wearing the clothes. They allow you to sample the life of an ordinary man.'

Logan asked, ‘Is that right?'

‘Aye. The life you gave up when you put on the scarlet.'

This time Logan's head did not bother to turn. ‘I'm not sure that I'd call working in the queen's stables an ordinary life.'

‘A more settled life, then.'

‘Ye think what ye like.'

I knew Logan's tones well enough to know he'd drawn a sharp line under that column of conversation.

My father's voice came from behind us. ‘Logan, you will want to feed my daughter soon. She tends to grow short-tempered if she does not get her dinner.'

Logan called back, ‘Aye, I've noticed.'

I assured them both that I was fine, and did not need their management. ‘I am not hungry yet,' I lied.

‘Nevertheless,' said Logan, ‘that does look a likely place to stop and have our dinner, there, do not ye think?'

I could not see where he was pointing. ‘Where?'

‘Just there, ahead of us.'

Sighing, I came back with, ‘How I could I possibly see what's ahead? You are built like a tree.'

Logan half turned again, and I saw his raised eyebrow and – so I imagined – the edge of his smile. ‘Aye,' he said calmly, ‘'tis past time we stopped.'

He did choose a good place, beneath a spreading sycamore that cast its shade in dappled patterns on the grass and caught the murmur of the wind within its leaves so it became a softly whispered song.

The horses were tethered close by and could graze and converse with each other the way horses do, with their snorts and soft whinneys and shakes of their manes, plainly glad to be able to rest for a short while from carrying us in the warmth of midday.

And in spite of my earlier protest, I felt better, too, after eating. I'd not have admitted as much, though, to Logan. It might have made him feel yet more superior.

He watched me idly for a moment before asking me, ‘What kind of tree?'

‘I'm sorry?'

‘If I'm built like one, there must be some variety ye have in mind.'

My father, smiling, called upon Sir David, who sat leaning with his back against the sycamore, absorbed in the small book that once had been Prince Henry's. ‘Does Marcus Aurelius Antoninus have aught to say about trees?'

Glancing up from his reading, Sir David replied, ‘He is very fond of fig trees.'

Logan grimaced. ‘I've no wish to be a fig tree.'

I know I rolled my eyes. ‘I can't imagine that a busy Roman emperor would place any importance upon what tree you – or he – might be like.'

Focused once more on his book, Sir David told us, ‘No, indeed. Marcus Aurelius felt that what mattered in life was to keep your words true, your thoughts honourable, and your actions good.' Then he paused, and set his book aside, and looked at Hector. ‘That's a maxim you should mark, my lad, for it will serve you well in life, as it did serve the prince.'

Hector was finishing the food that we had left unfinished. ‘What's a maxim?'

‘Well…' Sir David sought a simple definition with the ease of someone who had once been well accustomed to explaining things to children. Or one child, in particular. ‘A maxim is a truth. A rule to live by.'

Hector promised he would do his best to live by it. ‘But I'm no prince.'

Sir David told him kindly, ‘True words, honourable thoughts and good actions aren't the sole domain of those with noble blood, my lad.' For a moment, sitting there against the tree, he seemed to be considering something. ‘Let me tell you a story,' he said.

Hector was fond of Sir David's tales. ‘Is it another one about the prince?'

‘No, not about the prince this time. About a stable lad, a little older than yourself. I've heard it often. It's a tale my brother never tires of telling.'

Logan glanced at him, but didn't interfere.

Sir David said, ‘This stable lad, he had a gift with horses. He could tame those none could ride. He knew what ailed them as if they had told him in their language, and he knew the way to cure them. One day, in my brother's view, he might have been a stable master. Maybe even Master of the Horse, as once my brother was. But fate decided differently.'

‘What happened?' Hector asked.

‘His father died.' Sir David said it plainly, without sentiment but not without compassion.

When I looked at Logan's face, I saw no sign of a reaction there. And yet I knew – of course I knew – the stable lad was him.

Sir David continued, ‘His father had been a King's Messenger, one of the best. And he'd asked that his son might be given his place when he died. So the stable lad overnight found his world changed for the worse.'

Hector didn't see how that was possible. ‘He was a Messenger.' His tone implied that was surely enough to solve all of life's problems.

‘But now he was fatherless,' Sir David said, ‘and the head of his family. And shunned by the Messengers with whom he worked, who believed that he did not deserve his position.'Tis true, that was unfair of them,' he added, when he saw Hector's expression, ‘but then life is rarely fair. Nor was it fair that the first mission he was sent on was so dangerous.' He settled his back against the sycamore, gazing out across the fields for a moment as though he were seeking the safe path between Hector's impatience to hear the tale and Logan's tolerance of having it told. Then he said, ‘There was no hint of danger, mind, when he was sent. It was only a road, and a bag with a letter and jewel that the king wanted sent to the queen in her progress. Except on this day, there were thieves on that road.'

Hector's eyes grew wide. ‘Thieves?'

Sir David assured him, ‘Aye. Three hardened brigands, with a fourth friend in the palace who had told them of the jewel, so they knew what road it would travel by, and that it would be carried by a Messenger alone, just twenty-one, and inexperienced. They lay in wait, and ambushed him.'

I tried to close my mind against the picture of the fight that must have taken place upon that road – the three men against Logan, unsuspecting. I had selfishly forgotten many details of that summer. I remembered, though, his mother's face when he'd been carried home. And how the Logans' house had stayed so dark and silent for weeks afterwards.

My father had tried telling me what happened, but I'd had no patience then to hear of anything concerning Logan. Valentine had told me, ‘Watch, they'll make a hero of him now. Such men fall upwards through their lives.' And I'd agreed that it was shameful.

Now the only shame I felt was that I'd ever been that person. Had those thoughts.

Sir David told Hector, ‘Some people say he was shot by eight pistol balls.'

Logan smiled thinly. ‘Some people exaggerate.'

Sir David turned. ‘You're familiar with the tale then. Good. How many shots was it?'

I wasn't sure Logan would answer. He measured Sir David for a moment with his quiet gaze. ‘I heard it was five.'

My indrawn breath could not be helped, although my hand flew swiftly to my mouth to cover any sound.

Hector was speaking for me, anyway. ‘ Five pistol shots!'

Sir David said, ‘I do agree that would kill most men, but our stable lad was…'

‘Built like a tree?' Logan offered.

Sir David was drily amused. ‘Am I telling this story?'

‘Ye're taking your time with it,' Logan said.

‘Our stable lad was determined and brave, and he fought back against those three brigands. He fought for his life. He killed one, overpowered the other two, tied them all three to their horses and, even while wounded so badly, he brought them the rest of the way to the town where the queen was. Delivered the jewel and the king's message, and gave a very poetical speech…'

Logan scoffed. ‘He said nothing at all. He was all but delirious by then, and couldn't put two words together.'

Sir David said, ‘Well, in my version, he gave a poetical speech. After he bowed to the queen.'

‘Ye must surely mean after he fell from his horse in the marketplace, for that's the last thing that he does recall.'

Hector, who had been watching the two men with growing understanding, finally closed the circle. ‘He speaks of you!' he said to Logan. ‘You were once a stable lad, like me.'

‘I telt ye that already, did I not?'

‘Aye, but…' He was still trying to make sense of all he'd heard. ‘Five pistol shots! Where are they? Can I see the scars?'

Sir David reached a hand to tousle the boy's hair and said, ‘I fear, young Hector, that you must die disappointed, for he shows his scars to no man.'

Logan's mouth held its firm line, but I could see his eyes had softened. ‘For you, Hector,' he said, ‘I'll make an exception. If Mistress Westaway will turn around.'

I turned, not meeting his gaze, more because I had no wish for him to see just how affected I was by the things I'd heard. I could hear him unfasten his doublet and take off his shirt, and I heard Hector counting.

‘Five! Just as ye said,' Hector told him, in awe.

‘Did ye think I would lie?'

‘But what is that one, there?'

Sir David answered, ‘That was from a gentleman who broke his word.'

‘That,' said Logan, contradicting him, ‘is from a lass.'

Hector was horrified. ‘She stabbed ye?'

‘No, lad. Cupid's arrow struck me hard, in just that spot, the first time I did see her smile. A man will never heal,' said Logan, ‘from that kind of wound.'

My father said, ‘A pretty tale. Pray, what might be the lady's name?'

‘Nay,' Logan said, ‘that would be telling.' He was done with the display. I heard the rustle of his shirt, and then he told me I could turn around.

He had his doublet fastened. Still, I did not look above the level of his chin, not even when we'd finished with the dinner and he'd fetched the horse and came to lift me to the pillion, for I did not trust that my emotions would not show.

But as we started south again upon the road I told him, quietly, ‘An oak.'

He leaned back slightly in the saddle, angling his head down to hear me better. ‘What?'

I cleared my throat. ‘You asked what sort of tree you were,' I said, and raised my chin so that my voice would be more sure. ‘You are an oak.'

He turned his head a fraction further so that I could almost see his profile, but otherwise he stayed so still I might have thought he held his breath. And then, accepting what I'd said with a short nod I took for thanks, he faced the road again and we rode on.

When we reached our inn that evening at the town of Tuxford, I kept to my chamber, pleading that I had a headache, which was partly true. The perfume of the handkerchief that I still kept within my bodice had been bothering me all the afternoon.

Sitting at the small, round table near the window in my chamber, I drew out the handkerchief and spread it smooth – a square of white lawn edged in ivory silk, with the initials V and F embroidered at one corner in a thread of silver gilt. A token of a man's professed affection. I recalled how lovely I had thought it was when Valentine had placed it in my hand. Now, I only noticed that the scent of it had faded. In a week or two, no more, it would smell unremarkable. Sometimes expensive things were like that – potent, and yet passing.

It was curious, but I found that I could not clearly see his face within my memory. I could hear his words, though. And they did not paint a fetching portrait, for beneath their charm they sounded selfish and unkind.

I turned my thoughts back through the years and saw how I'd allowed those words to colour my own view of Logan, when in truth, if I unravelled everything, like pulling on a thread, I found that at the very start of things he'd done me no true injury, nor offered me an insult, and I could not think where our dispute began.

‘Why does he deserve your thoughts?' That was what Valentine had asked me on the morning I'd met Logan at the conduit and we had argued.

Why does he deserve your thoughts?

Because , I wished I'd told him then. He is the better man .

Somebody knocked upon my door. I went to answer it. The landlord's daughter, all of seventeen, entered with bread and ale.

‘Beg pardon, mistress,' she said, ‘but your husband thought you might be hungry.'

It was just like Logan to do something that would prove my point. I had to swallow hard to find my voice. ‘I thank you.'

As she moved to set my meal upon the table at the window, her gaze fell upon the handkerchief. ‘Oh! That is very beautiful. I've never seen its equal.'

I smiled faintly. ‘Would you like it?'

‘Me?' She looked astonished. ‘I could never—'

‘Truly, I insist.' I took the handkerchief and folded it and placed it in her hand, closing her fingers round it just as Valentine had done with mine. ‘Take it,' I told her, ‘as a gift.'

Take it , he'd said to me. Mayhap when you come home, I'll have a gift for you of greater worth.

Except I had discovered that, much like the man who gave it to me, it had very little worth at all.

As a little girl, I had looked forward to Whitsunday for, to me, it always marked the start of summer, with a whole week of festivities to follow. There would be a fair, and brand new clothes to wear, and singing and processions. For adults, it might simply be a holiday. For children, it was magical.

I saw that magic now reflected in the way that Hector stared so longingly at all the decorations that were being set up in the market square outside our lodgings. Having now arrived in Nottinghamshire, we were taking rooms at the White Hart at Newark. If one could believe its landlord, the White Hart had ruled its corner of the marketplace for some two centuries or more – its timbers straight despite their age, three storeys tall beneath a smartly tiled roof. At ground level, a square-walled, covered passageway cut through the building, leading to the cobbled courtyard just behind that serviced the inn's stables. And above the passageway, a small army of plasterwork figures set in separate niches stood along the bottom of the gallery, watched over by the inn's bright, painted sign.

Hector liked that sign, and said so while we stood beneath it in the doorway of the inn, waiting for Logan and the landlord to conclude their business. ‘But,' Hector asked, squinting upwards, ‘why does the deer wear a gold crown round its neck?'

My father said it showed the creature's connection to royalty. ‘King Richard the Second, who ruled many years ago, chose the white hart as his badge – as his personal emblem.'

‘Why?'

‘The white hart means peace,' said my father. ‘And King Richard wanted his people to know that his reign would be peaceful. He was the son of a very great soldier, the Black Prince, well known for his wars, but King Richard had no wish to be like his father.'

Sir David, passing just behind them with a portmanteau, remarked, ‘All sons would rather chart their own course in this life, I think.'

I thought at first he might be speaking of Prince Henry, for it had been widely noted and remarked upon within my social circle that King James and the prince often disagreed. But then I noticed that Sir David was looking at Logan, who appeared not to have heard.

Logan's attention was entirely upon my father, and his gaze assumed that odd, unfocused quality that came and went so quickly no one else seemed to observe it. I was even more inclined to think it meant that he was worried, for my father did look tired.

‘We'll stay here the week,' Logan said. He left no space for it to be discussed. ‘It's Whitsun week all over. We were fortunate to find our lodgings here, but in the next town all the inns and houses might be full, and I'll not take that risk.' He turned to smile at Hector. ‘Anyway, they'll have the fair on Tuesday. Ye'll not wish to miss that.'

Hector's look of joy was dampened only slightly when my father clapped a hand upon his shoulder and reminded him that boys who sought to kick their heels up at the fair must first attend their souls at the Whitsunday sermon.

Which we all did. I'd been spoilt, admittedly, by being raised within the Close at St Bartholomew's, because the church there was so beautiful. Still, this church here at Newark, but a stone's throw from our inn, was most impressive. It was very large, with soaring ceilings painted in exquisite patterns, full of darkly polished wood, pale stone, and high, arched windows filled with stained glass in bright colours, letting in the light.

The minister kept his words true to the spirit of the day, taking his sermon from the Book of John, when Jesus, knowing that his time was growing short, assembled his disciples and reminded them to honour his commandments. ‘If a man love me, he will keep my words, and my Father will love him,' the minister read from the text, and I saw my father's head nod in agreement at my side. But then the minister read through the Ten Commandments, giving them notations of his own, and midway through the reading, my father went very still, and bowed his head, and after that was silent with his thoughts.

‘No, I am well, there is no need to fuss,' he told me later on that afternoon, when I expressed concern. ‘It is no more than a slight aching of my head.'

But on Monday he kept his own company and after dinner he went for a walk by himself. Or at least, that's what he believed, for he most likely would not have seen Logan, who quietly slipped out to follow him, leaving young Hector in charge of Sir David.

Sir David very dutifully played the part of prisoner and did not stray from Hector's sight. And Hector, to his credit, did a fine job as a Messenger. He eyed Sir David with suspicion.

‘I would have your word ye'll not escape,' he said.

Sir David raised his eyebrows slightly. ‘I've already given it.'

‘Tae Logan, aye, but not tae me.'

The corner of Sir David's mouth quirked upwards, but he straightened it so that he, too, looked serious. ‘You have my word,' he said. ‘I'll not escape.'

Hector relaxed somewhat. He drew his chair so that he sat between Sir David and the door. But he still craved his stories. ‘Did Prince Henry favour war or peace?' he wondered, clearly thinking of the White Stag's sign.

Sir David gave this thought. ‘That is a question with no simple answer, and depends much upon circumstance. I will say, though, that more than any conflict or the lack of it, the prince did love the prospect of adventure.'

And he shared a few tales of Prince Henry's first encounter with his much-loved master shipbuilder, and of his visits to the dockyards, and the great ships that were built for him. He told us of the prince's friendship with Sir Walter Raleigh, that great favourite of the late Queen Elizabeth and hero of England's war against the Spanish Armada, who had himself sailed on so many adventures and now was kept locked in the Tower by King James for what the prince felt was a misunderstanding. Sir David told us, too, about the prince's determined support of the quest to find the Northwest Passage, and his dream to strengthen the colony at Virginia while founding new ones on more distant shores.

‘He had a great desire to sail to the far reaches of the world, and wished to venture off the edges of the map, to see what he'd discover there.' Sir David looked towards the window, and his smile was brief. ‘He did have many dreams.'

I'd watched my father grieve for all my life. I knew the signs of it. I would have let Sir David sit in silence with his memories, but Hector asked, ‘Where did he sail to?'

‘Nowhere. In the end,' Sir David said, ‘there wasn't time.' His gaze came back to Hector's, gently. ‘But he did have plans. I'd tell you what they were, but I fear it would leave poor Master Westaway with a cramped hand from all the writing he would have to do to note them down in his report.' And then he smiled again, this time directed to the open doorway of our lodgings.

I'd been so involved in what he had been telling us that I'd not seen my father coming in, but there he stood. The walk had done him good, it seemed. The wind at least had brought some colour to his face. But he did not yet look himself.

‘I am too tired to write this evening,' he assured Sir David, and not waiting for his evening meal, he took his leave of us and simply went to bed.

Logan, returning not long afterwards with a flat, paper-wrapped parcel that he set down near the door, suggested Hector might want to do likewise once our supper was eaten and the horses seen to. ‘The fair is tomorrow,' he said. ‘An important day, and ye'll be wishing to look your best.'

Hector looked down at the jerkin and shirt he'd been wearing since Langholm and wrinkled his nose. ‘I'll be looking like this.'

‘Will ye, now? Then I've wasted my money on that ,' Logan said, giving a nod to the parcel beside the door, ‘haven't I?'

Hector's face lit up. ‘What is it?'

‘Ye'd best open it,' Logan advised, ‘and find out.'

In a scramble of paper and string, Hector tore through the wrapping and pulled out a new shirt of white linen, clean and unworn, fitted hose, and a plain, dark blue doublet with shining brass buttons. His mouth fell open and his eyes began to fill. ‘Is this for me?' He stared at Logan. ‘Truly?'

‘Aye.' There seemed to be a certain tone of Logan's voice reserved for Hector and the horses only. ‘'Tis tradition.'

I think we all were touched by Hector's innocent and genuine reaction to the gift that might have been the first new suit of clothes he'd ever had for Whitsuntide. So much so that when he expressed dismay that we did not have any new clothes of our own, we did our best to reassure him.

Logan could do little more than promise he would wear a clean shirt on the morrow, ‘Which is nearly the same thing,' he said, to Hector's doubting face.

Sir David offered, ‘And I have a second doublet I shall wear.'

All I could tell the boy was, ‘I have a brown petticoat to wear in place of this one.'

Hector said, ‘That will look bonny, for your eyes are brown.'

Logan laughed. ‘With compliments like those, wee man, ye'll fit in well at court.' He reached into the pocket of his doublet and took out a folded piece of fabric, which he passed to me. ‘Ye'll have this also, if ye wish it.'

Speechless yet again, I took the handkerchief, unfolding it and smoothing it upon my knees. It was a simple square of Holland linen, very soft and simply edged in small white stitches that exactly matched the cloth. It had one small decoration only, in one corner, wrought in fine black thread – an acorn on a curling stem beneath the stout protection of an oak leaf.

‘It seemed fitting for ye,' Logan said. ‘And I have noticed that ye've not been carrying your other.'

‘No.' I was still looking at the oak leaf, tracing it with idle fingers. ‘No, I gave that to our landlord's daughter, when we were at Tuxford.' Why I told him that I wasn't sure, except it was a thing I felt that he should know. ‘Its scent did not agree with me.'

Logan made no reply at first, and so I raised my eyes and found that he was watching me. And then he spoke, and I discovered I was wrong. That tone of voice was not reserved for only Hector and the horses. Logan said, ‘This one is plain and has no scent.'

‘That makes it much more practical,' I told him. ‘Thank you.'

I could feel Sir David's eyes upon us, so I chose that moment to excuse myself and go to bed, but I spread my new handkerchief upon the pillow underneath my cheek, and for that night at least, the dream passed by me. Mayhap it could see that, like the little blackwork acorn, I was too well guarded.

Awakening on Tuesday morning, I found that the market square had been transformed into a place of wonder for the Whitsun fair. I'd seen the stalls and booths while they'd been building them, but nothing had prepared me for the swirl of life and colour and the wild chaotic glory of it all. I rose and dressed and barely touched my breakfast, eager to be out there in the midst of it.

My father smiled. ‘You are a child, yet. You should see your eyes.'

I didn't need to. I could feel my own excitement, and was sure it would be showing. ‘Then you'll have to come and dance with me, the way you always used to at the Whitsun fairs.'

My father touched my face and told me, ‘I would rest awhile longer. I will come and find you later.'

Kissing his cheek, I made him turn that to a promise before I went outside with the others. As we stepped over the inn's threshold, just for a moment, I saw Logan pause as though weighing the wisdom of bringing Sir David into such a crowd, where a prisoner might disappear with the ease and the speed of a scarf in the hands of the conjurer who stood performing his tricks now a few steps away.

But then Logan firmly walked forwards and set down the rules of the day. ‘We keep out of the drinking booths. We stay together. And we must stay out until we win at least one prize.'

‘You're our best hope of doing that,' Sir David said. ‘I see there's wrestling.'

But Logan did not wish to wrestle. ‘Hector,' he called his apprentice to his side, ‘where will we start?'

Predictably, Hector chose a small booth selling sugar candy, comfits, and all manner of sweetmeats, and once fortified with some of these, he dragged us off to see the players in the furthest corner of the market who were acting out the tale of Robin Hood. It was a spirited, rousing retelling, with much laughter from the crowd, and having won his Maid Marian, Robin urged all of us watching to join in the races and games, while with all of his men and his fair lady he strolled the marketplace, cheerfully lending encouragement.

It was Sir David who first saw me watching the dancers. The second time they started forming a circle, he casually said, ‘Do you know, Hector, Messengers really should know how to dance.'

‘Why?' asked Hector.

‘They just should.'

And the next thing I knew, there the four of us were in the large circle, standing and waiting while the small troupe of musicians started playing ‘Three Poor Mariners'.

Sir David told Hector, ‘Now, this is an easy one. See, they're choosing a few people now, and soon they'll start to dance around inside the circle while we sing the words together, and then when the music stops, each dancer must stop, too, and face the person they have stopped in front of, get down on one knee, and kiss that person's hand, and bring them thus into the dance. It's great fun, you'll enjoy it.'

I nearly laughed aloud at Hector's sideways frown. He asked, ‘How can a kissing dance be fun?'

Sir David said, ‘You'll see.'

It was fun. And it wasn't long till Hector's was one of the loudest voices singing:

‘We be three poor Mariners,

Newly come from the seas,

We spend our lives in jeopardy,

Whilst others live at ease,

Shall we go dance the round, the round the round?

And shall we go dance the round?

And he that is a bully boy,

Come pledge me on the ground.'

Hector fairly shouted the word ‘ground!' every time, then laughed to see the growing field of dancers dropping to their knees to kiss the hands of whomever they'd ended up across from in the circle. I was so amused by Hector that I nearly missed the moment when a young lady with golden hair bent to her knee in front of Logan and, with a quick shrug and grin, he was swept off into the dance.

I'd lost my place within the tune. I sought to get it back again. ‘We spend our lives in jeopardy, whilst others live at ease…'

It should have been an easy thing to spot a man as tall as Logan in the field of dancers, but I'd somehow lost him, too. I tried to focus past the blur of spinning bodies.

‘… pledge me on the ground !' sang Hector, as Logan stepped in front of me and smoothly knelt. He took my hand in his and kissed it, and then kept possession of it, hauling me into the moving circle. There were other people dancing with us, and I knew it, but I did not see them. I saw only Andrew Logan, and the grey eyes I'd once thought were cold.

Too soon we came around again to where we'd started, and the singing stopped, and I brought Hector in to join us. I feared this might leave Sir David on his own, but he'd already been invited by an older woman, so we were the four of us again, and dancing faster, ever faster, as the music picked up speed with every step, until there was no one remaining on the outside of the circle, and the rest of us could not keep up the pace to sing the words.

When we all stumbled out of the dance flushed and laughing, Robin Hood himself was waiting for us. Or, more properly, for Logan.

‘Come, sir, you must try your luck,' he said, ‘at wrestling.'

Logan shook his head. ‘I thank ye, no.'

‘The prize is very large this year.'

That caught Hector's attention. ‘Logan,' he whispered, but loudly. ‘A prize.'

Robin Hood – or, the actor who played that part – nodded. ‘Indeed. And there's pride at stake, because our champion is undefeated.' Here he motioned towards the raised platform where a man waited who was nearly Logan's size, standing in his shirt because of the day's heat, ready to take on all those brave enough to pay their pennies for the chance to grapple with him. ‘Thomas Hobson, Ironmonger, Alderman', the sign beside him read, so this was evidently being done to aid his business and political career as much as to raise money for the church. He'd been bantering with everybody passing by, good-naturedly, but when he saw that Robin Hood was talking now with Logan, he looked apprehensive.

Hector pushed at Logan's arm. ‘Ye must!' he said. ‘A prize!'

I'd seen men face the gallows with a fair sight more enthusiasm. Teasing, I told Logan, ‘I thought you liked fighting.'

‘Why would ye think that?'

I didn't know how the impression had been formed, or when, but I knew, ‘You fought Valentine.'

His downward look was dry. ‘I warrant God himself would come to blows with Valentine. But truthfully, I've never laid a hand on him.' He turned, in answer to the constant prodding at his side. ‘All right,' he said to Hector. ‘Hold my doublet, then.'

They drew a crowd, because they were so well matched in their height and size. Yet Logan was so clearly younger, fitter, and more skilled at wrestling that it seemed there was but one way that the match would end.

I knew the very moment he decided not to win. I saw the change of his expression, and the dropping of his shoulders, and the way his stance relaxed. He let himself be taken down.

When Thomas Hobson was declared the winner, Hector was incredulous.

‘The ironmonger must have cheated.'

‘Now, then,' said Sir David, ‘you can't lay a charge so serious at someone's feet before you have the facts.'

The wrestling platform was still thickly crowded round with people reaching to congratulate the winner, and praise Logan for his effort. Robin Hood had joined them, and had launched into a lusty speech while someone who looked very like the landlord of our inn held up two tankards for the wrestlers, and the crowd cheered.

Hector paid it all no heed. Arms crossed, he faced Sir David. ‘Was the tale ye telt me about Logan and the brigands true?'

‘It was,' Sir David said.

‘Well, if Logan was too strong for three men to defeat him when he was sae badly wounded, how could one man do it now?' asked Hector, sceptical. ‘He couldn't, that's what. Not unless he cheated.'

I kept silent, not revealing what I'd noticed. Toasts were being drunk now on the platform, and the tankards were refilled.

Sir David smiled. ‘I must say, Hector, you do argue with the logic of a lawyer. And you're right to think that Logan's much too strong to be defeated. Yet he fell. And why was that?' He waited for an answer for a moment, then he gently said, ‘Because he is a good man, and the ironmonger also is an alderman – a man of some importance in this town, who has to live here and command respect, and Logan would not take that from him.'

The ironmonger certainly looked pleased with the result. He was now making speeches also, and the tankards had been drained and filled a third time. Logan had stepped back, as though attempting to remove himself.

Sir David said, ‘It takes a man of strength to let another man be strong. To stand aside and let him claim his moment. I've known men of high estate who could not do so.'

Hector granted that. ‘But Logan didnae win a prize.'

Sir David turned his gaze across the bright confusion of the marketplace. ‘I do not wrestle,' he confessed, ‘but in my youth, I did well when I played at quoits. I noticed that there was a little pitch set up across the way. Shall we go try our luck? Yes? Good. Oh, Mistress Westaway will take that.'

Hector gave me Logan's doublet, and Sir David said as he was being dragged away, ‘If you would kindly let my large guard know my smaller guard's removing me to a new corner of the fair, but I am well secured and he'll have iron rings to hit me with if I should give him trouble.'

I knew that everything was fine, but I still watched to see exactly where they went before I turned and started pushing my way closer to the wrestling platform. Logan was no longer there. I found him at the back of it, between two booths in what had the appearance of an alleyway. He put a warning finger to his lips. ‘Ye don't want Robin Hood to hear ye, else he'll have me up to do it all again, and once is plenty.'

‘It was thoughtful, what you did,' I said.

‘What did I do?'

But he knew, and I let him know that I did, too. I told him how Sir David had explained it very tidily to Hector.

‘Aye, well,' Logan said, dismissively, ‘he seemed a decent man. It cost me nothing but a piece of pride, and ye should ken I have more than my share of that to spare.'

It struck me just how little I did know him in this mood, when he was smiling and at ease, upending all my preconceptions of his nature. I'd been led to think he'd fight all men because he was a brute, but now I saw he turned his temper only against someone like the guard at Brancepeth Castle gate, who'd been rude and belligerent, and even then he'd only shown its blunted edge.

It made me wonder all the more what Valentine had done that night at the Star Tavern in our Close that had drawn Logan into such a tumult. But I did not ask. Instead, I simply passed along Sir David's message, and the doublet.

Logan, with a nod, accepted both. Slipping his arms into the sleeves of the doublet, he made as if to shrug it on, but that motion stretched the linen of the shirt across his chest and caused its opening to gape. I saw the scar above his heart.

The blade – it must have been a blade – appeared to have been twisted, for the scar was not a clean, straight line, but jagged at its edges. And he'd told one bit of truth to Hector – though it was an older scar, it stood out red against his skin as though it were determined not to heal.

I wasn't sure what impulse made me reach my hand to touch it, but at any rate I didn't get the chance. Logan caught my fingers gently and prevented it.

He told me, ‘That would be unwise.' Although his words were light, I thought they seemed less of a warning than a challenge. ‘Especially after they served me three pints of whatever that witches' brew was.'

His eyes were definitely brighter, but I reassured him, ‘I don't think it's robbed you of your reason.'

‘No, my reason is intact.'Tis my restraint that's lacking. I do fear I might forget myself and…'

‘And?'

‘And do what I've wished to do since first I saw ye.'

I was not kissed against my will.

His grey eyes, as his head descended, sought and found permission in my own. Nor did he hold me fast and pinion me as other men had done when social gatherings gave them the licence for such contact. He didn't hold me at all. All the touch I felt from Logan was his kiss, and that was warmth enough.

I was twenty-four, of course I had been kissed before, but never with such tenderness, or thoroughness. Or care.

I found my voice and told him, ‘Had you done that when you first saw me, you'd have spared us a great many arguments.'

He laughed, and I believe he might have kissed me for a second time, except his eyes, which had been warm on mine, lost focus briefly, and his whole expression changed. He straightened, drawing back.

I didn't understand. I'm sure I showed that plainly. ‘Logan?'

Lightly his hand lifted to brush my cheek and then fell from my face and he forced a smile. ‘Forgive me, Phoebe. I meant ye no disrespect. The drink was very strong.' But Logan wasn't drunk, I knew. His hands were sure and steady as he finished fastening his doublet. Then, as if he hadn't just changed everything about my world, he said, ‘Let's go and find the others.' And he led me from our sheltered place back into the confusion of the fair.