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Edwin did not know if he had any opinions at all, so confused was his mind and so impressed was he with his father, but he tried to gather his wits. Eventually, one thought struck him above all others.

‘Every time I have spoken to anyone about the dead earl, they’ve told me that he was an evil man and that he did many foul deeds, but nobody has actually said what any of these deeds were. I’m more convinced than ever that the key to this mystery lies in the
past
, not in the present. He came here but a few days ago – nobody knew him, or at least nobody knew him well, and it’s very difficult to think that he might have offended someone so badly in such a short space of time that they would want to kill him. No,’ he said, realising that he was speaking his thoughts exactly as they fell out of his head, but also that they were starting to make some kind of sense, ‘the answer lies somewhere in the past. Somewhere at some time he did somebody a great wrong, and someone has decided to avenge it.’

Everyone was looking at him. He dropped his head. ‘Well, that’s what I think, anyway,’ he mumbled.

‘You mistake us, Edwin.’ It was Sir Geoffrey who spoke. ‘We are looking at you in pride, for you’ve hit upon something which nobody else has considered. I’ve been trying to think of anyone he might have offended since he’s been here, but this seems implausible. Your theory about the past fits much better. You’re right – he did commit some foul deeds, and I at least know some of them. And so does your father, for I told him of them long ago.’ He looked at father, who indicated that he should continue.

Sir Geoffrey cleared his throat. ‘The worst, the very worst of these deeds, happened fifteen years ago in France. It was when we were on campaign with the old earl, during the war which decided the succession.’

He looked around at the bemused faces of the young men, and realised he would have to start from the beginning. He sighed.

‘Pay attention, boys – I don’t want to say all this twice.’

Automatically they both straightened.

‘When King Richard died – may God rest his soul – there were two claimants to the throne. The king had no children, but he had one surviving brother, John, and one nephew, who was the son of their dead brother Geoffrey. If the law of succession were to be interpreted strictly, it would have been this nephew, Arthur, the Duke of Brittany, who inherited the throne, as his father had been John’s elder. However, he was only a boy of twelve who had never even visited England, so it would have been risky to put him on the throne. John and his supporters were in a much better position to seize power, and they invoked the old custom that the younger son of a king was nearer to the throne than a grandson whose father had never ruled. So John became king. However, Arthur decided to make a bid for the throne, or at least the barons who were supporting him did. Why did they do it? It’s possible that they truly thought that Arthur might make a better king than his uncle, for John was unpopular even then. But it’s more likely that they simply saw an opportunity to cause trouble and to profit by it. And so the realm endured civil war.’

He stopped to draw breath before continuing.

‘Most of the fighting took place over in France, in the Angevin domains. The war went on for three years, three disastrous years during which time many good men were killed. During that time Arthur grew from a small boy to a slightly older and more effective one, and there was some talk that his cause might succeed. However, he was captured at the siege of Mirebeau. John had him taken to his stronghold of Falaise; after that he was moved to Rouen, and nobody ever saw him again.’

Edwin had never thought to hear of so many evil deeds in just a few short days, but he was already becoming accustomed to it. ‘Murdered?’

Sir Geoffrey nodded grimly. ‘Aye. The rumours that floated around said that the boy had been blinded, then stabbed and his body thrown in the river. And one of the men at Rouen was Ralph de Courteville, then just a relatively minor lord. But shortly after Arthur’s disappearance, de Courteville was named earl, and nobody knew why, other than that he had performed some “great service” for the king.’

Robert exhaled. ‘You mean – you think that de Courteville murdered the boy himself?’

Sir Geoffrey looked tired. ‘Yes. The supposed method of the killing bore his mark. He always swore that he had some grudge against Arthur, for the boy had been arrogant to him and made him lose face in public at one time. So he built up this slight into a need for revenge. He was always particularly harsh on those he captured – and what man in his right mind would put out a boy’s eyes before killing him? Why do it? There is no reason other than vindictiveness.’ He gave a shudder. ‘Clearly the prince needed to be kept under tight rein, in case his cause surfaced again, but even the strongest-willed among the king’s party were squeamish at the thought of the cold-blooded murder of a boy.’

Edwin could hardly take it in. But even so, his mind was working on his own problem. How could this relate to de Courteville’s murder here in Conisbrough? Surely none of Arthur’s supporters could have borne a grudge for so long? Or was revenge a fire which could be kept alive and stoked during many years?

Sir Geoffrey seemed to see into his mind. ‘I don’t know how much help this is in our present situation, but it shows that de Courteville was responsible for an atrocity, and where there is one, there might be more.’ He was struck by a thought. ‘There were some who said that the deaths of two other knights at around that time might have been connected to de Courteville as well. Recall, Edwin – the arms you were looking at on the roll. Those two men supposedly died in accidents, but de Courteville was in the area, and shortly after their deaths their names were struck from the lists of knights and arms, as though they’d never existed. They must have done something that greatly displeased the king, although I can’t think what it might have been.’

Robert’s mind was evidently working faster than Edwin’s, for he spoke, a little shakily. ‘What if those two men had done something which the king wanted them to, but he’d decided afterwards that he didn’t want anyone to know about it?’

Everybody looked at him.

Edwin had already taken the next logical step and he grasped it first. ‘You mean, maybe they killed the prince, and then the king had them murdered?’

‘Yes. Or perhaps all three of them, de Courteville as well, murdered the boy, and then de Courteville killed the other two to keep them quiet.’ Robert’s eyes grew large. ‘Monstrous!’

Sir Geoffrey spoke slowly. ‘Robert, I think you might have stumbled upon something which has kept the rest of us guessing this past fifteen years.’ He thought carefully. ‘It all seems plausible now that you explain it that way. The times and places are all right.’ He looked thoughtful.

The expression on the knight’s face reminded Edwin of something. ‘That’s strange. Simon looked exactly as you do when I spoke to him about times and places yesterday.’ The others turned to him, so he explained further. ‘Martin and I were talking about the time at which the earl must have been killed – we were working out whether Father Ignatius might have seen someone going up the stairs – and Simon suddenly went very quiet and said he was thinking about something, but it couldn’t be right.’ He stopped.

Robert spoke. ‘So what was it?’

‘What was what?’

‘What was Simon thinking about?’

‘Oh. I don’t know – he wouldn’t say.’

That was probably not much help. The room fell silent.

Edwin had something else on his mind. ‘But I still can’t understand how a man would murder his own nephew, or at least have someone else do it. And if this prince Arthur knew about the danger, why did he continue in his bid for the throne? Surely he was well off as a duke and had no need to be king as well, if it was that dangerous.’

It was father who replied, snorting. ‘In that, my boy, you have revealed your innocence and naivety. Noblemen will always seek power – they are drawn to it irresistibly. Once King Richard died, there were only ever two choices for Arthur – take the throne or die. It was his right, his duty to fight, for the crown was his through his father. It was not the boy’s fault that his father happened to be John’s elder brother, and not the younger. He had to do it.’

His energy seemed to waver, and after a look at his old friend, Sir Geoffrey continued the theme. ‘For are all our places in the world not governed by our fathers? King, noble, knight, peasant – all have their station due to their fathers, and their fathers’ fathers.’ He reflected. ‘But it was also not his fault that he was only a boy of twelve who had not come to his full strength, and therefore never had a chance. It was not his fault that he died only three years later, alone in some dungeon.’

There was silence for a few moments, before Robert was the first to break it by rising, saying that he must get back to the castle lest the earl miss his presence. He took his leave of Sir Geoffrey and lingered a long moment by father’s bedside.

‘Master Godric, I must bid you farewell. By morning we shall be gone, and I don’t know how long it will be before I return …’

He left the rest unsaid, but father understood. He raised one lined hand and laid it on Robert’s arm, looking into the eyes of the younger man.

‘God be with you always, my boy, for I have watched you grow, and you have ever been the friend of my son. May the Lord bless us both, whether our lives be short or long.’

Robert looked at him quizzically for a moment, then put his strong young hand over the frail old one, oddly gentle, before turning and leaving the room, trying not to let the others see his face. He was already at the door of the cottage when he remembered his manners and stopped to take his leave of Edwin’s mother, leaning on the doorframe as he did so. Then he left the cottage to make his way back up to the castle in the waning sun.

The three men remaining looked at each other.

Edwin was starting to panic again. ‘But how does all this help? I still don’t know who killed the earl, and I only have a few hours left.’

Father took charge again. ‘Well, we now know more than we did before. Let us go over everything once more, leaving nothing out, and see if we may start to trace some patterns which were not visible to us up until now.’

Wearily, they started again.

It was some time later when Edwin heard a gentle throat-clearing noise from the door, and turned to see his mother hovering there. The smell of milk posset came from the other room, and he realised that she probably needed to give father some food. But it seemed this was not why she had disturbed them.

‘What’s this? Does it belong to Robert? I found it over by the door, so perhaps he dropped it on his way out.’ She held something up in the slanting rays of the setting sun, and they all peered at it.

She passed the item to Edwin, who was nearest, and he turned it over in his hand. It was the thong from around Robert’s neck, the one he never took off, but the leather was new and hadn’t been properly knotted. Clearly it had slipped open and fallen to the ground. The thong was passed through a heavy ring, and Edwin examined it closely, holding it up to catch the last of the sunlight. It was a signet ring, fashioned into the shape of a snarling lion’s head. The design was strangely familiar – where had he seen it before? He stared at the object as he tried to let memories wash over him.
A lion’s head
…

A moment later he was running towards the castle, breathlessly, running so fast he thought his heart would burst.

Simon was puzzled. As he wandered slowly down the stairs in the gloom of the keep, he tried to make some sense of it.
Someone must have gone past the bedchamber to get to the roof
. They were all sound sleepers, or at least they were normally. But Simon had awoken in the darkness of the night, not knowing why he had done so. And when he woke, he’d seen …

He was so engrossed in his own thoughts that he never felt the hands that reached out towards him. He was barely aware of being propelled forwards, was conscious of falling only for a fraction of a moment. Fortunately he had no time to register what was happening before his head crashed down on to the cold stone step and he knew no more.