All day, rumours had been circulating around the Saracen camp. A message had arrived from the besieged city, brought by a heroic swimmer, who had managed to dive under the chain blocking the harbour and slip between the anchored ships of the Crusader fleet without being seen. His words, passed from mouth to mouth, were being chewed over by everyone in the Saracen camp within an hour.

‘I bet you know more than anyone, little brother, seeing you’re in and out of the great pavilion all the time,’ Ismail said to Salim, as they stood together looking out towards the city and the sea.

‘Honestly, Ismail, I don’t know more than anyone else. Just that the walls are crumbling all over the place, and the Franks keep attacking. Everyone’s totally exhausted. The garrison are begging the Sultan to rescue them by tomorrow morning, or they say they’ll surrender.’

‘Surrender?’ Ismail sounded shocked.

‘It’s all very well for you,’ Salim burst out. ‘They’re desperate! They don’t have any food! They must be running out of weapons by now too. And there’s women and little children in there!’

‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean anything.’ Ismail braced his shoulders, as if shaking off an unpleasant subject. ‘What about the Sultan? Has he answered? Are we going to attack again tonight?’

‘He got the scribe to write at once. He said they had to hold on down there. He can’t attack yet. He’s waiting for fresh troops. They’re supposed to be coming from Egypt. He sent the message by carrier pigeon. I saw it fly off myself.’ He lost the effort to sound controlled and his voice rose in anguish. ‘What’ll they do to everyone in the city if it surrenders, Ismail? What’ll they do to Ali?’

Ismail shook his head sympathetically.

‘You know, when a city surrenders, the people, they’re like goods. Something to bargain with. The Franks won’t just kill them. They’ll try to swap them for something from us. Frankish prisoners, or their precious true cross, or something.’

Salim turned hopeful eyes on him.

‘Really? Do you really think that’s what they’ll do?’

‘I’m sure of it, little brother.’

Salim felt comforted.

Ismail’s right, he thought, as he washed for the time of prayer. Bargaining chips, that’s what the garrison will be. They’ll be too valuable just to kill.

He lived through the night and the next day veering between hope and despair. Messengers kept coming and going round Saladin’s pavilion. No one knew what was happening. Everyone’s eyes were straining towards the city and the sea, listening to the relentless boom and crash of the catapults, watching the brilliant flashes of Greek fire exploding, and wincing at the sounds of battle and the screams of the wounded.

And then, at last, came the moment that everyone had been dreading. A great groan went up from the whole Saracen camp as the anxious watchers saw the banners of Muslim Acre being torn from the masts, and in their place fluttered the hideous, garish flags of the Franks, decorated with their hateful crosses. As the evening sun sank into the sea, baying shouts of triumph, the ugly clatter of wooden bells and a horrible cacophony of drums and trumpets told the story. The city of Acre had fallen. The Crusaders had entered and taken it.

‘Ya haram! Ya nakba! It’s a disaster!’ everyone was saying. ‘Satan has defeated us!’

Salim, unable to bear the wails of his mother and the disappointment and grief he saw on every face around him, slipped into the doctor’s tent and sat hugging his knees, rocking backwards and forwards in misery.

I’ll never be able to go home again, he thought. Our house’ll be taken over by a Frank. They’re probably in there already.

The thought of filthy strangers infesting his home, lolling on the carpets where his father had sat with Dr Musa, scratching their fleas on the verandah upstairs where he had always liked to spend the afternoon, using his mother’s water jars, wearing the old slippers from the pile by the door . . .

He wanted to be sick.

Thieves! he raged. Murderers!

Where was Ali now? Had he been taken alive, or was he one of the dying whose dreadful cries had now been stilled? And if he was alive, had he been given something to eat at last?

They’ll have put him in the dungeons, I suppose, he thought with a shudder. With all the rats and scorpions.

Dr Musa, who had been looking for him, came into the tent and found him at last.

‘So, the sick are to look after themselves from now on, are they?’

‘I’m sorry, sidi Musa.’ Salim scrambled to his feet, realizing too late that he should have been accompanying the doctor on his afternoon rounds.

Dr Musa’s voice had been rough but his eyes were sympathetic.

‘Now it begins. The real business,’ he said.

‘What begins?’ Salim asked fearfully.

‘The comings and goings, the embassies, the talks, treaties, negotiations, we’ll give you this, you’ll give us that. Most tiresome. At least your brother will be safe.’

Salim’s heart lightened. ‘He will?’

‘Of course. I’m sure. A most tiresome delay there’ll be now. We’ll be stuck here for months, no doubt.’

‘What then?’ Salim asked. ‘Will we go on to Jerusalem?’

Dr Musa heaved a sigh.

‘How I long for it! My house, my books, my dear Leah, her wonderful cooking! But I fear my home may go the way of yours. Malek Richard will be heading for Jerusalem now. It’s what he wants most, after all. And we have seen what a man he is. It will take all of Saladin’s strength and cunning to keep him at bay. No, Salim. For the time being we’ll have to stay with the army.’

It was several days before Adam learned of the triumphant taking of Acre. He had lain, concussed and unconscious, on the pile of rubble while the battle had raged around him. Someone must have picked him up at last and carried him here, into this strange room, and laid him on this mattress. He was vaguely aware of other beds in rows along the wall nearby, the moans of other men, and white-robed monks moving quietly between them, but it was too much effort to look round. He kept his eyes closed most of the time, trying to block out the ferocious pain in his head. He slept the days and nights away, rousing only to drink a little of the water or broth pressed to his lips.

When he came to properly, he was aware of someone sitting beside him. He turned his head, regretting it at once as daggers of pain shot through his skull, and saw Sir Ivo. The knight seemed to have been talking for some time. Adam, his mind slowly clearing, tried to pick up the thread.

‘Even then,’ Sir Ivo was saying, ‘when you’d have thought no one could have gone on resisting, they wouldn’t give up. They beat us back again and again. You have to admire the Saracens, devils though they are. Their courage is amazing. They fight like Christians.’

‘Where am I?’ Adam managed to ask. ‘The city, is it taken?’

‘God’s bones, boy, don’t you know? Of course the city’s taken. You’re inside it, in this excellent hospital!’ Sir Ivo exclaimed, raising his voice to a pitch that made Adam wince. ‘The pagans took us by surprise in the end. They surrendered. It was the very day after you fell.’

Adam tried to smile.

‘Oh. That’s good.’

‘The churches in the city are already being restored. The pagans in their wicked pride had torn down the crosses. They’d even scratched out the faces of the Holy Mother and Christ himself on the sacred pictures!’ He shook his head, as if unable to believe such wickedness. He paused, then said awkwardly, ‘Glad to see you restored to your wits, Adam. You’ll be your old self in a day or two, I expect.’

Through the open door leading out of this large vaulted room came the sound of monkish chanting.

‘The Templars,’ Sir Ivo nodded. ‘Singing another Te Deum. Every mass is a true celebration now. The saints have blessed us. We’ll be in Jerusalem before the year is out, I’m sure of it.’

The music was so soothing that Adam’s eyelids drifted down. When they opened again Sir Ivo had gone, and the light penetrating through the narrow pointed windows had turned from the bright white of midday to the soft gold of evening. Someone brought him a bowl of thick lentil soup. He drank a little of it, closed his eyes and slept again.

The next couple of weeks passed in a blur. From the streets of Acre, outside the hospital, came the sounds of drunken carousing as often as the chanting of monks. Titbits of news penetrated his muzzy brain, without making much sense. The King of France, sick and disillusioned, had gone home, though his knights had begged him, with tears in their eyes, not to abandon the quest for Jerusalem. Saladin had agreed to pay huge sums of money, give back the True Cross and free all the Frankish prisoners taken to Damascus in return for the release of the prisoners of Acre, now languishing in the city’s dungeons. Jennet had miraculously walked out from under the burning tower, her clothes unsinged, and was even now coming through the door to visit him . . . No, that wasn’t right. That was only a dream. Jenny was dead. She was dead. She was dead.

He was too weak to wipe away the tear that trickled out of the corner of his eye and ran past his ear on to the straw pillow.

Slowly, Adam’s strength began to return. He found at last that he could lift his head from his straw pillow without fainting. Then the feeling of sickness in his stomach began to go. One day, he managed to sit up for a few minutes, though the effort exhausted him.

A few visitors came. Roger Stepesoft, his normal cheerfulness gone, staggered in one morning in the grip of a blinding hangover, his eyes bleary, his voice cracking when Adam stupidly asked after Treue, forgetting in his confusion the dreadful sight of Treuelove’s dead body slung over Roger’s shoulder. A few of the friendlier squires dropped in briefly to ask how he was, and one day even Jacques appeared, his eyes roving round the sick men in the ward, like a cat sizing up a cageful of birds, until he was sent packing by a monk.

Sir Ivo came regularly, but to Adam’s surprise the knight’s visits depressed rather than cheered him. There was something about Sir Ivo’s diamond-bright faith in the Crusade, his restless energy and his evident relish for the battles to come, that wearied and confused Adam.

I must be a sinner, he told himself guiltily, lying on his back and watching the motes of dust dance around in the ray of sunshine glancing across the room from the window. I don’t even hate the Saracens now. If I’d been one of them, I’d have fought for my city too.

He tried to fan the flames of indignation with thoughts of the old churches of Acre which the Saracens had turned into mosques, and the crosses they’d torn down.

‘It’s the blindness of evil that closes their eyes to the truth of the gospel of Christ!’ he remembered Sir Ivo saying, as he lovingly polished the haft of his lance. ‘They cling to their prophet and worship their book of lies because they’re children of Satan himself.’

But that boy, Salim, answered a small rebellious voice in Adam’s head, he didn’t look like a child of Satan. He didn’t have a tail, or anything like that. And his ma, she was like anyone’s ma, and really brave, walking through the camp. And Saladin himself, he’s supposed to be a demon but he sent his own doctor to Lord Guy, to my father. Even Sir Ivo admits that that was true chivalry.

He was wrestling with these thoughts one hot afternoon when Dr John stopped beside his bed.

‘It’s Adam, isn’t it?’ he said, a smile crinkling the corners of his eyes. ‘Adam Fitz Guy. I hardly recognized you when they brought you in. White as your surcoat you were.’

Adam tried to sit up.

‘No, no. Stay still. You had a bad crack on the head. The skull’s fractured. It takes a while to mend, and until it does you must stay where you are. You’ll be on your feet again soon. No long-term ill effects, I trust.’

‘I’m going to get better?’ Adam gave up the struggle to lift himself and smiled waveringly up at Dr John. ‘I was beginning to think – I mean, my head aches all the time and I feel all confused. I can’t think straight about anything. I keep forgetting stuff and get in a muddle.’

Dr John leaned down to feel his pulse, then drew up a low stool and sat down beside him.

‘What do you mean, muddled? You have delusions? Hallucinations?’

‘I don’t know.’ Adam didn’t understand the words. ‘I think it’s the devil coming into me, Dr John, to make me sin. I’m not sure about anything, not even the Crusade. Whether it’s right or not, I mean. I still want to get to Jerusalem, because of my ma, to save her soul from purgatory, but I don’t want to kill anyone. It’s not just being a coward, though I am one, I suppose. I just don’t think it’s right . . .’

He stopped, not daring to express the true wickedness of his thoughts.

‘You don’t think what’s right?’ Dr John prompted gently.

‘Well, it’s like – I mean, it’s not like . . .’ Adam stopped, then started again. ‘The way the monk told it, back in England, when I took the cross, it sounded so simple, that the Saracens were all evil, and killing them was a holy task. But they’re not all evil! Not the ones I’ve met. And the monk, he went on about Our Lady’s tears falling because infidels were trampling on the grave of her Son. I’ve tried to see her. I’ve prayed to her again and again, but when I do I just see my ma. She used to say, “Treat people nice, Adam. Don’t hurt anyone, whoever they are. That’s the right way. It’s worth more than a hundred masses.” And then I remember all the dead people, theirs and ours, and the wounded, and how they screamed in pain, and I don’t think it can be what Our Lady wants.’

He stopped, afraid that he’d shocked the doctor. There was a short silence.

‘What an amazing thing,’ Dr John said at last, ‘to hear my own thoughts in the mouth of a squire, whose whole life ought to be dedicated to fighting. I fear it’s the knock on the head that’s made a philosopher of you. Once you’re back in shape, wielding your sword, putting on your armour and trying to win your spurs and become a knight yourself—’

‘I don’t want to be a knight!’ Adam interrupted, his brow puckered with the effort of trying to think things out. ‘I’m not even a squire, not really. I’m just – I was – a serf. A nothing. Then a dog boy. Then Sir Ivo’s servant. None of it seems real to me.’

‘Sir Ivo’s a good man,’ the doctor said. ‘You were lucky that he took you on.’

‘I know!’ Adam looked more worried than ever. ‘Sir Ivo, he’s the best knight in the world. He’s kind and wise and fair to everyone. I love him! I owe him everything! And his faith in our mission here, his love of Christ, it’s so strong it makes me ashamed because I can’t feel the same as him.’

Dr John leaned forwards.

‘Sir Ivo’s a warrior,’ he said. ‘He thinks like a soldier. For a military man like him everything’s clear and simple. Black and white. He has one goal, the taking of Jerusalem, and he never lets his mind stray from the task. But I’ve lived in this country all my life. I grew up here, Adam. I’ve known many Jews, and followers of Islam, as well as Christians. Some of them are my good friends. When all this started, I was glad to think that Jerusalem might be taken back into Christian hands, but when I see all the suffering that this campaign is causing, then, like you, I’m not so sure that it is the will of God. In fact, I no longer believe it is.’

‘So the Saracens, then, the infidels, you don’t think they’re demons from Hell and the children of Satan?’ Adam asked anxiously.

‘I think they’re people like us, created by God. Loved by God. I’m content to respect them and wish them well.’

‘So if you were me you wouldn’t want to fight and kill them either?’

Dr John laughed.

‘I’ve never wanted to fight anyone! I’m a doctor. My job is to save life, not to destroy it.’

Adam, suddenly exhausted, closed his eyes. The doctor stood up.

‘That’s enough mental exercise for one day,’ he said. ‘Rest now, Adam. I’ll see you again soon.’

It was three weeks before Adam, still shaky on his feet, but clearer in his mind, was able to leave the hospital and resume his duties with Sir Ivo. He still loved and admired the knight, but he felt detached from him too. He would never again try to share Sir Ivo’s belief in the rightness of this Crusade, and he would never again feel guilty about it. His head still ached, often, and Dr John still made him drink disgusting daily brews of herbs, but he was recovering. He was thankful too to be living within four walls again. It was stiflingly hot inside the narrow streets of Acre, but it was better than the filth and discomfort of the camp.

The Fortis people had taken over a series of houses near the harbour, at the end of a small narrow street, and Sir Ivo had been allocated a pleasant little room off a courtyard, where the horses were tethered. It would be time, soon enough, once the negotiations over the prisoners had been completed, to set out for Jerusalem, but in the meantime it was pleasant to rest here.

Several times, Adam had seen King Richard himself. He strode about, restless with purpose, exuding an energy that seemed almost to scorch those around him. Adam had been among the knights and squires in the Fortis train when Lord Robert had paid a formal visit to the King. The large hall in the principal building of Acre, where the King was seated, was hung with gorgeously coloured banners. Richard sat on a great chair, surrounded by princes and nobles from all over Europe. He had received Lord Robert graciously. The matter of succession to Lord Guy’s land and title would be handled once the usual fee had been paid. Father Jerome would thrash out the details with the King’s scribes. In the meantime, Richard had heard how valiantly the young lord had fought for the cause, and he would knight him himself before they left Acre. Lord Robert had better purify his mind and thoughts, fast and keep vigil, in preparation for the day.

Adam, uninterested in the career of Lord Robert, was far more concerned with Tibby. Without Jenny to look after her, what would become of her? He assumed that Joan was caring for her, for the time being, at any rate. And Faithful? Was Joan looking after him too, or had he bounded off, as he’d done so many times when food was scarce, to forage on his own?

He had gone in search of them as soon as he’d been able. It hadn’t been hard to find Joan. The poor hangers-on of the Fortis contingent had packed themselves into a couple of old booths in the bazaar area. It was a stone’s throw from the main Fortis quarters. Adam, coming round the corner, was shocked to see Tibby on her own in the middle of the busy covered street, filthy from head to foot, staggering about with a piece of ragged grey cloth in her hand.

‘Oh, so you’ve decided to grace us with your presence, then, Master Adam?’ Joan said, appearing suddenly from the shadows. ‘Thought we’d seen the end of you, now young Jen has gone. Silly girl! I told her what would happen if she went down there.’

‘I couldn’t come before,’ Adam said. ‘I was wounded. I’ve only just got out of the hospital.’

Joan’s face softened. ‘Glad to see you looking all right now, anyway.’ She sighed. ‘You’re like me, I suppose. Missing her. And what’s to happen to the little one? Worries me sick, it does.’

Tibby had seen Adam. She came running towards him on unpractised feet.

‘I can’t keep an eye on her all the time,’ Joan said defensively. ‘Got me own work to do. Toddles off, she does, soon as my back’s turned.’

Tibby hurled herself against Adam’s legs and clasped him round his knee. He patted her awkwardly on the head and she stared up at him, still clutching her rag.

‘Jennet’s old coif that is,’ Joan sniffed, nodding at it. ‘Don’t try to take it off her. She’ll scream the walls of Acre down, what’s left of ’em.’

Tibby let go of Adam’s leg and stepped back. Though her eyes were as blue as Lord Robert’s, and her hair, unlike Jennet’s, was fair, he saw a gleam of Jenny’s old expression in her eyes. ‘I suppose it’s up to me now,’ he said gruffly. ‘I’ll have to look after her,’ he said. ‘When we go home I’ll take her back to Jenny’s pa.’

‘You’ll look after her?’ scoffed Joan. ‘And how will you do that, mister squire? I think I see it. “Oh, sorry, Sir Ivo. I can’t polish up your armour right now. I’ve got to fetch the babby out of the fire.”’

Adam grinned at the picture she’d conjured up, then frowned, trying to think things out.

‘If I can get money to pay you,’ Adam said, almost breathless at the thought of the responsibility he was undertaking, ‘so that you don’t have to do the laundry any more, but could spend all your time just looking after Tibby, would you do it?’

Her lined old face broke into a wistful smile.

‘Would I do it? And not break my back and rub my hands sore every day? Of course I would! Anyway, it breaks my heart to see her so neglected.’

Adam nodded, and summoned up a smile for Tibby.

‘I’ll come back tomorrow,’ he said. ‘I’ll have sorted it out by then. She’s my family, after all.’

‘So she is!’ Joan agreed happily. ‘Your niece, in a manner of speaking, seeing you’re brother to Lord Robert.’

Adam didn’t answer. It wasn’t what he’d meant. To him, Tibby was family because she was Jenny’s child, not Lord Robert’s. But the realization that she was in fact his own blood relative pleased him.

I’ll do it, he thought. I’ll look after her. All my life.

‘You haven’t seen – you don’t know where Faithful is, do you?’ he asked, feeling almost timid, knowing how much Joan had always disliked the dog.

She put her hands up in a defensive gesture.

‘Oh so that’s it, is it? No, no, Master Adam. I’m not looking after that brute of yours too.’

‘I don’t want you too,’ Adam said hastily. ‘I just want to find him, that’s all.’

‘In and out of here he is, all day long,’ Joan grumbled. ‘Getting in the way, stealing food, howling at night like a soul in torment. Surprised he ain’t found you yet. He goes off searching every day.’

A few hours later, Adam broached the subject of Tibby with Sir Ivo, as the knight was leading Grimbald out of the city to take him for a gallop on the open land near the river.

‘She’s alone in the world now, you see,’ he said nervously, not sure how Sir Ivo would react. ‘Lord Robert’ll never admit she’s his, and I’m her uncle, I suppose, as well as her godfather. I feel I ought to – well, it’s like she’s my responsibility.’

Sir Ivo listened in silence, his brow creased. Adam waited, hanging back while Grimbald shied at a group of noisy soldiers who were throwing stones at a scorpion.

‘It does you credit, Adam,’ Sir Ivo said at last. ‘And I’d like to help. But my own finances, I fear, are in a very bad way. I’m living on credit as it is. Until we return home and I can get back the income from my own small manor, I don’t have a penny to spare.’

‘I’ll keep a careful account!’ Adam said desperately. ‘I’ll pay you back every groat, I promise, once my own – well, when Brockwood is made over to me.’

‘You mean it hasn’t been yet?’ Sir Ivo raised his eyebrows. ‘I think you’ll find it has. Go and see Father Jerome. He’ll tell you what’s what. He should advance you any money you need.’

Adam walked thoughtfully back to the city, glad to be out of the blinding August sun. He had found the heat even harder to bear since the injury to his head.

‘Ah! So pensive!’ came a fluting voice ahead.

He looked up. Jacques was hurrying towards him, his lips parted over his dirty broken teeth in an insincere smile.

‘What a miracle you are, young Adam or – Master Adam, as we must now call you. Given up for dead! Carried lifeless from the battlefield by the upright Sir Ivo! Hovering – yes, hovering – for days, between life and death, only to return to us, full of strength and vigour.’ He leaned forwards to peer more closely. ‘Though still pale as a Scotchman’s backside,’ he said with satisfaction. ‘Not surprising, seeing as how you was knocked flat, and your head split right open. Dear me! What a tragic loss you would have been to all your dear friends! How we would have mourned!’

‘Get away from me, you cheat,’ said Adam, through gritted teeth.

A flash of pure hatred sparked in Jacques’s eyes, to be extinguished at once with another false smile.

‘Tut tut, my dear. No need to be so very sharp. A good boy like you too. Quite the little saint, I hear. Not that there’s any need. Tibby has other opportunities you know. Very much in demand. Shame, don’t you think, to take her back to drudge her life away in England, like her poor ma?’

‘What do you mean? What are you getting at?’

Adam scowled at him, suddenly uneasy, hearing menace in Jacques’s silky voice.

‘Mean? Me? Nothing at all! What should I mean? You should get out of the sun, my dear young master, before it boils you alive.’

He was gone before he’d finished speaking. Adam stood watching him, one hand shading his eyes, as the pedlar flitted away across the open ground, making for a gully near the river. Adam was about to turn away when he saw two men, wearing the turbans of Turkish merchants, step out from behind some fallen rocks. They raised hands in greeting, and Jacques hurried over to talk to them.

I’ve seen him talking to them before, Adam thought. What’s he up to now?

It took all Adam’s courage, the following morning, to visit Father Jerome in the monk-like cell he inhabited close to Lord Robert’s much more magnificent rooms, but the result of the meeting astonished him. Father Jerome frowned at the mention of Jennet, but looked thoughtful when Adam pointed out that her daughter was now destitute. No mention was made of Lord Robert, but it was clear that Father Jerome understood the situation perfectly.

‘This is a charitable impulse, Adam, and it does you credit,’ he said, his voice sounding almost warm. ‘I shall certainly make available the money you need for this purpose, and it will be set against the revenues from Brockwood, which are already piling up, no doubt, and will be at your disposal when you return home.’

Adam, not knowing how to answer, felt dazed by the large ideas these words had opened up. He looked up to see that Father Jerome was actually smiling at him.

‘And I’ll take this opportunity to congratulate you on your behaviour since discovering the truth about your birth. You’ve been wise and cautious. Go on like that, Adam, and you’ll do well.’ He had one last surprise in store. ‘Lord Robert’s to be knighted tomorrow, by the King’s grace. There’s something he wishes to say to you before he begins his vigil tonight. He’s in his quarters now. I suggest you go there at once.’

Two of the least pleasant of the Fortis squires were sitting on the steps leading down into the courtyard of the house next door, which was the Fortis headquarters.

‘What do you want?’ one said to Adam rudely.

The other stood up unwillingly.

‘He’s to go straight in. Don’t you remember?’ He called in through the open door, ‘The dog – I mean, Adam Fitz Guy here to see Lord Robert!’

To Adam’s amazement, Lord Robert was sitting in a large tub of water having his back scrubbed by a servant. He looked uncharacteristically anxious when he saw Adam.

‘Turn your back,’ he commanded sharply.

By the time Adam had turned round again, he was out of the bath and a cloth was wrapped round his lower half.

Adam waited in silence.

‘I’m to be knighted tomorrow,’ Lord Robert said. He spoke with none of his usual swagger and sounded almost thoughtful. He nodded towards the empty bath. ‘The purification of the body. And tonight, there’s my vigil.’

Sir Ivo’s words came back to Adam.

To become a knight, a man must be clean in body and mind, he’d said earnestly. All wrongs must be put right. At his vigil, a knight is naked before Our Lord.

Lord Robert was licking his lips nervously.

‘I acknowledge that you are my father’s son,’ he blurted out, all in a rush. ‘And that therefore you are my brother.’ He wasn’t looking at Adam, but at someone behind him. Turning, Adam saw that Father Jerome had followed him in, and that he was nodding with approval. ‘And I swear,’ Lord Robert hurried on, ‘that, unless you seek to harm me, I will never seek to harm you, and that your inheritance is assured by me.’

He sighed with relief, as if he’d spat out a bitter mouthful. Adam knew what he had to do. He dropped down on one knee.

‘I swear,’ he said gruffly, ‘that you are my liege lord. I won’t ever take up arms against you, or harm you in any way, or ask for any more than what Lord Guy – our father – left to me.’

Lord Robert had flinched at the words ‘our father’, but he was ready to finish the business off. He leaned down, took Adam’s hand and pulled him to his feet, not quite managing to hide his grimace of distaste.

‘We’re agreed, then,’ he said, shaking Adam’s hand.

‘Yes. We’re agreed.’

Adam could tell that Robert was longing for him to go, but he knew he had to talk about Tibby.

‘There’s the child,’ he said in a low voice, which only Robert could hear.

Robert flushed again, a much deeper red this time. There was guilt in his face, and uncertainty.

‘I’m going to take her,’ Adam said, sounding much older than he felt. ‘I’m going to look after her. Jenny, she wasn’t my real sister, but near enough to it. That makes Tibby my niece twice over.’

Robert stared at him in amazement, tried to speak and failed.

‘I’ll pay you,’ he whispered at last.

‘No need for that,’ said Adam, feeling wonderfully powerful all of a sudden. ‘There’s something you can do, though. She’s your serf, and so’s her grand-daddy, Tom Bate. Make them both free.’

‘I will. I promise, by the Holy Cross. I will.’

‘Tell Father Jerome now then,’ Adam went on stolidly, afraid that, when this moment passed, the promise would be conveniently forgotten.

‘There’s no need. I heard,’ Father Jerome said, behind Adam’s shoulder. ‘It will be done. Go away now, Adam. There’s more to be done tonight before the knighting tomorrow.’

Lord Robert’s knighting was, after all his anxious preparations, a hurried affair. Hollow-eyed from his all-night vigil and edgy from his fast, dressed with scrupulous care in his polished chainmail and carrying one of his father’s great helmets, he presented himself at the King’s apartments at the appointed time.

King Richard wasn’t there. He hurried into the great hall a quarter of an hour later, his face troubled.

‘There’s no other way out,’ Adam heard him mutter to one of his earls. ‘Saladin hasn’t paid up. He’s trying to keep me trapped here. What else can I do?’

He went through the motions of knighting Lord Robert automatically, with a distracted look on his face, and almost dropped the ceremonial spurs as he handed them over.

As soon as he had tapped Robert’s shoulder with his sword, called him ‘Sir Robert’ and told him to rise from his knees, he hurried away, calling out to his commanders to bring the Turkish prisoners out of the dungeons, take them out of the city to the open ground and do what they had to do.