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Thoresby had consecrated a grave for Nicholas in the back of the garden, for the apothecary garden had been his master work. Lucie was not surprised that Owen worried about her. She knew he’d never been comfortable about the ritual because of the customary weather.
    ‘Not today, my love,’ she assured him, kissing one of his battle-scarred hands. ‘I would not risk the health of our child.’
    She drew his hand to her stomach and watched his expression as their child kicked him roundly. Owen’s eye opened wide in wonder, and his face crinkled into the most beautiful smile in God’s kingdom.
    ‘Now that’s a sturdy kick,’ he said in a voice tight with emotion.
    ‘Or a punch,’ said Lucie, enjoying the moment and wishing it could be prolonged.
    A knock on the street door down below distracted both parents, but not the baby, who flailed away.
    ‘Quiet,’ Lucie whispered, rubbing her great stomach.
    Someone clattered up the stairs.
    ‘Hugh,’ said Owen with a laugh. ‘Do you think he’ll ever walk a straight line?’
    The boy proceeded to pound on their door. When Alisoun called him away, he stomped in protest.
    ‘We’re awake,’ Owen called out. ‘Save the door and let Hugh in.’
    Lucie laughed with him, hiding her disappointment in Owen’s allowing the interruption.
    The door eased open and Hugh peered around it, his fiery red hair unmistakable for anyone else’s. Seeing Owen and Lucie watching for him, he squealed and raced into the room.
    From the hallway, out of view, Alisoun said, ‘I am sorry about Hugh. I was too slow to catch him. A messenger is here from His Grace the Archbishop. He said he is to bring Captain Archer to the palace at once.’
    Lucie and Owen exchanged looks of regret over the moving head of their son.
    ‘I told you he’d send for me.’
    ‘You’ve not broken your fast,’ Lucie said, wanting him healthy.
    ‘He’ll feed me,’ said Owen. ‘But I can’t go at once. I want to say good morning to Gwenllian.’ He was already up and dressing. ‘I’ll tell him I’ll come to the palace bye and bye.’
    The snow had stopped before Owen stepped out into Davygate, and already what had fallen was turning to a slippery slush underfoot, the sort ofsurface he’d hated since losing half his sight. Long ago, while in the service of the Duke of Lancaster, he’d been blinded by the leman of a prisoner of war, a debility that had ended his career as captain of archers. Neither the duke’s physician nor Magda Digby had been able to save Owen’s sight. It was then that he’d learned to read and write in order to be the duke’s ears in the court circles, and it was these abilities as well as his fighting skills that had interested Archbishop Thoresby when the old duke died – for as Lord Chancellor of England the archbishop also had need of a spy. Owen had loved and honoured the old duke, Henry of Grosmont, a fine commander and a deeply pious man. Owen had not trusted the new duke, the husband of Henry’s daughter Blanche and a younger son of the king, and had therefore agreed to enter Thoresby’s service, naïvely believing that an archbishop would be as moral as the old duke. He’d quickly learned to his regret that although Thoresby was a man of God, he was also an ambitious man, a man who believed that it was often best to look the other way in order to protect strategic alliances. Falling in love with Lucie Wilton had tied Owen to the archbishop’s service. It was not only that in deference to his lord the guild had allowed Lucie to continue in her late husband’s apothecary upon marrying Owen, but even more importantly the circumstances of her husband’s death might have remained a blot on Lucie’s name but for Thoresby’s influence. For that, Owen owed him his allegiance.
    With his faulty depth-perception challenging him in the half-light of the snowy November streets, Owen picked his way past York Minster and into the grounds of the archbishop’s palace with a