When the bells for Prime ring out Sir Thomas wakes with a strangled cry of conflicted fury. In his dreams he has been back home in dear old Newbold Revel, back in his own bed, with his own wife, under meadowsweet-scented sheets of linen and finest-spun woollen blankets, but on waking here he is still – again – after four nights now – locked in Newgate gaol, in a cell he had oftentimes prayed never to see again, alone and upon a palliasse that stinks of other men’s worst fears.

But at least he has survived another night. At least he is not dead. There is that.

Though, dear Jesu, death now, this instant, would come as a relief, for he knows the day ahead will be filled once again with the same roiling terror, just waiting for the night to come; for the tolling of St Sepulchre’s night bell; and for the soft knock upon his door to let him know the priest is come to hear his last confession.

And yet what has he done? What has he to confess? Nothing. He clenches his teeth and kicks his feet. Jesu defend him!

If only that boy would come back; that would divert him. But he has not been for two days – is he alive? Is he beaten to death? Or is this some spiteful trick of Brunt’s? – and in his place is sent a small, boss-eyed girl who smells very strongly of goat and saltpetre, and who will say nothing save to indicate that she is mute, perhaps, and possibly deaf. She comes again this morning, just as Sir Thomas is gouging another scratch – his fourth – into the daub under his window to mark the passage of his days, and she brings more bread, more ale and another of those mealy apples, which Sir Thomas takes with genuine gratitude, for he is pleased to learn that someone somewhere intends him to live beyond the hour. After she has gone, he says his prayers, and eats and drinks, and then commits himself to pacing his cell, thinking the same thoughts he thought yesterday, and the day before, and the day before that, though this morning there are two new things to think about. The first is that the flies are already gathering in his cell. Not the noisy lugubrious bruisers that hang about his night soil bucket, each the size of an acorn, but the infuriating small ones that cut apparently pre-planned squares through the middle of the room. As the summer wears on, they become unbearable, he remembers. The second is that the man next door is playing, Sir Thomas thinks, the harp, and he wonders why he doesn’t have a harp. Why did he not think to bring a harp? It is true he has not played the harp since he was a boy. But now he promises himself he will take it up again as soon as he is home.

Nothing else has changed, save that the cat is warming to him, and this morning she allows Sir Thomas to tickle her stomach without latching onto his wrist with every claw, which gives him some sense of achievement, and it is while he is doing this, sat at the foot of his palliasse, that he hears stuttering footsteps beyond his door, and knows with no shadow of doubt that here comes – at last – his private attorney, Master William Hartshorne, bearing tidings.

He detaches himself from the cat and stands with his heart jarring in his ribs, and despite every little thing that he learned from before times, he cannot stop himself embracing the hope that Hartshorne will duck into his cell with a great yellow-toothed smile on his horsey old face, and he’ll spread his long arms wide and tell Sir Thomas to gather his things – though he has none – ‘for the king acknowledges his error and wishes this day to set you free with some very handsome recompense’. But it is not to be.

As soon as the door is opened, Sir Thomas sees Master Hartshorne’s face is longer than ever, deathly pale and utterly defeated, and he knows with a great sinking swoop of his vitals that his lawyer brings nothing but bad news. Nevertheless, Sir Thomas is still – for now at least – Sir Thomas Malory, knight, veteran of Verneuil and of countless other encounters, one-time Captain of Gisors, and once a Member of Parliament, and so he greets his lawyer with brave cheer, complimenting him on his very fine emerald-green doublet – obviously new – made of some sort of water-dappled silk and cut for a much younger man.

Master Hartshorne ignores the compliment.

‘Oh, Sir Tho-omas,’ he bleats, for when he is agitated he stretches out his words to sound not unlike a distant la-amb. ‘Oh Sir Tho-omas.’

And despite himself Sir Thomas cannot keep a similar quaver from his own voice when he asks: ‘Wha-at? The king means to see me dead?’

And as that last word trickles out, Sir Thomas glimpses once again that fork in the path ahead, where the world and everyone within it must go one way, while he – Sir Thomas Malory – must go the other, all alone, into the deep, dark woods of eternal night.

‘Well,’ he says, turning from Hartshorne to hide his tears. ‘So be it.’

To him, this is the bravest thing he has ever done.

‘But wha-at have you done, Sir Thoma-as?’ Hartshorne bleats regardless. ‘What have you done this ti-ime?’

At which Sir Thomas spins back.

‘Jesu defend me!’ he snaps. ‘What do you mean: “this time”? Wit you well, Master Hartshorne, that I did nothing last time, and that if I have done anything this time – which I have not – then I too am yet to learn of its nature!’

Hartshorne lets out a mew and steps back, raising his palms in defence.

‘But then why are you herein co-onstrained?’ he warbles. ‘Why are you back here in Newga-ate?’

‘You are supposed to know! You are supposed to tell me!’

At which Hartshorne deflates, and sighs long and loud, and he looks about in vain for something strong to drink, and somewhere clean to sit. He finds neither.

‘I have a-asked for an audience with everyone I can think of,’ he admits, ‘but the king and his Council are so taken up with negotiant-ations for Princess Margaret’s marriage into Burgundy that no man can say whether he is coming or going.’

Having been locked alone with his thoughts for nigh on a week, Sir Thomas finds such tidings from the outside world – a marriage! Into Burgundy! – otherworldly and pointless.

‘What of the Earl of Warwick?’ he barks. ‘What of my good-lord?’

He means that sarcastically: the Earl of Warwick is good-lord unto himself alone.

‘I have sent messages,’ Hartshorne tells him, ‘but am told he is again about his business in the Northern Parts, or across the Narrow Sea in Calais perhaps, or maybe even in Wales again – oh, Sir Thomas, I don’t know.’

And the two men are left looking at one another for a length of time – reluctant, unhappy collaborators once more – and both are dretched out of all measure, for this is all so sickeningly familiar, and after another long sigh, and a beating of his cap against his spindly thigh, Master Hartshorne must start again, asking – tentatively, haltingly – if there is anything Sir Thomas believes he may have done – ‘even by mischance’ – to harm the interests of the king?

‘I have scarce left my garden these past five years,’ Sir Thomas reminds him.

At which Hartshorne makes another of those curious mewing sounds.

‘It cannot be the old trou-uble back again, can it, Sir Thomas?’ he ventures. ‘You know that the earl will not lift a ha-and to help you if he belie-eves it so?’

At which their alliance fractures again, and Sir Thomas rounds once more on Hartshorne and asks him to leave, to return only when he has learned why the king is holding him, what he intends to do with him and how to stop it happening.

‘And have my wife send money, fresh linen and a venison pie,’ he adds, though he wonders whether there will be any time for that.

Hartshorne is miserable and cowed, and promises to do so, and takes his sorry, angular leave, apologising – just as he should – for all his divers failings, and so once more Sir Thomas is left alone with the cat, who this time scratches his wrist, after which he lies on the palliasse and then, after a further while, he turns to face the wall, and cannot stop himself weeping.

The day passes slowly, warm under the summer sun. Sir Thomas grows more despairing; more fearful, but – praise Jesu! – at None it is the boy who brings him his evening bread and ale, and Sir Thomas is startled to find how pleased he is to see him, alive and unharmed. But his joy is short-lived, for the boy will not hold his gaze, and so Sir Thomas must surmise that Brunt has told him all he believes he knows about Sir Thomas, and so Sir Thomas’s pleasure withers on the vine.

He takes the...