TEN

ROWLEY WAS SO ANGRY he could barely talk to her. And Adelia was so tired that despite a nap after having been put to bed by a solicitous and relieved Gyltha on her return to the Pilgrim, she resented his attitude. Would he have preferred it if she’d been raped and murdered?

But no, her crime, it seemed, was in ignoring the hunting calls of his search and not throwing herself in front of his horse in gratitude at being rescued.

“I didn’t need rescuing,” she protested. “I was in no danger.”

“Kidnapped by a load of cutthroats to view a skeleton is your idea of an outing, is it?”

“They were not cutthroats, they were Eustace’s frankpledge. We happened to meet in the road last night, they asked if I would accompany them to the cave where they had found him-and I went.”

“As one does,” Rowley said.

“I hoped they might have news of Emma.”

“Ah, yes, your disappearing friend. Then, of course, you had to go.”

She ignored his sarcasm. “Did you inquire for her?”

“Thank you, yes, I wasted more time yesterday questioning the sheriff’s reeve on your behalf. I had him called to the Bishop’s Palace.” Momentarily, Rowley’s irritation was diverted to something else. “By God, there’s incompetence here; robbery on that road is frequent, apparently. ‘Wait until Henry hears of it,’ I told the little bastard. ’The king will have your sheriff’s bollocks. He doesn’t like travelers being assaulted on his highways…’”

“Emma?” Adelia reminded him.

“There has been no report of such a cavalcade as hers being attacked, nor any likelihood that it could have vanished without trace-the scum that inhabit that forest only batten on parties of two or three. I told you, she’s gone elsewhere, no need to worry about her.”

Certainly, he didn’t. He turned on Mansur, speaking in Arabic. “And your disappearance? I suppose these rogues asked you equally politely to go with them?”

Mansur nodded. His eyes were half shut from fatigue-he’d had less sleep than Adelia.

It was the answer they had agreed on between them as, without bothering to talk to the monks, the two of them had helped each other back from the abbey wall to the inn.

The temptation to inform on Will the baker and the others because they hadn’t honored their agreement to give what information they held about Emma was great-very great-but Adelia and Mansur had sworn not to betray them, and oaths must be kept.

Reluctant to accompany him back to the abbey, Adelia told Rowley of the proofs of Eustace’s innocence awaiting him by the wall. While he was gone, she went upstairs to wash, put on clean clothes, and be lectured all over again by Gyltha, who punished her for a night of anxiety by brushing her hair with force. “We was worried. Well, Allie wasn’t-I told her you’d been called out to physic somebody.”

Adelia smiled down at her daughter. “Where did she get that?” The child was sitting on the floor regarding with intense concentration a birdcage in which fluttered a chaffinch.

“Millie. It come flying in when she was cleanin’. She found the cage from some’eres and gave it to the little ’un. That girl ain’t as daft as she looks.”

“No.” The deaf and dumb were universally regarded as half-witted-and treated as such. But, Adelia thought, there’s perception there; Millie notices things.

“Next time as you go off without saying, you leave me a message saying as you’re well,” Gyltha said, still brushing hard.

“Oh, I’m sorry, ow, I didn’t have my slatebook and chalk with me.”

“Couldn’t have ’ciphered it even if as you had.” Gyltha regarded reading and writing as exercises reserved for the effete. “A twig or summat’ll do. Just so’s I know it’s you.”

“I told you, they abducted me. There wasn’t time…” There still wasn’t; Rowley’s voice was echoing up the stairs, demanding her immediate presence in the parlor. “Lord, I’m not dressed yet.”

“Put this on.” Gyltha had been spending her evenings cutting out and stitching a swath of green silk acquired on the journey from Wales.

Adelia regarded the resultant pretty tunic. “You just want me to look nice for him. The old brown one will do.”

“Wear it.” When Gyltha was implacable, Adelia gave in.

The two women plus Allie and her birdcage-Adelia was damned if she was going to be without her daughter’s company again-descended the stairs.

Abbot Sigward, it appeared, had returned from Lazarus Island, and Rowley had brought him and brothers Aelwyn, James, and Titus back to the inn for a conference.

Now the four monks sat silently together along one side of the Pilgrim’s dining table, their black robes and hooded heads making a matte contrast to everybody else’s brighter reflection in the board’s high polish-Adelia’s green, particularly.

Hilda, ready to give her opinion, leaned across the hatch, which, like those in a monastery refectory, gave on to the kitchen. Behind her, the clatter of pans and an appetizing smell suggested that Godwyn was preparing food.

Only two of the inn’s people were missing. Rhys was upstairs asleep, still clutching his harp. Millie had been sent by her mistress to sweep the courtyard.

Allie was put on the floor, studying the bird in the cage, talking to it, tempting it with various tidbits to see which it liked best, her soft, inviting chirruping providing a background to the harsh tone of the man who was her father.

Rowley, still in hunting clothes yet very much a bishop, was in command. “We’re agreed, then. The sheriff shall be told that the man, Eustace, is to be exonerated.” When there was no reply, he pressed the point. “My lord abbot?”

There was a sigh from beneath Abbot Sigward’s cowl. “Yes, yes. That must be done. The fire was an accident.”

“I suspect it always was,” Rowley said. “But caused by whom?”

Abbot Sigward made to get up. “That is a matter for discussion in the privacy of our chapter.”

“No, it isn’t.” The bishop of Saint Albans hadn’t finished. “A man was wrongly suspected, his frankpledge falsely arraigned, and only the efforts of my lord Mansur here proved their innocence. A monk died in the flames. A town burned as well as an abbey. Therefore, this is also a civil matter, and those of us here who have been closely concerned have a right to hear it.”

He knows, Adelia thought. He knows who it was. He’s been talking to the lay brother, listening to Hilda. God help us, I think I know now.

From over the hatch Hilda said defiantly, “An old trap don’t prove nothing. That was Useless Eustace caused the fire. Di’n’t Brother Aloysius tell us when he was killed trying to put out the flames, poor soul?”

“So you say.”

Hilda bridled. “Heard him with my own ears, I did, for wasn’t I putting salve on his poor burns? ’Eustace, Eustace,’ he was saying. His last words, the dear.”

“Brother Peter was there, too, and he informs me that the words were not so distinct.” The bishop’s voice was quiet.

“Well, ‘Eu… Eu,’ then,” Hilda said. “But Useless was who he meant.”

“Are you sure it wasn’t ’You… You…’? And who was he looking at when he said it?”

In the silence, there was only the murmurings from the child on the floor: “Pretty bird, white stripe, pretty dickie.”

The last rays of the evening sun coming through the window shone on the long-fingered, blue-veined hands of the abbot clasped tightly on the table-the hands of a tense old man. His face, like those of the other monks, was invisible under his cowl.

At a glance from Adelia, Gyltha leaned down to pick up Allie and her birdcage. “That pretty dickie do need some air,” she said, and carried them both outside.

In the room the silence went on, inflating like a bubble to the point where it must burst.

Brother Titus broke it with a scream. “Stop it. Stop it. It was me. He was looking at me. Sweet Mary, Mother of God, it was me. I’d been at the wine in the crypt, I was drunk.” He began banging his head on the table.

The other monks didn’t move.

“And you left a candle burning?” Rowley was remorseless.

“It fell over. It caught the screen. I didn’t notice…” He turned to the abbot. He had blood on his forehead where it had hit the wood. “Dear God… how to be forgiven… All this time… I’ve been in hell with the devil… I have scourged myself til the blood ran. I wanted… but it was too massive, everything gone… Aloysius… I couldn’t believe… I couldn’t… Father, forgive me.”

He buried his head into the abbot’s shoulder, blubbering like an enormous naughty toddler seeking its mother.

And Sigward cradled him like a mother. “I know, my son, I know.”

Yes, thought Adelia suddenly. You did, didn’t you?

She got up and left the room. Mansur followed her out; this was business for the Christian Church.

They went into the courtyard, where Allie was dithering over her birdcage. “Shall I, Gyltha, shall I?”

“Up to you,” Gyltha told her.

Allie took a deep breath. “I think I will, then.” She untied the cage’s wicker door and opened it. The chaffinch fluttered out, perched on the wellhead for a moment, and then flew off.

“That’s better, isn’t it?” Allie asked, the tears falling.

Adelia grabbed her and kissed her. “I love you, Almeisan. So much.”

After a while, they heard the inn’s front door open and the shuffle of Titus’s feet as his brother monks helped him home.

Rowley came stamping out into the courtyard. “Well, that’s that.”

“Is it? What will you do about it?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know. Nothing, probably. It was an accident, what’s done is done. Quieta non movere.”

So sleeping dogs are to be left to lie, are they? Adelia thought. She said, “The abbot knew.”

“Suspected, perhaps.”

“And said nothing.”

He flared up. “In the name of God, Adelia, what would you have me do? You’ve just seen a man destroyed. Isn’t that enough?”

Yes, she had, and was sorry for it, but other men were being allowed to carry a blame of which they were guiltless.

Kindly old Abbot Sigward… she would never feel the same for him again.

“ Mother Church is all that stands between us and the devil,” the bishop of Saint Albans said. “If she loses respect, we are all damned.”

He turned to look at his daughter. “And what are you crying for?” The residue of his anger at other people gave the question irritability rather than the concern he probably felt.

Adelia rose immediately to stand between them. “She’s crying because she let her bird go.”

“Why? I thought she favored the thing.”

“She did, but she couldn’t bear to see it caged. She wanted it to be free.”

“Oh, God, she’s going to grow up like you.” He untied his horse’s reins from the rail, mounted, and rode off.

And that, thought Adelia, is the crux of everything wrong between us.

Indoors, she was met by Hilda. The landlady’s face was vicious. “See what you done to my dear abbot? You and that darky happy now?”

Adelia’d had enough. From the very first, the protestations by this woman that Eustace was responsible for the fire had been because, in her heart of hearts, she’d known he wasn’t. “Your dear abbot deserved it,” she hissed back and, ushering Gyltha and Allie before her, went upstairs to bed… and dreamed.

This time the queen was being walled up in a cave by unseen hands so that the layers of stones rose one upon the other, as if by themselves, while the woman behind them pleaded with Adelia to stop them until the last stone went into place and her voice was silenced.

Adelia woke up saying, “All right, all right, I’m coming to you.”

She took Mansur, Gyltha, and Allie with her. Making sure that nobody watched them, they toiled up the Tor from the burrow under the abbey wall and followed the trail of bruised grass and snapped twigs left by the descent down it the day before. Gyltha carried provisions, Mansur an iron bar and a lantern, Adelia a knife stolen from the inn’s kitchen, and Allie a frog and various beetles she picked up on the way.

Despite the trail, it would have been easy to miss the cave with its curtaining of branches if it hadn’t been for a pile of mule manure hardening in the sun outside it.

The removal of the withy screen caused Gyltha to hold her nose and protest at the stink. “Me and you’ll stay outside, miss,” she told Allie, but Adelia felt this was too hard; what child could resist a secret cave? Besides, Eustace’s bones had been reunited and covered with a patched cloak belonging to Ollie, the most silent member of the tithing.

Allie was enchanted by the place. She knelt with her mother to send up a prayer for Eustace’s soul, listening to and asking questions about the circumstances of his death, but then, since there was more wildlife outside the cave than in it, eventually joined Gyltha in order to explore the hillside while Adelia and Mansur got to work on dismantling the wall.

It wasn’t easy. It curved slightly outward, and whoever had built it in the first place had shaped the stones so that they would fit against one another almost with the tightness of tongue and groove, while Eustace’s father, however frightened he’d been of the demon, had put it up again in exactly the same way.

It took a quarter of an hour to lever out the first stone and, though removal became easier after that, it was an hour before there was a hole big enough to squeeze through.

In none of that time did Mansur or Adelia look inside; the lantern’s beam had been only enough to play on their work-and there was a stillness in the interior that made the idea of peeking somehow disrespectful.

The air coming from the hole they made was surprisingly fresh-no corruption here, nor was it completely black inside; they were aware merely of dimness.

“A saint’s tomb?” asked Mansur.

Adelia shrugged, refusing to be seduced by the undoubted air of sanctity here-the Arab had felt the same about the abbey. She picked up the lantern, and Mansur helped her climb through the hole.

She was in what was, or had been, a cell-a large, hollow cairn built within the hill. The earthquake of twenty years ago had caused it to shift, bringing damage. Where the beautifully packed stones of the wall and roof should have begun descending to complete the shape of a circular beehive, they had fallen down to reveal rough rock behind them.

Cracks had opened not only in the ceiling but in the hillside above it so that thin beams of sun, green from infiltrating ferns and moss, pierced the dimness here and there like spears of sunlight through tiny arrow slits.

In the center was a pool so still that it might have been a mirror. Mansur’s struggle to get his long body through the gap sent a shiver over its surface.

Beyond it, from the fallen stones of the opposite wall, dangled a skull.

Oh, God, please, Adelia thought, not another murder.

Here was Eustace’s father’s demon.

The skull had been cleaved nearly down to the forehead and was held together only by a circlet of metal like a woman’s headband, though this had been dislodged slightly so that it was worn at a rakish angle, as if Death was trying to be jolly. It stared, grinning, down at the pool where its perfect reflection grinned back up at it, making two demons.

A drop of water from the roof plinked into the pool like a note from Rhys’s harp. Again, the water shivered so that the demon in it rippled outward before resuming the shape of its twin.

After a long while, Mansur strode round the pool. Gently, his mouth moving silently in an Arabic prayer, he lifted the skull with two hands to put it on the ground, then began poking among the mess of stones. He crooked a finger at Adelia.

She’d been transfixed and had to blink and shake her head before she could join him.

There were other things among the stones: rotting shards of wood, bones, a battered helmet-also sliced in two at the top and corresponding to the wound on the skull where a blow from an ax or a sword had cleaved both the metal and the head that wore it.

Adelia put her hand into the pool to test its depth and found sand at the bottom. Sand? Had the sea once come up as high as this and then retreated?

She took the Arab by the arm and indicated that the two of them should leave.

When they were in the outer cave, Mansur said, “The wood in there was a bier. He was lain on it, I think. He has been treated with respect.”

“Possibly.”

Hearing their voices, Gyltha called from outside to ask what they’d found. They went to join her in the open air.

“A warrior, we believe,” Mansur told her.

“Possibly,” said the cautious Adelia again. “Certainly, he was killed by that huge dint on his head. He could be a saint-weren’t some of those killed in battle when the Danes came?”

Neither Mansur nor Gyltha had enough historical knowledge to answer her. But Mansur said, “Why, then, do the monks not know of him?”

It was a good point, and, certainly, the cell did not look like a saint’s inhumation.

“We’re talking about him as if he were very old,” Adelia said, realizing it for the first time.

“He was in there before the earthquake,” Mansur pointed out.

“But how long before the earthquake? Is he a victim only just previous to Arthur and Guinevere down there? Damn, I wish we could put a date to him.”

“Blow that,” Gyltha told her. “You ain’t got responsibility for every bugger found dead round here. Anyway, I’m a-going to take a squint at un.”

They let her go inside and waited for her, watching Allie take off her boots to splash her bare feet in the spring, letting the frog go from her hands into the water.

When, eventually, Gyltha rejoined them, she was subdued.

“What do you think?” Adelia asked her.

“I think as we should put the poor soul together and wall un in again. Leave un in his peace. Don’t seem right else.”

She was right; she usually was. So that is what they did.

Rebuilding the whole cell was out of the question; it was going to be time-consuming enough to close up the entrance hole. It was equally impossible to reassemble the bier, so they made a platform from branches to keep the skeleton from the bare ground. Sorting through the rubble, they discovered most of his scattered bones.

They found other things: shin guards not unlike the greaves worn by present-day knights, a brooch of lovely workmanship that had once pinned a cloak to the shoulder of a tunic and, Mansur said, might turn out to be gold if it were cleaned, the brass neck of a bottle, of which the leather had long rotted.

There was also a barbaric twisted torque, again probably of gold, from which hung a wheeled cross. He hadn’t been robbed, then, but on the other hand, there were no precious grave goods among the stuff they’d found, such as would have been buried with a great chieftain. Apart from the torque, everything was battered and utilitarian.

Yet somebody had built this secret chamber and hidden him.

Allie came clambering through the hole. “Look, look, I’ve found a toad.”

It was the first time anybody had spoken inside the cell; the adults had worked in silence. Automatically, they hushed her.

With the others’ help, Adelia began to reassemble the skeleton on the platform while Allie splashed water from the pool over the toad’s warty skin to cool it. It hopped away from her and buried itself in the sand of the pool’s bottom. Plunging after it, she said, “Ow, there’s a stone in here.” She began grubbing for what she’d stepped on and came up with a dripping sword.

“Let me see,” Adelia said.

It wasn’t an impressive weapon, almost black, with a nick in its blade, and surprisingly light so that it swung easily in her hand.

“What they bury that in the pool for?” Gyltha wanted to know.

“It’s the custom, I believe,” Adelia told her, remembering that the tithing intended to throw Eustace’s knife into the Brue.

At last, they had done what they could. The skeleton lay neatly on the platform, greaves in place, the torque round its neck. They put the brooch on its chest, covered it with the helmet, and folded the hands on top. The remains of the bottle were put at its side.

Gyltha looked at him. “Warrior he may have been, but he weren’t very big.”

He was decidedly short. Even Adelia was taller.

“But bless un anyway,” Gyltha said.

Mansur had become proprietorial about the body, and objected when Adelia proposed to take the sword back to the inn with her. “He was a fighter, he should keep it with him.”

But Adelia was still concerned that somebody had found it necessary to hide this man’s corpse from sight; she would be happier to be sure of when he had died. Knowing nothing about swords, she wondered if they had fashions, like women’s clothing, which could put a date to this one. There must be somebody who could tell her.

She and Gyltha and Allie left Mansur to block in the hole. When he’d finished, they sat silently outside the cave to eat their provisions and drink from the spring’s pure water.

That night Adelia dreamed again. A lovely, elegiac dream. At first.

She stood with armored knights on the shore of the Brue, just beyond Glastonbury ’s marketplace. Somewhere, women’s voices sang a lament. One of the knights raised his arm, holding a sword aloft for a moment so that the moon shone on its long blade and the jewels in its hilt.

The lament rose to a scream: “Arturus, Arturus. Rex quondam, rexque futurus.”

The knight sent the sword spinning high into the air, where it made a long arc, flashing black and silver as it turned. There was a plume of water, and Excalibur swirled out of sight.

Now the voices sank to a rhythmic moan that kept time with the dip of oars from a boat shaped like a swan.

The rowers were hooded in black, but the woman in the prow, her back to the shore so that Adelia couldn’t see her face, was in white. As the boat reached the bank, one of the knights stepped forward-he had an ax in his hand…

“No.” With a grunt of effort, Adelia woke herself up before she had to see Guinevere’s body severed once more.

For a while she lay, sweltering and resentful. I’m not a dreamer; I don’t believe in dreams. What are you telling me?

She got up, still chuntering with discontent. Lord, how I hate Avalon. Too beautiful, too terrible. Once and future kings-you can keep them.

She snatched her green tunic off its hanger because it was the nearest and coolest clothing to hand, put it on, stepped into her shoes, checked to see that Allie was still asleep, and tiptoed out.

Millie lay on a bed of rags under the landing’s barred window, tossing and turning in her sleep. She’d thrown off her coverlet so that the moonlight shone on her naked back. Which was striped.

Oh, God, they whip her.

Adelia blundered down the stairs, rammed back the bolts of the door to the courtyard, and went out, gulping in air little fresher than that inside.

A white figure was sitting on the wellhead parapet, and for a moment she thought Guinevere had come to haunt her.

It was Mansur. He had the sword from the cave in his hand and was musing over it.

She went and sat beside him. “Can’t you sleep, either?” His dreams must be as awful as hers-he was the one who’d nearly been buried alive.

He shook his head.

“Mansur, that child Millie has been whipped.”

He sighed. “They are not good people here, I think.”

She sighed with him. “Do you still believe Glastonbury to be the omphalos?”

“Yes,” he said, “I fear that it is.”

Patting his hand, she said, “Go to bed, old friend. Go to Gyltha; she’s the world’s only true navel.”

He rose and bowed to her. “Are you coming up?”

“I’ll stay here awhile. It’s too hot indoors.”

Full of love for him, she watched his dignified figure stalk indoors.

She got up, sent the bucket down the well-she always liked that echoing, faraway splash-and cranked it up again. The water was chilled, and she drank some, pouring the rest down her front.

Shutters were flung back and, looking up, she saw Hilda’s face staring bad-temperedly down at her. The well chain’s rattle had woken the landlady.

Deliberately, Adelia took up the sword, holding it by its blackened pommel, and stared back.

The shutters slammed closed.

Good, Adelia thought.

There was a quick movement behind her, and she was enveloped in a familiar smell of sweat and stale clothing as somebody seized her from behind and began carrying her away.

She lashed out with the flat of the sword and felt it connect with a shin. “Will you stop doing this.”

Will dropped her in order to rub his leg. “Where’d you get that bloody thing?”

“I found it.”

“Bring it, you might be needin’ it.”

“I’m not going anywhere.” She was shaken and angry.

“Thought you wanted to know ’bout your friend.”

Adelia’s eyes went wide. “Truly? Tell me now. What’s happened to Emma?”

“Keep your bloody voice down, will you?” He pulled her across to the entrance. As they went, Adelia heard the shutters open again.

She tried to get her arm free. “I must tell my people where I’m going.”

He wouldn’t stop. “You just told ’em. Told the whole bloody county. Come on. We ain’t got time for messages.”

Out in the road the tithing were mounted on their donkeys, holding the reins of another, ready to ride, edgy. “Hurry up, can’t you?”

There were only three of them this time: Will, Toki, and Ollie, the one who rarely spoke. “Where’s Alf?” she asked.

“Waitin’ for us. Get on that bloody moke.” Still clutching the sword, she was hoisted up behind Toki; Will got onto his own donkey and led the way up the high road.

“Where are we going?”

“You listen to me now,” Will called over his shoulder, his voice rough with the importance of what he was telling her. “You want to know what happened to your friend? Well, you’re a-goin’ to, but one cheep and this time we all gets our throats cut. You hear me? Never mind Glastonbury nor Wells, it’s his forest an’ his road. He’s king of ’ em both. He ’s doing us a favor, and he don’t do many.”

“Who? Who’s doing us a favor?”

“He’s given us three hours, but he’s chancy-sweet Jesus, he’s chancy. Iffen he changes his mind, we’re bleeding meat.”

“Who?”

“Never you mind. We calls him Wolf.”

“And he’ll tell me what happened?”

“He told us. He’s a-lettin’ us show you.”

At the top of the hill, they took the Wells road.

Clinging on to Toki’s back, Adelia said quietly into his ear, “Did Wolf kill them?”

Toki murmured back, “He’s told us he’ll be raidin’ over Pennard way tonight, but you can’t trust him, he’s chancy, terrible chancy, is Wolf.”

“Are my friends still alive?”

But they had turned onto a track leading into the forest and Will had slowed to look back. “You startin’ to listen’, Toki?”

“I’m listenin’, Will.”

The donkeys were reined in to a walk so that their hooves trod the ground’s leaf mold almost without sound. An enormous yellow moon shining through branches in dapples obviated the need for a lantern, but Adelia guessed Will wouldn’t have allowed one to be lit in any case; holding on to Toki’s back, she could feel a vibration in his body.

He was afraid, all the men were afraid; they exhaled fear.

There was a clearing ahead with a charcoal burner’s hut in the middle of it-Adelia could smell ashes. She was lifted down. The donkeys were led into the hut and shut in.

“Now we walk,” Will whispered.

They walked. If the men were silent, the forest was not. It rustled with unseen life: A nightjar gave its long churring call; somewhere an animal screamed. A badger lumbered onto the path ahead and disappeared.

At one point, Toki was hoisted to the lower branches of a tree and climbed to its top. Those at the bottom stood completely still until, after several minutes, he came down.

“Sounds like there’s a to-do over to Pennard, Will. I heard screamin’. Reckon as he’s kept his word and we’m clear.”

“Fucking hope so.” Will crossed himself. He was still afraid.

Adelia was afraid with him. She knew little of these men except that they weren’t frightened easily. She didn’t know where they came from; she’d begun to think that probably they’d been dispossessed of their employment by the Glastonbury fire and were surviving however they could, nibbling at the edges of criminality while trying, for the most part, to aspire to normal, law-respecting life-hadn’t they gone to extraordinary lengths to prove Eustace, and therefore themselves, innocent of arson?

But here, in the forest, they were in the kingdom of Wolf, somebody who terrified them, someone who had broken away from society and recognized no law, a wolf’s head, a creature-Emma, oh, Emma-who pounced on travelers on the Wells road, taking their goods and lives.

The tithing knew him well enough to be granted this favor, knew him well enough, too, to be scared to death of him.

Chancy, she thought, the description of an unstable mind.

The wonder was that in order to keep the bargain they’d made with her, they had actually approached Wolf and were risking this foray into his lair. Thieves they might be, but there was honor here-more honor than in a Christian abbey.

Moonlight took color from foxgloves, bellflowers, and yellow archangel that in daylight would have patched the June forest. The branches of a dying tree threw shadows across the track that resembled stripes on a girl’s back.

Toki stopped again; this time all of them heard a distant howling. Real wolves? Hounds? Maniacs? Whatever it was, Will urged them to a stream and they waded down it so that their scent would be untrackable. The water was cool to Adelia’s tired feet, but she felt none of the joy of avoiding the hunt that she’d experienced on the Tor; that wouldn’t have killed her. Besides, its end had been to prove these men innocent. This time, she knew, she was being taken to see dead bodies.

Little Pippy. How could she bear to look on that small corpse? On Emma’s?

I can’t uncover terrible things. My ears are filled with the cries of the dead.

But she was what she was; she must travel on to face what she had to.

It was in a clearing. Alf’s voice greeted them, shaking with nerves. “You took your bloody time.”

There was a mound of earth beside him, and he stood on the edge of a long and shallow grave. “He threw ’em in the pit all higgledy-piggledy,” he said. “I been straightenin’ ’em out a bit.”

Will lit a lantern. Then, in a move that both touched her and added to her grief, he and the others swept off their caps.

All of them dead weeks ago. Attacked on the road as they went, having been turned away from Wolvercote Manor. Armed, two-legged animals springing at them from the surrounding trees, tearing, bludgeoning. A screaming end for those dear lives.

Will was holding the lantern out to her.

“I can’t,” she said. “I can’t.”

“Better you do,” he told her.

As she took the lantern from him, she realized she was still holding the dead warrior’s sword. She was reluctant to let it go; it provided some comfort in this death-stricken place.

With the lantern in one hand and the sword dragging in the other, she began to walk along a grave that seemed to stretch forever. Alf had laid the bodies side by side, all facing upward, with their hands crossed on their breasts. The earthy mold of the pit into which Wolf had thrown them had preserved some flesh, but insects and mammals had taken their portions, turning the faces into unrecognizable distortions that clamored to her, echoing the shrieks and cries of the skirmish with Wolf and his robbers on the road that had been their last experience.

Father Septimus, his gnawed hands laid on the wooden cross that hung from his neck.

Emma’s two grooms, so kind to Allie-it seemed terrible to Adelia that at this moment she couldn’t remember their names-both had been stripped down to their hose, their leather jerkins too valuable to be left to rot. Impossible now to tell which was which.

Master Roetger’s squire, Alberic, far from his native Swabia, another whose jerkin had been taken, leaving his bones to display the hacking to his rib cage.

Adelia stopped for a moment; it was unbearable to go on. Will gave her a small push. “We ain’t got all night, missus.”

She was approaching the women-oh, God, the women. The one with fair hair would be Alys, Emma’s maid. She was naked.

The thought of what might have been done to the girl before she died made Adelia shut her eyes tight.

“Get on, missus.”

Next to Alys was Mary, young Pippy’s elderly nurse, the half-chewed face showing none of the patience and kindness it had borne in life. Her corpse, too, was naked.

“Did he rape them?” Adelia kept her voice low and steady.

Nobody answered her-an answer in itself.

She took another reluctant pace. Her lantern shone on an edge in the earth that rose like a step and led to a continuance of the twigs and weeds that made up the forest floor. She’d come to the end of the grave.

She turned on Will. “Is this all of them?”

He nodded.

“There are only six here.” Her voice yelled shockingly through the silence, and she lowered it. “There were nine. Where’s Emma? Where’s her child? Where’s her knight?” She let the lantern and sword drop so that she could grab the man’s tunic and shake him. “You devil, what’s he done with them?”

There was an exhalation of relief from the men around her. “We did wonder,” Alf said.

She wheeled round to face him. “Wonder what?”

“As maybe it was your friend got away. She might’ve been one of these deaders, for all we knew.”

“Got away? Emma got away?”

“It was like this, see.” Will sat her down on a fallen tree trunk, picked up her sword, and gave it back to her like a mother restoring a toy to a baby to calm it. He squatted beside her while Alf started shoveling earth back over the bodies. “What Wolf says was there was a big fella with ’em as had his foot in a sort of basket.”

“A basket,” echoed Alf, pausing in his spadework.

“Roetger.” Adelia was having trouble moving her lips.

“Foreign, was he?” Will asked, interested.

She managed to say, “A champion swordsman. German.”

“What’s a German?” Alf asked.

“You get on and cover them poor buggers up, Alf,” Will told him. “We wants to get away afore we join ’em.” He turned back to Adelia. “Champion, was he? Fought like one, seemingly. Held Wolf’s lads off from the back of the cart, got one of ’em in the eye, sliced another’s bloody hand off, stuck one more.”

“Lost four of his lads that night, Wolf did,” Alf said, pausing again. “Wasn’t best pleased, Wolf wasn’t.”

“But Emma, what happened to Lady Emma and her little boy?”

“Youngster, was there?” Will asked. “Wolf says as how he thought he heard a kid crying. That’d explain it, then, ’cos she fought an’ all. That’s one lady as Wolf didn’t get to… She had a dagger on her and stuck it in one of Wolf’s lad’s throat when he was clam-berin’ up on the front of the cart-the which is another as Wolf had to bury.”

Adelia nodded. Emma would have fought. Her servants dying around her, Pippy behind her in the cart-she’d have fought to kill.

“Well, Wolf was surprised like. An’ while he was surprised, the lady whips up the horses an’ has that cart gallopin’ off down the road. Wolf, he chases after it, but that big German bugger’s in the back and he’s still flailin’ his sword about so’s Wolf can’t get near. He had to let it go, see.”

“Let the cart go?”

Will nodded. “Lady, German, cart, and what-all as was in it. Oh, an’ a pack mule as went canterin’ after it-Wolf lost that an’ all.”

They got away.

Then she had Will by the shoulders and was shaking him again. “Where did they go?”

“I don’t bloody know, do I?” Will brushed her hands off and settled his tunic.

“What do you mean you don’t know? What happened to them?”

Will shrugged.

Alf said, “How’d we know?” Toki and Ollie chimed their ignorance. There was an air of disappointment. They’d taken all this trouble, put their lives within the grasp of the chancy Wolf, gained her information-and still she wasn’t satisfied.

“But… they’ve disappeared,” she said. “There’s been no sign of them since. If my friend was alive, she’d have contacted me. I know she would.” She was near crying.

“Ain’t our fault.” The tithing had told her as much as it knew. It had done its bit.

“Dear heaven.” It was bitter; it was cruel. All this and she was no nearer to finding Emma than she had been.

“Last seen gallopin’ toward Glastonbury, wasn’t they, Will?” Alf said helpfully.

“So Wolf said.” Will stood up. Adelia’s ingratitude had rendered him churlish once more. “Could’ve made Street the rate they was going, or fallen in the fucking Brue for all I care. Finished with them bodies, Alf?”

“Nearly, Will.”

“Let’s get off, then. We only got til dawn, and I got my bloody baking to do.”

His bloody baking could wait; Adelia wasn’t leaving the dead like this.

She went to the neat strip of turned earth that now covered them, knelt down, and prayed. “Eternal rest grant unto these dear men and women, O Lord, and let perpetual Light shine upon them. May their souls rest in peace. Amen.”

Silently, she promised the corpses that they would not be left forgotten in this forest. Whoever Wolf was, he was an outrage. England prided itself on being a civilized country-well, it wasn’t civilized here. If the warring churchmen of Glastonbury and Wells couldn’t keep safe the road and forest that stretched between them, there was one man who could. King Henry would see to it; she’d demand that he did.

When she looked up she saw that the men around her had taken off their caps again. She had been unkind to them, so she added, “And bless these friends who did not count the cost in bringing me to this place. I am grateful to them.”

There was some embarrassed shuffling. Alf began patting the earth down with his spade. Then stopped.

The tithing jerked to attention. She heard the hiss of Will’s breath.

A breeze had rustled the trees where there was no breeze.

Wearily, she looked toward the spot on the edge of the glade that was commanding the men’s horrified attention.

A distorted bush, a green thing, which spoke. “Greetings, lads.”

“We thought… we thought as you was over… over Pennard way tonight, Wolf.” Will was panting.

“Some of me is, Will. The rest of me’s here.”

The voice had the crackle of dry leaves, as if a tree were talking.

Whether it was naked or not-and perhaps some of it was-the whorls pricked into its body and the wreath round its head-or it might have been bushy hair-made it more vegetation than animal, a thing that had lurched through primeval forest before humanity began. Even the weapon it carried was of wood-a stake ending in a pale, newly sharpened point.

Will was backing away from it. “You said… three hours, Wolf… as we could bring her…”

“Course I did. Course I did, Will. You was offering me a tidbit.” Teeth gleamed among the foliage. “We likes tidbits, don’t us, Scarry?”

The tithing gave a soft, concerted moan; another creature had come, dancing, to join the first.

It gave a shriek of joy. “Puellae.”

“Only one this time, Scarry, only one. But she’ll do for us. First me, then you, eh?”

“You and me, Wolf, you and me.” More greenery decorated this taller, slimmer, swaying figure.

Will was arguing. “No need for this, Wolf… no need…” Yet as he spoke, he was walking backward. Adelia became aware that the others were melting away from her. Alf was protesting. “You promised, Wolf, you said…” But his shaking hands had dropped the spade, and he, too, was retreating like a cowering dog.

It was a dream. This was no longer the present; she’d been transported to a darkness where there were only trees and predators.

“Time you was going, lads,” Wolf said softly to men who were already going. “Leave the lady. Me first, Scarry next. Eh, Scarry?”

There was a response of joy. “Mirabile visu. Let ’em stay, oh, Wolf, Lupus of mine. You first, then me. Let ’em watch.”

They were half goats. They would perform a rite on her, here in their glade; she would be torn to pieces to satisfy a pagan god. They had no need for weapons; they were terror itself, the mere stink of it scattering normal men like panicked birds. She was so frightened she couldn’t move, as if the ground had sprouted roots into her body.

The one called Wolf padded daintily forward until he stood opposite her with only the grave between them. Bright eyes held hers through the mask of leaves. “I’m owed,” he said. “The one as got away, she robbed me of me entertainment. I likes me entertainment, and I were promised her, weren’t I, Scarry?”

“You were, Wolf. The dame promised. Filia pulchrior.”

“But I done the ones she left behind, didn’t I, Scarry? They was entertainment, wasn’t they?”

“Bleated, they did, Wolf. Lambs under the slaughter. Is agnus, ea caedes est. Oh, rapture.”

“An’ I’m a-going to do you,” Wolf said. “I can do anything.”

His eyes never leaving hers, he began fumbling at his crotch. There was a splashing sound. He was urinating, waving his penis back and forth so that it sprayed the grave of those he’d butchered.

The other creature neighed with pleasure.

At that, a great fury was released in Adelia. She stood up, not knowing that she could, nor why she did, except that she was the last remnant of civilization in this terrible place. Here were men without souls, for whom there were no limits, no restraints, who’d relinquished every decency humanity had forged in order to set itself apart from brute beasts. Chaos had come again. It had overtaken the dead, who were being dishonored, it would overwhelm her, but for their sake, however alone, she had to be on her feet to face it.

Wolf smiled.

She wasn’t alone. Somebody’s mumbling was coming nearer. “But you said… You promised us… Ain’t right, Wolf, it ain’t, it ain’t.” It was Alf. He was coming back, fighting against terror as against a high wind but pushing against it so that he could stand in front of her.

Wolf smiled again, fondly, twirled the stake in his hands like a baton, and struck Alf with it across the neck. He fell at Adelia’s feet, still whispering protest as if he couldn’t stop. “You said… you said… you said… ain’t right.”

“Shut the fucker up, Wolf,” the thing called Scarry said casually.

Wolf twirled the stake again, catching it above his head in midair so that it faced downward, the moon shining wickedly white on its sharpened point.

He held it high, stepped nearer, enjoying it, a priest about to sacrifice. Adelia smelled earth. Coming forward.

Later, she was to tell herself that she killed him of her own volition. At the time, it seemed that the sword, which she’d forgotten was in her hand, leaped up by itself and lunged.

All at once, in front of her, was a bare human chest from which a pommel and part of a blade were sticking out and vibrating.

For a moment, a long, silent age, woman and creature were connected by a piece of iron; she saw the eyes flicker in surprise. This wasn’t how it should be.

Wolf coughed.

There was a sucking noise as his body released itself and fell back.

Then there was just a sword point that dripped. Adelia stared at it. “Good gracious,” she said.

“What’ve you done, you bitch?” The thing called Scarry came leaping across the glade and threw itself down to take the body of its leader in its arms. “Aaaaah.”

Wolf’s eyes, still astonished, stared up at his friend. He tried to say something. His chest heaved with dry coughs.

Scarry looked up, staring round the glade as if for help from the gods he’d worshipped here. “He’s hurt. Do something, in the name of God. Somebody do something.”

It’s his lung, Adelia thought. The sword went into his lung. The grotesque creature of which she’d been so afraid had been transformed into a patient. He was suffering. She went down on her knees and listened to the chest. Air was making a flopping sound as it flowed through the lung’s puncture hole.

Scarry screamed at her like a man at the ending of his world. “Do something.”

Adelia heard her foster father’s voice as he’d bent over a man stabbed in a Salerno brawl whose chest was making the same sucking noise, “If we could open the thorax and sew up the ripped lung… but we cannot… He will die in minutes.”

Already Wolf’s eyes were glazing over. Beneath the mask of leaves, his face was changing color.

“I’m sorry,” she said, “I’m so sorry. There’s nothing to be done.”

“Bloody is,” a voice above her head said earnestly. Will was trying to get her to her feet. “We run.”

Scarry was kissing the dying face, begging. “Te amo. Don’t leave me, my Lupus. Te amo, te amo.”

“Run,” Will said again. He’d taken the sword from her, pointing it at the sobbing Scarry. “And quick. He ain’t going to take this kindly.”

She was pulled up. Toki and Ollie had a stumbling Alf by the arms. “Run,” Will was shouting now. “He’ll fuckin’ kill us.”

What had happened, what was happening, the horror of this place… She let herself be dragged into a run.

Out of the glade, through trees.

Behind them rose a screamed lament that ruffled the leaves. “Come back, my Lupus! Te amo! Te amo!”

She was leaping over fallen branches, along a stream, breath coming short; whether woodland hurtled by her or she was hurtled past it was impossible to know.

The charcoal burner’s hut. They stopped, panting.

Will found his voice. “Is he after us, Toki?”

Adelia could hear nothing except the pounding in her own ears.

“He’s after us,” Toki said.

She was put up on a donkey; they were all on donkeys and galloping. When they reached the road, knowledge came to her. “Dear God, I killed him.”

The tithing took no notice. It just galloped faster.

THEY TOOK HER to the cave on the Tor and sat her down by the spring. It was quiet there.

The night was still dark, though. Being so near to the summer solstice, the sky had never been completely black and, even with the sun still below the horizon, was lightening as if filters were being removed from it one by one. Bats flittered against it.

“Toki?” asked Will.

A blackbird emitted its first song of the day, an isolated sound.

Toki nodded his head and puffed out his cheeks in relief. “We lost him.”

“Then you get back down the hill an’ wipe out our tracks. He can sniff a footprint in the dark, can Scarry.”

Adelia looked up at them. “I killed him,” she said.

“Pity you di’n’t do Scarry while you was about it,” Will told her. “He ain’t a-going to like losing Wolf.”

Ollie spoke for the first time. “But he don’t know where she lives, Will, does he?”

“No, he don’t,” Will said with satisfaction. “I told Wolf as she come from Wells.”

“I killed him.” She, whose oath was to preserve life, had taken life. Didn’t they realize it?

“You saved Alf,” Will pointed out. “He was a-goin’ to do Alf.”

Alf.

Here, at least, was somebody she could help. They’d laid him down on the grass. The skin of his throat was raw and swollen where the stake had been struck against it. She tore a strip off the hem of her green tunic, soaked it in the cold water of the spring, and applied it to the bruising. She tried to get him to drink some water, but swallowing was too painful for more than a few sips.

“Can you talk, Alf?” she asked with tenderness.

He huffed a response.

“Is he going to be all right?” Will asked her.

“I think so. His voice should come back when the swelling goes down.”

“Pity,” Will said savagely. “He talks us into more fuckin’ trouble than he’s worth… Him an’ his bloody truth. Everyone got to keep their word… Pain in the arse, Alf is.”

Adelia looked up, angry. Then she saw that Will was ashamed of his and the others’ cowardice in the glade, humiliated that it had been Alf, not him, who’d come to her aid.

“He can’t help it, Will,” Ollie said.

That’s the extraordinary thing, she thought. He can’t.

Smoothing the greasy hair back from Alf’s young, pockmarked face, she thought what a jewel was here. The Lord only knew how, petty thief that he was, the truth flamed bright in Alf’s soul-not honesty, not regard for other people’s deer, but the truth. It had dragged him, unwilling, moaning with fear, back to her side in the glade from outrage that Wolf had broken his oath to the tithing. He’d tried to save her life and, if she had then saved his, it was something to set against the fact that she’d had to kill to do it.

By the time Toki came back, dawn had broken. They gave Adelia some dried meat that she chewed on without identifying it, and she accepted a harsh but invigorating drink out of a filthy bottle. But when, having cleaned it, Will threw the sword down beside her, she saw only the image of Wolf’s lung and the rupture this blade’s tip had made in it so that air had escaped into the pleural cavity.

“I don’t want it,” she said.

“You bloody keep it,” Will told her. “And pray God as you won’t need it.”

This was such unusual piety for Will that she asked, “Who is Scarry?”

Will shrugged. “Don’t rightly know. Wolf, now, he come from the Quantocks, always mad, he was. Strangled his mother when he were still a lad, so the story goes, and lived wild in the forest ever after. Chancy, Wolf was, and no loss, so don’t you go frettin’. World’s a better place with that bastard gone.”

Perhaps it was, but remembering that it was she who’d sent him out of it put a weight on her that would never be lifted. She shivered. “And Scarry? He could speak Latin.”

Will nodded, and Adelia noticed that he, too, had a momentary coldness and drew his cloak around him. “Educated, Scarry is. Nobody don’t know for sure where he come from, up north as like as not. I heard his name was Scarlett or Scathelock, summat like that. Some say he was a priest and done wicked things so’s the Church chucked him out. Or he was a noble and done wicked things so’s he was outlawed. Joined up with Wolf, what, three, four year ago. Fish divin’ into water that was for Scarry. Loved it, liked the killing. Don’t know which of ’em was chancier, him or Wolf.”

“He cried for love of Wolf.” That dreadful scream: Te amo, te amo.

“Yeah, well.” Will shifted uncomfortably. “The pair of ’em was funny like that. What?” Alf was tugging at his elbow and croaking.

“He wants as you should tell her the rest of it, Will,” Toki explained.

Will spat. “Gor bugger, Alf, you want me to lose me best customer?”

It appeared from an indistinct whisper that Alf did.

Again, Toki translated. “Alf says as you’m a prize baker and don’t need to work for that old bitch.” He paused. “Maybe as we owe it to the missus, Will. She ought to know.”

“What old bitch?” asked Adelia.

“All right, all right.” Will sat down beside her, pulled up a piece of grass, and chewed savagely on it. “ ’S like this. See, Wolf knew as your lady’d be on that road. He was a-waiting for her, like.”

“How did he know?” God, it was becoming hot; the air was accumulating weight and making her gasp for breath.

Will sucked on his grass. “See, the big manors round here, they used to suffer something terrible from Wolf. He raided their beeves, sheep, barns, nothing safe from Wolf. And that weedy old sheriff not doin’ anything proper to stop un, nor Glastonbury, nor Wells.”

“So?”

“Well, so the lords and ladies as was suffering, they came to an arrangement, like. With Wolf. Payin’ him to stay off their land, see?”

Danegeld. The manors had paid Wolf to procure their peace and safety. At this moment, a disgraceful history seemed irrelevant, but Alf, in whom truth spouted like clear water from a fountain, thought it necessary that she should know it. “I see,” she said.

“So that night, the night as your friend was turned away from Wolvercote…” Will paused.

The air became heavier, suffocating.

“Well, that night Wolf got a message from there a-saying as there’d be a rich lady and party a-leavin’ of Wolvercote. Nice pickings for him, it said. They’d be taking his road, it said.”

“A message?” Adelia said stupidly. Alf was nodding. Then it came to her. “She sold them? She sold them?”

“Don’t know about that,” Will said, getting up. “I’m just saying as what happened.”

She’d sold them. The mistress of Wolvercote Manor had looked on Emma and the child, seeing only a threat to her position. And wanted them dead. And set the wolves on them.

“No need to worry about Eustace,” Will said, looking down at her. “He’s a-laying in Street Church and, when we’re off the hook for the fire, we’ll bury the poor bastard, with his fingers, the which is still by the abbey bloody wall.”

But Adelia wasn’t worrying for Eustace. It was the betrayal of Emma that had wiped everything else from her mind. And the bodies in their shallow grave in a lawless forest, killed twice-once by a woman who’d turned them from her door with murderous intent, and once by an animal. And who was the guiltier? The animal? Or the lady in her velvet manor?

Adelia’s mouth moved. “She sold them.”

Emma, Roetger, and Pippy. The souls of the dowager’s victims called out to her. Where were they?

She looked out toward the blue-and-green pattern of the marshes to clear her mind-an anatomist’s mind so clinical that it could not bear untidiness, whatever jumble of monstrosity had been fed into it.

Surely they are dead, she thought. They sustained wounds in the battle with Wolf and died of them. But Lord in heaven, did all bodies vanish in this godforsaken country? Was there some hole that sucked people into it without a trace?

Clear as clear, over and over, she watched Emma on the cart lash its horses into a gallop, saw Roetger flailing at their pursuers, heard Little Pippy screaming… a pack mule cantering behind them.

And then nothing. They vanished. She couldn’t see them anymore.

She raised her head. “ Glastonbury, Alf? You said they were last seen galloping in the direction of Glastonbury. My friend and the cart.”

Alf huffed his assent.

“They didn’t get there.”

Will said, “Horses veered, maybe. Crashed ’em somewhere ’mongst the trees. Killed ’em.”

Yes, that might be the explanation: three more corpses rotting in that hellish forest, noticed only by the wildlife feeding on them.

Gently, because it was unbearable to envisage otherwise, Adelia’s mind gathered the bodies up and laid them in the trench that held their companions, folding their poor hands, pleading for rest to their souls…

SHE COULDN’T SEE their faces, just their shapes-one large, one shorter and slim, one very little.

Shapes.

“You all right, missus?” Toki asked anxiously, offering the disgusting bottle. “Have another swig, you’re a-breathin’ horrible strong.”

“No.”

Dimensions. Shapes. One large, one shorter, one tiny. A foreigner, a woman, and her baby. Messages, messages. Shapes.

“Oh my God,” she said aloud.

“What’s up now?”

“I’ve got to get back to the Pilgrim.” She was on her feet.

“Better wait. Toki, you get down there. Make sure all’s quiet.”

She couldn’t wait; she began to run down the hill, the tithing following her. All she could see was the door of the inn and three shapes standing in front of it, one big, one middle-sized, one very small, urging it to open for them.

Now she knew why the landlord of the Pilgrim had fainted.

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