Grave Goods aka Relics of the Dead

ELEVEN

AS SHE REACHED the shadow of the abbey wall, Adelia slowed down. The agitation that gripped her had to be controlled; she must plan.

When the tithing caught up with her, she was rubbing her forehead with one finger, thinking hard.

She looked from one face to another. “I’m in sore need of one more favor from you,” she said.

“What now?” Will snapped. He was tired; they were all tired.

She spoke slowly and clearly. “I want you to get my people out of the Pilgrim and take them to Wells. All of them, the lord Mansur, my daughter, my companion, and the Welshman. I want you to take them to the Bishop’s Palace and put them in the care of the bishop of Saint Albans, who is staying there.”

“What for?”

Ollie, youngest and most taciturn of the tithing, was surprised into asking, “Gor-dang, old Godwyn’s cookin’ ain’t that bad, be it?”

Adelia smiled at him. “No, but it’s time we moved on.” She turned to Will. “Is it safe to take them along the road?”

Will looked at Toki. “What do your ears tell ee, Toki?”

“Nothin’. ’S all quiet.”

Will considered. “Reckon as now they’re all upsy-downy over Wolf bein’ dead, getting theyselves a new leader. Might be all right then.” He looked at Adelia with suspicion. “You and the darky doin’ a moonlight flit? Leavin’ poor old Godwyn without his dues?”

“Something like that,” Adelia told him, “but I’ll pay you when I can get to my purse.”

“Come on, Will,” Toki said. “ ’Tain’t as if that old Hilda ever did you a good turn.”

“That’s for sure,” Will said. “All right, then, the palace it is, but the mokes’ll need a bit of a rest and waterin’ afore we set off.”

“One more thing,” Adelia said. “I shan’t be coming with you. I want you to tell my people that I’m already at the Bishop’s Palace, waiting for them.”

Running away without paying they understood; this they did not.

“You staying, then?”

“Yes. If they know that, they won’t come with you.” Gyltha wouldn’t allow herself, and certainly would not allow Allie, to accompany a collection of men as disreputable-looking as these on just their say-so-at least not without a fight.

A singed apple tree leaning over the wall still had a living branch on it. She went to it and came back with a twig. She handed it to Will. “Give this to my companion; her name’s Gyltha. It’s a token that she and the lord Mansur are to do what you tell them. And when you get to the palace, you must inform the bishop of Saint Albans that he’s to make sure he keeps my people there and that I want him to come to the Pilgrim. I’ll be waiting for him.”

“Oh, yes.” Will raised his eyes to the heavens. “Bishops allus do what we tell ’another token would beem. Hobnob with bishops every bloody day, don’t we, lads?”

It was a good point; another token would be necessary. “Tell him…” She tried to think of what would convince Rowley that she was well but in need. “Tell him… tell him Ariadne waits for him.” It had been his name for her when they’d been lovers.

She made Will repeat it several times until he’d got his tongue round the unfamiliar syllables.

The tithing didn’t want to leave her alone, Alf especially. “He’s scared as Scarry’ll come after you,” Toki explained.

Adelia was impatient with them. She had things to do. Out here, in the early sunlight, with the abbey and its monks just over the road, was another world from the forest of last night that was already assuming the unreality of nightmare. It was the Pilgrim that was now the focus of a more pressing danger. “Will, you said yourself the man has no idea where I am.”

“So he ain’t, but Alf’s maybe right. Scarry set a lot of store by Wolf; he’ll want his revenge on us all, ’specially you, missus. You was the one who done for Wolf.”

Had she? It still seemed something she’d watched rather than experienced. Well, she’d face that later, pay whatever she had to pay later; now was not the time. “He has to find me first.”

“Maybe.” Will thought it over. “He’s got Wolf to bury. An’ he’ll be busy for a bit, seein’ as if all those other bastards’ll follow him now as Wolf’s dead.” He glared at her. “You sure the bishop’ll come if so be we ask him?”

“I know he will.”

There was a huff from Alf.

Toki said, “Alf says as he’s going to stay.”

“No.” She took in a breath and tried again. “I want my people safe in Wells. It’ll need all of you to get them there.” Allie, Gyltha, Rhys, and Mansur would need as large an escort as possible to travel the forest road; as it was, even four men were too few.

“Maybe she’s right.” Infuriatingly painstakingly, Will ticked over the reasoning on his fingers. “One, Scarry thinks as she lives over Wells way, ’cos that’s what I told Wolf. Two, he’ll be busy for a bit, a-buryin’ of Wolf and seein’ as if all the other bastards’ll follow him now as Wolf’s dead. Three, if we gets the bishop here today, he’ll keep her safer’n what we can.” Head on one side, he studied his splayed hand. “Yep, reckon as she’ll be safe enough for a bit.”

Quietly, they all crossed the road. The courtyard was deserted and silent, the overlooking shutters barred; it was still too early even for Millie to be up.

Adelia slipped into the stables as Will began hammering on the back door.

It took time for him to be answered, and it was Gyltha who appeared at a window.

The exchange between the two was lengthy and, on Gyltha’s part, bad-tempered with anxiety, but Will, waving the twig, played his part surprisingly well, eventually convincing her that Adelia was at Wells and wanted her family to join her.

The door was unbolted, again by Gyltha. “What’s she doin’ sending messages by the likes of you? Well, you bloody got to wait while I pack our traps. What for’s she gone to the palace? Suppose you’d better come in-you can help carry. And wipe your boots.”

Adelia couldn’t hear the rest because the tithing, meekly stamping their feet and brushing the dust off their clothes, went inside.

After a while, Toki came out. He’d been deputed to fetch the donkeys and was sipping a tankard of ale. “Your Gyltha drew it,” he told her, entering the stables. “Godwyn and Hilda, they ain’t there.”

“Not there? Where’ve they gone?” The whole point of staying here was to keep an eye on them while she hid in the stables.

Toki didn’t know. “An’ your Gyltha, she don’t know, either. They was there last night, but they ain’t now. Looks like they flitted theyselves.”

“Mmm”

It took time and much arrangement, but eventually Adelia, peeping through a crack in the stable door, watched as Mansur and Gyltha, carrying Allie, were helped onto two of the donkeys, their packs loaded onto another. Rhys was having to share a mount with Toki, both being light in weight.

When Will, on pretense of fetching a hay bag, came into the stables, she said, “They’ll be safe on the road?”

“You better hope so,” he said. He cocked his head. “You reckon your folks is in danger here, do you?”

“Yes.”

“Want to tell me?”

“Later. Just get them away.”

A look of disgust came over his face, which signaled he was about to say something fond. “Don’t like leavin’ you alone.”

Dear, dear, how she did like this truculent man. To please him, she said, “I can look after myself, you saw that.”

He grunted.

“And Will…” Adelia put her hand on his. “In the glade… they were demons and you weren’t armed. You couldn’t have done anything but what you did.”

He scowled at her. “You keep that bloody sword close, that’s all.”

Watching the party set out, she prayed for its safety. It had been a matter of balancing one danger against another; it had seemed that getting Allie and the others out of Glastonbury was the lesser evil, but if she were wrong, if Wolf’s men should be on the rampage…

She tried reassuring herself; it was morning, and there would be other people on the road…

Lord God, have them in your keeping.

She found it strange that the landlord and his wife had abandoned the inn. Perhaps Hilda had heard her conversation with Will when he came to collect her last night. Damn.

Still, she might as well take advantage of the situation. The door to the courtyard had been left open, so she went inside, sword in hand.

Rats scampered away from a dirty pot as she entered the kitchen. Flies were everywhere. A well-built fire still threw out heat. The place smelled of stale food and a bowl of milk that had turned sour. Usually, Godwyn kept his domain neat and clean-this disorder suggested that he’d left the inn in a hurry.

She threw open the shutters to let in some air and light. There was a ham hanging from its hook in the ceiling. She cut off a slice, threw it away, and cut another that the flies hadn’t got at, broke a portion of stale crust from a loaf in the mesh-protected food safe, and drew herself a potful of ale-all the time listening for any sound of the innkeepers’ return.

She looked for string, found a piece, and tied it round her waist to make a sword belt. The image of Wolf coming at her across the glade flashed into her mind with the memento mori: “You have killed a man.”

Lord, she was tired; she’d think about that another time.

Taking her booty back to the stable, she carried it up to the hayloft and made herself comfortable on some straw behind a bale that hid her from the entrance.

Rowley, she thought, when he came, would be pleased with her caution; though there was a job to be done, she was not exposing herself to risk by doing it on her own.

Yawning, she wondered if he would guess her purpose and bring men with him. Useful but probably unnecessary…

How very hot it was…

It was a sleep of exhaustion, energy-reviving and dreamless for the most part. Only at the end of it did Guinevere walk out of a mist with writhing greenery around her. Again, the queen was in white, though this time she was veiled-in none of Adelia’s nightmares had she shown her face. She was alone; there was nobody to cut her in half. Birds accompanied her, fluttering like an extra cloak in a breeze. One of them landed on her shoulder, an owl, a barn owl, its big eyes and widow-peaked head directed toward Adelia. It turned and took a corner of Guinevere’s veil in its beak. Suddenly, Adelia knew that this wraith wasn’t Guinevere, it was Emma.

“No,” Adelia told it, “I don’t want to see.”

But the bird spread its wings and began to rise so that the veil in its beak rose with it…

Adelia woke herself up with her own shouts, frantically brushing flies off her skin where they’d been attracted by sweat. The bolstering straw was making the loft into a hothouse. And it was dark.

Dark? Had she slept through seventeen hours of daylight?

There was a hoist at the back of the loft, and she crawled toward it to push open its door and look out.

To the west, a monstrous cloud like a horizon-wide black, sagging blanket had obliterated the sun, if sun there still was. What it was bringing would be terrible; darts of lightning were coming out of it, stabbing the distant marshland.

Without the sun, it was impossible to know how long she’d been asleep. It might be evening by now-and Rowley had not come. Or had she missed him and, not finding her, had he gone away again?

A torn spider’s web hanging from the hoist’s door carried the image of what had been under Guinevere/Emma’s veil. Thunder midges dancing in the half-light outside formed the same shape, and she knew she was being haunted, hunted.

She backed away, scrambling down the ladder and into the courtyard.

And that was stupid. Hilda and Godwyn might have come back; they’d see her.

The inn was quiet, however. Nothing moved in the oppressive air. Weeds drooped, dying among the cobbles. Birds had deserted the sky, as if afraid of what was on its way. From the west came a long grumble of thunder.

She would have liked to draw a bucket of water so that she could drink and swill herself down with it, but the noise the chain would make daunted her and, instead, she crossed to the inn’s door and cautiously pushed it open, grimacing at the protest its hinges made.

Nobody came.

It was dark inside. All the heat in the world seemed to have concentrated here, like a pustule.

Why hadn’t Rowley come? Allie and Gyltha and Mansur hadn’t reached him, that was why. They were lying dead in the forest, Allie’s little hands crossed on her breast; she could see them.

Pull yourself together. Most likely the bishop was out when they got there, at some convocation or blessing other people’s babies, attending to God’s business, never hers, never hers. Or had just decided not to bother.

Be damned, then, she thought. I’ll begin the search without you.

It was unlikely that the kitchen would provide the evidence she looked for, so she left its rats undisturbed and went along the corridor that led to the parlor.

Some light from the kitchen hatch cast shadows on the room’s table. There was someone sitting in the great chair at the far end, with a bow on his head.

Adelia took in a sob of breath and looked again. It wasn’t a bow, it wasn’t a head; it was Allie’s birdcage, which someone had left balanced on the chair’s back. Going the length of the table, she took it up and cradled it for a moment before putting it down to begin a search of the room’s aumbries. Platters in one, pewter tankards in another, candlesticks and candles, a box of sharp eating knives. Nothing there, though it was difficult to see.

Back in the kitchen, stamping to scatter the rats, she blew on the embers of the fire and lit a candle. The flame intensified the shadows outside its range so that, going upstairs, she had to fight the impression that she was accompanied.

Godwyn and Hilda’s room was meaner than those of the guests. Wherever they’d gone, it was in the clothes they stood up in, because a small press contained neatly folded tunics, skirts, bodices, trousers, and several clean aprons, all dusted with pennyroyal against the moth.

Adelia started back from a human shape behind the door. It turned out to be two cloaks hanging on a hook. There was a ewer and bowl, both empty, with a saucer of soapwort by their side. A shelf held a razor, combs, and various jars, all of which Adelia opened without finding anything but medicaments. A bottle contained a bitter-smelling tincture of burdock, suggesting one or the other of its owners had digestive problems. Probably Godwyn, Adelia thought, remembering the landlord’s perpetual look of discomfort.

She got down on her knees to peer under the bed, finding only a pisspot. She tipped over a straw mattress and examined the struts on which it lay. She tapped every floorboard to see if one was hollow.

Nothing. An innocent room.

The communal chamber in which poorer guests were put to sleep side by side was swept and empty except for an enormous platform of a bed, now stripped of covering, and a giant chest containing the inn’s linens, which expelled a pleasant smell of the dried rosemary and sage scattered among the sheets.

The room she’d shared with Allie was next door, and Adelia went in, hoping against hope that Gyltha, in packing, had over-looked something that she could change into-what she was wearing had suffered in the forest.

Of course, there was nothing; Gyltha hadn’t left so much as a pin behind. However, the ewer still held water for washing…

A door along the landing bumped against its frame as if some-one had put it to. It was the door to Mansur and Gyltha’s room.

She went out to see. It couldn’t have been the wind; there was no wind.

Yes, there was; the storm was sending a slight breeze ahead of itself, soughing a draft of air through the corridor outside.

Adelia bolted back into her room and barred the door. Whatever was out there, if there was anything out there, she could face it better clean-or, happier still, cower in here and not face it at all.

Shaking, she stripped, scrubbing and sluicing herself with manic energy, saving some of the water for her hair, which she plaited-her head veil being too torn by forest branches to be worth putting on again.

There. She’d be a fresher sacrifice if she were killed. But then, as she re-dressed, she thought, Fool, you still hope that Rowley will come.

She drew back bolts and, candle in one hand, the other gripping the sword hanging from her string girdle, approached the door she’d heard closing. It wasn’t on the latch and trembled in a draft that had become stronger. Raindrops began hitting the inn’s roof like pellets; somewhere an unsecured shutter startled to rattle.

“I warn you, I’m armed,” she shouted, and kicked the door open. At the same moment a rush of air along the passage from one window to another blew her candle out.

No. No, I’m not brave enough.

As she rushed for the stairs, the storm broke. Thunder cracked the sky in half. The inn’s front door was open, letting in rain. Lightning outlined the hooded figure advancing toward the bottom of the stairs, sleek and gleaming, its arms held wide like a scarecrow’s.

“I WAS TRYING TO CATCH YOU,” Rowley said. “I thought you were going to fall down.”

“I nearly did,” Adelia told him. She was still sitting on the stairs, her legs too weak from shock to stand. “Did Allie arrive all right?”

“And Gyltha. And Mansur. All apparently under the impression that you’d be waiting for them. I told them to stay and I’d come to see to it. Perhaps you’d be good enough to tell me what it is I have to see to.”

Both were having to shout over the noise of the storm; outside the still-open door, rain was hitting the courtyard cobbles as if a giant overhead was sluicing them with titanic buckets of water.

Rowley produced a flask and handed it to Adelia before taking off his leather cloak and hood to shake them outside, then shut the door.

“Bolt it,” Adelia told him.

He raised an eyebrow but did as she said.

She took a swig of his brandy. It caused her to cough, but it made her feel better; she could cope with anything now that he was here.

He picked up a lantern and they went into the parlor, each carefully choosing a seat on either side of the table. He became benign. “Well, my child?”

Don’t call me that, she thought. But she was too glad of him to start the old confrontation. She told him of her excursion into the forest and what lay buried there, of what had happened. “You see… oh, Rowley, I’ve killed a man.”

“Good.”

She shook her head in misery. “Don’t admire me for it.”

“Why not? What else could you do? He was about to spear this Alf of yours before raping you…” He reverted to being bishop-like again. “Do you wish me to hear your confession, my child?”

“No, I don’t,” she snarled at him. “I’m telling you as a friend.” She showed him the sword. “It seemed to act by itself.”

“Where did you find that old thing, in the name of God?”

“Never mind.” There were other things to get to. She told him what she knew of Wolf’s attack on the road, of the dowager Wolvercote’s part in it, and what she suspected had happened to Emma, Pippy and Roetger after their escape.

She had to speak loudly to overcome the lash of rain outside, wincing as lightning lit up cracks in the shutters, stopping altogether during rolls of thunder.

“It’s a matter of shapes, you see,” she said. “Representation. Last seen, those three in the cart were galloping for their lives in this direction. I believe they saw the inn here, the only building on the road, and made for its shelter.”

“They could have, I suppose,” the bishop said doubtfully.

Again, she suppressed irritation. Damn it, didn’t he believe her? Couldn’t he see, as she did, that poor trio hammering on the Pilgrim’s door, begging to be let in?

Going doggedly on, she said, “Hilda and Godwyn had been told by the king’s messenger to receive three guests: a foreign gentleman who would be investigating the skeletons in the abbey churchyard, a lady, and her child. And there they were, on the doorstep, Master Roetger, a foreigner; Emma; and Pippy Fitting the expected shapes exactly.”

“So?”

“So…” Adelia drew a deep breath. “I think they murdered them.”

“What?”

“Murdered them. The circumstances were perfect; the three arrived without protection, nobody knowing they had arrived…”

“No protection, woman? Emma had a master swordsman with her.”

“She also had a child. I’m not saying they were killed where they stood. Probably they were invited in, made welcome, comforted. But you only need a child to make you vulnerable.” Angrily, she wiped tears from her eyes. It had happened to her during an investigation when Allie was still a baby; she’d gone quietly to what had nearly been her death because a killer had threatened to kill her daughter if she did not.

She said, “At some point Godwyn merely had to grab hold of Pippy and wave a knife. Emma and Roetger would have had to do what they were told. It was why I wanted Allie away from here. It only takes someone with a weapon.”

“Why on earth should anybody do that?”

“It’s something to do with the abbey skeletons. If they’re disproved as Arthur’s and Guinevere’s, the economy of the abbey will suffer. So will the Pilgrim’s.”

“So three people had their throats cut? You’re fantasizing, my girl. Godwyn’s a common landlord, for God’s sake. A weedy little man. Innkeepers don’t go round murdering their guests. Not deliberately, anyway, though I’ve eaten some meals…”

Adelia gritted her teeth. “A weedy little man who fainted when Mansur, Allie, and I arrived at his inn; he knew he’d killed the wrong people.” She leaned forward. “Rowley, I know he did. What’s Emma’s mule doing up in the abbey pasture? Hilda, Godwyn, they sold her goods once she was dead-horses, cart, clothes, jewels. That’s what I was about when you arrived, searching for something, anything, that still belongs to her.”

He teetered his chair back. The lantern on the table between the two of them threw an upward light on his face, emphasizing its bones, leaving the sockets of his eyes dark. He’d always been a big, well-fleshed man-his first years as bishop had rendered him almost plump; too many clerical feasts and dinners-but he was thinner now than she’d ever seen him. It suited him. But, blast him, he was complacent, a know-it-all. Power did that, she supposed. Too much “Yes, my lord bishop,” “No, my lord bishop.”

“And have you found it?” he asked, sure of the answer.

“No.”

“There you are, then.”

Adelia stood up. They could sit here all night while she kept advancing her theory and he kept refuting it. Well, she at least wasn’t going to. “Come on, you can help me look.” She took up the lantern.

Sighing heavily, he followed her.

It was only as they went up the stairs that she remembered the door to Mansur and Gyltha’s room. “Somebody might be in there,” she said, pointing. She could be brave now.

“A murderous landlord?” Dramatically, he drew his sword. “Let me at him. I’ll run the varlet through.”

She held the lantern so that they could both see as she went in behind him. An almost simultaneous crack of lightning and thunder made them crouch-and sent a figure scuttling under the bed. They heard it moan.

Adelia drooped with relief. “Millie, it’s me. Don’t be frightened, it’s me. This gentleman’s a friend.” Then she remembered. What use of verbal reassurance to a girl who couldn’t hear it?

Signing to Rowley to sheathe his sword, she went forward, letting the lantern shine on Millie’s terrified face.

They took the girl downstairs to the parlor. Rowley administered brandy. “She can’t hear the thunder, you say?”

“I don’t think so. But she’s frightened of something, poor child. She knows…” Gently, Adelia cupped the girl’s face in her hands, mouthing words. “Millie, what… happened… to the lady… who came here… with her little boy? Oh, this is hopeless.” She turned to the table and drew three figures in its light layer of dust with her finger-a large one with a sword in its hand, that of a woman, and, finally, that of a child.

“These three, Millie,” she begged, pointing. “They came here. What happened to them?”

“She won’t tell you even if she could,” Rowley said. “She’ll protect her employers.”

“I don’t think so, they beat her. Oh, look…”

For comprehension had come into Millie’s eyes. She was nodding, her finger tracing a line under Adelia’s drawing, standing up, beckoning. They followed her to the back door, where she drew the bolts, cowered for a moment at the swamping rain, and ran for the stables. Adelia and Rowley ran after her.

The storm had covered the sound of Rowley’s arrival. Before he’d done anything, he’d stabled and attended to his horse, now kicking in its stall, scared by the thunder.

Rowley went to its head and soothed it. “All right, old boy, all right, it’s only noise,” but his eyes were on Millie, who had gone to a woodpile by the door and was throwing logs aside to reach something underneath.

Nodding emphatically, she dragged a curved, broken section of wood from others that were similar and watched Adelia as she handed it to her.

“What is it?” Rowley asked.

It was an elaborately fretted piece of oak. “A bit of the hoop from Emma’s cart,” Adelia said. “It held up the canvas. It’s all here. They smashed it up for firewood.”

Dont weep, she told herself. You knew.

But despite everything, she had hoped to be wrong.

“For Jesus’ sake, why?” Rowley was becoming convinced. “Why would they kill them?”

“For gain. Dear Heaven, Rowley, that little boy. Emma loved him so much.”

Millie was still looking up, curving her right hand over three extended fingers of the other to make sure she understood. Three people in a covered cart.

Adelia nodded and shaped the question “Where are they?”

There was ferocity in Millie’s face. What had been done was wrong, wrong; now she could expose it. She got up, dragging Adelia back to the inn. Rowley followed, splashing through ankle-high water. If anything, the rain was intensifying; the courtyard’s drain couldn’t cope with it.

Millie made for the kitchen. She pointed to a large vat in one corner and then began tugging at it. It was too heavy for her.

Rowley put down the lantern and went to help. The vat moved, but its bottom hoop caught on something and they had to tip and roll it before it was free of the obstruction.

Underneath was a handle set into one of the kitchen’s flagstones.

“Shit,” Rowley said.

Millie held up three fingers again, her teeth bared as if in despair, then pointed. “God help them,” Adelia said, quietly. “They’re down there.” As lightning flashed again, so did hope. “Lift it, quick, quick. They might still be alive, prisoners.”

It was a heavy slab. With effort, Rowley hoisted it up and slid it to one side. A dank smell mixed with that of liquor came rushing out of the hole-but not the stink of corruption Adelia had been dreading.

Rowley knelt. “Halloo, there. Emma? Halloo.” He turned his head sideways, but there was only the beat of rain and a crack of thunder that shook the kitchen walls. “There are steps here,” he said.

“Well, there would be, it’s a cellar,” Adelia said. “Give me the lantern.”

“Reinforcement is required first, I think.” Still kneeling, Rowley produced his flask, offering it to Millie, who drank and handed it on to Adelia, who, shaking her head in impatience, gave it back to him.

He took a hefty swig. He was reluctant to go into the hole, she realized-he’d never liked enclosed spaces.

She took up the lantern, ready to shove him aside, but he grabbed it off her-“I’m going, I’m going”-and began to descend the steps.

“Be careful, Rowley,” she called to him, frightened, “Godwyn might be hiding down there.” She turned to Millie, shaking her head and putting up a hand to keep her back in case there was violence. “Stay here.”

Rowley’s voice came up to her with an echo. “Nobody here, but it’s not just a cellar, there’s a tunnel leading out of it. Watch your step, woman, it’s slimy.” Carefully, she followed him down. He was right; the steps were slippery, and very steep.

She was in a cellar, a big one, part of it a storeroom for extra tables and benches, some awaiting repair. Most of it housed ale barrels, and she wondered how they’d been carried up and down the steps before she saw a chute leading to a hatch in, presumably, the edge of the courtyard for ease of delivery by a brewer’s dray.

At the far end, Rowley stood, sword in one hand, lantern in the other, peering at an opening in the wall. He came back to her, pausing to examine a rack at the foot of the steps that was filled with different sizes of wine bottles. “Glass bottles,” he said, marveling and extracting one of them. “The Pilgrim does its guests well.”

When it wasn’t killing them. But, so far at least, there was no sign that murder had been done.

Adelia turned to look up at Millie peering anxiously down at her. She indicated to the girl that she and Rowley were going to proceed farther.

There was a crack, this time not of lightning, less loud but still vicious. Millie’s eyes went blank, and her body fell over the hole. Adelia started up the steps to go to her. She saw an arm drag Millie away by her hair before the flagstone at the stairhead’s entrance was slammed into place.

“Rowley. Oh, God, Rowley, they’ve killed Millie. They’re blocking us in.”

There was a smash as a bottle he’d been holding hit the floor. He pushed Adelia out of the way, gave her the lantern, and clambered up the steps to try to heave the slab up.

They both heard the scrape of the barrel being put back over it.

He heaved again. “Fuck it, I can’t shift the thing.” He came back down. “That way. We’ll get out by the chute.” He began clawing his way up the slide to dislodge the courtyard hatch at its top.

Again, they heard the scrape of something heavy being pulled across. Cursing, yelling, Rowley pushed at the hatch, pushed again and again. It didn’t budge.

After a while, he allowed himself to slide back. For a moment, he lay, face downward, on the chute. Then, picking himself up, he smiled at her. “Well, my love, we’re going to have to investigate the tunnel-and quick, before the bastards block the other exit.”

Taking the lantern, he ushered her toward the hole in the cellar’s wall, talking all the time. “That’s the nice thing about tunnels-they’ve got two ends. Not surprised to find one here. Sure as Adam and Eve it’ll come out somewhere in the abbey grounds. Abbots have always liked an escape route from invaders, or their own damned monks. And I’ll wager Brother Titus has nipped along this one a fair few times to sample some ale…”

“It was Hilda who hit Millie,” Adelia said. “I saw her sleeve.”

“Nothing we can do about that yet.” Pulling her behind him, he entered the tunnel.

It was a large entrance, but if Brother Titus had used its passage to go to and fro, his bulk must have been mightily squeezed, for almost immediately the walls narrowed and lowered, enclosing them in a space little more than four feet square that, as far as they could see, went on and on. They were forced to bend double-Rowley was almost crawling, and Adelia had to take the lantern, maneuvering past him into the lead. Every thirty yards or so the tunnel widened into niches, vital for allowing a strained back to gain respite. Rowley ignored them. “Get on, get on, woman. Go faster.” He was panting. So was she.

Whoever had built the tunnel had been a craftsman; arched stones enclosed them on either side. Head bent, Adelia saw little except the mud of the floor as her boots squelched through it.

How far? Jesus, how far now? She’d lost all sense of direction and time. She was choking on her own breath. She gasped for the fresh air that was somewhere above her, the heavens impervious to the poor mice scuttling along their underground tube.

At one point, she thought she heard footsteps and imagined they were Godwyn’s or Hilda’s, running to block the other end of the tunnel against them. It was the thud of her own heart in her ears. We’re too far down to hear anything else, she thought, and began to choke again. She slowed, and Rowley’s head butted into her, the jolt nearly sending the lantern out of her hand so that she had to clasp it with the other to stop it from falling, burning her fingers on it. Oh, God, to be down here without light…

At the next niche she stopped and sat down to gain some breath, straightening her back and sucking her scorched fingers. Rowley peered at her. “Move, woman, move.”

“You go on,” she said. “I’ve got to rest.”

He collapsed beside her-the tunnel’s lack of height had made it harder going for him even than for her. He was looking at the lantern’s candle that had burned hideously low, then shifted with discomfort. “Hello, what’s this?”

He produced what he’d sat on-a plain deal box secured by a prong through a hasp. “I think we’ve discovered where our innkeeper and wife keep their treasures.”

She took the box. It rattled. Something of Emma’s might be hidden inside. But prong and hasp were so rusted together that she couldn’t open it.

Rowley grew impatient. “Let’s sit here and examine the contents, shall we? Come on.”

Clutching the box, she followed him, like Eurydice hastening after Orpheus, remembering that, at the last, Eurydice had been condemned to stay in the Underworld, never to see daylight again.

It was taking too long; if there was an end to this bestial tunnel, Godwyn and Hilda had reached it first and entombed them in it as they had Emma, Pippy and Roetger.

“What is it?” In front of her, Rowley was cursing.

“I left my bloody sword in that bloody cellar. I put it down to pick up a bottle.”

“I’ve got mine.” She’d been tempted to throw it away; the damn thing attached to the string round her waist kept bumping against her legs.

“ Lot of good that bloody rusty thing is.”

It killed a man, she thought. God, don’t let me think about that now.

So far, at least, there was no sign that three prisoners had ever been down here. Had Millie tricked them? No. Or if she had, she’d suffered for it-the girl hadn’t feigned unconsciousness; there’d been no trickery there. She’d been felled by that madwoman like a sapling under the ax.

A madwoman. Up there. Shutting them in.

Adelia began to pray in time to her shuffling, splashing feet, “Almighty Lord, save us. Save us, O Almighty Lord, of Thy great mercy, save us,” to a God Who, for her, automatically encompassed the Judaism and Christianity of her foster parents and something of Mansur’s Allah.

It had come naturally to her as a child that the faith of three beloved worshippers must reach the same deity with the accord that they gave one another. She could do no less now as she stumbled and ached and sobbed for breath. Theology was beyond her; so, almost, was thought, only a plea for help that went lancing upward through the earth to the stars: “Save us.”

All light had diminished except for the lantern that dragged along the ground in Rowley’s hand ahead of her. Help was restricted to the edge of his cloak, where she clutched it. All at once, the image of his naked body in bed came to her so strongly that she was stabbed with lust and, if that was profanity at this desperate moment, she couldn’t help it because here, in extremis, it was too sweet to surrender. I have loved him, he has loved me, and that is something, dear God, it is something.

As if the thought had power, the ceiling began to rise so that her man could stand up straight, and she with him.

Now the tunnel was sloping upward, culminating in steps that led to a ceiling. Rowley took them at a run that pulled his cloak out of her grasp.

Adelia went up more heavily, realizing for the first time that her skirts were weighing her down. In the relief of reaching the tunnel’s end, the significance of the fact that, for the last few upward yards, she had been wading through ankle-deep water escaped her.

Above her, the lantern’s candle guttered. For a tremulous second she watched it flutter like a moth before it went out.

The darkness then was like no other. A moonless night always held some reflection that the eye could adjust to; this was the negation of light, an absence of everything. Adelia heard the useless echo of her whimper tremble into it as if it came from somebody else.

There was a scratching and tinny sound, followed by a blast of profanity from the bishop of Saint Albans. “What are you doing?” she screamed at him.

“There’s metal up here. A hatch or whatever it is, it’s metal. What do you think I’m doing? I’m trying to open the bastard.”

“Try feeling for a catch.”

“Oh, thank you, Doctor. I’ve done that. There isn’t one. Either the bugger’s locked in place or there’s some sort of cantilever on the other side that lifts it. I’m hitting it-somebody might hear us.”

Nobody would hear that. Adelia struggled to untangle the sword hanging from her waist and then held it up until it found Rowley’s boot. “Try this.”

She felt a fumbling hand take the weapon from her. There was a reverberating clang as metal hit against metal. That was better. But who was up there to hear? Only the couple who’d buried them-and they weren’t going to lift anything.

Adelia covered her ears as clang after clang made her head rock. Between every clash, Rowley shouted halloos and curses until she thought he’d go mad-or she would. Feeling each step with her hands, she climbed up until she touched his leg. “Let me try.”

He hauled her up beside him and she realized she was still clutching the box from the niche. She threw it down and raised her arms, encountering metal. She traced it with her fingertips-a shallow, inverted dome of iron. It was completely smooth, no protuberance that suggested a catch on this side of it.

“See?” Rowley gave her a push aside and resumed his assault. But that was it; she couldn’t see. Eyes were useless; there was only touch and hearing-and terror.

After an age of noise, she couldn’t bear it anymore. She reached out for his arm, found it, and held it. “Let’s go back to the cellar.”

The thought of a return battling through darkness… but there’d be space there, and comforting, normal things like barrels… it might be that Millie wasn’t dead and could let them out… something.

She said, remembering, “The hatch on the barrel chute was made of wood, perhaps we can hack our way up through it and shift whatever was on it.”

“Or at least drink ourselves to death.”

That he’d stopped howling and now sounded merely disgruntled was balm to her. She could bear up if he could, but only if he could.

On her bottom, investigating with her feet, she managed to hump herself down the steps. When she heard Rowley join her, she spread her arms so that she could feel the rough texture of the tunnel wall on either side and began to wade down the incline they had come up.

And she was wading. Water surrounded her knees. She went on. It was up to her waist.

Stupidly, she wondered if she’d started down a wrong branch of the tunnel into some massive drain. But there’d been no branching off…

Somebody said, “There’s water coming in, Rowley.”

Somebody else said, “So there is, my love. We’d better go back.”

She felt a hand against her face work its way down to her shoulder, guiding her backward until they reached the steps, then helping her up to the landing at the top.

She clung onto him. “Where’s the water coming from? What’s happening?”

“I’ll tell you what’s happening…” And from the sound of his voice, Adelia envisaged him spitting the words from between his teeth. “Our noble landlord has opened the chute in the cellar. Taken the fucking hatch off. This is floodwater.”

“Floodwater?”

“In case you didn’t notice, it was raining outside. Still is, presumably. It’s coming down that bloody chute. It’s filled the cellar and now it’s flooding the sodding tunnel.”

“But… that would take hours.”

“Sweetheart, we’ve been down here for hours.”

In her mind’s eye, Adelia saw the hills around. Glastonbury Sheeting rain, unable to soak into the drought-baked, rock-hard earth, would be funneling down their sides into the High Street like rivers in full spate. The Pilgrim’s courtyard had already been an overflowing sink when she’d last seen it. With the plug hole of the barrel hatch removed, water would be pouring down the chute…

“One thing,” Rowley’s voice said. “It’ll ruin the bastard’s ale.”

“Will it reach us up here?”

Her answer was another ear-wounding clang. He was bashing the sword hilt against the iron hood again.

A stupid question; how could he know? It would depend on whether the rain stopped in time. And then, she thought, whether it does or not, we’re dead. They were in a diminishing space formed by brick, iron, and rising water, all of them impermeable. The air would go bad. In Salerno, she’d once worked on a corpse her foster father had bought for her to practice on, that of a man who’d fallen into a large, empty wine vat, his flailing arm catching its lid and bringing it down on top of him.

“Asphyxiation,” she’d said, finishing the examination.

“Correct,” he’d said. “It is what happens when people are enclosed like that.”

“I know,” she’d said, “but why? It was an enormous vat, why couldn’t he go on breathing? What causes people to asphyxiate in confined spaces?”

“Air hunger,” he’d said. “Our breathing uses it up or poisons it, I don’t know how.”

They would die, like the man in the vat.

“Allie.” Again, it was a cry of agony that seemed to come from somebody else.

The clanging stopped and was replaced by Rowley’s voice: “She’ll be provided for. I’ve made a will.”

“Allie.” A document couldn’t pick a child up or kiss a scratch better or cure the need for a mother who wasn’t there.

Another clang, the last, and she was rocked as he miscalculated where she sat and his body thumped against her before it found its place at her side. “Goddamn you, woman.” Hot breath fanned her ear. “This is your fault. Why in hell didn’t you marry me?”

She didn’t know anymore. Why hadn’t she?

“Nice little castle,” the breath said. “We could have brought her up together. You stitching away at your tapestry in the solar, me on the practice ground teaching her swordplay.”

It was meant to make her laugh and, oddly, it almost did, but beneath his courage she heard fury for a life missed.

My fault, she thought, my most grievous fault. What price independence when I could have chosen happiness, his, Allie’s, mine? Too high. “I wouldn’t do it again,” she said.

“Bit bloody late now.” Again, her skin felt his breath. “You’ve sent me to hell, you realize that? My soul is doomed. I’ve sinned at prime, at matins, at lauds; I’ve lifted the host to the Lord, and what I was lifting was your skinny body. I’d think, What do I see in her? But you were all I saw.” Another sigh. “I have offended against my sweet Lord. Saint Peter’s not likely to give me passage through the gate after that.”

“It won’t be hell for me if I’m with you,” she said, feeling for him with her arms. “We’ll fry on the griddle together.”

Voices speaking love into the darkness. Tiny flames guttering out.

It was becoming difficult to breathe.

After a while his head fell hard against her neck, and when she spoke to him again, he didn’t reply.

“No,” she begged him. “Wait for me. Don’t go without me.”

There was a deep grinding sound, and the lid above their heads lifted, slowly, as if a cautious cook was peering into a pan.

The foulness of the death chamber rushed upward-she felt its passing, like a wind-to be replaced by damp fresh air.

“God pray we’re in time,” somebody said.

Dizzily, still clutching Rowley’s body to her, she looked upward. The abbot of Glastonbury ’s face was staring down on her, Godwyn’s beside it, both of them anxious.

Behind them, Hilda struggling. “Leave ’em,” she was screaming, “leave em.” Only Brother Titus’s large arms were holding the woman back from hindering the resurrection of the couple she’d condemned to death.