I ground the morning glory seeds with some oil taken from the kitchen supplies, to which Antoine still has a key. The result was a paste that, when mixed with food, is difficult to detect. I flavored it with a little sweet almond to mask the bitter taste, and gave it to Antoine camouflaged in a loaf of bread. She would administer the dose to Clémente, she told me, at supper.

She seemed to have no doubt as to my mixture’s efficiency, nor any suspicion concerning my change of heart; I could only pray that her trust would last long enough for me to set my own defenses into place. The morning glory seed, though dangerous in use, is far from lethal. I hoped that, having realized that, Antoine would hold her tongue. For a while, at least.

My deceit was simple enough. The dose of ground seeds, even administered twelve hours in advance, would ensure Clémente was unfit to be examined next day at Chapter. The symptoms are severe, ranging from vomiting to visions to complete unconsciousness over a period of twenty-four hours. That, then, was the time I had left.

That night the dorter was slow to settle. Perette lingered close to my cubicle, watching me-waiting, I thought, her bright birdlike eyes glittering-until at last I motioned her to go to bed. She seemed inclined to persist, her small face pinched with anxiety or impatience, and I sensed she wanted to signal something to me. But now was not the time. I repeated the gesture of dismissal and turned away, pretending to sleep. But for a long time after the lights were extinguished I could still hear the small sounds of wakefulness-sighs, turnings, the click-click of Marguerite’s rosary-in the darkness so that I wondered whether I dared risk leaving at all. The small oblong of sky above my bed glowed purplish blue-in August here the sky is never quite dark-and I could see a dim scatter of stars in the distance and hear the soft sigh of the surf across the marshes. Close by, Alfonsine moaned, and I wondered whether she was observing me. Her moanings might be genuine sleep sounds or a fakery of sleep to lull me into unwary action; the thought kept me in my bed for almost an hour longer until desperation drove me out. After all, I could not wait forever, I told myself, and by morning I might have lost my only chance of escape.

Forcing myself to breathe silently, I rose and crossed the dorter barefoot. No one moved. I ran softly down the steps and across the courtyard, expecting at any moment to hear cries at my back, but the courtyard remained cool and dark, but for a shard of moon cutting across an angle of brickwork, the windows unlit.

LeMerle’s cottage too was unlit, but I could see a dim glow from his fire reflected onto the ceiling, and I knew he was awake. I tapped at the door; a few seconds later he opened it cautiously, and his eyes widened. He was in his shirt, with breeches replacing his priest’s robes. From his coat, carelessly discarded on a nearby chair, and his muddied boots, I guessed that he too had been on the prowl about the abbey, but he gave no indication of his business there.

“What the hell are you playing at?” he hissed as he pulled me in and latched the door behind me. “Isn’t it enough that I risked my neck for you this morning?”

“Things have changed, Guy. If I stay I may be accused.”

I explained my meeting with Antoine and her murderous request. I told him of my compromise, of the morning glories, the twenty-four hours. “Do you see now?” I asked him. “Do you see why I have to collect Fleur and leave?”

LeMerle frowned and shook his head.

“But you have to help me!” I sounded shrill to myself, afraid. “Don’t think I’ll stay silent if I’m accused! I owe you nothing, LeMerle. Nothing at all.”

He sat down, one booted foot flung casually over the chair arm. His anger was gone and now he looked tired and-genuinely, I thought-rather hurt. “What’s this?” he said. “Don’t you trust me yet? Do you think I would stand and let you be accused?”

“You did it before, remember?”

“All in the past, Juliette. I suffered for it, believe me.”

Not half enough, I thought, and said as much.

“I’m sorry. I can’t let you go.” His voice was final.

“I wouldn’t betray you.”

Silence.

“I wouldn’t, Guy.”

He stood up, putting his hands on my shoulders. I was suddenly aware of his scent, a dark aroma of sweat and damp leather, of the fact that in spite of my height he dwarfed me.

“Please,” I said in a low voice. “You don’t need me.”

The touch of his hand was like a breath from the ovens, crisping the hairs at the nape of my neck. “Trust me,” he said. “I do.”

Ten years ago I would have given anything to hear those words. It alarmed me a little that a part of me might still want them, and I closed my eyes to evade his. It was a trap. Didn’t I know him by now? His skin was smooth, smooth as my dreams.

“As what? A pawn in your game of bishops?” I pushed him away with my hands, but somehow my body drew him closer so that we stood entwined, his fingers clasped at the nape of my neck, tracing letters of fire on my raised hackles.

“No.” His voice was very gentle.

“Then why?”

He shrugged and said nothing.

“Why, LeMerle?” I cried in angry desperation. “Why this charade? Will you risk both our lives for your revenge? Because a man once had you exiled from Paris? Because of a ballet?”

“No, Juliette. Not for those things.”

“Then why?”

“You wouldn’t understand.”

“Try me.”

It must have been witchcraft. Or madness, perhaps. I fought against it, scarring his wrists with my fingernails even as I clung to him, sealing his mouth with mine as if by so doing I might consume him whole. We shed our clothes in ferocious silence, he and I, and I saw that his body was still hard and strong, as I remembered it, and I was startled to realize just how tenderly I recalled every mark, every scar, as if they were my own. The ancient brand on his arm shone silver-snakeskin-pale in the moonlight, and though some part of me protested that I was making an irrevocable mistake, I could hardly make it out above the roaring in my mind. For a time I was more than flesh; I was sulfur, I was a pillar of fire that raged and fed and thirsted. It was what Giordano had always warned me about; the hidden savagery in my nature that he had always taken such care to subdue-and with so little success. It occurred to me then that although Giordano may have been learned in the properties of elemental substances, there were far more powerful alchemies in the world than his, alchemies that melded flesh and burned away the past and changed hatred back into love with a simple cantrip.

After a time the fire slipped from us and we lay gently, like lovers. My anger had left me, and a new languor possessed my limbs, as if the past five years had been a dream, nothing more, grim shadow play on a wall that reveals itself to be nothing more than the movement of a boy’s hand in the sunlight.

“Tell me, LeMerle,” I said at last. “I want to understand.”

In a sickle of moonlight I saw him smile. “It’s a long tale,” he warned me. “If I tell you, will you stay?”

“Tell me,” I repeated.

Still smiling, he did.