“Oh, Lord, he’s hurt.” He’d been set on by the robbers on that dangerous road, pummeled, knifed, and it was her fault-she shouldn’t have sent him out on it.

Godwyn sniffed at the squirming bundle at his feet. “He ain’t hurt, mistress, he’s drunk.”

And so he was. That he’d managed to stumble his way home directionless and unnoticed by predators was witness to a God who smiled on the inebriated.

Godwyn was sent back to bed, and for the next hour Adelia supported the bard as she made him walk on tottering legs round and round the courtyard’s wellhead, twice pushing him toward a pile of straw onto which he could vomit, filling a beaker from water in the well’s bucket and making him drink it every time he opened his mouth to try and sing.

Eventually, both of them exhausted, she guided him into the barn and sat him on a hay bale to get out of him what information she could.

He seemed most proud of having returned at all. “Not to be late back, you said,” he told her, “I remembered. So back, back I came and yere I am. Robbers, yach, I spit on them; they don’t frighten Rhys ap Griffudd ap Owein ap Gwilym. I flew, like Hermes the messenger, patron of poets.” He’d also crawled. The knees of his robe had been worn through and, like his hands, were stuck with horse manure-the least unpleasant smell about him.

Actually, he’d done very well when, finally, Adelia managed to piece together an incoherent story. He’d inveigled himself into not only the servants’ hall of Wolvercote Manor but also the affections of its gatekeeper’s daughter, who had succumbed to his mysterious charm and with whom he had later passed a pleasing and energetic hour in a field haystack-“Lovely girl, Maggie, oh, lovely she was, very loving.”

“But did she tell you anything?”

“She did, oh, yes.”

What the gatekeeper’s daughter had told him in the haystack was that a month or more ago, a lady with an entourage had appeared at Wolvercote Manor’s lodge gates late at night, expecting to be let in and claiming that she was Lady Wolvercote come to visit.

“But the gatekeeper, he didn’t know her, so he called his Lady Wolvercote to the gates and there was a quarrel, though Maggie didn’t hear all of it, see, because her Lady Wolvercote sent her dada up to the house to get men-at-arms to bar entrance to that Lady Wolvercote.”

“Emma did go there, I knew it, I knew it. But what happened then?”

“Ah, well, there’s a mystery. See, Maggie said her dada seemed shamed for days after because of something that happened when our poor Emma was sent away.”

“Ashamed? Oh, dear God, the men-at-arms didn’t kill her?”

“No, no, don’t think so. What would they have done with the corpses? No corpses at Wolvercote, see. Maggie would’ve known.”

“But something happened. What was it?”

Rhys shifted; he was beginning to wilt. “Well, see, Maggie and me, we were interrupted then.”

In fact, at that point, Wolvercote’s hayward had been seen crossing the field in which the haystack stood and, since the hayward was affianced to young Maggie, the girl had advised Rhys to make a swift withdrawal-in more senses than one. Which he had, going back, fortunately unseen, to the hall’s kitchen, where he’d again entertained the dowager Lady Wolvercote’s servants, this time with some of his bawdier songs, his appreciative audience lubricating his voice with pints of the dowager’s ale until he’d been turfed out into the night by the dowager’s steward, a man lacking any appreciation of music, especially when it reached his bedroom window and woke him up.

How Rhys had managed the six miles back, he couldn’t remember, partly because the loving and redoubtable Maggie had given him another blackjack of ale to help him on his way.

“And you learned nothing more?”

Rhys shook his head.

“I see.” Then she said, “What about the baker? The man I saw in the kitchen? Did you manage to talk to him?”

“Wasn’t there. Itinerant, he is. Only got called in last time because the kitchen baker was sick, see. Goes round the markets with his bread usually. Due at Wells market tomorrow, Maggie said.”

“Today,” Adelia said, firmly. “He’ll be there today. It’s gone midnight.”

The bard’s large eyes fixed on her and then begged for mercy. “Oh, take pity, mistress, you wouldn’t…?”

“Yes, I would. You’ll be singing at Wells market nice and early this morning and talking to itinerant bakers.” She patted his shoulder. “I’m truly grateful to you, Master Rhys. The king shall hear of your efforts.”

If the praise was meant to invigorate the Welshman, it failed.

WHEN MANSUR AND ADELIA set off for the abbey the next day with Gyltha and Allie in tow-Polycarp’s poultice needed changing-they found themselves perspiring before they’d walked a yard.

From being pleasantly warm, the sun was sending out an aggressive heat that, with no cloud in the sky, threatened to become prolonged, wakening the fear of parched crops and thirsty, dying cattle, and sending Adelia back to the inn to fetch the widebrimmed rush hats she’d bought for herself, Gyltha, and Allie on the journey from Wales.

It was obvious that the only way left now to give an age to the skeletons was by attempting to date the coffin they’d been buried in, and, somewhat late, she’d remembered that she should have asked Rhys a question. It had come to her in the otherwise blessedly dreamless sleep into which she’d relapsed on regaining her bed and which, thinking of other matters, she had forgotten on waking.

The bard had already left for Wells market, moaning and protesting, but it might be that either Godwyn or Hilda could give her an answer.

Adelia poked her head round the Pilgrim’s kitchen door, apologizing for her intrusion. “I think Master Rhys once mentioned that there was an earthquake here many years ago and it opened up a fissure in the abbey graveyard. Would either of you remember that?”

It was not a good time. The kitchen had retained the previous day’s heat and, though its shutters were closed against the sun, flies had found their way in to settle on the surfaces of boards and hanging meat.

Godwyn didn’t bother to turn round. Even in the gloom, Hilda’s face could be seen to be red as she put down her flyswatter to glare at Adelia. “How’d we know? We wasn’t here then.”

“Of course you weren’t, of course you weren’t. Silly of me. Er, don’t bother to light a fire. It’s too hot. We’ll be happy to have cold cuts tonight.”

“That’s what you was going to get,” Hilda said. And considering the temperature, she couldn’t be blamed for saying it nastily.

Rejoining the others and handing out hats, Adelia suggested to Gyltha that her question about the fissure was one that could be put to Brother Peter if he was still around.

“Who’d be fishing in a graveyard?” Gyltha wanted to know.

“It’s a hole, Gyltha. The earthquake moves the ground so that it slits open. I’m sure Rhys mentioned a fissure when he was telling us and King Henry about his uncle Caradoc’s vision, at least I think I’m sure.”

When they reached the abbey grounds, they found the monks, their hands folded under their scapulars, emerging from the Abbot’s kitchen on their way to sing terce.

Mansur and Adelia joined them, and Adelia put her question to the abbot.

“In the name of God,” Brother Aelwyn said furiously, appealing to his superior, “are we to be pestered even on our way to holy offices?”

“Answer her, Aelwyn,” his abbot told him.

The monk turned to Adelia. “Yes, a fissure was opened by the earthquake, what of it?”

“Twenty years ago?”

“That was when the earthquake occurred, the day after Saint Stephen’s Day, to be exact, if it’s any business of yours, mistress.”

“Between the pyramids, was it?”

“Yes.”

“And how deep was it?”

“Deep, deep, woman. We didn’t bother to measure it, we had other things on our mind. Deep. It closed itself the next day, in any case.”