“Poor old Useless,” Alf said quietly.

“An’ you’ll clear him for us?” Will asked.

“Yes,” Adelia told him, “I shall tell the bishop of Saint Albans, and he will tell the sheriff.”

She bent over the trap, mentally going over its evidence once more, clearing away the weeds in order that the position of the burned finger bones could be seen more clearly.

Mansur shouted.

She turned round, alarmed.

The tithing had gone. Where the men had been seconds ago, there were merely burned stones and the rise of a hillside. It was as if the sun had melted them away.

“Come back, come back,” Adelia yelled. “You haven’t told me about Emma.” But her scream raised nothing but a flight of warblers from the undergrowth.

The only thing to show that the tithing had ever been present was the harp nestling in Rhys’s arms.

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.”