“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.