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.