Chloe awoke stiff and cold despite her clothes. There was no fire in the attic room and sleet had begun to fall, coating the grimy window and filling the cheerless room with a cold gray light.

She got up and went to wash her face. The water in the ewer was frozen solid. The remains of the loaf on the tray were dry and stale. Hungry and thirsty, with no way of alleviating either condition, she returned to bed, huddling beneath the covers in an effort to keep warm.

It was many hours later before she heard footsteps on the stairs and the key turned in the lock. Jasper and Crispin came in. Neither of them spoke to her as they approached the bed and stood looking down at her white face on the pillow, all that was visible of her body. She stared up at them, reading cold indifference in Jasper's face, hungry anticipation in Crispin's, and for the life of her she couldn't decide which was the most frightening.

"Sit up and drink this," Jasper finally said, holding out the cup he held.

"What is it'" She made no move to obey.

"That is not something you need to know. Sit up."

"I'm hungry and cold," she said.

"Soon you won't be," he returned. "Sit up. I won't tell you again."

Slowly, she struggled up on the pillows and took the cup. Its contents were thick and syrupy, giving off a strange and repulsive odor. "I don't want it," she said, turning her head away, holding the cup out to him.

Jasper said nothing. He took the cup and handed it to Crispin. Then he sat on the bed and caught Chloe's head in the crook of his arm, forcing it back. She was tightly wrapped in the bedcovers and couldn't free her limbs as she struggled violently. He held her head in a vise and took the cup from Crispin.

"Open her mouth."

Crispin's fingers brutally pulled her mouth open and the evil-smelling liquid slid down her throat. With her head tipped back as it was, she had no choice but to swallow. Crispin clamped her jaws shut and she thought she was going to suffocate. And then they released her.

"You are a little fool," Jasper said. "You have nothing to gain by resistance."

They went out and left her alone again. She fell back on the pillows, numbed with shock, tears streaming unheeded down her cheeks. A foul taste was in her mouth, like bitter aloes, and she was abruptly reminded of the potion Hugo had given her. That hadn't tasted as bad, but the herbal quality had been the same.

What was this one supposed to do? It wasn't poison. They wouldn't poison her when they had such plans for her. She lay in terror, waiting for something to happen. When it did, it took her by surprise. Her body began to feel warm and relaxed, her head slightly muzzy, but it wasn't an unpleasant sensation at all. She was no longer hungry or even particularly thirsty and soon drifted into a light-headed doze filled with a sequence of soft-edged dreams.

She lost all sense of time and, when her door opened again, looked with fuzzy lack of curiosity at her visitors. Louise's anxious face hung over her like a moon in a mist, and Chloe smiled reassuringly, or thought she did.

"Come along, dear, it's time to dress," Louise said. Her voice sounded a little peculiar, but Chloe let the speculation slip from her. She tried to sit up and the maid who had accompanied Louise moved to help her.

Her head swam and the room tilted violently. A wave of nausea washed over her and she fell back again. "No, I'll stay here," she said faintly.

"You can't, dear." Louise sounded almost desperate. "Once you sit up, it'll be better." She tugged at Chloe's arm, and because she sounded so unhappy, Chloe made one more effort. This time the room stopped spinning once she opened her eyes wide.

She submitted to being undressed and her body-washed in warm water from a steaming copper jug. They brushed and rebraided her hair, fastening the braids in a coronet around her head. She tried to help her attendants, but her limbs were too heavy to lift and her mind kept slipping sideways so she forgot what it was she'd intended to do. But nothing seemed to matter. The room wasn't even cold anymore.

They dressed her in a white silk shift that covered her body from neck to ankles, white silk stockings gartered above the knees, white satin pumps. Vaguely she was aware that some article of underwear was missing, but the recognition simply flitted through her untroubled brain. Finally, Louise slipped over her head a white silk gown with long sleeves and a high, ruffled collar and the maid pinned a diaphanous veil onto the golden crown of her hair.

"How lovely you are," Louise said, her voice thick with tears as she gazed at the vision… the sacrifice she had prepared for her son. She tried to tell herself that Crispin would make a good husband, that Chloe was making a perfectly good match, one that many girls would give their eyeteeth for. Maybe she wasn't too eager, but what young girl was? It wasn't a love match, but such connections were rare these days and they were young; they could grow together.

All brides suffered from wedding nerves. She tried to pretend she didn't know why Chloe's eyes were blank, her movements sluggish. It was just wedding nerves.

"Come downstairs, dear."

Chloe allowed herself to be led out of her prison and down the stairs into the hall. She felt as if she were moving through some kind of filmy curtain, her feet making tentative contact with the ground as if it were made of sponge. There were people in the hall, their faces moving in and out of her field of vision.

"Behold the virgin bride." Jasper stepped up to her, his voice suddenly low. "What a vision of purity, little sister. But you and I know better." The open mockery made no dent in the warm, muzzy world she was inhabiting. In truth, she hardly heard him. He took her arm, placing her hand on his own arm, and they began to walk across the hall as the carefully selected wedding guests fell back… guests who bore the mark of Eden on their skin. Later they would accompany the bridal couple to the crypt in the time-honored rituals of the Congregation.

Louise moved into the shadows at the rear. She knew Jasper expected her to make herself scarce, but a mother was surely entitled to witness her only son's marriage.

The Reverend Elgar Ponsonby stood before a table, his hands nervously caressing the smooth leather binding of a Bible. His clerical linen was limp and slightly spotted. His eyes were unfocused, his breath pure alcohol, it seemed to Crispin, standing beside him as he watched the progress of his bride and his stepfather. Old Elgar was never sober, and only Sir Jasper's purse kept bread and wine on his table.

Jasper removed Chloe's hand from his arm as they reached the table and placed it on Crispin's. As she felt Crispin's hand close over hers, Chloe looked up through the gauzy material of her veil at his face hovering in the air in front of her. Unease filtered through the rosy mists of unthinking. She was being married to Crispin. Jasper had said so and that was what was supposed to happen. But it wasn't supposed to happen. It mustn't be allowed to happen. The passionate conviction thrust through the trance and for a second she was aware of her surroundings, of the people around her. She could smell the woodsmoke from the fireplace, the hot candle wax. Her lips moved beneath the veil as if to form some shout of protest, some screaming appeal to the shapes around her. But nothing would come. And then the moment of lucidity was gone and the warm muzziness had returned. She smiled vaguely and obediently stepped up to the table beside Crispin.

Hugo stood outside the closed door to the crypt. The ghosts seemed to come out to meet him as he postponed the moment when he would take the key from its secret shelf under the lintel, open the door, and go inside, down the shallow flight of stone stairs into the labyrinth of cold, vaulted chambers smelling of earth and mold and the grave.