‘Now!’ The young man’s shout drew her gaze. ‘She’ll be safe with me. Now, Gwenn!’ Steady blue eyes held hers, honest eyes. Gwenn’s mind raced. How had he come by her name? No matter. He had a sensitive, open face for all that it clashed with his mercenary’s attire. She could trust his eyes, if not his profession.

The young man’s neighbour moved impatiently, and she saw the top of his dark head turning to the townsfolk clustered below the window. ‘Help us.’ He held out the hem of his cloak, and people jumped to take it. Incongruously, she noticed a ring on his middle finger, for she caught the flash of gold as the sun bounced off it. He had bitten fingers, but they clutched the edge of the cloak securely. Both men looked fit and capable. Reassured that her sister would have a soft landing, Gwenn screwed her eyes shut and let go. When she opened them again, Katarin lay motionless in the valley of the cloak. ‘Katarin!’

Katarin blinked and moved her arms. ‘Gwenn?’ Katarin pointed at her, and smiled. ‘Gwenn?’

A ragged cheer went up. A strong hand reached out, plucked the infant from the cloak, and Katarin was pressed against the broad leather-clad chest of the blue-eyed soldier. He smiled at the infant, ruffled her hair, and placed her in the outstretched arms of a woman behind him. His flaxen head tipped back. ‘Your turn now.’

‘Jump, Gwenn! Jump!’ Mikael Brasher had joined the knot of people round the cloak.

The dark-haired man glanced up, and Gwenn’s heart jolted. It was the mercenary who had set the mob on her. ‘You! You threw the first stone.’ Horrified, she stared accusingly at the young Saxon. ‘And you – why are you always with him?’ Biting her lip, she shook her head. They had both been in Duke’s Tavern with the Norseman, the monster who had set fire to their house. And what had he done with her grandmother?

Filling her lungs with untainted air, Gwenn wound her veil back round her nose, and forced herself to go back. Her eyes smarted. In the swirling, choking blackness she was all but blind. Praying her grandmother was close, Gwenn felt her way inch by lung-burning inch. Her foot nudged against something soft. Heart thumping, she went down on all fours, but the softness was the softness of fabric, not of a body. Her grandmother’s wimple. She cast it aside.

‘Grandmama?’

Her lungs were bursting. The oak floorboards felt warm. Gwenn whimpered, and tried to swallow, but her throat was dry as parchment. The crackling grew, was all but a roar, and the gaps between the floorboards shone yellow like the sun. The flames from the chamber below must burst through any second. The floor groaned a warning and shifted under her hands and knees. Gwenn gulped. Cold sweat trickled down her back. She was hot and cold all at once. Gritting her teeth, she crawled forwards another inch, and another, until eventually her hands encountered what felt like a corpse.

‘G...Grandmama?’ The body moved. It coughed. ‘Thank God, you’re alive!’

‘Gwenn?’ The old woman’s breathing was harsh, laboured. ‘Get out, Gwenn.’

‘Grandmama!’

‘Out,’ Izabel whispered hoarsely. ‘I’m finished.’

‘No!’

‘Finished.’ Izabel was shaken by coughing. ‘Divine retribution...’

That Viking animal had deranged her grandmother’s mind. ‘No.’ Gwenn heaved on Izabel’s arm, to little avail. She heard a roar as the back wall of the chamber became a curtain of fire. Great tongues of flame licked up it. The cracks in the floor glowed brighter, bright as molten gold in a goldsmith’s crucible. ‘Grandmama! Don’t give up!’

‘Tell...Yolande...I am sorry,’ Izabel breathed, in distant, dreamy tones.

‘Grandmama.’ Gwenn sobbed. Izabel’s mind must have gone, she seemed heedless of the danger.

‘Though Yolande sinned,’ Izabel choked weakly, ‘I see that my narrowness, my bitterness...was a far greater wrong. Tell her...ask her...forgive me?’ Her voice faded; she blinked through the swirling drifts of smoke, seeming to rouse herself as she strained to raise her head. Rheumy eyes fell on Gwenn, she looked stricken. ‘Why, Gwenn, why have you not gone? Your time is far off. You must go.’

Roughly, Gwenn gripped her grandmother’s arm. ‘Grandmama, you’re not even trying!’

Izabel twisted her head towards Gwenn’s. ‘It’s my time, my dear. The Lord has spoken.’ Her old eyes glistened with moisture. ‘But you should not be here. Go. Say a Mass for my soul. Obey my last wish, and get out.’

It was hopeless. Dry, gulping sobs ripped through Gwenn. A loud crash informed her that part of the staircase had collapsed. She heard a drumming in her ears.

‘Out!’ Her grandmother’s head thudded on the boards.

The drumming was louder, nearer; it sounded like footsteps. Gwenn screwed up her smarting eyes to squint through the smoke, and went rigid. Someone was kneeling on the other side of her grandmother. Her senses deserted her.

She had been consigned to a furnace in Hell, and the Devil had sent one of his minions to torment her, for the flickering flames illumined swarthy features that were dirty with soot and streaked with sweat. Night-black brows arched over frenzied grey eyes. It was the face of a demon, and he had come to chose between her and her grandmother. Gwenn screamed, and reached for Izabel.

Her grandmother’s hand fluttered to meet hers. ‘Go,’ Izabel gasped. ‘And remember, Our Lady is yours. The Stone Rose is yours.’ Izabel let her breath out on a rattling sigh, and was still.

The demon was making his choice. Sick to her core, Gwenn watched as his fierce eyes passed briefly over her grandmother, seemed to find her lacking, and came to rest on her. The demon smiled.

‘No!’ Gwenn’s lips were stiff with fear. He took her by the wrist and, as fiends do, he had the grip of ten men. She knew it would be useless to fight him.

‘Come, girl.’ Unceremoniously, he dragged her to her feet and shoved her towards the window and daylight.

Mercifully, with the clear, sweet air easing the pain in her chest, the panic receded, and with a flash of insight Gwenn knew that he was no demon. It was the routier, the one who had thrown the first stone, and for some reason he was trying to save her. He must be intending to throw her out of the window, after Katarin. But Gwenn was bigger than Katarin...

‘Hell’s Teeth!’ The mercenary’s mind and hers ran the same course. ‘The window’s too small.’ Jerking Gwenn to one side, he aimed a boot at the frame, and sent it spinning into the street. Another moment and he had her on the ledge, facing inwards.

She found herself looking directly into his eyes. ‘I’m too big,’ she said, clinging to his arms as though his strength alone could save her.

His dark head shook. ‘A tiny thing like you? Never. Bonne chance, my Blanche.’

The flash of white teeth as he grinned was the last thing she saw from the sill. He hooked his arm under her knees and sent her tumbling backwards out of the window and into the fresh air of La Rue de la Monnaie. The impact of her body striking the cloak forced that life-giving air from her lungs, and for a second or two it was all she could do to catch her breath. But she was not allowed any respite. The townsfolk muttered. The cloak was lowered. Helping hands rolled her out, onto the ground, where she lay gasping like a fish out of water.

‘Gwenn! Gwenn!’ Katarin cried. Blindly, Gwenn held out her arms to her sister, and then the tears came.

The cloak was stretched out over her head. It blacked out the sun. ‘Hold it steady there!’

‘Ready, Ned?’ A new voice asked, coughing, from farther off.

Silence gripped the crowd. All Gwenn could hear was the crackle of burning wood and the hiss of water on fire.

‘Ready, Alan. Jump!’

There was a crack like thunder, a sickening thud, and someone gave a gasp similar to the one Gwenn had made when the air had been knocked from her lungs. A bulging purse, with its strings snapped, landed with a clunk at Gwenn’s side. No doubt it belonged to her rescuer. Hugging Katarin, Gwenn retrieved it, climbed unsteadily to her knees and peered over Katarin’s brown mop of hair into the dip of the cloak. It had split, she saw, under the man’s heavier body. The cloak was lowered to the ground, and the mercenary’s grey eyes went straight to her.