Her footsteps faltered as she approached the abbey’s only gate. The wall that rose toward the cloudless sky reminded her of her father’s tomb. It was hewn from the same gray stone.

Alec is here, she reminded herself, shaking off her sudden foreboding. When he saw her in person, he would remember his love for her. He would be her hero once again.

The only way to signal her presence was to tug on a bell rope. At the bell’s high jingle, the peephole snapped open. “Aye?” came a voice from the folds of a cowl.

Clarise greeted the faceless monk in Latin. “I must share a word with Alec Monteign.”

The monk showed no reaction to her words. “We have an illness here. The abbey is quarantined,” he said stoically.

Alarm rippled over her. “What manner of illness is it?” she demanded. Without Alec’s help, she would have no choice but to execute her mission.

“Fever,” said the monk shortly. “Boils and lesions.”

Clarise repressed the urge to cover her mouth with one corner of her headdress. “Nonetheless, I must speak with Alec.” Desperation made her dizzy. She blinked her eyes to clear her vision, and when she opened them, the monk was gone.

Where did he go? Clarise stood tiptoe and peered into the abbey’s courtyard. The cobbled square looked strangely abandoned. An inscription over a pair of double doors drew her gaze. Hic laborant fratres crucis, said the message. Here labor brothers of the cross.

No one labored now. Neither did they tend the vineyards outside the abbey’s walls. The rows of trellises stood bereft of vine or grape. She was left with the dampening suspicion that she’d come to the wrong place for help.

The sound of footsteps echoed off the courtyard. Another man approached the gate. He did not wear a cowl over his dark, tonsured hair but a stole that designated him an abbot. Clarise’s hopes took wing, then plummeted as his black gaze skewered her through the little opening.

“You should not be here,” he informed her cryptically. “There is a great scourge within these walls.”

“I wish only to speak with Alec Monteign,” she said deferentially.

“Brother Alec tends the sick. He cannot be interrupted.”

“He isn’t ill, then?” she asked, hopeful once again.

“Not yet.” The abbot spoke with no inflection in his voice. She couldn’t tell if he was angry or dispassionate.

“I was once his betrothed, Your Grace,” Clarise rushed to explain. “If he knew I had come so far, I am certain he would want to—”

His gaze had sharpened with her words. “Remove the cloth, so that I might see you,” he interrupted.

Clarise eased the kerchief from her flame-colored hair. The abbot put jeweled fingers to his mouth and gasped with recognition. “I know you,” he said in a voice so intimate her innards seemed to curdle. “You are the one who has written Alec words of defilement and temptation.”

“But, Your Grace,” she protested, realizing he made reference to her many letters. “I merely reasoned with his choice—”

“Silence!” he hissed. He stepped back suddenly, his face lost to shadow. “You are a woman, an ancestor of Eve. You would lure Alec from his holy vows,” he insisted.

“Not true!” she cried. “I have come for . . . for . . .” She stuttered, for in truth, she had come to lead Alec from the Church. “I have come for sanctuary,” she amended. It was a means to gain entrance; she had nowhere else to turn.

The abbot pressed himself to the gate. In a wolfish smile he bared his teeth. “Sanctuary?” he repeated. Then his head fell back as laughter, harsh and mirthless, rose from his throat. “Is that what you call it?” Suddenly he was deathly serious. “Horatio!” he snarled over his shoulder.

The man who’d answered the gate loomed behind him. “Show this woman your face,” the abbot commanded.

The monk pulled the hood from his head.

Clarise sucked in a breath of horror. The man’s face was speckled with lesions. Puss oozed from every pore. The wounds seemed to weep, lining his cheeks in flaky traces. She changed her mind at once about wanting to enter.

“Does this look like refuge to you?” the abbot inquired. There was a mad gleam in his onyx eyes.

Clarise drew her kerchief closer to her nose. She swallowed hard as the vision of illness threatened to upend her empty stomach. “Let Alec go,” she begged. “He is the only one who can help me, Your Grace. I have great need of him.”

“I am sure you do,” said the abbot with oily implication. “Nonetheless, he cannot leave. Until the illness runs its course, no one leaves. You run the risk of infection yourself.”

She stepped back instinctively. “I am going now,” she said.

“Just a moment,” the abbot ordered. “It comes to mind that Horatio might have infected you already. We cannot contribute to the spread of disease. Can we, Horatio?”

“Nay, Your Grace.” The monk seemed to smirk.

Clarise looked from one man to the other. She weighed the benefit of seeing Alec against the risk of being stricken. “I must go,” she repeated, staggering backward several paces as she pulled her head covering into place. “I will call again when the illness is gone.” She could not afford to be locked in the abbey’s walls indefinitely. Ferguson had given her two months’ time to accomplish her assignment. After that, her mother and sisters’ lives were forfeit.

With a nameless fear she turned and hurried down the grassy slope. As the earth dropped sharply beneath her feet, she began to run, desperate to put distance between herself and the sickness that polluted the abbey. She pinched her slippers with her toes, skirting hollows and leaping over rocks as she raced toward the river and the trading town at its shore.

Clarise dived into the midst of traffic. A trail of carts and traders swept her along. The cheerful throng was headed toward the market at the river’s edge. To her relief, there was no sign of illness in the sweating faces of those who milled around her.

The busy air of the market town contrasted sharply with the deathlike stillness of the abbey. Stalls and tents crowded the grassy riverbank. Tables overflowed with goods brought from other places—leather, samite, mink, trinkets, and jewels. Clarise stumbled through the throng, dismayed by the turn of events.

The scent of meat pies lured her toward the food stands. Ducklings sizzled over spits. Barrels swelled with luscious fruit. Over the shouts of the hawkers she heard her stomach rumble.

“Have a gooseberry?” a kind old lady offered, extending her the prickly ball of fruit.

“Thank you!” Clarise ripped off the skin with her teeth and stuffed the juicy globe in her mouth.

Now what? she wondered. It had never occurred to her that the Abbey of Rievaulx would be anything but a haven of refuge. Alec had flown there to keep from being murdered by the Slayer. Yet illness now despoiled the place, and the abbot’s strange behavior made it all the more frightening.

She thought of Alex, trapped behind the walls. He must be desperate to leave! But until the illness ran its course, he could not. Perhaps he’d never even received her letters. The abbot could have kept them to himself, fearing Alec would rescind his vows if he knew of Clarise’s desperate situation.

She seized the explanation with relief. While it meant that Alec knew little of her plight, it also meant that he might still help her. If she found a way to reach him.

How long until the quarantine was lifted? Could she afford to bide her time in this trading town while every day brought her mother and sisters closer to death?

The sound of one woman scolding another roused her from her thoughts. “Megan, are ye mad?” hissed the woman, tugging at the other’s elbow. “Do ye want to live at Helmesly and be nursemaid to the Slayer’s son?”

At the Slayer’s name, Clarise gave a guilty start. She followed the direction of the women’s stares and spied a man sitting astride a horse. The man wore no armor in the afternoon heat. By the hopeless look on his battle-scarred face, he hadn’t met with any luck in his search for a nurse.

That can’t be the Slayer, Clarise thought, swallowing hard. A gooseberry seed moved painfully down her throat. As the women moved hurriedly away, whispering to themselves, Clarise eyed the Slayer’s representative.

The Slayer had spawned a son on the baron’s daughter. Ferguson wouldn’t like that at all, she thought with a faint smile. Yet it made her mission that much easier. For the sake of her mother and sisters, she needed to approach the knight and offer her services as a nurse.

I am not equipped to feed a baby, she silently resisted. Yet that was not exactly true. She’d fed her youngest sister goat’s milk when their mother suffered the birth fever. It wasn’t an impossible task. Besides, she couldn’t stay in this trading town indefinitely, waiting for the quarantine to lift.

With leaden feet, Clarise crossed the grassy expanse that separated her from the horseman.

The man caught sight of her and stared with interest. To her relief, he did not appear to be a vicious warrior. Below a full head of graying hair, his eyes were light and keen. Though his face was crosshatched by scars, one end of his mouth was caught up in a perpetual smile, giving him a congenial look. He dismounted as she approached him.

“Are you in search of a nurse?” she asked in the Saxon tongue. As Ferguson had suggested, she would play the part of a freed serf.

He took hold of his animal’s bridle. “I am,” he said, giving her a quick but thorough inspection.

“I can care for the baby,” she offered, sounding more certain than she felt.

He gave her a skeptical look. “Where is your child?”

My child? Mary’s blood, she was supposed to have birthed a child! “It . . . it died of fever just a day ago.”

The knight’s expression turned sympathetic. “And you would care for another,” he finished gently. “What does your husband think?”

Husband? She balked at the unexpected question. Having not intended to go through with Ferguson’s plan, she’d given little thought to what she would say under the circumstances. “I have no husband,” she answered automatically. At the knight’s odd look she added, “He died in a skirmish.”

The knight frowned and paused. “You have suffered much for one so young,” he said.

His sympathy gave her courage. It would be easier than she thought to find her way into the Slayer’s home. “I have no money,” she added pathetically. “No way of feeding myself. Please, take me to Helmesly Castle. Let me care for the baby.”

The man looked dazed by her enthusiasm. “Very well,” he said. “You wish to go now?”

“Aye, right now.” Her hopes rose anew. The hoary knight had fallen for her tale.

“Have you nothing to bring with you?”

“My goods were sold to cover my husband’s debts,” she said, thinking quickly.

“What is your name?”

“Clare,” she improvised. “Clare Crucis.” The last word from the inscription at the abbey sprang to her lips. She congratulated herself for being so clever.

“I am Sir Roger de Saintonge,” said the knight. He inclined a slight bow. “Shall we go?”

She approached the white destrier with mixed eagerness and dread. Sir Roger spanned her waist, tossing her pillion into the saddle. “You are not afraid of horses,” he remarked.

She shook her head and realized belatedly that most peasants were afraid of the giant warhorses. She would have to remember to think like a commoner.

The knight led his mount by the bridle through the thinning crowds. Clarise kept her gaze fixed on the road they were taking. It was a well-trodden path leading away from the town and abbey.

As they wound around a series of low hills, the Abbey of Rievaulx dropped from view. The hope that Alec would save her from her dreaded task died a painful death. Either she advanced Ferguson’s evil plot, or her mother and sisters would be put to death.

Oblivious to her desperate thoughts, the knight strode alongside the horse, keeping hold of the reins. The sun sank lower into the troughs of the hills, bringing Clarise the worry that she might be alone with him come nightfall.

“How far is it to Helmesly?” she inquired.

He slanted her a startled look. She realized with dismay that she’d spoken in the language of the upper class.

“You speak French!” he commented. His eyes gleamed with interest. “And you’re not from Abbingdon, are you?”

Her spirits sank to new depths. She was not as adept at subterfuge as she’d imagined. “I served in a Norman household,” she muttered, as that was the only logical answer. Few peasants, free or bound, knew how to speak Norman French.