They had said her presence was required in Ely at the magistrates' court to bear witness to a land dispute arising from the havoc of the past civil war. It was a common enough summons in the years following Charles II's restoration with the consequent storm of claims and counterclaims between dispossessed parliamentarians and the newly restored royalists. Her household staff thought nothing of the summons, and since the penalty of refusal was automatic loss by default of the disputed land, it didn't occur to them that she would not cooperate.

And indeed she had had no choice. In soft voices they had threatened her son, even as the earl of Ravenspeare's small dagger pressed against her ribs as he stood so close to her in the hall, a neighborly smile twisting his thin mouth, his voice dripping honeyed concern and vows of friendship for all to hear.

They took her to an inn, a secluded lodging frequented only by bargemen who came up the narrow drainage cut from the river to drink and carouse. Bargemen who, like most Fenmen, showed no interest in the affairs of others and, even if they did, knew how to keep a still tongue in their heads.

For four days the men of Ravenspeare had forced their prisoner to bear witness in their own particular fashion. They took turns with her and only when she was a mute, bleeding, befouled wreck had they left her. Even now she could still hear their laughter on the stairs while she huddled in the corner of the attic chamber, bruised, filthy, her own blood seeping from her, mingling with the vileness that they had spilled inside her…

" 'Ere we are, then, Mistress Sarah… Mistress Sarah…" Edgar touched her arm.

"Mother?"

The worry in Jenny's voice pierced Sarah's waking nightmare. She jerked on the bench as if she'd been kicked into awareness, just as they had kicked her into consciousness when they had wanted her again… wanted to hear her weep and plead as they plowed into her battered body…

"Mother, we're home. What is it? Are you ill?"

Sarah stumbled down from the gig. Edgar, waiting with upraised hand to help her, caught her as she half fell from the step.

"Eh, Miss Jenny, I think yer mam's taken bad," he said with concern. "I'll 'elp 'er inside."

Jenny followed them into the cottage. She touched her mother, who stood shivering beside the banked fire. She touched Sarah's face, eyes, with the tips of her fingers. "Oh, what is it? What's happened?" she whispered.

Abruptly, Sarah shook her head, reached up her hands to clasp Jenny's wrists in a reassuringly firm grip. She forced a smile at Edgar, who stood in the doorway with a worried frown on his normally phlegmatic countenance.

"I'll be off, then?" he said, a hesitant question in his voice. Sarah nodded and loosed Jenny's hold. She came over to Edgar and took his hands in a warm clasp that spoke as loudly as any words could have done. Then she kissed him lightly on the cheek. The man blushed and backed out of the cottage. "I'll be back to fetch Miss Jenny in the mornin', then."

"I'll be ready by seven," Jenny called, moving to stand beside her mother to wave good-bye. She put an arm around Sarah's shoulders and was relieved to feel that the rigidity had left her mother's body. Whatever had caused it, surely it had to do with her horror of Ravenspeare Castle.

Sarah turned back inside and sat down again at her loom, just as if she'd never left it. Her eyes rested for a moment on her daughter's blind, intelligent countenance. One of those four devils of Ravenspeare had fathered Jenny. Not that it mattered. Jenny was hers. She had been created in torment, and she bore the marks of that violent conception in her blindness, but she was unsullied. She was pure. She belonged only to her mother.

Chapter Fifteen

"I brought you some dinner, m'lord." Doris entered Ariel's chamber bearing a laden tray.

Simon looked up from his drowsy contemplation of the fire and realized that he was famished.

The dogs sniffed at the tray when Doris set it down on the table beside the fire. "Edgar's back, m'lord. Should I take the 'ounds down to 'im? They'll need a walk, like as not."

"Yes, do that, thank you." Simon reached for his cane and stood up, stretching stiffly. He smiled at Doris, then limped over to the bed. Ariel was sleeping heavily, her breathing slightly labored. Sweat beaded her pale, waxy countenance and tendrils of hair clung to her damp brow.

"I've brought some lavender water, m'lord." Doris hurried over to him, bearing a bottle of fragrant water and a cloth. "If we wipe Lady Ariel's brow with it, she'll feel better, even though she's asleep."

"I fear I'm an inadequate nurse," Simon said ruefully, watching Doris's deft attentions to the sleeping patient. "I believe we should anoint her chest again with the ointment."

"I'll see to it, m'lord. You sit down now and eat yer dinner. We wasn't too sure what you'd like in the kitchen, but Mistress Gertrude says that if the beef and venison don't appeal, then there's an eel pie in the pantry, an' she can do you a nice brook trout in butter, quick as 'op o' me thumb."

"This will do splendidly." Simon sat down before the tray of roasted beef ribs and venison pasty. Besides, there was a bottle of claret, ready with the cork drawn, a salad of celery and beetroot, a substantial chunk of cheddar, a quarter loaf of wheaten bread, and a slice of damson pie with a jug of thick golden cream. The good, wholesome food of his childhood, he thought, the saliva running with the pleasurable pang of hunger. He poured himself a glass of claret.

Romulus and Remus were sitting expectantly yet patiently beside the door. They seemed to know that Doris was their key to liberty and watched her as she moved about the chamber, replenishing the coltsfoot leaves in the skillet, removing the now cold bricks from the bed, smoothing down the sheets and pillows.

"I'll take the dogs now, m'lord, less'n there's somethin' else?"

"No, nothing… oh, ask Edgar for a report on the roan's condition, will you? Lady Ariel is bound to be concerned when she awakes."

"Yes, sir." Doris bobbed a curtsy, gathered the cold bricks to her meager bosom, whistled to the dogs, and went out.

Simon ate his dinner and drank his claret in a ruminative peace. It occurred to him that this was the pleasantest evening he'd spent since arriving at Ravenspeare Castle. He liked his own company and always had done. He threw more coltsfoot into the skillet when the heady fumes seemed to him to be losing their strength, and listened to his wife's breathing grow deeper and more even.

A sharp rap at the door, sounding more like the hilt of a sword than a hand, jerked him out of his contentment. But before he could speak, the door opened. Oliver Becket, holding a glass of cognac, stood somewhat unsteadily in the doorway, thrusting his dirk back into its scabbard.

"So, how's my bud doing?" he inquired, his eyes squinting at the bed. "I see you're playing nurse, then, my lord Hawkesmoor." He laughed and stepped into the room, kicking the door shut behind him. "Poor work for one of the queen's soldiers, I would have thought. What would His Grace of Marlborough have to say, I wonder?" His laugh rasped unpleasantly. "But then, I expect he knows that tending sickbed is all that a cripple's good for."

"Did you want something, Becket?" Simon inquired, sipping his claret and regarding his visitor with scant interest.

"Oh, I just came to see how my bud was faring." Oliver approached the bed. "You'll grant a lover's right to be concerned, I trust." He glanced over to Simon, who hadn't moved from his chair, seemingly hadn't moved a muscle. Oliver's eyes narrowed. This lack of response to his barbed comments was most unsatisfying. He returned his attention to Ariel.

"Not a beauty, my little bud," he mused. "No, you'd never call her a beauty, but quite an appealing creature, when she's well. A fever, of course, can turn any beauty into a hag. And I fear our patient is no exception." He brushed a finger over the girl's damp face. "Lank and waxen." He shook his head, tutting. "None of us can understand what made her act so foolishly. Can you, Hawkesmoor?"

Simon didn't deign to respond. He quietly sipped his claret, stretching his feet to the fire, and waited for the moment when he would have no choice but to pick up Oliver Becket's glove.

"No, none of us can understand why Ariel would jeopardize her horse for a Hawkesmoor. Falling through the ice is not unexpected, the chit is always rash and impetuous with her own safety, but to put her horse at risk…" He shook his head solemnly and drank from the glass in his hand. "No, not Ariel. And most particularly not for a lost cause." He laughed. "The gyrfalcon's attentions to your face could hardly have made matters worse, could they?"

"I daresay she surprised us both," Simon observed dispassionately.

Oliver stepped forward toward the fire, then something in the other man's eyes halted his advance. He lounged against the bedpost. "Do you truly appreciate her, Hawkesmoor? Have you learned what she likes? Have you discovered that little beauty spot on the underside of her-"

"You are a bore, Becket." Simon interrupted him, his voice still mild. "In fact, I would say you are about the most tedious and inconsequential little man I've ever come across."

Oliver's face flushed darkest red. His hand went to his belt, to the dirk in its scabbard. The other man watched him, unmoving.

"Don't imagine she's yours, Hawkesmoor," Oliver declared, his voice thick with vitriol. "She belongs to us. To her brothers and to me."

"Really?" Simon's eyebrows lifted. His voice sounded mildly curious, but his blue eyes were as hard and bright as glacial ice. "And to think I thought she was my wife."

Oliver's dirk was suddenly in his hand. He advanced on the seated man.

Simon didn't move, and his eyes remained fixed on Oliver's face, holding Becket's drunken, squinting, aggressive stare. "You'd draw on an unarmed man," he stated softly.

"You have a dagger," Oliver snarled. "Draw it and we'll throw for first strike."

Simon laughed, a quiet, scornful sound. "I fight my battles on the field, where they belong, Becket. Not in the chambers of sick women."

Oliver's dirk flew through the air, passing a bare inch from the seated man's face before burying itself in the wooden post of the mantel. Not by so much as a twitch did Simon indicate that he was aware of the weapon's path.

"Such an incontinent temper you have, Becket." Simon leaned forward and pulled the dirk free. He handed it back, hilt first, to its owner. "I believe you would do well to cultivate a cool head… at least in your dealings with me," he added thoughtfully.

"Do you threaten me?" Oliver was discomposed, blustering, but it was clear he could find no graceful path of retreat.

Simon shook his head. "I rather thought that was your territory, Becket."

Oliver spun on his heel, caught his foot in the fringe of the tapestry rug, nearly fell but righted himself by grabbing on to the bedpost again. He half stumbled, still off balance, to the door. "You won't have her," he declared over his shoulder, his little eyes squinting malevolently. "You won't have her, Hawkesmoor."

The door slammed shut behind him.

What in God's name had Ariel seen in him? The thought that that venomous fool had known Ariel before he had stung Simon.

Which little beauty spot had he meant? She had one on the underside of her right breast, and another little cluster tucked beneath the curve of her right buttock…

Simon's jaw clenched as he fought to control the surge of irrational fury, the wave of disgust at the thought of Becket's slimy fingers discovering the beauties and the tiny imperfections of Ariel's body.

Ariel moved, mumbled, kicked the covers from her. Her robe was translucent with sweat, clinging to her breasts. It was tangled around her waist, and her belly and thighs and the honey gold triangle at the base of her belly glistened with perspiration.

Simon wetted the cloth with lavender water and bathed her skin. It seemed to ease her, and her hectic murmurings ceased. He found a clean shift in the linen press, scented with the dried rose petals sprinkled between the garments. He bent over her, easing the soaked robe up her body, lifting her on the palm of his hand as he freed a fold caught beneath her bottom. In the grip of fever, she seemed weightless, insubstantial, easily held on his hand.