He woke some time later, disturbed by a sound outside in the street. She was still with him, head on his chest, her dark hair spread like a curtain to cover them both. He moved one hand and stroked it, marvelling.

"Well," said Ariane. "Well, well, well…»

He laughed quietly. She had meant him to laugh. He shook his head. "This has been the longest night I can remember." It was hard to believe how much had happened, in so many different ways, since they had arrived in Tavernel in the afternoon and walked through the thronged streets to The Liensenne.

"Is it over?" Ariane de Carenzu asked in a whisper. Her hand began moving slowly, fingernails barely brushing his skin. "If the songs tell true we have until the lark sings at dawn."

He felt desire returning, inexorable as the first beginning of a wave far out at sea. "Wait," he said awkwardly. "I have a question."

"Oh dear."

"No, nothing terrible or very difficult. Just something about Arbonne, about people we know Something I should have asked about a long time ago."

Her hand was still, resting on his thigh. "Yes?"

"What is it between Talair and Miraval? The hatred there?"

It was true, what he'd said, what he'd come to realize earlier tonight: there was something unnatural about the refusal to learn that had carried him through his months here in Arbonne.

Ariane was silent for a moment, then she sighed. "That is a terrible question, actually, and a difficult one. You'll have me chasing my own memories."

"Forgive me, I—"

"No, it is all right. I have been thinking about them all in any case. The memories are never far away. They have shaped so much of what we are." She hesitated. "Have you at least heard of Aelis de Barbentain, who became Aelis de Miraval?"

He shook his head. "I'm sorry. No."

"The youngest child of Signe and Guibor. Heir to Arbonne because her sister Beatritz went to the goddess and the two brothers died of plague quite young. Wedded to En Urté de Miraval when she was seventeen years old. My cousin." She hesitated, but only briefly. "Bertran's lover, and I think the only real love of his life."

There was a silence again. In it, Blaise heard once more, as if the speaker was actually in the room with them, Bertran's words on a dark stairway in the depths of another night: The god knows, and sweet Rian knows I've tried, but in twenty-three years I've never yet found a woman to equal her.

Blaise cleared his throat. "I think, actually, that last will be true. He said something to me in Baude Castle that would fit… what you just said."

Ariane lifted her head to look at him. "He must have been in a strange mood to say anything about it at all."

Blaise nodded his head. "He was."

"He must have trusted you, too, oddly enough."

"Or known the words would mean nothing to me."

"Perhaps."

"Will you tell me the story? It's time I began to learn."

Ariane sighed again, feeling ambushed almost by this entirely unexpected question. She had been thirteen that year, a bright, quick, laughing spirit, still a child. It had taken her a long time to recapture laughter afterwards, and the child in her had been lost forever the night Aelis died.

She was a grown woman now, with complex roles on the world stage and the burdens that came with those: queen of the Court of Love, daughter of one noble house, wedded into another. She was not a risk-taker by nature, not like Beatritz or Bertran; she thought things through more slowly before she moved. She would not have devised the scheme they had for this son of Galbert de Garsenc, nor had she approved when she was told of it. But by now she had made her own decisions about this man whose hard shell of bitterness so clearly served, like armour on a battlefield, to defend something wounded underneath.

So she told him the story, lying beside him after love on a bed in Bertran's palace, travelling back to the rhythm and cadence of her own words into the past as darkness outside slowly gave way to grey dawn. She told him all of it—quietly spinning the tale of sorrow from that long-ago year—save for one strand of the old weaving, the one thing she never told. It was not truly hers, that last secret, not hers to offer anyone, even in trust or by way of binding or in great need.

In the end, when she was done and fell silent, they did not make love again. It was difficult, Ariane had always found, to sustain any desires of her own in the present day when Aelis was remembered.

Elisse of Cauvas was vain, with, perhaps, some reason to be. She'd a ripe figure and a pleasing voice to go with the long-lashed, laughing eyes that made men feel wittier and more clever in her company than they normally did. Coming from the town that prided itself on being the birthplace of the first of the troubadours, Anselme himself, she often felt that she'd been destined to be a joglar and follow the life of the road, castle to castle, town to town. She considered herself miraculously released—and counted her blessings almost every morning when she awoke—from the tedium and premature ageing she associated with the life she might have expected as an artisan's daughter. Marry the apprentice, survive—if you were fortunate—too many childbirths in too few years, struggle to feed a family and keep a leaking roof intact and the cold lash of the winter wind from coming in through chinks in the walls.

Not for her, that life. Not now. With perhaps a single irritating exception she was almost certainly the best-known of the women joglars following the musicians' circuit about Arbonne. As for that single exception, until very recently the only recognition Lisseut of Vezét ever received seemed to occur because her name was similar to Elisse's! Jourdain had told an amusing story about that a year ago, and they'd laughed together over it.

The latest touring season had changed things, though, or started to change them. In two or three towns and a highland castle in the hills near Gotzland she and Jourdain had been asked their opinion of the wonderful music being made by Alain of Rousset and the girl who was his new joglar. And then, outrageously, Elisse had been asked by a fatuous village reeve, after a performance in a wealthy merchant's home in Seiranne, how the olive trees were faring back home in Vezét. When she realized what the man's mistake was, who he took her for, she'd been so furious she'd had to abandon the merchant's hall for a time, leaving Jourdain to amuse the guests alone while she regained her composure.

It wouldn't do, she thought, lying in an extremely comfortable bed on Midsummer Night, to dwell upon such things, or the unsettling success Lisseut had had with Alain's song earlier that evening—a frankly mediocre piece, Elisse had decided. Where had Jourdain's wits been, she thought, fighting a returning fury, when that glorious opportunity had arisen? Why hadn't he been quick enough to propose his own music for Ariane and the dukes, with Elisse to sing it? Only later, on the river, in the silly games men insisted upon playing, had her own troubadour, her current lover, pushed himself forward—to become an object of general amusement shortly afterwards, as he splashed into the water downstream.

Though 'current lover' might—it just possibly might—be an inappropriate phrase after tonight. Elisse stretched herself, cat-like, and let the bedsheet fall away, leaving her mostly uncovered in her nakedness. She turned her head towards the window, where the man she'd been lying with in the aftermath of love was now sitting on the ledge, picking at her lute. She didn't really like her lovers leaving her side without a word, as this one had, and she certainly didn't like other people handling the lute… but for this man she was prepared to make exceptions, as many exceptions and in whatever dimensions as proved necessary.