She'd brought the lute because she hadn't been entirely sure what was wanted from her. When Marotte, the owner of The Liensenne, had approached her with a whispered confidence earlier in the evening, telling her she'd be anxiously expected—those were his exact words—in the largest of the upstairs rooms after the third of the temple night chimes had sounded, Elisse had wondered if her singing days with Jourdain might possibly be winding to their close.

When she tapped at the room door though, wearing her best tunic, with a flower in her hair for Midsummer, the man who opened it gave her a slow, appraising smile that made her knees feel weak. It was Midsummer, and very late at night. She ought to have known it was not an audition she was being invited to. And, being honest, she didn't at all mind; there were many avenues to success in Arbonne for a woman of passion and spirit and some confidence in herself, and one of them was in this room.

One of them, in fact, was sitting on the window ledge, watching the eastern sky, his back to her, idly making music on her lute. He played very well, and when he lifted his voice—so softly she had to strain to hear, as if the words weren't meant for her at all—it was oddly sorrowful, though the song was not.

The song was his own, a very old one. A charming enough tune, Jourdain had dismissively called it once, tired of the endless springtime requests for it, even after all these years, and in preference to his own, far more musically intricate shapings.

Elisse, listening now to the quiet music and words, was prepared to disagree completely, if required—to regard this as the quintessence of all troubadour love songs. Lying in the wide bed alone, though with no complaint to offer about the hour just past, she had a feeling that her opinion would not be solicited, that it was, in fact, irrelevant. The man on the window ledge, she realized, had probably forgotten she was here.

That bothered her, but not unduly. In another man it might have been infuriating, cause enough to send her storming from the room, but this one was a different proposition from any other in her world, and Elisse of Cauvas was perfectly willing to take her cues from him, and only hope she was quick enough and, well, enjoyable enough, to make an impact of her own. She had never failed to do so before.

So she lay quietly and listened to Bertran de Talair play her lute and offer his own song to the coming of dawn above the empty street. She knew the words; everyone knew the words.

Even the birds above the lake

Are singing of my love,

And even the flowers along the shore

Are growing for her sake.

All the vines are ripening

And the trees come into bud,

For my love's footsteps passing by

Are summoning the spring.

Rian's stars in the night

Shine more brightly over her.

The god's moon and the goddess's

Guard her with their light.

It was really an almost childishly simple tune, with words to match, Elisse thought. Jourdain was right, of course; compared to the interwoven melodies he made her practise endlessly this was something a completely untrained person could sing, hardly worthy of the long apprenticeship demanded of the joglars of Arbonne.

Which made it even odder how near to tears she suddenly seemed to be, listening. Elisse couldn't remember the last time she'd cried, except in anger or frustration. It was because of Midsummer, she decided, and the extraordinary events of tonight, not least of which had been the long-imagined, though never really hoped for invitation to this room.

She reached for the pillow he had lain upon beside her in the dark and held it to herself for comfort, as the sweet refrain returned and brought the song to an end. The woman it celebrated was dead, she reminded herself, dead more than twenty years ago, before Elisse had even been born. She was dead, and would have been over forty years old by now had she lived, Elisse calculated. This wasn't real competition, she decided, she could allow these dawnsong memories without troubling herself. The dead were gone; she was the woman with him now, the one lying in his bed as Midsummer Night came to its end. The advantages, surely, were all hers. Elisse smiled, waiting for the moment when he would turn to see her waiting, her body offered to his sight, and for whatever else he wanted of her.

At the window, Bertran de Talair watched darkness surrender to grey in the streets below and then saw the first pale hues of morning streak the sky in the east. He wondered, idly, hopelessly, just how many dawns he had seen in this way, with the wrong woman waiting for him to come back to her in a bed he had abandoned. He wasn't going back to the bed. He pushed the very thought away, closing his eyes, letting his mind circle back, faithfully, to the ending of his song.

Even the birds above the lake

Are singing of my love,

And even the flowers along the shore

Are growing for her sake.

Dawn was breaking, the day was coming. There would be much to do, a world of complex things that demanded to be done. He opened his eyes, feeling her slipping away again as he did, slipping away in mist, in memory, with the child in her arms.

PART III—Autumn

CHAPTER 9

On the bright, mild morning in autumn when her life changes forever, Rosala de Garsenc is returning carefully from her favourite walk along the sloping, tree-lined path from the water mill back to the castle when she sees her father-in-law waiting for her astride his horse in the open space in front of the drawbridge.

Her breath quickening with the first stirrings of apprehension, she places her hands protectively in front of her rounded belly but resolutely does not alter her pace. Her husband is away at the court, and Galbert will know that.

"Good morrow, my lord," she says as she comes slowly up to the courtyard. The drawbridge of the castle is down; inside the forecourt a handful of corans are noisily practising with quarterstaves, beyond them serfs are unloading sacks of harvested grain watched carefully by the reeve. It is a bustling tithe day at Garsenc Castle. No one is close enough though to overhear anything the two of them might say to each other.

Galbert de Garsenc, massive and imposing in his riding clothes, makes no immediate reply to her greeting, looking stonily down upon her from his horse. He ought to have dismounted, of course, simple courtesy to his son's wife demands that; his failure to do so is a first signal, an attempt to intimidate. Rosala knows by now that almost everything this man does is meant as a means of control.

"Will you come in?" she says, as if there is nothing untoward in his manner at all. "You must know that Ranald is away, but I will gladly do what I may to make you comfortable." She smiles, but only briefly; she will not abase herself before this man, she has sworn it to herself.

He jerks his reins to make the horse dance a little, quite close to her. She stands motionless; she certainly isn't afraid of horses, and she is quite sure, for the obvious reason, that her father-in-law will not risk doing her any physical harm just now.

Galbert clears his throat. "Get in," he says, the celebrated voice icy cold. "Get into the castle immediately before you shame us further. I heard tell that you were walking abroad but refused to credit it. I came to see for myself, certain that the rumours must be idle and false. Instead I find you brazening about obscenely, parading in your condition before the serfs, exactly as I was told. Are you utterly corrupt that you do such things?"