He didn't seem surprised, and she wondered if she'd been mistaken, if it hadn't been blood poisoning at all.

During the night the rain turned to snow. "They will not come," Lady Eliwys said the next morning, sounding relieved.

Kivrin had to agree with her. It had snowed nearly thirty centimeters in the night, and it was still coming down steadily. Even Imeyne seemed resigned to their not coming, though she kept on with the preparations, bringing down pewter trenchers from the loft and shouting for Maisry.

Around noon the snow stopped abruptly, and by two it had begun to clear, and Eliwys ordered everyone into their good clothes. Kivrin dressed the girls, surprised at the fanciness of their silk shifts. Agnes had a dark red velvet kirtle to wear over hers and her silver buckle, and Rosemund's leaf-green kirtle had long, split sleeves and a low bodice that showed the embroidery on her yellow shift. Nothing had been said to Kivrin about what she should wear, but after she had taken the girls' hair out of braids and brushed it over their shoulders, Agnes said, "You must put on your blue," and got her dress out of the chest at the foot of the bed. It looked less out-of-place among the girls' finery, but the weave was still too fine, the color too blue.

She didn't know what she should do about her hair. Unmarried girls wore their hair unbound on festive occasions, held back by a fillet or a ribbon, but her hair was too short for that, and only married women covered their hair. She couldn't just leave it uncovered — the chopped off hair looked terrible.

Apparently Eliwys agreed. When Kivrin brought the girls back downstairs, she bit her lip and sent Maisry up to the loft room to fetch a thin, nearly transparent veil which she fastened with Kivrin's fillet halfway back on her head so that her front hair showed, but the ragged cut ends were hidden.

Eliwys's nervousness seemed to have returned with the improving weather. She started when Maisry came in from outside and then cuffed her for getting mud on the floor. She suddenly thought of a dozen things that weren't ready and found fault with everyone. When Lady Imeyne said for the dozenth time, "If we had gone to Courcy…" Eliwys nearly snapped her head off.

Kivrin had thought it was a bad idea to dress Agnes before the last possible minute, and by mid-afternoon, the little girl's embroidered sleeves were grubby and she had spilled flour all down one side of the velvet skirt.

By late afternoon, Gawyn had still not returned, everyone's nerves were at the snapping point, and Maisry's ears were bright red. When Lady Imeyne told Kivrin to take six beeswax candles to Father Roche, she was delighted with the chance to get the girls out of the house.

"Tell him they must last through both the masses," Imeyne said irritably, "and poor masses will they be for our Lord's birth. We should have gone to Courcy."

Kivrin got Agnes into her cloak and called Rosemund, and they walked across to the church. Roche wasn't there. A large yellowish candle with bands marked on it sat in the middle of the altar, unlit. He would light it at sunset and use it to keep track of the hours till midnight. On his knees in the icy church.

He wasn't in his house either. Kivrin left the candles on the table. On the way back across the green, they saw Roche's donkey by the lychgate licking the snow.

"We forgot to feed the animals," Agnes said.

"Feed the animals?" Kivrin asked warily, thinking of their clothes.

"It is Christmas Eve," Agnes said. "Fed you not the animals at home?"

"She remembers not," Rosemund said. "On Christmas Eve, we feed the animals in honor of our Lord that he was born in a stable."

"Do you not remember naught of Christmas then?" Agnes asked.

"A little," Kivrin said, thinking of Oxford on Christmas Eve, of the shops in Carfax decorated with plastic evergreens and laser lights and jammed with last-minute shoppers, the High full of bicycles, and Magdalen Tower showing dimly through the snow.

"First they ring the bells and then you get to eat and then mass and then the Yule log," Agnes said.

"You have turned it all about," Rosemund said. "First we light the Yule log and then we go to mass."

"First the bells," Agnes said, glaring at Rosemund, "and then mass."

They went to the barn for a sack of oats and some hay and took them out to the stable to feed the horses. Gringolet wasn't among them, which meant Gawyn still wasn't back. She must speak with him as soon as he returned. The rendezvous was less than a week away, and she still had no idea where the drop was. And with Lord Guillaume coming, everything might change.

Eliwys had only put off doing anything with her till her husband came, and she had told the girls again this morning she expected him today. He might decide to take Kivrin to Oxford, or London, to look for her family, or Sir Bloet might offer to take her back with them to Courcy. She had to talk to him soon. But with guests here, it would be much easier to catch him alone, and in all the bustle and busyness of Christmas, she might even get him to show her the place.

Kivrin dawdled as long as she could with the horses, hoping Gawyn might come back, but Agnes got bored and wanted to go feed corn to the chickens. Kivrin suggested they go feed the steward's cow.

"It is not our cow," Rosemund snapped.

"She helped me on that day when I was ill," she said, thinking of how she had leaned against the cow's bony back the day she tried to find the drop. "I would thank her for her kindness."

They went past the pen where the pigs had lately been, and Agnes said, "Poor piglings. I would have fed them an apple."

"The sky to the north darkens again," Rosemund said. "I think they will not come."

"Ay, but they will," Agnes said. "Sir Bloet has promised me a trinket."

The steward's cow was in almost the same place Kivrin had found it, behind the second to the last hut, eating what was left of the same blackening pea vines.

"Good Christmas, Lady Cow," Agnes said, holding a handful of hay a good meter from the cow's mouth.

"They speak only at midnight," Rosemund said.

"I would come see them at midnight, Lady Kivrin," Agnes said. The cow strained forward. Agnes edged back.

"You cannot, simplehead," Rosemund said. "You will be at mass."

The cow extended her neck and took a large-hoofed step forward. Agnes retreated. Kivrin gave the cow a handful of hay.

Agnes watched enviously. "If all are at mass, how do they know the animals speak?" she asked.

Good point, Kivrin thought.

"Father Roche says it is so," Rosemund said.

Agnes came out from behind Kivrin's skirts and picked up another handful of hay. "What do they say?" She pointed it in the cow's general direction.

"They say you know not how to feed them," Rosemund said.

"They do not," Agnes said, thrusting her hand forward. The cow lunged for the hay, mouth open, teeth bared. Agnes threw the handful of hay at it and ran behind Kivrin's back. "They praise our blessed Lord. Father Roche said it."

There was a sound of horses. Agnes ran between the huts. "They are come!" she shouted, running back. "Sir Bloet is here. I saw them. They ride now through the gate."

Kivrin hastily scattered the rest of the hay in front of the cow. Rosemund took a handful of oats out of the bag and fed them to the cow, letting it nuzzle the grain out of her open hand.

"Come, Rosemund!" Agnes said. "Sir Bloet is here!"

Rosemund rubbed what was left of the oats off her hand. "I would feed Father Roche's donkey," she said, and started toward the church, not even glancing in the direction of the manor.

"But they've come, Rosemund," Agnes shouted, running after her. "Do you not want to see what they have brought?"

Obviously not. Rosemund had reached the donkey, which had found a tuft of foxtail grass sticking out of the snow next to the lychgate. She bent and stuck a handful of oats under its muzzle, to its complete disinterest, and then stood there with her hand on its back, her long dark hair hiding her face.