"She is going to get some olive oil," Moise said. "To see if we can get your wrist irons off over your hands."

I almost shriveled with embarrassment! I'd forgotten them. I could imagine trying to pass myself off as an envoy from Robert Guiscard wearing irons and broken chains on my wrists.

Layla was back inside of five minutes with a jar of oil, and poured it on my hands and wrists. It was Ketil who held onto the slippery irons while I made my hands as small as possible and pulled. At first I thought it wasn't going to work. Then I decided I'd just have to stand the pain, and jerked hard. In spite of the oil I lost some skin, but the irons came off.

Then we followed Layla a couple of hundred yards farther to where the tunnel ended. There she reached up and touched the overhead, saying something in Arabic. Moise started to push where she touched, to open another trapdoor.

"Just a minute," I said, and looked at Ketil, then at Moise. "I'm going alone. Tell Ketil if he was with me, they'd know at once that something was wrong with my story."

He passed it on to Ketil. I wondered if the big Varangian would get mad, but he just nodded and said something in Greek. Then he took off his Norman-looking helmet and set it on my head. It even fitted pretty well. Looking at it critically, he nodded, then spoke again in Greek.

"He wishes you the blessing of the Virgin," Moise told me.

That surprised me so I couldn't say anything for a few seconds. This was a guy I'd thought of as a savage. Then Moise came up with something.

"Larn, you should take me," he said. "I can help you."

"How?" I demanded. I wasn't in the mood for wasting time in silly arguments. "You can come out with me, but not to the castle gate. You'll have to hide outside somewhere."

"I can help you," he insisted. "I can be a Saracen, or a Levantine Jew. They dress like Saracens."

"How will that help me?"

He didn't answer for several seconds. Then, "We'll think of something," he said.

"Moise," I told him, "that's not a reason."

He surprised me. His voice was hard when he answered. "Then here is a reason. I am going with you whether you like it or not."

I suppose my eyebrows went up at that. "Huh!" I said. "Do you realize we'll probably be dead by morning?"

He nodded soberly.

"Okay," I told him, "we'll go together."

I stuck out my hand and we shook on it. Then he reached up again and pushed up the trapdoor.

Unlike the other, this one made him grunt to raise it. I shook hands with Ketil before we left, then bowed to Layla. I didn't know the Norse or Saracen rules of courtesy, but I wanted to do something to express my thanks. Especially to Layla. She'd owed us nothing and put herself at risk. And saved our lives this far, anyway.

Then I pulled myself up through the trapdoor and gave a hand to Moise.

He lowered the trapdoor back into place. We were in a small room. "Layla told me this is a holy place," he whispered.

We left through a doorway with no door in it, that led into a good-sized room lit through large windows by moonlight. I'd wondered what a holy place might be like. In this one, the only furniture was a lectern in one corner, and in the opposite corner, a low platform with a railing and what seemed to be a desk. I suppose they had some meaning, but I have no idea what.

From the outside door we could see the castle some way off.

"Larn," Moise murmured, "there are two things we must consider before we go any farther. Would a knight be out without a horse? And also, you speak Norman with an accent."

He had a point. Two points. The lack of a horse I could probably lie my way around. But while my Norman French had become pretty fluent, and I could disguise my voice, I'd never pass as Norman.

"If anyone asks," I answered, "I was a boy in Provence who was adopted by a Norman knight when my father was killed."

Even by moonlight I could see that Moise wasn't entirely satisfied with that. I wasn't either, as far as that was concerned. But it was the best I could think of on the spur of the moment. And that's what it had to be-the spur of the moment.

"Let's go," I said, and we started for the castle.

THIRTY-TWO

This time the castle wall looked different to me, Bigger. Forbidding. When I'd ridden up to it before, I'd been a guest, and the gate had been open for me. Now I was on foot, an enemy trying to trick my way in.

It occurred to me that maybe no one was on gate duty this time of night.

I'd thought there might be a big knocker or a bell rope, but I ended up pounding on the gate with my sword hilt. After several minutes and some hard pounding, I tried yelling. Finally, someone spoke angrily to us through a slot in what I suppose you could call the gatehouse, a rounded section of wall to the right of the gate.

"What do you want?!"

"I want in, that's what I want!" I disguised my voice by making it higher pitched and nasal. I also made it angry and imperious, because the identity I'd decided to pretend here was an envoy of Robert Guiscard de Hauteville, Tancred's son, Duke of Apulia, Calabria, and Sicily. Someone whom hopefully they wouldn't want mad at them, and wouldn't question too hard.

"I am Laurent de Caen," I continued, choosing Caen because I'd at least been there, even though it had been at night, in a storm, and I hadn't ventured inside the walls. I'd come close to getting killed, too. "I did not come all the way here from the duke," I continued, "and have my horse killed under me, to be kept standing outside in the night."

There was no answer, and I wondered if I'd blown it-irritated whoever it was so badly that he was going to leave me out here. Or maybe said something that had given me away as a fake. It was dangerous pretending to be something you don't know much about, I told myself, especially with people like these.

We waited about five minutes, and I was just getting ready to start pounding again when a small door opened to the left of the gate. A knight stepped out and motioned us in. The wall was about twelve feet thick, and the gate like a dark trap they could close at both ends while we were inside.

But we went in and nothing happened.

I recognized the knight who met us on the other side: Stephen, Gilbert's steward, seneschal is the Norman word. He'd been in charge of the banquet that evening, and maybe in charge of drugging the drink. That much gray hair meant a lot of experience and years of weapons practice; in a sword fight he'd take Moise and me before we could yell "mercy." And his narrow eyes didn't look very trusting.

"Caen?" he said.

"Caen. On the River Orne."

"Your speech does not sound like Normandy."

I gave him my coldest look. "I did not come here to relate the circumstances of my childhood," I said stiffly. "Where is your master?"

He didn't answer for several seconds. "He is-not well. Perhaps I can be of service to you."

That sounded fine to me. Although actually, Gilbert and I had hardly spoken to each other, he'd seen more of me than Stephen had, and there was a better chance he'd recognize me. "Perhaps you can," I said. "The duke has sent me to seek the whereabouts of a renegade vassal, Arno de Courmeron, who has trafficked with Vikings preying on Norman shipping. His profit from it will be his head separated from his body.

"Delivery of this Arno to the duke, alive, will be rewarded by a special ducal fief: precedence above all others in the showing and sale of destriers." I was getting into it now; the story was flowing. "Also, ownership of this Arno's well-known herd of brood mares," I went on, "which has been landed at Palermo and is currently in the duke's possession."

I glanced around at the three armed men who stood nearby, then back at Stephen. "Arno is known to have been shipwrecked on Sicily, and is traveling with several dangerous thaumaturgists said to be from India, as well as with a band of Vikings. The duke will also pay well for each of these other miscreants delivered live to him." I turned and gestured at Moise. "This is Isaac, a Levantine Jew employed by the duke to counter their thaumaturgy."