“Prior’s guesthouse,” Ulf said.

“What’s happening?”

“Dunno.”

He sat beside her with his knees drawn up, staring at nothing.

What is he seeing? Adelia put her undamaged arm round him and hugged him close. He is my only companion, she thought, as I am his. The two of them had survived a travail that no one now living had made; only they knew how great was the distance they’d traveled and how long it had taken them and, indeed, how far they had yet to go. Exposure to the extremes of darkness had made them aware of things, not least about themselves, that they should not have known.

“Tell me,” she said.

“Nothin’ to tell. She poles up to where I was fishing and it’s ‘Oh, Ulf, I think the punt’s leaking.’ Nice as honey. Next thing there’s stuff over my face and I’m gone. Woke up in the pit.”

He threw back his head and an incredulous cry that spoke for the shattered innocence of the ages rang through the room. “Why?”

“I don’t know.”

Desperately, the little boy turned on her. “She was a lily. He was a crusader.”

“They were freaks. It didn’t show in their countenance, but they were freaks that found each other. Ulf, there are more of us than there are of those. Infinitely more. Hold fast to that.” She was trying to hold fast to it herself.

The child’s eyes fed off hers. “You come after me.”

“They were not going to have you.”

He considered it for a while, and then something of its old self crept back into the ugly little face. “I heard you. Gor, you didn’t half swear. I ain’t heard cussing like that, not even when the troopers came to town.”

“You ever tell anybody and it’s back to the pit.”

Gyltha was in the doorway. Like Rowley, who loomed behind her, she was furious with relief. Tears ran down her face. “You little maggot,” she shouted at Ulf. “Didn’t I tell you? I’ll wallop your backside for you.”

Sobbing, she ran to gather up her grandson, who gave a sigh of contentment and held out his arms to her.

“Out,” Rowley told them. There were laden servants behind him; Adelia saw the concerned face of Brother Swithin, the priory guest-master.

As Gyltha headed for the door with Ulf in her arms, she paused to ask Rowley, “Sure as I can’t do nothing for her?”

“No. Out you go.”

Gyltha still lingered, looking at Adelia. “Was a good day when you came to Cambridge,” she said. She went out.

Men came in with a huge tin bath and began pouring steaming jugs of water in it; one had bars of yellow soap resting on a pile of the harsh segments of old sheeting that passed for towels in the monastery.

Adelia watched the preparations hungrily; if she could not wash the filth the killers had imposed on her mind, she could at least scrub it from her body.

Brother Swithin was troubled by the arrangements. “The lady is injured, I should fetch the infirmarian.”

Rowley said, grimly, “When I found the lady, she was rolling on the ground in battle with the forces of darkness; she will survive.”

“There should at least be a female attendant…”

“Out,” Rowley said. “Out now.” He opened his arms and scooped the whole boiling of them to the door and shut it on them. He was a massive man, Adelia realized. The fat she’d derided was lessened; he was still heavy, but great strength of muscle had been revealed.

Lumbering to where she lay, he put his hands under her armpits, lifted her so that she stood on the floor, and began undressing her, picking her dreadful clothes off with surprising delicacy.

She felt very small. Was this seduction? For certain he would stop when he reached her shift.

It wasn’t and he didn’t; this was care. As he picked up her naked body and slipped it into the bath, she looked into his face; it might have been Gordinus’s, intent over an autopsy.

I should be embarrassed, she thought. I would be embarrassed, but I am not.

The bath was warm and she slid down it, grabbing one of the soaps before she went completely underwater, scrubbing, rejoicing in the harshness against her skin. Raising her arms was difficult, so she surfaced long enough to ask him to wash her hair and felt his fingers strong against her scalp. The servants had left ewers of fresh water that he poured over her hair to rinse it.

She couldn’t bend to reach her feet without pain, so he laved those as well, intent, meticulously going between the toes.

She thought, watching him, I am in a bath, naked in a bath with no bubbles, and a man is washing me; my reputation is doomed and to hell with it. I’ve been to hell and all I wanted in it was to be alive for this man. Who carried me out of it.

It was as if she and Ulf, all of them, had fallen into a world not even nightmare had prepared them for but which coexisted with the normal so closely that an unguarded step gained access to it. It was at the end of everything, or perhaps at the beginning, a savagery that, though they had survived it, revealed convention as an illusion. The thread of her life had so nearly been sheared that never again would she depend on having a future.

And in that moment, she had wanted this man. Still wanted him.

Adelia, who’d thought she was conversant with all conditions of the body, was new to this one. She felt soapy, lubricated, within as well as without; it was as if she were bursting into foliage, her skin rising toward him, desperate for him to touch it-he who, at the moment, was regarding not her breasts but the bruises across her poor ribs.

“Did he hurt you? Truly hurt you, I mean?” he asked.

She wondered what he considered the bruises and the wound in her arm to be, and her eye. Then she thought: Ah, was I raped? It matters to them. Virginity is their holy grail.

“And if he did?” she asked gently.

“That’s the thing,” he said. He was kneeling beside the bath now so their heads could be on a level. “All the way to the hill, I was seeing what he could do to you, but, as long you survived it, I didn’t care.” He shook his head at the extraordinary. “Fouled or in pieces, I wanted you back. You were mine, not his.”

Oh, oh.

“He didn’t touch me,” she said, “apart from this and this. I’ll mend.”

“Good,” he said briskly, and got up. “Well, there’s much to do. I can’t be dallying with women in baths; there’s arrangements to be made, not least for our marriage.”

“Marriage?”

“I shall speak to the prior, of course, and he will speak to Mansur; these things must be done with propriety. And there’s the king…tomorrow, perhaps, or the day after, when all’s settled.”

“Marriage?”

“You have to marry me now, woman,” he said, surprised. “I’ve seen you in your bath.”

He was going, actually leaving.

She hauled herself painfully out of the bath, grabbing one of the towels. There wouldn’t be a tomorrow, didn’t he realize? Tomorrows were full of awful things. Today, now, was the essential. There was no time for propriety.

“Don’t leave me, Rowley. I can’t endure to be alone.”

And that was true. Not all the forces of darkness were vanquished; one was still somewhere in this building; some would stalk her memory always. Only he could keep them out.

Wincing, she slid her arms round his neck and felt the warm, damp softness of her skin against his.

Gently, he disengaged them. “This is another thing, don’t you see, woman? This is a marriage between us; it must be in accordance with holy law.”

A fine moment, she thought, for him to worry about holy law. “There isn’t time, Rowley. There isn’t any time beyond that door.”

“No, there isn’t. I’ve got a great deal to see to.” But he was beginning to pant. Her bare feet were standing on his boots, the towel had slipped, and every inch of her body that could reach it was pressed against his.