The following day the messenger returned to the castle. Bishop Thomas had gone to Oxford on church matters and the messenger had missed him. Now more horses must be found for the messenger to try again, to trail after the bishop’s party and, pray God, catch them soon.

Joanna heard this news from the castle laundress, listening in appalled horror as the woman recounted how Sir Yves had hurled a mutton bone at the hapless messenger in the castle great hall.

“Dislikes his dinner being interrupted by bad news,” the laundress concluded. “Shall I take this headscarf? It is stained along the edge.”

“Thank you.” Joanna waited until the slim, dark woman had sped from the room and then she began her work afresh, grinding, testing, burning, mixing. The air in the chamber became thick with smog and still she worked, first by daylight and then by star- and candlelight.

I must find something.

She labored on through the night. The white powder, a mixture of chalk and other mineral compounds, was ready in its presentation box: an elixir to cure the ills of the stomach and head. Joanna knew she should find a better title than this but she could not think: she was too fretful and weary. SirYves and Bishop Thomas would be pleased with her elixir, yes, but they wanted gold. They wanted that most rare, most precious, most perfect of forms and she had only a few scant pieces from Orri’s hoard, the nugget from her assay of the previous day, and odd grains from the river.

She tried a new experiment, with the blackened cupel left from her assay from the lead and silver ore. Perhaps if she heated this to white heat, the purifying element of fire would grow her more gold from the dross of the silver and lead. She set to using the bellows with a will, pumping furiously into the furnace until her arms ached like the toothache and the very walls of the castle chamber seemed to be sweating…

“Hey, hey, you will tear yourself to shreds.”

Hugh took the bellows from her and she tottered, scrabbling after them. “Give those back! I am no puffer!”

She snatched for them, just as the table and furnace seemed to turn over and slide away. Feeling as if she was falling off the edge of the world, Joanna tumbled down. She yelled and struggled to surface through a haze of blackness, tasted soot and then wine.

“Taste the wine again. It will restore you.”

Hugh was holding her somehow, and they were outside—not merely of the chamber but of the castle.

“Where are we?” she croaked.

“The garden. I returned from West Sarum this evening to find you huddled over your furnace like a fighter with his last lance. What is going on? The servants tell me you have not eaten or slept all of yesterday or today.”

Joanna took another sip of wine and tried to recollect. “Have I been so long?”

“It would seem so.”

“And you have been away?”

Hugh smiled. “So much for asking if you missed me. I never knew so intent a maid, once you are lost in your work.”

“Do you stop when you are in mid-joust?”

He laughed and waved a chunk of cheese before her eyes. “Eat. Do not talk for a space. Feed yourself and I will tell you of West Sarum, although in truth, there is little to say.” Frowning, he took a drink of wine himself. “I trawled the town for news of David and found none. No one would talk, not even for coins. There were guards around—not many, but enough, and their presence quelled all gossip. And before you ask, I was not stopped or questioned because I was disguised as a herbalist.”

“But—but what wares did you have?” Joanna stammered, trying and failing to imagine Hugh as a herbalist.

“None!” came back the cheerful answer. “I knew I would sell nothing; the West Sarum folk are careful with their chattels. Though I did tell many a goodwife and carpenter about your sage tisane.”

He had remembered that. Joanna felt a rush of tender feeling unbuckle her body. To her horror, her eyes blurred with tears. “Stupid woman!” she muttered, smearing a hand across her face.

“Hey, I know that you like David, but you need not fret. No news means no change.” Hugh dangled a piece of white bread before her. “Agreed?”

Joanna opened her mouth to say that no news meant nothing of the kind, but she felt too dispirited to argue. “You do not need to tempt me like an ailing horse, Hugh.”

“That would make you a nag, eh? Now I know you are not yourself; you would never have left such an easy opening for me, else.” He nodded as she took the bread and began chewing. “So are we agreed?”

“David is not alone in the donjon.”

At her quiet observation Hugh put down the cup of wine. “You do not mean that French fellow, do you, but the older man who is with them. Is he your father? And why, if you are the bishop’s woman, is he in prison? What did he do that was so terrible?”

“He is innocent and has done nothing! We have never done anything, yet we are harried and hunted—” She was so furious that she could no longer speak: the very words seemed to be choking her.

A wall came about her, warm and steady, with a living, beating heart: Hugh, drawing his arms around her waist and easing her so that she rested with her head tucked comfortably into his shoulder. She was on his lap, she realized—how had she simply accepted this before? She had not even struggled!

She thought of squirming now, decided it would be absurd, and wondered again how she had noticed but not noticed her position. Comfort, she thought. She felt comfort and a tingling safety in Hugh’s arms, which was a powerful contradiction. She was his captive, yet she felt safe with him. More than safe. It was pleasing to sit on him, to feel his muscled thighs beneath hers, to sense, by his powerful tension, that he was attracted to her.

After peace, a reckless sense of goading, of pricking him, overcame her. “Are you jealous of the bishop?” she breathed.

He stiffened further and she almost cheered. “I was before,” he said.

It happened between them. Joanna lifted her head and Hugh lowered his and their lips touched.

Volatile yet permanent, Joanna thought, sighing as she closed her eyes and kissed him. For a wild instant she imagined a whole heavenload of stars, shining gold and silver above them. Her eyelids fluttered and she glimpsed Hugh’s eyes, also closed, his lashes dark and lustrous as rare black silk. It was twilight, and the sky was the color of Hugh’s eyes, and the herbs about them were as fragrant as his breath.

“Lovely,” Hugh whispered, tracing her eyebrows, nose, and the gentle curve of her face with his thumb. “A grace of God in truth, and a worker of wonders, besides. I can only destroy, but you—” He kissed her eyes and nose and mouth. “You make, you heal, you read—”

“My father, too,” Joanna prompted, smiling as Hugh smiled at her. The world between them was so all-embracing she wanted to float in it forever, but she must not forget Solomon and he must not forget David.

“Tell me about him,” Hugh said, but now Joanna heard Sir Yves’s heavy tread on the path behind them. She skimmed down from Hugh’s knee onto the bench and they were sitting modestly side by side when Hugh’s father hailed them.

“Hello! Taking in the fresh air? How are you, Joanna? Have you grown more gold?”

“I am in hopes of doing so,” Joanna answered, the reply she had often given the bishop. “I have your elixir ready, my lord.” Seeking to escape before Yves could ask more searching questions, she stepped away from the bench. “I will bring it to you directly.”

“A page can surely do that,” Hugh said, glowering at his father. So far, the two men had not greeted each other.

“I will be quicker.” Joanna moved off, though not before she heard Hugh saying to Yves, “Why must you be always so impatient? Is Joanna not doing enough that you must harry her?”

“Pah! You cannot recognize work when you see it! Not everyone has your lazy streak—”

“I am no more idle than you are a cowardly glutton, Father.”

“How dare you, sir?”

“Say that with our combined forces we might storm the bishop’s palace? Why not? It is the truth.”

“And where are the Templars in this grand plan of yours? Why do you not ask them and hear their answer? You know what it will be because it is madness and cannot be done, yet still you berate me, as you have always done….”

“I berate you? I berate you, Father, when you have filled my days with a thousand, thousand complaints?”

Alarmed that she was the cause of this quarrel, Joanna wove back along the garden path toward the castle, flinching as a moth flew straight out of a lavender bush and fluttered past her head. Above her the sky was now the black of night, sprinkled with stars, and a slender moon.

The moon was new, but it was there now, and it was rising and growing. And when it was full, Lord Thomas would cast her father into the prison pit.

God help me!