She was hurried into the chamber by the two bored-looking, scarred guards she did not know. The smaller of the two knew Joanna, though, or thought he did.

“You have a visitor,” he told David and Solomon, as soon as the door was bolted. “The lady of my lord bishop. You will conduct yourselves accordingly. None of your odd, Eastern manners!”

To her, he said, “If you will but sit on the bench before the fire, my lady, I will bring the men to you.”

David and her father might have been half a league away, not a few paces. So simple and tempting it was, to cross the dusty floor tiles and ancient strewing herbs to where Solomon was, in his favored place, standing beneath the arrow slit and torch. He had been reading a text by torchlight, but now he rolled up his parchment and smiled.

Shalom, he mouthed as the guard turned to beckon David, a greeting that wrung tears of longing to her eyes. Eagerly she marked the tiny changes in him. His beard had a few more gray hairs. His fingers were stained with sulphurs and his own favorite herb, alkanet. His face was more fleshed out. His dark eyes twinkled at her.

That he was hale and whole and in possession of his wits was better than she had dared to hope. She had been so afraid for him, so terrorized at the thought of the malice of Bishop Thomas against him, especially when she was held hostage by Hugh. For so long this slight, stooping father of hers was all she had.

To stop herself doing something foolish or giving herself away—for this new guard did not seem to know that one of the prisoners was her own father—Joanna forced herself to step to the fireplace.

She could sense David and her father watching. Solomon was still smiling.

Does he not recognize the danger we are now in? The thought made her annoyed, then ashamed. Her father was otherworldly, with his mind on the starry heavens. Perhaps it was a blessing he was as he was—he could cope with imprisonment as he had coped with the many blows life had dealt him: with a mild, sanguine heart.

David was different. With the grace she remembered in him, he strolled to the bench with the guard. As he paused, awaiting further orders, his face remained impassive, no longer open and boyish. He had, she realized with a pang, some new gray hairs amidst his fair hair. A legacy of his time in the prison pit? Was he pleased to see her? She did not know.

“I bring news from your brother!” she wanted to burst out. “We are striving to free you!” Their previous ease, when she and David had spoken of Jerusalem and the great Arab scholars, seemed impossible to recover.

“You, sit here,” said the smaller guard to David, pointing to one end of the bench. “You, there.” He pointed to the other end of the bench.

The two men settled where indicated and she was perched between them, all three of them staring at the two cups in her hand and then at the small fire in the grate.

“Sir, have you another two cups, please?” Joanna asked. “Then we might all partake of the bishop’s bounty.”

Panic crawled over the guard’s face. The ale had stopped foaming, but it was clear he believed it a lethal brew. He stared at the copper cups with hesitant fascination.

“I will see if there is another cup for you,” he said, stepping away from the fire with alacrity.

“You escaped my brother,” David whispered in Latin. “Pray God that you do not fall into his hands again.”

The harshness of his voice chilled Joanna.

“I am here because of Hugh!” she began, desperate to explain.

David shook his head, his thin mouth a wire of disapproval. “Not on my account,” he replied, misunderstanding her. “You do nothing for others, my lady.”

“That is not true!” To her horror, she realized that she and Hugh had erred. They had not thought of any message or token that she could deliver to David to show her true intent. How could we forget, she berated herself, but knew the answer all too well. For the last mile of their journey she had been consumed with dread for Hugh.

“We are striving together in this,” she said, but David turned away from her on the bench, as if he blamed her for his imprisonment in both donjon and prison pit.

“It is good you are home safe, daughter.” Solomon spoke for the first time, holding out a hand to receive one of the cups.

Joanna leaned toward him. When their hands touched, she wanted to kneel at his feet and wail forgiveness for having been away and now, with her return, for being the reason he was back in the donjon. All she could think to say was the bald truth. “I am truly sorry you are here.”

“No matter. You will continue the work.” Solomon drank from the cup, giving a sigh of pleasure. “When he is ready to speak to me again, David and I will continue our disputations.”

The guard was returning from turning out the contents of a chest, carrying a pewter cup.

“That will not do,” Joanna said at once. “I am sorry, but the bishop said that for this potion to work, the cup must be the color of the sun, either gold or copper.”

Together, the two guards glanced at the scatter of objects beside the chest. “There are none such here,” said the smaller one.

Joanna, her heart hammering afresh as she told lie upon lie, spread the fingers of her free hand. “I am very sorry. The bishop was most insistent on the point.”

The guard looked ready to kick her and the useless contents of the chest about the room.

“I have two more copper cups within my chamber.” Joanna rose from the bench. “If you allow it, sir, it is the work of moments for me to fetch them. I am sorry, indeed, that I did not think.”

“Go, then,” the guard interrupted, mollified by her apology.

Before he or his companion changed their minds, Joanna moved to the door.

Running upstairs, she found the cups and wrote a hasty note for her father. Returning to the first-floor chamber, she fretted outside the door until the guards readmitted her.

“Here we are.” She displayed the copper goblets and hurried to the fire to pour the contents of the remaining cup between three. As she did so, she skimmed the slip of parchment along the bench to her father.

Quick as a waterfall, David fell upon the note and hefted it aloft, his eyes glinting with triumph.

“The lady is passing messages.” His accusation echoed round the stone walls.

“David,” said Solomon, mildly, as if all the Templar had done was to point out a mistake in her pouring.

“What is this?” The smaller guard had the paper now and was squinting at it furiously.

“You are mistaken.” Joanna was so furious, so hurt, she wanted to lash out at the man she once thought of as a friend, but she could do far more than that. “I heard a blackbird call this morning and have written down the song in the language of birds. My lord bishop said that Solomon had a delight in such matters.”

“I do indeed.” Her father understood at once. The language of birds was a veiled reference to alchemy, of which, pray God, David had no knowledge. “Blackbirds and wrens and eagles.”

She appealed directly to the guard, who, between shooting dark looks between her, David, and Solomon, had laid out the slip of parchment on the palm of his hand. “Does that appear as any writing you know, sir?”

“It does not,” the guard said, peering again at the alchemical symbols, “although it may be code.” He showed it to his fellow guard, who nodded.

“Then take it to my lord,” said Joanna at once. “It is no grief to me.” She sensed David’s baleful glare at her use of one of his brother’s phrases but ignored him. Her breath kept stopping in her throat as she willed the guard to pass the note to her father.

Solomon spoke directly to David. “You should try the fortified ale. It is most agreeable.”

David folded his arms and kicked at a fallen log in the fireplace.

“Then I shall drink yours.” Still appalled by his malicious attempt to make trouble, Joanna drained the second cup and offered one of the other copper goblets to the nearest guard. She smiled in a winning way, pretending in that moment that she was giving the cup to Hugh. “For your patience and courtesy, sir.”

Stepping forward, the guard reached his decision. He flung the note on the fire and took the cup.

“To your health, my lady. Next time, you must sing the song of the blackbird to us, so we might all enjoy it.” He sipped the drink and nodded, possibly in approval. “I will keep the cups.”

It was a dismissal. Fearing that there would be no “next time,” Joanna rose to her feet. She did not know, now, what the guards might say to the steward, or to Bishop Thomas. She did not know when she might be allowed to visit again. Close to tears of frustration, her reunion with her father shattered before it had even begun, she had no choice but to walk around the bench to the door.

She could have avoided passing David but she deliberately brushed past him, allowing her long skirts to slap against his legs.