I am a lovesick fool, Joanna thought as she crouched behind the pallet. Is that the wittiest thing I could say, after we have been apart so long?

Hugh rushed out onto the landing like a dark storm cloud, the alaunts flashing round him like bolts of lightning. After a few moments he returned, plucking the flask containing the aqua fortis from the floor.

“Hurry!” he said, throwing a second sword to David.

Joanna rose and sped to the door. She must make an effort. “I would have a blade, too,” she said, running round in front of him like one of the dogs. David slipped past to scour the stairs: she would not speak to him.

Hugh stared down at her from his huge, extended height, strapping as an oak tree and twice as dark in his rich borrowed clothes, only his keen, bright eyes showing behind his rough “turban.” Again, her heart raced at the sight: he looked so mysterious, so full of vigor and pith. She wanted to fling her arms about him and have him carry her off, as in those stories she had heard of Saladin.

Tales she had heard from David.

That woke her from her daydream as nothing else could have done. She seized Hugh’s wrist and shook it. “Give me a blade.”

“Take this instead.” He thrust the flask at her, dragged the cloth away from his lips, and before she knew what he was about, dragged his “turban” off his head and smacked a kiss on her mouth. “Haste, wretch, we have scant time.”

Her father—where was he? Joanna scanned the chamber and then heard the unbelievable: Solomon padding upstairs.

“He wants some stuff. I told him to go.” Hugh grabbed her arm and scooped her along, half dragging her over the floor.

“Are you mad? He will be there for an age, choosing, selecting…”

“I told him to take no longer than he can run a hundred paces.”

“Have you seen my father run?”

Hugh laughed—by good nature, she had missed his hearty laugh!—and smacked her lightly on her rump. “Off with you.”

She was not supposed to be speeding onto the landing with her loins tingling, thinking of lovemaking. As her eyes grew accustomed to the shadowy tower and the narrow stair, she knew this was the moment. If they were spotted now, it would go hard for them. The bishop had not yet been missed, but he must be soon, and though David now wore the chain mail of one guard, there was no disguising Hugh.

“I go first,” Hugh said again. “Then you, David, then you, Joanna. Solomon—” He broke off and bawled up the stairs, “Solomon! Come now!”

“That will bring the guards, little brother,” said David, ever joyful these days.

“They will be busy enough, soon,” replied Hugh, and he set off for the stairs, hurling the stool down first and saying to the dogs, “Fly, lads, go down, go on!”

Barking a frenzy, the great white hounds barged forward to do his bidding and in a swirl of teeth and tails careered down the steps. Joanna, gripping the flask, desperate not to drop it or shake it too violently, found herself half tumbling down the narrow stair, striking her shoulders against the wall and central pillar. Conscious of her father coming down slowly behind her, one step at a time, she found herself pressed at one point against David as he stopped suddenly on the stairs.

“Get on!” she hissed, disliking having to touch him.

“Do not order me.”

“Peace, both of you,” called Hugh. “Solomon, are you with us yet?”

“I have quite caught up,” replied her father, as serene as if he was strolling by the river.

“A wonder this, but no one in the bailey has yet noticed,” Hugh whispered back up the stairs.

“The folk here are used to screams from the donjon,” Solomon remarked.

Joanna shivered, thinking again of the oubliette. She studied the flask in her hand: was there enough?

“Our luck may yet hold and we come through sweetly. Maybe we simply walk through the gate. No grief to me to fight, but I’d rather go easy.”

“There is a small postern on the eastern side of the bailey,” Joanna reminded him, feeling her face glow as Hugh said, “Good, good!”

“Can you two not keep silent till we are through this?” grumbled David. He squawked as Joanna moved past him, elbowing him in the ribs.

“What are you about?” Hugh barred her progress with an arm.

“The trapdoor. If I can break the lock there, those poor creatures may have a chance, too.”

She expected Hugh to object but he was already shifting the heavy weights on top of the door. “You pour and I’ll pull,” he said. “Just be sure you have sufficient left for those outside cages. It will make a fine distraction if those prisoners break loose.”

Joanna nodded. “We are of the same thought, Hugo.”

“Hugo! God in heaven!” David sneered, but he subsided when Hugh glared at him.

“You can work, too, brother. Watch by the outer door.”

David stepped across the trapdoor to do as he was bid, muttering to Joanna as he strode by, “You will not last.”

His spite, though startling, did not touch her. Speed, she knew, was vital: she had no moments to waste on the Templar’s change of heart toward her.

Calling out a warning, she poured more of the “strong water” onto the trapdoor lock, ducking her head out of the way of the stifling, acrid fumes. It was best not to think about those trapped in the oubliette, what it would be like to have that scalding, choking liquid cast about head and face….

Hugh was laboring, too, dragging at the huge iron ring on top of the trapdoor, cursing as he struggled. “Solomon, get a ladder! There will be one somewhere close!” he bawled at one point, gulping in a massive breath and straining again, wrestling with the ring as if it was alive.

“Keep back!” he warned as Joanna tried to also seize the ring. The whole door shivered like a dog shaking itself and came free. It groaned open, Hugh red-faced and sweating as he hauled on a door designed to be lifted by two men, and then swung back onto its hinges as he jammed it open with the stool.

He took the short ladder Solomon had found in the debris of tools and fetters by the door and slid it down into the dark. Dropping his water flask into the hole, he called down, “You are free, come out!” and shooed the dogs back.

Joanna tried to see into the tar-black chamber, coughing on the acid fumes and the fouler, older stench of human filth and ordure. Hugh caught her round the waist and lifted her, wriggling, away from the open trapdoor.

“They have their chance.”

“But they may be fettered!”

“A guard,” David said, and they froze, Joanna then gathering her wits and singing a chorus of “King John went a-hunting,” as if she had no cares in the world.

“Gone off to the kitchen,” David reported, and they all sagged a little, in relief.

Hugh clasped Joanna by the shoulders. “We must leave now, sweeting,” he said gently. “Let us free the prisoners in the yard and get out while we may. My men are waiting for us in the city with horses. They will be here by now.”

This was the plan as they had agreed and all she need do was walk out of the donjon to the cages and stop as if to stare at the prisoners while she broke the locks. She picked up the flask again but Hugh took it from her. “I will do that. I will not have you taken hostage again. Go to the eastern postern and wait for me there.”

What he said made sense, but it was hard to leave the tower and leave behind the open, gaping oubliette. As she looked back a final time before slipping through the outer door, Hugh murmured, “Some things we cannot know. Trust to God, girl, and leave it to him.”

Even his provoking use of “girl” could not shift her sense of shame, but at least it made her move. She took one of her father’s rough bundles and slung it over her shoulder, picking up her skirts and preparing to run.