The worst of it was, Aliena felt partly responsible. It was her father’s estate, and she and Richard had failed to win it back for the family. They had given up, when William became earl and Aliena lost all her money; but the failure still rankled, and she had not forgotten her vow to her father.

On the road from Winchester to Shiring, with a wagon-load of yarn and a brawny carter with a sword at his belt, she remembered riding along the very same road with her father. He had constantly brought new land into cultivation, by clearing areas of forest, draining marshland, or plowing hillsides. In bad years he always put aside enough seed to supply the needs of those who were too improvident, or just too hungry, to save their own. He never forced tenants to sell their beasts or their plows to pay rent, for he knew that if they did that, they would be unable to farm the following year. He had treated the land well, maintaining its capacity to produce, the way a good farmer would take care of a dairy cow.

Whenever she thought of those old days, with her clever, proud, rigid father beside her, she felt the pain of loss like a wound. Life had started to go wrong when he had been taken away. Everything she had done since then seemed, in retrospect, to have been hollow: living at the castle with Matthew, in a dreamworld; going to Winchester in the vain hope of seeing the king; even struggling to support Richard while he fought in the civil war. She had achieved what other people saw as success: she had become a prosperous wool merchant. But that had brought her only a semblance of happiness. She had found a way of life and a place in society that gave her security and stability, but in her heart she had still been hurt and lost-until Jack came into her life.

Her inability to marry Jack had blighted everything since. She had come to hate Prior Philip, whom she had once looked up to as her savior and mentor. She had not had a happy, amiable conversation with Philip for years. Of course, it was not his fault that they could not get an annulment; but it was he who had insisted they live apart, and Aliena could not help resenting him for that.

She loved her children, but she worried about them, being brought up in such an unnatural household, with a father who went away at bedtime. So far, happily, they showed no ill effects: Tommy was a strapping, good-looking boy who liked football, races and playing soldiers; and Sally was a sweet, thoughtful girl who told stories to her dolls and loved to watch Jack at his tracing floor. Their constant needs and their simple love were the one solidly normal element in Aliena’s eccentric life.

She still had her work, of course. She had been a merchant of some kind for most of her adult life. At present she had dozens of men and women in scattered villages spinning and weaving for her in their homes. A few years ago there had been hundreds, but she was feeling the effects of the famine like everyone else, and there was no point in making more cloth than she could sell. Even if she were married to Jack she would still want to have her own independent work.

Prior Philip kept saying the annulment could be granted any day, but Aliena and Jack had now been living this infuriating life for seven long years, eating together and bringing up their children and sleeping apart.

She felt Jack’s unhappiness more painfully than her own. She adored him. Nobody knew how much she loved him, except perhaps his mother, Ellen, who saw everything. She loved him because he had brought her back to life. She had been like a caterpillar in a cocoon, and he had drawn her out and shown her that she was a butterfly. She would have spent her entire life numb to the joys and pains of love, if he had not walked into her secret glade, and shared his story-poems with her, and kissed her so lightly, and then slowly, gently, awakened the love that lay dormant in her heart. He had been so patient, so tolerant, despite his youth. For that she would always love him.

As she passed through the forest she wondered whether she would run into Jack’s mother, Ellen. They saw her occasionally, at a fair in one of the towns; and about once a year she would sneak into Kingsbridge at dusk and spend the night with her grandchildren. Aliena felt an affinity for Ellen: they were both oddities, women who did not fit into the mold. However, she emerged from the forest without seeing Ellen.

As she traveled through farmland she checked the crops ripening in the fields. It would be a fair harvest, she estimated. They had not had a good summer, for there had been some rain and it had been cold. But they had not had the floods and crop diseases which had blighted the last three harvests. Aliena was thankful. There were thousands of people living right on the edge of starvation, and another bad winter would kill most of them.

She stopped to water her oxen at the pond in the middle of a village called Monksfield, which was part of the earl’s estate. It was a fairly large place, surrounded by some of the best land in the county, and it had its own priest and a stone church. However, only about half the fields round about had been sown this year. Those that had been were now covered with yellow wheat, and the rest were sprouting weeds.

Two other travelers had stopped at the pond in the middle of the village to water their horses. Aliena looked at them warily. Sometimes it was good to team up with other people, for mutual protection; but it could be risky, too, for a woman. Aliena found that a man such as her carter was perfectly willing to do what she told him when they were alone, but if other men were present he was liable to become insubordinate.

However, one of the two travelers at Monksfield pond was a woman. Aliena looked more closely and revised woman to girl. Aliena recognized her. She had last seen this girl in Kingsbridge Cathedral on Whitsunday. It was Countess Elizabeth, the wife of William Hamleigh.

She looked miserable and cowed. With her was a surly man-at-arms, obviously her bodyguard. That could have been my fate, Aliena thought, if I had married William. Thank God I rebelled.

The man-at-arms nodded curtly to the carter and ignored Aliena. She decided not to suggest teaming up.

While they were resting, the skies turned black and a sharp wind whipped up. “Summer storm,” said Aliena’s carter succinctly.

Aliena looked anxiously at the sky. She did not mind getting wet, but the storm would slow their progress, and they might find themselves out in the open at nightfall. A few drops of rain fell. They would have to take shelter, she decided reluctantly.

The young countess said to her guard: “We’d better stay here for a bit.”

“Can’t do that,” the guard said brusquely. “Master’s orders.”

Aliena was outraged to hear the man speak to the girl that way. “Don’t be such a fool!” she said. “You’re supposed to look after your mistress!”

The guard looked at her in surprise. “What’s it to you?” he said rudely.

“There’s going to be a cloudburst, idiot,” Aliena said in her most aristocratic voice. “You can’t ask a lady to travel in such weather. Your master will flog you for your stupidity.” Aliena turned to Countess Elizabeth. The girl was looking eagerly at Aliena, visibly pleased to see someone standing up to the bullying bodyguard. It started to rain in earnest. Aliena made a snap decision. “Come with me,” she said to Elizabeth.

Before the guard could do anything she had taken the girl by the hand and walked away. Countess Elizabeth went willingly, grinning like a child let out of school. Aliena had an inkling that the guard might come after them and snatch her away, but at that moment there was a lightning flash and the shower became a storm. Aliena broke into a run, pulling Elizabeth with her, and they raced through the graveyard to a wooden house that stood beside the church.