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Mark looked at Lynet. “If you want to live, you whore, you'll take her to her room. I'm sending her back to her father, and he can lock her in a plague hut for all I care.” But he did not look at Iseult as he said this, and Lynet saw the way his whole body trembled.

Queen Iseult gripped Lynet's hand, still looking after Lynet, the bruise beginning on her white, white face. “Come, Lynet.”

They went to the queen's private chamber then, the sunny room where she and her women did their weaving and their needlework. Right behind them came Wellen, King Mark's own steward, an ox of a man who stood as solidly beside his master as a cliff stood beside the sea.

The women in the chamber saw their mistress's state and ran up to her, crying and lamenting and wringing their hands. They lead her to her stool, but before they had any chance to do more, Wellen said, “Out, all of you. Any who stays except the little whore will be held to be guilty of the aiding treason against the king.”

They stared. They saw the dried blood smeared across Queen Iseult's face, and they all understood. They'd known, or most of them had, Lynet could see that now. She had thought she'd been so crafty, but she'd been deaf to the whispers and blind to the winks and the long looks.

They left the queen then, all the women. Not one stayed beside her. Then Wellen walked out behind them, and barred the door.

Lynet couldn't stand anymore. She collapsed at Iseult's feet, fear overwhelming her. She wailed like the terrified child she was while the queen stroked her hair and murmured soothing sounds. When at last she was able to look up, Lynet saw that for all the time she had sobbed, tears had streamed silently down Iseult's cheeks.

Ashamed, she rose and fetched water and washed the queen's face, dabbing at the ugly bruise that spread across her cheek. All the while, one thought repeated itself in her mind. He could kill them. He had the absolute right of king and husband. He could kill them anytime he chose, and no one would do anything about it.

“What can we do, Majesty?” she asked hoarse. “What …”

Iseult patted her hand. “Never fear, Lynet. You will be allowed to go home. My lord husband is not cruel in that way.”

“But he will send you away? He said …”

“Yes.” Iseult rose, resting her hands on the window sill. “He will send my to my father for punishment.” Her long fingers gripped the stone ledge as if she meant to break it to pieces. “Beware your own heart, Lynet. Beware the blindness it can throw over you. Beware …” but she shook her head and could not finish. “Build up the fire, child. The night will be cold.”

The night was cold, and it was long and dark. Lynet huddled on her pallet beside the queen's bed, hungry, terrified, and filled with a sadness so intense it dug its claws into the center of her being.

Despite all this, or perhaps because of it, she did, eventually fall asleep.

She woke befuddled, shivering, and parched to a dead fire and Wellen shouting curses out in the corridor. The door was open. She was alone. The queen was nowhere to be seen.

They found her on the shore beside Sir Tristan who had been left for the carrion birds. She was as dead as he, without a stain upon her. A broken heart some said. Poison said others. It hardly mattered. She was dead, and he was dead, and the whole court was in a frenzy from all of it, and suddenly Lynet found herself in the midst of a nest of furies who called her foul names and struck her face, pinched her body, and pushed her into the mud. She hid trembling in the cellars until Wellen found her there and dragged her out by her hair and tossed her down in front of King Mark and his men in Tintagel's hall. She grovelled at his feet, too afraid even to plead for her life.

“Let her go,” was Mark's sentence. “Let her go back to her father's house and tell him what she has done, and let me never see her face again.”

Wellen himself hauled her to the gates and shoved her through them. Lynet stood outside the keep with no cloak and only slippers on her feet. As she wept, her face pressed against her hands, the rains began. Only the kindness of one of the horsemen saved her from having to make the journey on foot. He loaned her a broken-winded nag that would not be missed too much, so at least she could ride.

But the rain and the blows and the sorrow were too much, and by the time Lynet reached Cambryn, she had a raging fever and could not even stand. For weeks she lay insensible. By the time she woke, her family knew all that she had been and done.

So too did the rest of Cambryn, and all the lands of Dumonii.

It was this that had been behind Mesek's smirks and sneering slights in the old hall. The judgment of Lord Kenan's children, her judgment, was such that it cuckolded kings and killed queens and knights. And who knew what else she had done? Lynet bowed her head until her brow pressed against the knuckles of her clenched hands. Who knew what favors she had accepted from Sir Tristan to be his errand girl? The rumors ran wide and deep that her virtue was in every respect long gone.

For two years now she had lived with all of this — memory, guilt and shame and the desperate need to protect her family's pride. She had learned to wear a mask of dignity and calm, but sometimes it slipped, like now. And when it did, the pain showed through and there seemed to be nothing she could do but weep a fresh river and hate herself that much more. Her folly had trapped her and she would never be any more than the tainted creature she was now.

So she knelt and she prayed and the stones bit her knees through the cloth of her skirt, and she could do nothing else. Nothing at all.

“Laurel thought you might be here,” came Bishop Austell's soft voice.

Lynet opened her eyes and wiped hastily at her tears. Her fingers ached from being clenched so hard and so long. Bishop Austell knelt beside her, crossing himself and bowing his head. His lips moved in silent prayer. Lynet bowed her head once more too, not to pray but to collect herself. By the time the bishop had breathed the “amen,” she was able to stand with him. She brushed her skirts into some semblance of order and faced him with dry eyes and reasonably composed countenance. This all elicited a surprisingly gentle smile from the bishop. Bishop Austell had a hard visage. It was a tinner's face; craggy and pitted, seamed and brown. He'd been a tinner, in fact, before God called him to the monastery. He'd been a little surprised, he told her once. He had thought the Lord predisposed toward fishermen, of which the Dumonii had a gracious plenty. But for all his coarse exterior, there was deep kindness within him, and an understanding of the mercy of the Divine, as well as the wrath.

Today, mercy was plainly in his heart. “Is there anything you'd like to tell me, child?” he asked kindly.

“Nothing new, good Bishop.” Lynet rubbed her brow and temple. Her eyes ached, and her head felt too heavy for her neck.

“Did one of the men say something to you?”

Not yet.
“Nothing openly, no. They hinted. It was enough.”

Bishop Austell took her hands between his own and gently folded them together in an attitude fitted to prayer. The gesture warmed her chill, making it somehow easier to breathe at the same time. “You are of stronger stuff than this, Lynet.”

Which was more than Lynet could bear. She drew away from his kindness, pulling back her hands, drawing down her knotted sleeves as if to hide them. “No, Bishop Austell, it seems I am not.”

But the bishop was not prepared to let her be. He laid his big, hard hand on her shoulder, turning her so she must face him. “You have done your penance, Lynet,” he said gently but firmly, ducking his head to catch her eye. “God has forgiven you. It is a sin not to accept that forgiveness.”

“I know it,” her voice quavered and her feet twitched painfully at the memory. She did know. She knew in the depth of her heart, but that heart was so frozen in its own darkness that it would not move. “But until I can forget, how can I forgive?”

“We are told the greatest virtue is charity. Spare some charity for yourself.”

Lynet wanted no more of this. “I will try, Bishop.”

“Will you?” Bishop Austell straightened as far as he was able. Age and prayer had stooped his back. Neither, however, had dulled his wit, and he saw easily she wanted to make her escape. “It's a sin to lie to your confessor, Lynet.”

She turned her face away. It was no help, for now she looked into the strained and sorrowing faces of the Christ and the Holy Mother, carved to show such delicate poignancy, and remind her what true suffering was.

She dropped her gaze to the flagstone floor. “Should you not be down at the tinning? Lest celebration fall into debauchery?”

With this not so subtle hint, Bishop Austell sighed. “Father Lucius has a sharper eye for debauchery than myself. He will hold the line. I judged your brother more in need of help.”

Lynet cursed herself silently. All her wallowing in self-pity had left Laurel and Colan alone. “How is it in there?”

“Calm. Polite, in a rough fashion. Strained.” The bishop looked toward the door, seeing something distant. “It has been agreed that Colan will hear this plea in the morning.”

Lynet swallowed. “God help us.”

Bishop Austell nodded. “That is my prayer. But I think it bears repeating.” He appraised her with his bird-bright eyes. “Are you ready, Lynet? There will be much asked of you today.”

She straightened her spine. Much asked, and she must meet it. Her only future was in aiding this house and its holders. She had set her feet on the path, and though they ached, she must not turn from it.

“Yes, Bishop, I am.”

Bishop Austell stood aside to let her pass. Lynet walked into the corridor, but even as she did, she felt the weight of his gaze on her back. Not just his, she felt all the Divine that waited there in the chapel watching her, and she shivered.

But Lynet could do nothing except to keep walking.

Lynet found herself able to plunge quickly into the whirl of work that accompanied finding room, food, water, clean clothing, bedding, and space for ten men who had brought nothing but their weapons and horses with them. Even the constant ache in her feet was a welcome distraction. It was far from the first time she and Laurel had fulfilled such duties in their father's house, and their people knew their business as well as the sisters did. Consequently, all was handled with what Lynet judged to be creditable dispatch.

The hardest work was in managing proper lodging and feasting, yet keeping the two peoples apart. Colan busied himself with their chiefs, keeping the men talking peaceably of the prospects for a fair spring and summer, of the health of their cattle and horses, of the latest news and gossip from Tintagel and from Camelot. The Kynhoem and Treanhal, though, had been only partly mollified by the truce their chiefs had struck for the day. They were more than ready to trade blunt glowers and bald insults that could have easily escalated to taunts and blows. Fortunately, both Peran and Mesek recognized the problem, and were not adverse to having their men make themselves useful. At Laurel and Lynet's bidding, their guests helped shift stores, work the stables and dig out the cellar that had collapsed under winter's blows.

It was a precarious peace, but it did hold through the evening meal. In this, they were lucky with the timing of these new arrivals. It was the custom to finish the day's celebrations by feasting the tinners and their folk in the high house, so, the old hall was filled to the brim with a boisterous, merry crowd. It was no struggle to keep Kynhoem and Treanhal at separate tables. Lynet herself saw that their trenchers and their mugs were kept equally full, allowing none breath for more than praise or song. Both food and drink were as generous as could be for so early in the spring — soup of salted fish, bacon and lentils, hot boiled goose in a cold sauce of pepper and coriander, a stew of last year's apples and plums, the finest and freshest of the bread, and great quantities of beer to wash all down pleasantly. With all this bounty, the feast lasted until well after the sun had gone down. Some among the guests could no longer stand with certainty by its end. Laurel, anticipating this, made sure there were some broad-shouldered lads to lead them gently but firmly to their quarters. Ordinarily, they would have housed most of the new comers in the great hall for the night, but Laurel judged, and Lynet agreed, that it would be more prudent to keep them well out of each others sight. So, while Lynet had supervised the feasting, Laurel had dealt with the rearrangement of persons and goods, and the grumbling that must come with that, to make places in the smaller chambers of the new hall for all ten. Mesek and Peran agreed to be conducted to their separate chambers by Laurel herself, and Bishop Austell.

While her sister saw to that important business, Lynet lent hand and eye to making sure the good linens and plate were safely returned to the cellars, that the great fires were banked, and most importantly, that the wine and beer were stored securely back under cork and wax. She kept in motion, for the ache in her feet and back and the fog in her mind told her that if she stopped, she would fall asleep in a moment.

Colan alone remained at the high table, swirling the dregs in his cup, seemingly lost in thought.

Or lost in wine.
Lynet mounted the dais and plucked the cup from his fingers. “Colan, get to bed. You'll do no one any good if you are exhausted in the morning.”

But he only eyed her, lacing his fingers together across his stomach and stretching his long legs out under the trestle table.

“Well, my sister, what do you think of this matter?”

Lynet snorted. “You ask me? I believed you to be above woman's council.”
Especially this woman's.

“Come now. You mistook my jokes.” His grin turned rueful as he took the cup back and swallowed the last of the wine. “My fault, I know. But what do you think?”

His tone was so serious it left her no choice but to answer in kind. She rubbed her eyes, trying to clear them. “I think you'll need all your wits about you on the morrow. This could easily mean war.”