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“B y the saints, look at her. She is a beauty.”

They had progressed as far as the mews, where Gryff took Tiffin from her cage. Hal looked the falcon over while Gryff breathed in the smell of the place, awash in memories. He had not felt so content since he had left Lancaster’s household.

“You have not known her weight at all since the Epiphany?”

“Nay, we have been forced to live wild and her diet has been whatever could be hunted in the winter woods. It has been a little easier these last weeks, now spring is come, God be praised.”

“She seems in perfect health.” Hal kept his eyes on the bird but put a hand to Gryff’s shoulder again, squeezing. “It’s in his blood, little Tiffany,” he said with a confidential air. “There are few who could care for you so well.”

Gryff tensed, suddenly remembering they were not alone. He caught Hal’s eye and gave a meaningful glance in Nan’s direction, muttering, “There are fewer still who know aught of my blood.”

Seeing Hal was the only thing that could have made him forget Nan for whole minutes. His friend had as yet taken no notice of her at all. She hung back, watching them silently from the doorway as though hesitant to come inside.

Hal only gave the barest nod of understanding to Gryff, his brows flicked upward in curiosity. He turned to see Nan framed in the doorway and his brows rose further. Even with the late afternoon light behind her and her face shadowed, she was so comely that a man could do little more than stare.

Gryff introduced her as a servant of Morency, and said only that they had met on the road and were recently come from Wragby. Let the full story be told later, when he had time to explain all of his strange journey over these last five years.

When Hal said he was pleased to offer her his hospitality, Nan shook her head and spoke.

“I will leave you now, but first I would ask if you know the woman I seek. She is...” Nan faltered for only an instant.

Her eyes had been lowered in an unusually deferential manner, but now she met Hal’s gaze.

“I am told she is a common whore, mayhap a bawd, and lives just outside the walls of Lincoln. Her name was once Beatrice, though she may be called different now, and her hair is like mine.”

In spite of the distance between them, Gryff could feel her tension. It radiated off her, her jaw clenched tight as she blinked at Hal, expectant. He did not know what she imagined the answer might be, but he saw she was bracing herself for it.

“Her hair?” echoed Hal, politely confused.

She had put up her hood when they had entered the church, and now she pushed it back from her face.

Beneath it, the plain blue kerchief only showed her hair at the edges, so she reached over her shoulder to untuck the cloth and pull a sheaf forward.

It fell shining to her waist, little ripples of golden silk that flowed over her breast to her belt.

Gryff could still feel it between his fingers, cool and soft, the first touch he had stolen from her.

“Bettie,” said Hal immediately. “She is called Bargate Bettie.” He was looking at Nan a little doubtfully, a little curiously. “She is a bawd, aye, and her place is south of Bargate bridge.”

She nodded and tucked her hair behind her, pulling the hood back up.

None of the tension had left her. Gryff saw her snap her fingers for Fuss before she remembered that the dog, still wary of birds, had not followed her inside the mews.

In the moment that she paused, it struck him that she would leave now. Without a word, she would leave him.

The elation of finding Hal was swept aside, replaced by a formless fear.

No more would he find her by his side when the memories froze him, or stole his sleep.

Tomorrow he would wake to the dangerous world again – and she would not be there to steady him with her quiet acceptance of that danger, her acceptance of him. He might never hear her silence again.

He tried to move his tongue to thank her, but the words would not come. Mere thanks were inadequate. You saved me , he wanted to say. So much had she done for him – and what had he done for her in return, but steal touches and cause her to shrink from him?

“It is unwise to go there now.” Hal spoke emphatically, stopping her just as she was turning to go. “It is no place for decent women to wander, if they would be safe from lecherous rogues.”

“That’s no concern to me,” she assured him.

Hal scoffed at this, incredulous, and Nan looked to Gryff, her eyes meeting his directly for the first time since he had kissed her.

It startled him, but he did not shy from it.

His friend looked at her and saw only her slight stature, her youth and her beauty.

Hal did not know how much more there was to her.

“She will be safe,” said Gryff, holding her steady blue gaze.

He wanted to put everything into his look, all the things he did not know how to say – apologies and thanks and hopes that they would meet again – but he was not as eloquent with his silence as she was.

He only looked for as long as he could into the blue that burned him.

“It will be full dark soon, and it is far,” Hal protested. He was adamant. “Nor will Bettie have time to greet you at the hour when her trade is most brisk. Come, I beg you will have sense. In the morning I will take you to her. Never will my wife forgive me, do I let you go to such a place alone.”

A hint of doubt came into Nan’s face. She glanced over her shoulder to see the setting sun – and then down to find her dog sprawled in the dirt outside, chin on his paws, perfectly content. She seemed to consider for a long time before giving a reluctant nod.

Hal beamed. Gryff tried not to, and then turned to ask his friend when he had acquired a wife.

“M onks!” Hal had shouted with laughter at first, but by now he had settled into intermittent bursts of chuckling.

If it weren’t for the child sprawled on his chest, almost asleep at last, he probably would still be howling.

“Five years with monks – and you tell me they were the kind who stayed true to their vows! I am full amazed you have lived through it.”

Gryff couldn’t help laughing a little himself, largely because of the sleepy child whose face pulled into a reflexive grin, eyes still closed, in response to her father’s humor.

She was barely a year old, and her brother born only two months ago.

Hal had lived a very different life for these last five years than had Gryff.

“The vow of chastity they kept, it’s true, but had they kept a perfect poverty I think me I would have perished long ago. The abbot loved his hawking too well, and I thank God for it. It is how your father knew Brother Clement, and why I was taken in.”

“He never spoke of it.” Hal’s hand covered the little girl’s back, gently patting, urging her to sleep.

“Never did he breathe a word of your flight, nor did he betray that he knew aught of where you had gone. Not even when Lancaster questioned him. In his last hour he whispered to me that you were safe, but no more than that.”

Moris had died a year ago, a fact that came out as they had sat down for a meal with Hal’s wife and children.

The rare letters sent to Brother Clement were the source of the few precious scraps of information that had come to Gryff over the years in hiding, and the last had said that Hal’s father was ailing.

It struck him that the letter was turned to ashes now.

So was the one that had informed him that Hal had gone to Lincoln, and the one that announced his own father was dead, and his brothers.

The letter that described the execution of the last Welsh rebel Dafydd and the imprisonment of his sons – that too had been eaten by flame.

Hal glanced toward the stairs. His wife had disappeared there with the baby, saying she would return to see to their comfort as soon as the boy was fed and sleeping.

But Hal said she was like to fall asleep herself, tired and overworked since they had found no replacement for the maidservant who had recently left them.

Nan was upstairs too, obviously astounded she would be given a bed and an entire room all to herself for the night.

Now that he and Hal were alone, they could speak more freely.

“He feared for you, Hal, else I would have bid you farewell ere I ran away.” He looked at Hal’s thumb brushing against his daughter’s curls. “If I have brought danger to you by coming here, he will haunt me.”

“Nay,” said Hal. “Never would he fault you for coming to me. Nor do I believe you put me in peril.”

“Think you there is no danger to me from the king?” The question came out of him as half-challenge, half-hope.

“I know little of the king except which birds he cares to fly when he comes to Lincoln. But I have heard of no reward offered for you, and that has been some little comfort. You did well to come here now, when the season is done and the birds put up for the moult.”

They both knew Gryff must decide what to do before the season began again.

Hal was as excellent a falconer as his father had been, and kept a mews favored by the king himself.

But a falconer was a servant, not a confidant, and so Gryff could not expect his friend to know all the tidings of court and king.

“Have you seen aught of Will these five years past?”

“He writes often to ask advice of me for his birds, though his own falconer has skill the equal of mine.” Hal’s face split into a smile. “He is nothing like he was as a boy, except for that.”

Gryff smiled to remember it. “Still looking for a fast friend, you mean?”