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W hen asked if she had nowhere else to go, little Cecilia said she was orphaned.

She came from a village not far from Lincoln, but there had been no one to take her in when her mother died.

She had come to town to look for work, and found it here in the brothel.

Nan sat silently through the child’s explanations that she knew she should be grateful, and was.

Bettie kept a good house and never beat her, and she didn’t want to be disobedient.

She was sorry, she said. Over and over again, she said she was sorry that she was too frightened to do her duty, until Nan could bear it no more.

“Don’t you never be sorry for it.” She was surprised by the sob that almost escaped her. She felt scraped-out and hollow, incapable of so much feeling. “Don’t you never let no one say it’s your duty. Nor will I let it be your fate.”

She bade the girl lie down and sleep now, and sent Fuss to curl up beside her.

She had to look away from them, because the sight almost caused the sob inside her to come loose again.

When asked if she wanted Nan to find her a new place, somewhere she might do hard but respectable work, Cecilia had readily agreed.

Nan stared at the battered door of the room for hours, trying to think of a suitable place that would accept the child.

Somewhere safe and protected. But every thought skittered away from her, impossible to hold on to.

Her mind was a wasteland. There was only this door and the night.

There was only waiting for the morn, when she must open the door to face her sister.

A footfall made her heart jump. She drew her dagger and looked quickly to Fuss, who was so deep in sleep he did not even twitch when a soft voice called, “Do you wake?”

She stretched out a staying hand in Fuss’ direction in case he should wake, and opened the door a crack. It was Rosy, her red hair reflecting the light from the candle she held.

“Will you be staying with Cissy, then?” she whispered with a glance toward the pallet where the girl lay. “Only the tanner – him as has been wanting her – he went off to the tavern. He was cursing all the way and saying he will return for what he was promised.”

Nan nodded, and wondered if she should say anything more about her plans, what little she had of them. It was so strange, to be looked at in this way by these girls – as though she knew what to do, or had any kind of authority.

From her memory rose a vision of the woman who had put herself between Nan and that lustful lord so long ago, how she stood so proud and tall and unyielding.

And then she thought of her lady, burning with conviction and radiating power as she carried Nan away to safety.

They had seemed avenging angels to her, the women who had saved her.

Had they felt this way, deep inside? Uncertain and fearful and small?

“She’s a good girl,” said Rosy, her eyes on the sleeping child. “It’s not a bad place here, truly. But I do remember well how I had dreams of escaping this life once. It’s a hard thing for a girl to accustom herself to.”

Nan looked at this young woman who looked no more than sixteen years old, who was already so jaded and yet still wistful. “Where did you dream you would go,” she asked, “if ever you escaped?”

“To the sisters of the Magdalene,” she replied promptly. “I will go someday, if ever I find a way to manage it.”

A convent. It might be a solution, if there were no other way.

Nan pulled her inside the room so they could speak in the assurance that none would hear them.

She questioned the girl, and learned how as a child Rosy had hoped to live with Benedictine sisters.

But having no dowry to give the Church, she fell into working life instead, and then into a whore’s life a year ago.

She had never intended to stray so far from decency, she said, but then no one did.

There were few options when circumstances were dire.

All the while she spoke, Nan looked between these two girls and thanked God, over and over again.

Good fortune and unexpected kindness and unearned mercy, that’s all that had kept her from a place like this.

She was painfully aware that the only real difference between her and her sister was their luck.

That was what she had told herself these last few days.

Now she knew there was something more than circumstance, something fundamental in their natures.

You are so different none would believe you were sisters, Aunt Mary had said.

She had tried to warn her, but Nan had not wanted to believe it. She still did not want to believe it.

But what she wanted did not matter. It did not matter at all.

“If you would leave this house and this life,” she heard herself say, “I will see you safe away. But it must be now, when morning comes.”

Rosy sat up straight from her slump against the wall, near to dozing off. “But...I’ve nowhere to go, nor coin to give the sisters to take me in. And there are the customers, Bettie won’t want me going off with no warn–”

“I will see you safe away from here.” She looked the girl straight in the eye. She spoke it as an oath, a vow between them, certain and steady and true. “I will let no evil befall you.”

As the words fell from her lips, she was suddenly sure of herself and her course again.

If only just for a day, she would take these lives under her protection.

The enormity of it pressed on her. This was the debt she owed, one that she would happily repay a thousand times over.

But now she understood, as the girl stared at her with hopeful eyes, how heavy was the weight of a life, a soul. Two of them.

She saw the moment when Rosy believed her, the threshold where doubt dissolved into certainty. The girl nodded and said, “I will take these hours to think on it, then.”

They turned down the lamp and sat in silence, waiting for the dawn.

Nan listened to the girls’ fragile breath in the dark, and took her time with her prayers.

She asked God to bless and care for those who had protected her when she was vulnerable.

She began, as she always did, with her Aunt Mary who had shouted that she’d not let Nan be sold to a filthy lecher.

She ended with Gwenllian, her teacher and friend, who had given her the gift of knowing how to protect herself.

She held the vision of Gwenllian in her mind, the first time she’d ever seen her with blade in hand – so beautiful and fierce – as daylight filtered into the little room. Fuss was looking at her, expectant, and little Cecilia opened her eyes.

“We leave now,” Nan said, and turned to Rosy. “Do you join us?”

At the girl’s nod, she stood and gathered her few possessions.

At her belt she tied the purse of nails, strings loosened so she might reach them easily if needed.

Every blade was put into place – at the front of her belt, in the back, her boot, her garter, the braces on her arms. Her fingers pressed briefly against the dagger in her bodice, her heart’s protection, and she prayed today would not be the day she must draw it.

They need only walk out. The house typically did not rouse until midmorning, and all was quiet at this early hour.

Still, she felt a foreboding that caused her to clutch hard at the small bag of belongings over her shoulder while she rested a hand on the knife at her belt.

When she asked the girls if there was aught they would take with them, only Rosy nodded and said she would gather her cloak from her room.

Just as they neared the end of the corridor, Fuss let out a bark. He had followed Rosy around the corner into her room and now there were voices shouting, all while Fuss made enough noise to wake the dead.

In an instant, Nan had a blade in one hand and a nail in the other.

She pulled little Cecilia around the corner with her by instinct, not wanting to let the girl out of her sight.

The smell that greeted her told her it was the tanner come back, as promised.

In the room she saw him – a tall, thin man shouting drunkenly as he fell onto a small bed.

Then she saw a flame of red hair flick out from beneath him and heard Rosy cry out.

Nan only made the nail graze his ear because she did not want him to keel over onto the girl.

When he reached up to clap a hand to the side of his bleeding head, Rosy darted out.

She was clutching her cloak to her, and she wasted no time getting away from him.

But he snatched at her dress and yanked her back, so Nan stepped forward and drew her blade across the back of his leg, just above the knee, to sever the sinew. He dropped like a stone.

“Fuss!” she said sharply, with a stamp of her foot, and he settled down to a growl. The drunken man was howling, though, and the girls were staring at the blood, so there was no hope of a quiet exit now.

She would feel no guilt for crippling a man who would bed a child, but it meant that trouble was more likely to follow them. They must move swiftly now and without hesitation, for she was a stranger in this town and the might of Morency was far away.

She hastily slung her bag crossways over Rosy’s shoulder, so she could move unencumbered. After a bare instant of thought, she chose the dagger from the back of her belt to put in the older girl’s hand, then pulled the small silver knife from the garter at her knee to give to the younger girl.

There were voices in the corridor now, moving toward them.

The drunken man on the bed was trying to rise and come at her but his leg collapsed beneath him.

His bellow followed them as they moved past sleepy women emerging from their rooms, and down the stairs until they reached the place where she had left Bea last night.