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“Now, my dear, there is nothing to fear here,” Berengaria said gently. “Come. Let me aid you.”

“How?” Ali said, easing her way out of the alcove. “By spelling me to death?”

“Oh, by the saints,” Jason said, rising and taking Ali by the arm. He pulled her bodily back into the alcove and pushed her down onto one of the stone benches. “She’s not going to hurt you. I’ve known her for years and she has yet to do anything unseemly to anyone that I’ve seen.”

“You’re hardly one to judge, apparently being one of them yourself,” Ali accused, wrapping her arms around herself.

“Do I look like I cast spells?”

“How can I tell? The entire place is bewitched!” Ali exclaimed. “You likely all cast spells!”

Jason sighed and looked at Berengaria. “Perhaps a soothing brew of harmless herbs would aid her. Then she’ll see we mean her no harm.”

Ali considered trying to escape again, but she’d already tried to escape from Jason before without success.

So she remained on the bench where he’d placed her and watched closely as Berengaria went to her worktable.

The woman poured wine, then sprinkled it liberally with several different kinds of herbs.

In truth, Ali couldn’t have told the difference between dried rose petals and a pinch of hemlock—which gave her little comfort.

When Berengaria returned, Ali gestured toward Jason.

“Let him taste it,” she challenged. “If he breathes still, then I’ll try it.”

Jason sighed heavily, but sipped the wine. Then he handed her the cup with a smile. “See? Still alive, still breathing, still just as charming as always.”

Well, he could have been a warlock himself, and immune to Berengaria’s spells. She gave that thought as she swirled the wine about in the cup and studied Jason for telltale signs of bewitchment. All he showed, however, was a lethal charm that couldn’t have come from a sack of herbs.

She sniffed the wine, wished briefly for Sybil’s ability to judge brews from a whiff alone, then tasted hesitantly. It didn’t taste poisoned, or as if it had been laced with spells. It tasted like sweet wine with a few herbs sprinkled on top. She leaned back against the wall and finished the cup.

And the longer she sat there, the more ridiculous her suspicions seemed.

Jason was no warlock; he was merely a man who looked at her kindly, if not a bit assessingly. Berengaria was no witch; indeed, she looked more like someone’s grand-mere than she did one who brewed potions and cast spells in the depths of night.

“You must be tired of hiding.”

Ali looked at Berengaria and blinked. “What?”

“Hiding for so long,” Berengaria said. “You must be tired of it.”

Ali wondered if she was gaping or if her mouth had simply decided it couldn’t be bothered to stay closed any longer.

“She has the sight,” Jason offered, draining his cup. “ ’Tis impossible to keep secrets from her.”

Ali looked at Berengaria. The sight, whilst a bit unnerving, was nothing to fear. “If you have it truly,” she countered, “then tell me what you’ve seen.”

Berengaria looked at her with a smile she likely used on all those who disbelieved in her skill, but she answered readily enough.

“I’ve seen your stepmother hunting you; she hunts you still.

I’ve seen your sire so deep in his grief that he can scarce think of you without weeping. He would give much to have you found.”

Ali pursed her lips. Those were things that anyone who knew she had a sire could have divined.

“And,” Berengaria added slowly, “I’ve seen that you should be very careful when you return to Solonge.”

Jason’s cup fell from his fingers and landed on the wooden floor with a dull thud. Fortunately for them all, the cup had been empty.

“Solonge?” he managed in a strangled voice.

Ali felt just as strangled. When she returned to Solonge? Why, she had no intention of ever setting foot inside that accursed bailey again!

Jason continued to wheeze.

Ali looked at him crossly. “You’re having trouble breathing. Did you finally find something foul in your cup?”

He looked as if he were torn between laughing and weeping. After a moment of his mouth working silently, he sat back and blew out a heavy breath. “Aliénore of Solonge,” he said, shaking his head with a small laugh. “Who would have thought it?”

“Who, indeed?” she muttered. She buried her nose in her empty cup, wondering if there might be a place to hide permanently that didn’t entail her own poor self in a crypt under the floor of a chapel.

She looked at Berengaria, who she had to concede might indeed be able to see further than she herself could.

“Thank you for the wine. It was pleasant,” she said.

“Wine with a sprinkling of courage atop,” Berengaria said.

“Courage?”

Berengaria looked at her and Ali felt as if every secret she called her own was suddenly laid open before the woman’s gaze.

Perhaps the old woman had the sight in truth.

But, despite herself, she wasn’t afraid.

Never mind that there were now three people in this keep—Jason, Gillian, and this woman here—who could betray her to her death.

“Courage,” Berengaria repeated, “though you’ve more of it in you than you realize.”

“If I had been courageous, I would have followed the path my father laid out for me,” Ali said with a sigh.

“I very much suspect,” Berengaria said thoughtfully, “that had you done so, you never would have set foot on the shore of England. Marie wouldn’t have allowed it. There are many places in the sea where a body might sink to his death and no one but the murderer be the wiser.”

“Think you?” Ali asked in surprise. She could believe many things of Marie, but murder?

Berengaria rubbed her gnarled hands together. “I daresay she’s not above that. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn she’d done it before.”

Ali knew that Marie was feared and hated by many, but to suspect such a thing of her was, well, almost more than she could stomach. Though she certainly could have seen herself coming to a bad end at the woman’s hands.

Berengaria rose. “We’ll keep you safe whilst we can. But for now, I’ll leave you to my lord Jason’s care whilst I go to forage for herbs.” She smiled. “One can never have too many, you know.”

Ali watched her pull the alcove’s curtain across and supposed that Berengaria had no need to listen to her sorry tale. Like as not, she knew it all already. But that left Jason to hear it; and there he sat, looking at her as if he’d never seen a woman before.

“What?” she grumbled.

He only smiled faintly. “You’re famous here, you know. There was quite a stir when you disappeared.”

“No doubt,” she said wearily.

“I am intensely curious about how you came to find yourself with spurs on your heels instead of keys on your belt. Will you not tell me of it?”

She hesitated.

“I am a vault,” he added. “A veritable repository of secrets that must be kept upon pain of death.”

And if any secret fit that description, it was hers.

“Come, Aliénore, and unburden yourself.”

The sound of her name caught at her so suddenly and so tightly that she could do nothing but clutch the stone bench with her hands and struggle to breathe normally.

And then, of course, she had to weep. Jason shoved a bit of cloth in her hands, patted her head a time or two, then sat back and waited for the deluge to subside.

Ali found, eventually, that she had run the well dry for the moment.

She leaned back against the wall and dragged her sleeve across her eyes.

“Womanly weakness,” she said, with another sniff.

He laughed. “Aye, to be sure. Now, give me the tale of your spurs. I daresay you didn’t kill anyone for them.”

“I might have, for all you know of it.”

“How?” he asked. “By breaking a sewing basket over some poor fool’s head?”

She glared at him. “You are a rude boy.” “I am not a boy, and my mother tells me I am quite polite, but we aren’t discussing my flaws. I daresay you are more skilled at filching than killing. Am I right?”

“I stole spurs from my brother Francois,” she admitted reluctantly. “And he deserved to lose them, the drunkard.”

“His sword too?”

“He tormented my dolls when I was little.”

“His mail?”

“He was senseless. It seemed a just recompense.”

“The poor lad. What then?”

There was little point in boring him with the events of the past two years. Indeed, they were memories better left forgotten. So she shrugged, as if neither the time nor the danger had meant anything to her..

“I fled Solonge,” she said, “found myself at Maignelay-sur-mer as Sybil’s keeper, and now I am here.”

“Here being the last place you would have chosen,” he said with a dry smile. “Poor girl. But you’ve told me so little. How did you manage the pleasure of being Sybil’s keeper? Were you the most patient of Maignelay’s garrison?”

She shook her head. “Sybil’s mother, the lady Isabeau, gave me the task. I daresay she knew from the start what I was, else she never would have sheltered me thusly.” She paused. “I owe her much for her protection.”

“She will be blessed for it. You needn’t fear here, either. We will protect you now, Berengaria and I. I would imagine if Gillian brought you here, she knows as well.”

“Aye, she does.” She stared down at her cup in her hands. “Though I daresay there is nothing any of you could do.”

“I can protect you from Sir Etienne.”

“I wouldn’t refuse that aid, but he isn’t whom I fear the most.”

“Colin?” he asked in surprise. “Think you that you need protection from him?”

“He vowed to kill me did he but ever find me.”

He shrugged. “Idle words, spoken in anger. I doubt he meant them. Besides, your contract with him no longer stands if he’s to wed with Sybil.”

“He would likely kill me just the same to remain true to his word. And who knows,” she continued, “if he’ll actually succeed in forcing her to the altar? If the wench had any spine, she’d flee for a convent, for I daresay she would prefer that. Especially if she could have the calling of cellarer.”