Up in the outer cave, it was freezing cold, for a sharp breeze was blowing in from the east. Our clothes were still damp from the rain, and the cloak was not much better. It would be an uncomfortable night. Not that sleep seemed possible anyway. My mind was turning things over and over, and would not let me rest. I lay down on my side of the cave and closed my eyes, but I could not stop shivering. And I thought, his brother! I should have seen it. His brother! No wonder he pursues this quest so single-mindedly. And then I thought, Lord Hugh. Lord Hugh of—of somewhere. How did they know his name? He certainly didn’t seem like a lord of anywhere, with his cropped hair and his well-worn clothes, and the way his friends spoke to him, as to an equal. On the other hand, though, I considered how my father had warned his men to make sure Simon remained alive that night. He had been a prisoner of some consequence; a person of future value as a bargaining tool, maybe. So perhaps his brother really was Lord Hugh of somewhere or other. I thought Red suited him better. By the Lady, it was cold. I wished dawn would come; but my mind shrank from the problems of the next day. I rolled over, trying to make myself comfortable.

“You’re shivering,” said the Briton from the other side of the cave. “Best come over and lie by me. That cloak will cover us both.” But I shook my head, drawing the wet cloak about me tighter. After what had been done to me, I did not think I would ever be able to lie by a man, not even to sleep, not even with somebody I trusted. And I did not trust him, with his cold eyes and his silences.

“You need not be afraid of me,” he said. “It would be a lot warmer.” But I shrank in on myself, wrapped my arms around my chest, drew my knees up to my stomach, made myself small under the cloak. I stared at the candle; it still burned, tiny and golden, in the space between us. There was silence for a while.

“Suit yourself,” said Red. He lay on his back, staring up at the vaulted roof of the cave, and the candlelight flickered on his high-bridged nose, and his set jaw, and his grim, tight mouth. I drifted in and out of a fitful sleep, with snatches of half-seen nightmares, with fragments of painful memory and visions of an unimaginable future. And every time I woke, I looked across to see him lying stretched out with his head on his pack, and his face white in the moonlight, and his eyes wide open. But once, waking, I found him sitting up, motionless, and staring toward the cave mouth. When I looked, there on a dark branch that stretched across the opening perched a perfect white owl, preening her feathers fastidiously with a delicate beak, regarding us from time to time with her shining, ancient eyes. I held my breath, watching her, and when at length she spread her great wings and rose to flight I sensed an end to things, a moving on and parting that would not be halted by any burning of magical herbs, by any intervention of human or spirit world. It was as inevitable as death, and I put my hands over my mouth, to keep silent.