“...any message must go through the priest just as yours did, asking after me,” Mary was whispering. “So I did not answer, for then he’d know about her and bring his sour face to me and Edmer to preach Hell and damnation at us every day. And I could not think you would want your lady to know, and for shame I did not say it before so fine a guest as your Welshman.”

“Tell me now,” came Nan’s voice. She spoke low, but did not whisper. When no answer came, she said, “I would know if she is dead, and no matter the shame of it, I would know the manner of her death.”

“May God forgive me, but it were better that she died years ago than become what she is.”

He could hear Nan’s sharp intake of breath, and the painful hope in her voice when she asked, “She lives?”

He knew that hope, how it pierced the heart, the anguish it brought. He had clutched it to himself desperately for a time, and sometimes still felt it prowling in the forgotten corners of his heart. It was the Fiend’s own torture, the terrible punishment for loving.

“Aye, she lives. In sin.” Mary’s whisper grew fainter, as though saying it aloud was another kind of sin. “She is become a bawd, Nan. A common whore herself and keeping a brothel full of them.” She seemed to wait for some reaction, but she obviously did not know how long Nan could hold a silence. “It killed your father, it did.”

“He killed himself with drink,” came the swift reply. “And when he done it, he abandoned her to an evil fate. Haps he is redeemed now in death, if God is merciful. But I will not leave her redemption to chance.”

“Oh sweet Nan, you were ever too good-hearted. Will you not understand? She don’t want redemption, nor to be saved in any way. I begged her to come away and live with me here. But she said she would do as she pleased, and what pleased her was to open her legs for any man passing. She spat full in my face, do you hear?” There was another long pause. “You are so different from her that none would believe you were sisters.”

It was a very long time until Nan’s voice floated through the darkness, filled with a quiet conviction. “But we are. We are sisters.”

After that there was no more talking. There was only a hard silence that settled over the room. He could taste the anger and sorrow that filled the air all the sleepless night.

1282

On Palm Sunday, Prince Llewellyn’s brother Dafydd attacked an English stronghold, and yet another war was begun.