I backed away and my heels struck the stair behind me. I was in such a hurry to get away I fell sprawling across the granite steps. The bird on my shoulder took off, rising in widening gyres through the air, but when I found my feet it glided down to where it had rested before on my shoulder and I began to run back up the way I had come.

I climbed in haste for a time but soon was tired again and had to slow to a walk. I began to think about what I would say when I reached the main staircase and was discovered. “I will confess everything and accept my punishment, whatever that is,” I said. The tin bird sang a gay and humorous ditty.

It fell silent though as I reached the gate, quieted by a different song not far off: a girl’s sobs. I listened, confused, and crept uncertainly back to where I had murdered Lithodora’s beloved. I heard no sound except for Dora’s cries. No men shouting, no feet running on the steps. I had been gone half the night, it seemed to me, but when I reached the ruins where I had left the Saracen and looked upon Dora it was as if only minutes had passed.

I came toward her and whispered to her, afraid almost to be heard. The second time I spoke her name she turned her head and looked at me with red-rimmed hating eyes and screamed to get away. I wanted to comfort her, to tell her I was sorry, but when I came close she sprang to her feet and ran at me, striking me and flaying at my face with her fingernails while she cursed my name.

I meant to put my hands on her shoulders to hold her still but when I reached for her they found her smooth white neck instead.

Her father and his fellows and my unemployed friends discovered me weeping over her. Running my fingers through the silk of her long black hair. Her father fell to his knees and took her in his arms and for a while the hills rang with her name repeated over and over again.

Another man, who held a rifle, asked me what had happened and I told him. I told him the Arab, that monkey from the desert, had lured her here and when he couldn’t force her innocence from her, he throttled her in the grass and I found them and we fought and I killed him with a block of stone.

And as I told it the tin bird began to whistle and sing, the most mournful and sweetest melody I had ever heard and the men listened until the sad song was sung complete.