“It’s the cough, Your Majesty,” said the nursemaid, stumbling over the words. “She’s had that cough since the storm that overset us all.”

“Demons were set loose in the world,” said Antonia briskly. “They have found a way in to where weakness and innocence offer ripe pickings.”

Adelheid glanced at her, but Antonia could not interpret what feelings, if any, stormed beneath her pinched features. It was not that the young queen was no longer pretty, although certainly she had lost her bloom. It was as if the light that animated her had been snuffed out. She was cold and hard, like a woman who would never laugh again.

“Have you no honey for her throat?” asked the queen, speaking sternly to the nursemaid. “Ground up with chestnut meat, it might soothe her. She has always suffered these fits, as I’m sure you have not forgotten.” She noted each of the other attendants with her gaze. “I would have a bath, although I am sorry to disturb you all from your rest.”

Lady Lavinia pushed forward out of the throng. “Let us only be thankful you have survived, Your Majesty. Anything in my power to give you is yours.”

“You have endured the storm better than many,” observed Adelheid. As servants scurried off to haul and heat water and lay out clothing, she walked forward into the chamber to stand beside the bed shared by her daughters.

“The wind caused much damage, Your Majesty,” said Lavinia, “but my people have set to work with a will to repair roofs and fences and walls with winter coming on. For a few days afterward there was some ash fall, but not so much that we could not sweep it off the streets and dig out the few ditches and pits that it disturbed. Still, there has been no sun for many months. It has been a hard winter.”

For a long while Adelheid watched her daughters. Berengaria, too, had fallen asleep, but her thin face was pale and she whistled with each exhalation. A steward brought in cracked chestnuts, and the nursemaid sat down at the table to grind them into a paste she could mix into honey.

Beyond, in the courtyard, torches and lamps were lit and servants scurried to and fro. Captain Falco had vanished, replaced by two solemn guardsmen. Lavinia yawned silently and rubbed her eyes, but did not stray by one step from Adelheid’s elbow. The lady of Novomo was worn and worried but steadfast. She had lost less than most: her daughter had been sent north soon after Adelheid’s departure for Dalmiaka, and so had weathered the storm in her mother’s hall. Of her close kin, all were accounted for; all were alive.

Soon it would he dawn, such as dawn was these days without any sight of the sun’s disk ever appearing to promise that the light of God’s truth would soon illuminate all of humankind. God had clouded the heavens as a sign of Their disapproval.