‘Oh, Papa.’ She went to him and put her arms around his neck, hugging him. She smelt clean and fresh, the pale fragrance of wild hyacinths. ‘You mustn’t worry about me. I won’t abandon you. No matter what happens.’

All his intentions were fast ebbing away, already he could see what an unreasonable tyrant he must seem to her… And yet at the same time, as she gently disengaged her arms, he felt the needling sense of unease return. Since Iridial’s death Orial had rarely lied to him… Though there had been the stray sable kitten, kept concealed in a basket in the laundry until it leapt playfully out at Sister Crespine, its tiny claws unsheathed… And the time she had been kept back after school for some schoolgirlish prank involving water, string and a loathed termagant of a needlework mistress… Trifles, really.

She had been such a biddable child, always eager to please. Which only made the present episode harder to understand.

He must keep a closer watch over her.

CHAPTER 9

Fiammis is floating just below the surface of the lake, her long yellow hair streaming about her pale body like ribbons of waterweed. Naked as a watersprite, her slender limbs shimmer with the fluorescent taint of floating algae.

Anguished, Acir goes wading into the green waters, catches hold of the limp body and drags it out on to the shore.

‘Fia! Fia!’ He can hear himself frantically calling Fiammis’s name, her pet-name, the name he has not dared to use since childhood when they were constant companions.

Fiammis does not stir.

Acir leans over her, presses his mouth to Fiammis’s and, encompassing the wet body with his own, begins to blow breath into the limp body.

The weed-stained lids open. Fiammis is staring directly into his eyes. Fiammis’s arms, her waterweed hair, wind about him, binding their wet bodies together. Her mouth, no longer slack and cold, presses upon Acir’s, her tongue…

They are rolling, rolling back into the water, floating down into the green depths, drowning slowly in this unending kiss…

Acir gasps for breath, each convulsive shudder wracking his body more profoundly than the last.

‘Fia, oh Fia, Fia…’

Acir Korentan awoke, calling the name of his dream-lover. And then, with a groan of self-disgust, he felt a stickiness staining the sheet in which he had twisted himself.

How could I? How could I?

And he thought he had finally exorcised the ghost of her memory!

He lit a crimson candle before the rose reliquary and prostrated himself naked on the bare boards of his lodgings. He was shaking.

‘Forgive me,’ he said silently again and again. ‘A lapse. A moment of foolish human frailty.’