Kaitlin, who had a clearer idea of what the chaplain might have meant to the captain than most of her husband’s peers, let it go, and spent the night curled in her husband’s arms. In the morning—well rested—she levered her growing bulk off the bed. “No longer the prettiest maid in the valley,” she said.

Ser Michael knelt and kissed her hands.

“He was a good priest,” she said. “He married us.”

Michael smiled. “Cully says he died healing the captain. That—” He paused.

Kaitlin frowned. “What?”

“Cully—this is Cully, sweetie, not some pious croaker—Cully says a man in a ragged robe came and knelt by the captain, and he woke up.”

Kaitlin crossed herself. “A saint?” she asked.

Ser Michael frowned. “I’d hate to think so,” he said. “I enjoyed jousting with him too much.”

The whole town came out in the spring rain. The rain fell in sheets, and made the turf—still frozen deep under—springy and squishy like a huge pile of wet wool.

Every man-at-arms in the town came in his harness, and squires cursed them.

And the Bishop of Albinkirk stood in the rain. The coffins were plain boards. One was empty, for the lost child, and there were only red scraps in poor Robin’s coffin, rushed and overwhelmed and devoured by imps after he lost control of the horses. The goodwife stood by the coffins of her dead children, and her eldest daughter stood with her, but now wore the scarlet tabard of the company, and even through the rain a distance could be seen between them.

The priest’s coffin had the banner of the Order of Saint Thomas over it, and no other marking but the dead priest’s crucifix, helm, and gauntlets.

Like every man present, the bishop was soaked to the skin, and cold.

He raised his arms.

“What words can I say that will equal the deeds of these people?” he asked. “How can I express a mother’s grief? Or a knight’s impotence in the face of death?”

The only sound was the rain. Gabriel flinched.

“In the beginning was the word,” the bishop said. “Word” echoed. “Only the true word, the Logos, could speak for these. As the Logos was, in the beginning, so he will wait until the end, alpha and omega. And, we can only hope, wait patiently for all of us to come to him.” He stood, arms wide, his soaking vestments hanging from him and his face raised to the sky.

Perhaps they expected a flash of lightning, or the acknowledgement of the heavens, but there was only an icy wind.