She thought again of the letter she had had from Aymer, so many years ago, of the love he bore Ranulf. What was it like, to murder a man who loved you well, who called you his own? And yet since coming to Morency she had seen well how Aymer had been despised and feared.

“He woke, you know.” He said it to the empty room. “In the moment before I struck, he woke. He saw me above him, and was not afraid. He thought he had nothing to fear from me, until the very moment his throat was slit.”

She imagined it: the dark and hushed room, the warm bedclothes, the startled eyes looking at him, the hot rush of blood.

“Have you ever killed a man?” He asked her.

“Nay.” She had watched men die, but never killed.

“It is an evil thing.”

She shook her head, though he could not see, and said what she had thought many times since coming here. “If a man be evil, I think it not evil to kill him.”

“Even as he sleeps?” He asked it without turning, his voice echoing into the empty bedchamber where he looked. “Even if he is defenseless?”

She thought of the knightly vows he had taken. “Even then, if to do so protects the weak.”

He gave a hollow laugh. “Who do you imagine I protected? Alice had already taken her own life when I took his.”

“Then you spared me.”

“A happy accident,” he said. “I had no thought for you. I killed him because I knew it would buy me favor with the king.”

“It is a sin forgiven.” She moved closer to where he leaned against the doorway. “Your remorse is not for the favor you bought, but for the love he bore you.”

“No,” he said, turning to face her. His back pressed against the stone as though to fix himself to the spot. “Not only his love for me, but mine for him. For even when I saw his cruelty and knew him depraved, sure he was a creature of Hell...” He paused to raise his face to look at her, and in him she saw revulsion for himself. It was a disgust so deep that it stung her to see it. “Even then did I love him as a father. Even as I killed him.”

His eyes searched hers, but she could not guess what he found there. He lifted his hand to the scar across his eyebrow.

“When I was a boy learning the sword, he watched as we practiced. Another student bested me, held me to the ground with his blade and I was forced to yield. Aymer pulled him off me and the blade swung free and cut me here. It was unwitting, a mischance only. But Aymer beat the boy for it, and cracked his bones, and crippled him.”