They’d come to this nameless castle in the dark of evening. It was large anyway, and well fortified. That much he had seen through the blinding rain, the silhouette of a fortress stretching across the horizon. Even the barest outlines of it intimidated, a stronghold of dark stone with sinister arrow-slits riddling the walls, so imposing that he later dreamt of the walls stretching to the sea and beyond, a barrier that would trap him where he could not avoid Edward. But on arrival, he had none of those thoughts. He’d been so damp and weary that he counted the small room and warm fire as a mark of the highest favor. Two days later, with no greeting but that of the evasive steward and no information save the healing properties of valerian, he was inclined to believe that he was being held captive in truth.

“Why am I guarded, old man?”

The healer did not look at all surprised by the interruption of his diatribe, nor offended by the abruptness of the query. He didn’t even glance to the door, where three armed and doggedly silent men had been posted outside since Ranulf’s arrival.

“You are man not to be crossed, my lord,” he answered with smile. “At my instruction, the guard was put here to keep you to your bed. Rest has been essential to your mending.”

“And now I am mended, yet here I stay confined. Is it a household of cowards, to fear one wounded man?”

The old man raised his shaggy brows. “You cannot be ignorant of your reputation, my lord. Had Aymer of Morency been so craven as to fear an unproven boy of seventeen, he might still live.”

It was said in an academic tone, without the usual contempt. Ranulf allowed himself a smile, admiring the other man in spite of the annoyance of that tired old complaint. Murdered these thirteen years past, and still the dead man’s shadow clung, even unto Wales – if that’s where this was.

“But you do not answer me. Is this keep full of sleeping old men, that I am feared and kept under guard? I would gladly take my leave, now I am healed.”

The healer placidly stirred some new potion, as though not concerned in the least that he was locked in a room with a confessed killer of old men.

“Did I not tell you? I am to take you to the lady of this house, and she will tell you all you wish to know.”

He turned to Ranulf, a wooden bowl of some grayish paste that was no doubt to be slathered across his chest and arm, the latest in a series of foul-smelling cures for wounds that were closed up and nearly healed. If not for the hellish itching, he’d have almost forgotten that the flesh had ever been torn.