Ranulf found he’d rather his reckoning come in the form of a knife in the night than as this collision of women, each of them waiting and watching, wanting something from him. Alice had come to him in a vision, demanding rectitude. So he had turned to the Holy Mother to ask her help in this, praying to her and carrying Alice’s ghost with him as he wandered west and avoided Edward. He had thought to hold to the vision of Alice and the face of the Holy Mother, and it would be enough save his soul from the fires of Hell. But then she had come, with her wide gray eyes and cool hands, and the reality of her cast his earlier visions into shadow. A living angel, he had thought, who would absolve him, lead him to truth. This woman, this new vision who had turned out to be Gwenllian of Ruardean. Instead of saving him, she captured him and humiliated him, and brought him back here. She may as well have hand-delivered him to the Fiend himself.

He should have consulted with a priest at once when Alice had come to his dreams those months ago, but his way forward had seemed so clear. The vision had come to him to warn him of the danger his soul was in, and he must go to the White Monks to seek guidance. He had not thought past that simple course of action, trusting to the Holy Mother to guide him. But he had been guided into a dark wood, led to injury and then captivity, and he had only his own waywardness to blame that he had shifted allegiance to a misty-eyed angel that was but a fancy of a fevered brain.

Now Edward would ask, and he must answer well or none could save him. Death, or sin – which would he choose, if it came to that? Help me, lady, with all thy might, he prayed, do not let me die in sin. Yet he also saw Alice, young and smiling, blond wisps of hair in her eyes, and he thought she would not want him to die, not for anything.

“My friend has become monkish, I think.” Edward’s voice came suddenly, startling him. He had not thought himself so deep in prayer. “I am told you asked leave to pray before aught else.”

Ranulf took one last lingering look at the Madonna before standing and turning to face the king. He did not bow, but stood straight to look unflinchingly into the eyes of his friend, his king. This was the moment he had feared for all those long muddy miles, and there was no hint in Edward’s face as to what his fate would be. No anger, no reassurance – just a polite inquisitiveness, as though he had asked a mundane question and waited for Ranulf to give an equally mundane answer.