“I’m not going to tell you. I don’t want to. I…” She stops suddenly and glances anxiously about her, over her shoulder, searching above her head and then behind her. All at once she has become terribly frightened.

“What is it, child?” the Master of the Chalice asks her. “Do not be afraid.”

“I can hear them!” she cries. “Oh! Can’t you hear them?” She begins to run now, and even tries to jump out of the circle. When she finds she is unable to do so tears of terror stream down her pale cheeks. “Oh no!” she cries.

Now I hear them, too. We all do. Bees. In seconds, dozens of them have come up from below and joined the girl in the circle. She flaps her arms and hands, batting them away with her flowers, screaming. The smell of honey grows stronger. Now I understand. Now I see the curious mark on her top lip, which I had taken for a mole or birthmark but which must have been the bee sting that killed her. And here we have brought her into a confined space and now it is filled with the greatest fear she has ever known.

“Send her back!” I hiss at the Master of the Chalice.

The earl of Winchester objects. “No! We must hear more.”

“She must go back.”

The earl is on his feet now. “We need to know more. She has given us nothing!”

“She is terrified,” I tell him. “She is suffering. She will tell us nothing further now.”

Amelia is on the floor of the circle, desperately trying to cover her head and her face, to protect herself from the bees.

“I don’t understand,” says the Master of the Chalice. “How did the bees come through? We did not call them.”

“Send her back now!” I shout at him.

He nods and quickly chants the necessary words. He does so with skill and speed, but even so it seems an age before Amelia begins to fade before our eyes, the sound of her cries growing ever more faint, until all that remains is the echo of the buzzing bees as they, too, vanish.