Chapter Twenty

 

Luke stared into the dregs of ale at the bottom of his tankard. His vision swam, not so much from the quantity of drink he’d imbibed as from exhaustion. He had spent another two days playing cat and mouse with Henry’s guards. They were ever on the alert for him, and with their superior numbers, they’d managed to keep him at bay. Though not without injury to themselves, he recalled with grim satisfaction, for he had struck out in frustration on the last occasion, knocking one to the ground with his fist before storming off. It had gained him nothing!

Philippe and Erin had begged him to storm the abbey and whisk Merry away. Yet stealing Merry from yet another house of God, this time a bishop’s castle, was not the answer to her dilemma—at least not yet. Not while hope for justice remained.

He had applied himself to securing her innocence instead. Visiting a number of his peers who were close to the king yet whom Luke could call friend, he’d explained Merry’s circumstances and persuaded them to pressure Henry. He’d sought the astute counsel of various abbots and priests. He was even granted a ten-minute audience with the bishop of Winchester.

As he’d told Merry, Bishop Henry of Blois was a reasonable man. He had listened to Luke’s tale of a woman wrongfully condemned and promised to give the matter thorough examination. He’d assured Luke that a sentence of heresy was not a foregone conclusion and had generously agreed to let Luke testify on his wife’s behalf. Then he’d soundly dismissed him, ordering the Phoenix not to bother him again.

Luke had even gone into the cathedral to ask God’s help. Winchester Cathedral, with its glorious transepts, had beckoned him into its sanctuary. He’d stared in awe at the ribbed vaulting and scalloped capitals before coming to a stunned halt before the enormous marble font that Bishop Henry had commissioned from Belgium. Falling to his knees beside the font, he had stared at the figures depicting the miracles of St. Nicholas, and he had appealed to the children’s saint, for the sake of their child, to spare Merry further suffering.

Assured that the good saint had heard his pleas, he’d had one last hopeful meeting. On the morning of his departure for Arundel, he’d closeted himself with a servant of Amalie, who had in fact accompanied her to Arundel, to Wallingford, and then to Clarendon. The man, brother to Luke’s own reeve, the hunchback Ewan, unfortunately had come up empty-handed when searching Amalie’s trunks for anything suspicious, such as the torn page from Luke’s journal.

Luke had come to an impasse. Without proof, there was nothing he could use to bend Henry’s arm. Righteousness and Merry’s innocence would have to save her.

With the trial steadily approaching, he’d hastened home to make certain his grandfather still lived. Indeed, though bedridden and weak, the earl clung tenaciously to life. After a single night’s turnaround, Luke would make his way back to Winchester, where he knew that Merry at least now had ample food and drink, as well as more blankets. After Luke’s vociferous complaint to the bishop himself, she’d been moved to a cell more befitting the pregnant wife of a peer of the realm.

Seeking his own comfort in a deep mug of ale, Luke found it did little to numb his devastation. Many times in his military past, despite his efforts to negotiate peace, war had been inevitable. Unavoidable. Certes, he had tasted the bitter gall of defeat. Yet never had the matter been this personal, this close to his heart—and never had he blamed himself so absolutely for failing.

In truth, not since his youth, had he felt so utterly powerless, so ineffective. Then, as now, all he had was hope, and his was running low.

Thrusting his fingers through his hair, Luke sighed and stood up. What time was it? he wondered. Only a single torch remained lit, illumining the stairwell that would take him from the great hall to the bedchambers above. The servants had long since retired. He, too, should have sought his bed earlier, for he had a long ride in the morning, followed by nerve-wracking hours, maybe even days, through which Merry would endure rigorous questioning.

Yet he’d known he would not be able to sleep for thinking of her plight and lamenting his attempts to ease it. After supper, he’d sent the children off to bed, unable to bear their long faces and disillusioned eyes. He had failed even them. They could not understand why, with all his vast resources of power and wealth, he could not free the “happy lady” as Edeline called her, from the superstitious zealots who held her.

Plodding up the stairs, he was hounded by the echo of his footsteps. Arundel, with its cool gray walls and lofty ceilings, struck him as empty. For all its beauty and grandeur, it was not a home without Merry. Halfway up the steps, he stopped, struck by the depth of his loss.

She was the source of his home’s warmth. She was its hearth fire. If something were to happen to her, he would not want to live there, haunted by her ghost. Haunted by the aching emptiness he was already beginning to feel.

His own liege lord, Henry II, by that name, ultimately was responsible for Merry’s persecution. How could Luke ever pledge his sword to him again? How could he accept Arundel if it cost him Merry’s life?

He could not. He would not.

Without Merry, he wanted nothing to do with this place. It was Merry he wanted, vital and alive. He would rather live the life of a mercenary, relying on his sword for income, than live in a castle without her. And what of their child?

In the dimly lit stairwell, Luke took a ragged breath. His knees gave way suddenly, and he sat heavily on the steps, doubled over by the pain in his chest. He pressed the heels of his palm against his eyes to keep the tears from coming. To no avail. They came, hot and fierce and with all the pain stored up, unshed since the death of his beloved father.

Ah, Merry! he lamented. Why must I realize now how much you mean to me? I have failed you more than I have failed anyone. Please forgive me!

He wiped the unaccustomed tears from his face and sniffed. Then, because he knew that lamentations would accomplish nothing, he pushed himself to his feet and continued up the stairs.

As he ascended to the second level, he spied a line of light shining between the joining of the double doors to his grandfather’s chamber. Luke had visited the earl earlier that evening, finding that, without Merry, the old man was once more lost to his illness.

A light in his room could mean only one thing: he was suffering another one of his bouts.

Luke lengthened his stride. As he thrust open the door, the earl’s manservant pivoted with a gasp. He’d been standing by the earl’s bed, spooning something into the old man’s mouth. His expression of guilt and dismay were so evident that Luke bore down upon him, snatching the cup from his frozen-still hands.

“What is this?’ Luke demanded, peering at the milky contents.

“My lord’s infusion,” said the manservant, backing away from him. “L-lady Merry left instructions for me.”

Luke gave the cup a sniff and recognized the bitter perfume of opium. “This isn’t chamomile,” he growled, unable to mask his fury as he glanced at his grandfather. The old man had already slipped into a drugged sleep, some of the liquid leaking from the side of his mouth.

With cold rage, Luke placed the cup on the earl’s nightstand. He turned to the manservant who was backing toward the open door.

Luke struck like the cobra of his native land. In the blink of an eye, he grabbed Egbert by the neck and slammed him against the plastered wall, pressing his hand into the man’s throat.

“You lie. At whose bidding do you poison my grandsire?’ he thundered.

Egbert blanched and sputtered, unable to make a sound.

Luke slammed him against the wall a second time to jar his memory.

“Say it, man, and I won’t hold you responsible. Keep silent, and you shall hang by morning.” He eased up slightly so the servant could speak.

“Lady Amalie!” blurted the manservant in a garbled tone, the sweat already broken out on his brow.

“Why do you serve her?” Luke demanded. “Have you not attended my grandfather for two score years?”

Guiltily, the man shook his head. “That were my brother,” he admitted. “I was sent to replace him.”

“Then you’re the king’s informant,” Luke guessed, releasing the man so abruptly that he collapsed to the floor. The ramifications that the king was involved with poisoning the Earl of Arundel echoed through him.

“Stand up,” he commanded, jerking him to his feet again.

The moment he was standing, Luke plowed his fist into Egbert’s stomach—nay, not Egbert, but his twin, by the look of him. The man doubled over, gasping for breath.

“That was for saying my lady has a sharp tongue,” Luke growled, finding great satisfaction in delivering the blow. He had looked forward to that moment. He waited again for the man to recover before he clamped a hand over his throat and pinned him to the wall once more.

With his icy fury beginning to thaw, his blood flowed more freely. He welcomed its energy. Hope returned to pulse in him anew. Perhaps this was not such a terrible discovery. Perhaps it would help him save Merry!

“What is your name?” he demanded.

“Derek,” gasped the man.

“Why does Amalie still want my grandsire dead? What could his death gain her now?”

The man stared back at him, wide-eyed. “I know not, except that Lord William could bear witness against her,” he replied. “In the beginning, the earl resisted the concoction she wanted him to drink.”

“Did the king have anything to do with this?”

Derek’s dark eyes darted wildly, but he stayed silent.

Luke shook him. “Answer me.”

“I don’t believe so, my lord. King Henry told me only to let him know about your new lady wife. ’Twas Lady Amalie who wanted the earl dead. She threatened me and my brother and his wife if I didn’t do as she asked.”

Luke tightened his hold threateningly. “Will you speak out against her to the king or in public court, if needs be?”

When the man hesitated, Luke insisted, “I will see you hang for attempting to kill Lord William if you don’t.”

The man began to whimper. “Lady Amalie will have me killed in any event,” he cried, frightened and defeated. He let out a low moan of the truly trapped.

Luke eased his hold. “Derek, listen to me. You will remain safe in my protection,” he promised. “Have you any proof that she meant to poison my grandfather?”

Derek thought hard. “There is a . . . a bit of writing that she gave me, telling of the plant’s strength.”

“The page from my journal,” Luke guessed. “Is there any of her own writing upon it?”

“Aye,” Derek said. “She wrote me how to brew it exactly.”

Luke considered the pitiful man before him, caught up in the intrigue of the royals. “Can you read and write, then?”

“Aye.” He regarded Luke expectantly. “Me and my brother both were taught so we could better serve.”

“Then you will pen the king a missive,” Luke informed him, as Derek’s eyes bulged.

As with the second breath of battle, Luke felt the first signs of triumph explode in his breast, giving him renewed strength. “You will tell Henry exactly what you have told me regarding his cousin. Moreover, you will tell him that I am apprised of the plot and that, together, we intend to report Lady Amalie.”

“Report her,” Derek exclaimed. “To whom? The king is the absolute authority, isn’t he, my lord?”

“The king has spent the early months of his reign bringing order and law back to England,” Luke told him. “Aye, he is the ultimate secular authority, but still, there are courts. Courts of the manor, courts of honor, and of course, the king’s court whenever he so pleases to call it into session. Aye, we will shout Amalie’s guilt from the bloody rooftops if need be. However we do it, we will be heard!”

The manservant swallowed nervously, his Adam’s apple bobbing. “Do you mean to blackmail the king?” he squeaked.

Luke grinned at him. “I have nothing to lose,” he said. For, indeed, without Merry, all that he had meant naught to him, and he would gladly spend his own blood to realize her freedom.

Given Derek’s expression, he clearly thought otherwise.

“Come,” Luke ordered, marching the manservant before him out into the corridor. Propelling him toward his room, he resisting the urge to run. Amalie’s plotting was precisely the weapon he required to best his king. Yet was it enough to procure Merry’s freedom in the ecclesiastical court? That he knew not.

Taking up flint and steel, Luke lit the candle on his desk and pressed Derek into the chair. He laid a sheaf of parchment before him and unstopped the inkwell.

“Now write,” he said, extending him the quill.

Derek took the quill with fingers that trembled. Luke paced the chamber, listening to the man’s hesitant scratches. He longed to dictate the letter himself, but it was crucial that the missive rouse Henry’s anxiety. It was equally important that the king recognize it as authentic.

At last, the hand at work stilled. “’Tis done,” said Derek.

Bending over his shoulder, Luke read what he had written. It dismayed him to think that Merry’s future could rest upon such faint, spidery scrawl. Nonetheless, he was certain its contents would be sufficient. If delivered to Henry by mid-day on the morrow, then by afternoon, the king might be willing to talk of compromise and of influencing the ecclesiastical court.

“Take yourself to bed,” Luke ordered the man. “Do not think to leave Arundel, or you will lose your life. The guards at the gate will not hesitate to run you down.”

“Aye, s-sir,” answered the man, bowing as he backed out of the door and fled.

With swift and precise movements, Luke rolled the parchment secured it with a ribbon. After a short rest to regain his senses, he would bear the letter straight to Portchester Castle.

After his successful hunt, King Henry had taken up residence at the old Roman fort overlooking Portsmouth harbor, even then being rebuilt as a royal home. Lying halfway between Arundel and the bishop’s Wolvesey Palace where Merry awaited her fate, Portchester had been wrested away from the Maudit family upon Henry’s crowning. Ironically, Luke’s greatest fear had always been that the king would do the same to the d’Aubigny family.

Until that moment. For truly, only Merry’s life mattered now.

Her trial would begin two morning’s hence. Pray God, he had acted in time to affect its outcome.

With a long, shaky breath, Luke closed his eyes in a moment of silence. He was not a devoutly religious man, having seen various altars to myriad gods all over the world and always wondered how so many could be so certain that theirs was the one true deity. Still, he found himself praying hard for the second time in as many days.

Please, God. Keep her safe long enough for Henry to come to his senses.

 

“The time has come, lady,” said the monk whom Merry detested.

Merry staggered to her feet from the narrow cot on which she rested.

As Luke promised, she’d been given more and better food. In fact, since his visit three days earlier, her situation had improved enormously. Not only had she been moved to a larger chamber, but the day before, she’d finally been given a clean robe of brown homespun. Her latest meal, one of three she received daily, sat in her stomach like a stone.

“Hold your hands out,” the monk commanded. By the glint in his eyes, clearly he hoped she would resist him.

She offered her hands to him meekly, and he wound coarse rope around her wrists, pulling it taut until she winced. Smirking, he tugged her out of the chamber, through the prison, and out into the courtyard.

A brilliant sun blinded Merry briefly. Thrilled to be outdoors, she forced herself to accept it, squinting at the blue sky and envying the birds winging high overhead. Oh, to be free like them! With a deep breath, she filled her lungs with fresh air and called upon the natural world to strengthen her in the hours to come.

They came upon a wide moat and crossed it via a wooden bridge passing beneath a stone arch to enter Wolvesey’s inner courtyard. Servants scurrying here and there paused in their work to gawk at her. The monk pulled her through two more doorways before they entered an antechamber leading to the bishop’s great hall. Nodding at the soldiers guarding the entrance, he pulled it open and dragged her into a room so noisy that Merry balked. Many people, all talking at once, caused their voices to echo in the vast stone chamber.

Led through the jostling crowd, Merry found herself suddenly at the center of the chamber, where she guessed the ecclesiastical court held its hearing. The throng took note of her appearance, and the volume dimmed to curious buzzing.

Frozen by dozens of curious stares, Merry sought even one familiar face in a room that seemed to stretch endlessly in every direction, even upward. Tapestries hung high on the long walls, above the people who lined them, some standing on benches, some sitting. Above the tapestries, great arched windows rose nearly as high as the ceiling, making Bishop Henry’s hall look much like a cathedral.

Indeed, she faced a wall where recessed arches held statues of saints and below these, in the center, a seat for the bishop had been carved upon a raised dais. Seeing no higher throne in the room, Merry realized the king would not be in attendance, either to help or hinder.

Thick leaded glass of the clerestory windows cast multi-hued flecks of light on the walls and floors and even the faces of the room’s inhabitants. Combined with the colorfully garbed spectators and the richly woven tapestries, the array of so many vibrant colors, after a week in the bishop’s prison cell, dazzled Merry’s unaccustomed eyes.

Wait, Luke must be here! she realized.

In the expectation of seeing him, she craned her neck, scanning the many faces eagerly. Clerics, scholars, and noblemen alike had all gathered to learn the fate of the Phoenix’s bride, but there was no sign of Luke, nor of her sisters. Despite the crowd, a sense of isolation crept over her.

Suddenly, a voice bellowed over the din, wresting her attention toward a page standing near the bishop’s throne. “His Excellency, the Bishop of Blois.”

Anyone still seated scrambled to his feet as a sturdy man with a graying beard and vermillion robe swept into view from a door nearby and climbed up onto his high seat. Following him out the same door, a handful of clerics, including two nuns, filed toward the table standing between Merry and the bishop’s throne and took their seats.

On that cloudless day, there was no need for light other than what streamed through the many windows. Nonetheless, several candles danced along the table, reflecting curiosity in the severe aspects of the devout men and women who, along with Bishop Henry, would decide her fate. Recognizing Father Bartholomew, Merry took heart, though the expressions of the others ranged from curious to skeptical to condemning.

The bishop, on the other hand, struck her as mainly weary and perhaps just a little bit annoyed. As he, too, took measure of her, Merry looked away, her attention drawn to the scribe who filled his inkwell at one end of the table. At his back stood two empty benches. Why in a room where nobles vied to sit and many indeed stood around the perimeter of the room would benches be left empty? she wondered in confusion.

Seeing the trial about to start, the crowd’s excitement seemed almost palpable. As the monk untied the rope that bound Merry’s hands and she shook her tingling fingers, the volume in the chamber rose, prompting the bishop to hold up a hand for silence.

“My court is called to order,” he announced in a voice crisp and dry. He clasped his hands in his lap and stared at her.

An expectant hush fell over the chamber. Merry swallowed hard and widened her stance to counteract her shaky knees. Out the corners of her eyes, she again sought Luke’s familiar face in the audience. Surely, he would not have left her to endure this day on her own.

“The charges will be read,” intoned Bishop Henry without enthusiasm.

The scribe stood up from his table and read from a single piece of vellum. “For the propagation of curses and spells, for the unnatural application of herbs under the guise of healing, for the attempt to murder by poison a member of a holy order, for bringing a dead horse back to life, for exciting the lust of innocent men, for causing injury and loss of crops, the Church accuses Merry du Boise of malefaction and heresy.”

A ringing filled Merry’s ears as the exclamations of the onlookers merged with the roaring of her own blood. The shock of hearing not only the old allegations but new ones leveled against her turned her suddenly cold. How could she ever escape such a thicket of charges, each one thornier and more damnable than the last? And where was the Phoenix to rescue her?

“How do you answer such charges, Merry du Boise, formerly of Heathersgill and the Priory of Mount Grace?” Bishop Henry’s gritty voice managed to penetrate the humming in Merry’s ears.

Merry sought Father Bartholomew’s steady gaze. He sent her an encouraging nod, prompting her to say what he’d advised during their last meeting.

“Not guilty,” she said, wishing her voice held more substance. She closed her eyes and imagined Luke was holding her hand. Then she snapped them open and managed a deep breath. “Moreover my name is no longer du Boise. It is d'Aubigny.” The name fell awkwardly off her tongue, as it was the first time she’d used it.

As the crowd’s murmuring grew louder again, she added, “I am Lady d'Aubigny of Arundel.”

The throng began to shout until the bishop quietened them with threat of clearing the entire room of spectators.

The rough monk who’d brought her there thrust a Bible before her.

“Place your hand upon the Holy Word,” he ordered. “Do you swear on the four gospels that you will tell the truth throughout these proceedings?”

Merry swore it, keeping her voice as steady as possible.

“Summon the first witness,” commanded the bishop, his weariness and annoyance on the wane as they were getting to the meat of the matter. “Father Moreau, you may commence the questioning.”

The priest next to Bartholomew leaped to his feet, and Merry’s fragile hopes disintegrated, for the man was a stranger whose dark eyes burned with religious zeal. She sensed he would do his best to cast her in the ugliest light possible.

“The court brings forth Friar Matthew of Heathersgill,” he said with a strong Norman accent.

Merry’s dismay mounted as her family’s parish priest was brought before her. The Church had been thorough in its research, and it was clear the bishop and his clerics meant to start at the very beginning.

Friar Matthew cast Merry an uncomfortable glance as he shuffled into the open space, moving to stand before the first empty bench.

It occurred to Merry then that, by the end of the proceedings, the benches near the scribe would be full of those bearing witness either for or, more likely, against her.

“How long have you known the accused?” Father Moreau jumped right in to his questions.

“Since the day she was born,” admitted the friar.

“Can you tell us what she was like as a child?”

Matthew looked down at his feet. “She was a delightful child, no different than any other girl, until her father was slain and her home taken over by barbaric Scots.”

“And then?” prompted Moreau.

A hint of color stained the cleric’s cheeks. “Then she lived in the hills with the cunning woman, Sarah, learning the properties of plants for healing.”

“Did the accused use plants solely for healing?” Moreau continued.

The friar hesitated. “Not always,” he admitted, seemingly with reluctance. “On occasion, in order to . . . to keep at bay the men in her family’s castle, she would cause them to sicken. I know not how, but she carried a number of powders. I saw her throw such at a man and make him drop to his knees in agony. However, you must understand that these men were barbarians, invaders who—”

“Tell us what happened to this Sarah who taught the accused how to harm others,” interrupted Moreau smoothly.

Merry paled. She longed to leap to Sarah’s defense. How many times had the good woman saved a child with fever or helped someone with a rash or cough?

At last Friar Matthew lifted his solemn gaze to Merry. She sensed him apologizing in advance for what he would have to say. “Sarah was drowned for a witch.”

A murmur rippled through the throng.

“Was the accused also thought to be a witch?” Moreau asked, gesturing to Merry.

The friar looked away. “She was only a child,” he equivocated.

“Answer the question,” exhorted the examiner.

“Some folk at Heathersgill were set against her,” he admitted. A flash of defiance entered his eyes as he lifted them to the bishop. “But she was a mere child whose father had been slain before her eyes. She had good reason to be bitter—”

“So you suggested she be taken to the priory of Mount Grace, did you not?” interrupted Moreau.

The friar nodded. “Eventually, aye.”

“Where she was to turn her heart toward Godly devotion,” continued Moreau, steepling his fingers as if he were truly considering her devotion. “You may sit,” he added, nodding in a shallow bow to his fellow clergy. “The court now brings forth Mother Agnes of Mount Grace.”

Hearing the name of her nemesis, nausea swept through Merry. She braced herself for the ordeal of seeing the vile woman again. As tall and thin-lipped as ever, the prioress shouldered her way through the crowd and crossed to the benches. The triumphant look she cast Merry as she moved past her drove a chill straight down her spine. There was no question the prioress expected personal victory in the outcome of this new trial.

After swearing her in upon the gospels, the priest enjoined the prioress to tell the bishop’s court of her experience with Merry. Agnes struck a pious pose and addressed Bishop Henry.

“I am the prioress of Mount Grace,” she said, softening and lifting her tone from its normal grating tenor. “This girl first came to my priory three years past. Knowing her history and the trouble she had engendered using plants, I refused to allow her into the priory’s garden.”

The mother went on to describe in detail the difficulty Merry had displayed in memorizing the prayers and attending devotions.

“Despite my gentle guidance, it was soon apparent I was wasting my breath. Sister Mary Grace, as we called her then, was oft found digging in the gardens—so much for my precautions. Other sisters came to me and admitted they had seen her scaling the priory’s wall at night,” she tacked on dramatically. “It was then that I realized she had been led astray by dark forces. No doubt she was slipping over the walls to copulate with the devil himself. I tried to counsel her, but her defiance only worsened.”

Merry looked for the reaction of the bishop’s council, only to see them hanging on Mother Agnes’s every word. Bishop Henry’s face, however, remained impassive, neutral, or so it seemed, and Merry could only hope he would not prejudge her for making an enemy of a prioress.

“One day, I discovered her secret herbal in one of the priory’s storerooms,” Mother Agnes continued, though she stopped feigning a high and feminine voice, now sounding more like the brutish nun Merry remembered. “I removed the collection of vile substances she had brewed. In retribution, she poisoned me, meaning to kill me. Three days and nights I did hover on the brink of death. Through piety and prayer, I survived her evil concoction.”

Father Moreau addressed his first words to Merry. “Is it true you tried to poison a woman of holy orders?” he demanded with sincere outrage.

Merry could not deny it. “I did, Father.”

The room erupted in shouting, which the bishop and his skinny scribe could not quiet for at least five minutes.

“May I speak?” Merry asked when she could be heard again.

“You have answered,” Moreau said, turning to the nun for his next question.

Merry could not let her own words damn her. Mother Agnes had controlled the last trial. The only hope of justice in this one was for her to speak on her own behalf.

“I did not finish my answer,” Merry asserted, looking hopefully toward the bishop.

“Silence,” Father Moreau admonished, and the prioress smirked in triumph.

Right then, Bishop Henry’s voice cut through the room. “Let her speak,” he intoned curtly.

Father Moreau visibly sighed. “Very well. What more have you to say?” he asked. “You have already admitted your guilt.”

Merry looked into his glittering gaze from across the span of the table length between them. “My intent was to punish Mother Agnes for whipping—”

“Vengeance belongs to God Almighty?” the priest interrupted her, his eyes alight with righteousness.

Merry waited for the new surge of murmuring to die down. “If that is so,” she replied steadily, “then why am I here?”

Chuckles of approval rippled through the crowd until one of the bishop’s clerics managed to silence them again.

Moreau pursed his lips, his face a study in disapproval, apparently seeing neither humor, nor irony in her response. “Has the prioress given an accurate account of your crimes or not?”

To her alarm, a tide of nausea as she’d experienced during her first weeks of pregnancy arose in her. Saint Anne’s blood! She laid the blame on the small portions of poor-quality food and sheer nervous exhaustion. With her vision blurring, she blinked, trying to clear it.

“Mother Agnes has lied on several accounts,” she answered, then licked her lips, realizing a sudden thirst. Was she allowed to ask for water?

“You call me a liar—you who thrive by deceit?” the prioress railed, her poise slipping.

The priest looked startled by her sudden volume. “Only the bishop and I may address the accused,” he reprimanded the nun. Turning back to Merry, he questioned, “How has the prioress lied?”

“Mother Agnes said I left the priory to copulate with the devil.” She had to pause as the onlookers gasped again at her inflammatory words. “In fact, I went to find herbs denied to me at the priory, specifically Saint John's wort, which grows in wooded copses.”

“Wherefore would you require this plant?” he asked predictably.

“To make an ointment that soothes the cuts and gashes of my sisters, who had been whipped by our mother. I did not sicken the prioress for destroying my herbal,” Merry added, at last getting her chance. “I did so because she beat to death a novitiate of no more than thirteen years of age, who had done nothing more sinful than speak aloud at the supper table.”

A thoughtful silence descended over the refectory.

“She lies!” shrieked the prioress into the quiet, her tone bearing no resemblance to the gentle piety she had shown before. She turned to address the bishop. “She’s a heretic. She’ll say anything to save herself from purification. I am the prioress of Mount Grace. I will not suffer to be maligned by a godless girl.”

“Calm yourself, Prioress, and sit down,” Bishop Henry said, scowling at her from his throne, his earlier annoyance apparent once more. “Bring forth the next witness,” he advised Moreau.

Muttering to herself, the prioress sat down next to Friar Matthew, who slid over, giving the sputtering creature more room.

Merry’s light-headed only worsened as the Abbot of Fors, Agnes’s cohort, was called forward. Desperately, she wished she could sit down as she could scarcely focus on the little man who had witnessed her first trial and condemned her along with Agnes. If anyone were to corroborate the prioress’s story it was he.

“Then you believe the accused intended to kill her victim?”

Merry realized she had lost track of the conversation. Panic rose up in her. It was vital that her mind stay sharp, and yet it seemed a fog was seeping into her brain, detaching her from her own thoughts.

“It was clear she meant the prioress to die,” the abbot answered earnestly. “I saw the girl’s herbal for myself. ’Twas filled with vessels of strange liquids and ointments and powders. I helped my colleague to destroy all of it.”

Merry sighed inwardly, thinking of the many hours of work that she’d put in to creating such healing potions.

“In your mind, is there any question that this woman is a witch?”

“Do not answer,” Bishop Henry interrupted testily. “Father Moreau, I’m not interested in this man’s opinion. He is here to bear witness to facts regarding heresy.”

Merry threw the bishop a grateful look.

“Have you any testimony to offer that has not yet been stated?” Moreau rephrased.

The abbot put his fingertips to his lips, his eyes shining with zeal. “Aye, under sworn oath, she said that she had given the devil dominion over her.”

The crowd responded with loud gasps. For the third time, the bishop called for silence. Then Moreau turned to her eagerly. “Let me remind you that you are speaking before the Bishop, God’s representative, and have sworn on the four gospels. Did you testify at one time that the devil had dominion over you?”

Merry’s heart thudded. “At one time, I did say so,” she replied, licking her dry lips again.

As expected, the crowd erupted in a cacophony of shouting.

“I was mistaken.” Had anyone heard her?

The bishop’s scribe began to yell at the top of his lungs for quiet. It took a solid ten minutes this time, but Merry waited patiently, determined not to let that condemning statement be her last. Before anyone could stop her, she repeated herself as loudly as she could, “I was mistaken.”

“You mean you lied?” Moreau countered, pouncing like a ferret. “Then how can we believe you now?”

“I did not lie,” Merry said, cutting him short. “I believed my stepfather was the devil incarnate, and for a brief time, he had control of my life. Now, he is dead, and the devil is said to be immortal.”

A confused silence followed her words. It seemed no one had followed her logic, including Father Moreau. After a pause during which he stared at her with narrowed eyes, he turned back to the abbot.

“Is there anything else you would share with this court?” he inquired. “Something else that was discussed at her previous trial?”

“Nay,” interrupted the bishop sternly. “There is to be no mention of a previous trial, Father Moreau. I thought I made that quite clear.”

“Apologies, Your Excellency. My mistake.” Moreau clasped his hands in an attitude of repentance.

“Any trial that has not been sanctioned by a bishop or archbishop is of no interest to this court,” Bishop Henry added darkly. “Proceed.”

“Can you bear witness to anything else that will help our court decide upon her guilt?” Moreau asked the abbot.

“She does bear the devil’s mark upon her backside,” the abbot added with a flush of excitement “There is no mistaking its distinctive shape.”

Nay, not that! The eager murmurs of the crowd washed over her, and Merry looked down at her hands in dread, her knuckles shining white through her fair skin.

“Permission to have the mark displayed as evidence, Your Excellency,” Moreau petitioned the bishop.

Merry held her breath. She had already told Bartholomew how she’d been forced at her previous trial to hike up her skirts and reveal her birthmark to her persecutors. Then, the trial consisted of only nuns and the abbot. This time, God’s teeth, there was a roomful of men who were not even of the Church. If she were forced to endure the same humiliation—

“Your Excellency, first another witness from the priory.”

Merry glanced up sharply. It was Father Bartholomew, standing and addressing the bishop. He must have read her mind! Relief made her weak. Why had he waited until then to act?

The bishop glowered at him. “I’ve heard enough witnesses from the priory. What will one more contribute?”

“A second witness to the mark on the accused would make a display unnecessary,” Bartholomew reasoned. “I’m sure that none of us here wish her to bare her womanly flesh.”

“There are no other witnesses from Mount Grace,” Moreau protested.

“One came forward on her own accord,” Bartholomew admitted, with an apologetic smile. Merry knew in fact that Bartholomew had gone out of his way to find one of the priory’s sisters who would speak on her behalf. “Your Excellency?” He turned back to the bishop.

Henry’s gray eyes glinted. “Proceed,” he decided, nodding at Bartholomew.

Merry’s hopes rose. She’d been warned that Father Bartholomew could not reveal his sympathies toward her. If he meant to discredit the previous testimonies, he would have to be subtle.

Bartholomew called forth Sister Magdalena. With pleasure, Merry recognized her former roommate at the priory, a soft-spoken young woman who had been a novice at Mount Grace until the previous winter. No longer wearing the white veil of a novitiate, Merry assumed she was now a professed member of a different priory or convent.

After swearing to tell the truth, Magdalena confirmed Merry’s guess as she introduced herself as a resident of Saint Frideswide’s. Rather than approach near to Mother Agnes, she stood at the far side of the bench from her.

“Sister,” Father Bartholomew began, “is it true that the accused has a mark low on the back of her body?”

Magdalena’s hazel eyes touched sympathetically on Merry. “She has a birthmark,” the nun admitted reluctantly.

“What sort of birthmark?” Bartholomew pressed.

The nun shrugged. “It is round and pink,” the nun said, gazing at the floor. “’Tis rather pretty, actually,” she added unnecessarily. “Like a flower bulb.”

“Sister, have you a birthmark?”

Sister Magdalena raised startled eyes at the priest. “N-nay,” she said, looking frightened.

“Have you any marks on your back?” Bartholomew persisted.

A tense, little silence followed as the nun paled. She darted a glance at Mother Agnes and then back at Father Bartholomew. “I do,” she finally admitted. “I have several marks.”

“What manner of marks are they if they be not birthmarks?” Bartholomew looked puzzled.

“What do you mean by these questions?” Bishop Henry interrupted. “Are you going to ask every one of us here if we, too, have marks?”

“I believe the nun’s answer will be relevant, Your Excellency,” Bartholomew assured the bishop. “Please, sister, answer the question,” he enjoined the young woman. “What manner of marks are on your back?”

Sister Magdalena nodded slowly, as though finally understanding the reason for her torment.

She answered simply with one word, “Scars.”

A murmur of conjecture rolled through the onlookers.

“How did you come by them?” Father Bartholomew persisted.

The young nun’s gaze strayed once more toward the prioress of Mount Grace, sitting like a raven on a branch. “Mother Agnes laid twenty lashes on my back,” she whispered.

Benches groaned as the witnesses leaned forward to catch her answer. Merry blanched, recalling the damage that had been done so cruelly to Magdalena’s body.

“Such stern punishment,” Bartholomew reflected. “What was your crime?”

The nun looked down at her twisted hands. “I misspoke the prayers at compline.”

“Aye, she did,” called out Agnes standing up with her righteous zeal. “She had to be punished in the eyes of God for fouling his words.”

“Silence!” The bishop threw up his hands in amazement. “You are in my court, prioress, and you will not speak unless asked.”

Duly reprimanded, Mother Agnes seemed to shrink into herself.

Henry of Blois wasn’t finished with her. “What’s more, if these statements prove true regarding your abuse of those whom the Holy Church has charged you to guide along the spiritual path, then your position as prioress of Mount Grace will end. You will be punished for your heavy-handedness.”

Agnes blanched at the bishop’s threat. She sank onto the bench, suddenly silent.

The bishop gestured for Magdalena to continue. “Continue, Sister. You were telling us how you misspoke your prayers at compline.”

“I was weary,” she added, “and I left out a word or two without meaning to. Mother Agnes said that a whipping would help me remember the next time.”

The bishop’s lips thinned as he slid a dark look at the prioress.

Father Bartholomew coughed quietly, and Magdalena continued as if prompted, “’Twas Sister Mary Grace who tended my wounds with a salve.” She fixed a grateful look on Merry. “I might have died of fever from infection had she not cared for me so kindly.”

Bartholomew cut her off, “I see. I’ve no more question for you, Sister, Your Excellency,” he said to the bishop.

As if wishing to clear her reputation for devoutness, Magdalena said, “I was weary, and I recited them incorrectly, so she whipped me. I never recited them wrong again.”

Father Bartholomew coughed quietly, and Merry wondered if perhaps the cough was a signal for Sister Magdalena added, in a louder voice, “’Twas Sister Mary Grace who tended my wounds with a salve.” She lifted grateful eyes to Merry. “I might have died of fever from infection had she not cared for me so kindly.”

“I see,” said Bartholomew, casting a look of chagrin at Father Moreau. “I have no more question for the sister, Your Excellency,” he said to the bishop.

Impressed with his acting ability, Merry tried not to look at him as he resumed his seat. She focused on her hands again, sending him a silent message of thanks, while breathing deeply to keep her nausea at bay.

As Luke had reassured her it would be, the prioress’s testimony had been cast in doubt. Hope was not a brittle thing to be crushed under foot; it was a chrysalis, after all.

“Is there anyone else to speak?” the bishop asked.

Father Moreau sprang once more to his feet. “Lady du Boise,” he began, pacing back and forth before her.

When she started to correct him again, he waved her off and started again. “Lady d'Aubigny, on the basis of the testimony we have heard, you were thought a witch even before you entered Mount Grace. Then at the priory, despite the attempts of the prioress to wean you away from your evil ways, you continued to dabble with plants. Will you tell the court why that was so?”

Merry fixed her gaze on the dark heads of the audience. Moreau’s pacing made it difficult to order her thoughts. “Plants are not evil, Father. They are heaven’s gift to mortals, a means provided by God to soothe our physical ills.” Those were words that Sarah had canted to her many times.

“Then you admit to leaving the confines of the priory at night?” Moreau prompted.

“I openly admit it. The mother forbade me to enter the priory gardens. I had to go elsewhere to find what I needed.”

“Such as poisons?” he interrupted. “Did the poisonous plant you used against the prioress grow within the convent or outside its walls?”

Merry took several deep breaths. “Outside,” she said shortly.

Batholomew coughed again, and Merry was certain this time he was signaling her to be wary.

“What is the name of that plant?”

‘Henbane.” Her throat was so parched with thirst that her voice cracked.

“How much is required to kill a living soul?”

“Clearly more than two leaves, which is what I used.”

“How did you know to use only two leaves?” he pressed.

“There is a science to such things,” Merry answered wearily.

“Was it the witch, Sarah, who taught you this magic?” the priest persisted as if she hadn’t spoken.

“’Tis not magic, and she wasn’t a witch. She was a gentle healer.”

“Answer the question,” Moreau exhorted. He resumed his pacing then, swimming in and out of Merry’s focus.

“Sarah taught me how to use henbane for healing. Its leaves, boiled in wine and applied properly, cool all hot inflammations or swelling in the body and even in the eyes. Henbane also assuages pain in the joints,” Merry stated, recalling Sarah’s lessons, all the while feeling as though reciting the words offered her a support that she must lean on lest she fall.

“Henbane works well as an ointment, too. It can also stop the toothache.” She paused, then added, “I taught myself how to use the plant for ill.”

“Why would a girl experiment with poisonous herbs?”

Merry hesitated, but having sworn upon the gospels to tell the truth, she did so. Now a grown woman, she thought about the motives of the terrified, angry girl she’d been.

“To avenge the man who killed my father and raped my mother,” she answered, her voice strained.

“Vengeance is the Lord’s,” Moreau shot back. “Then you confessed to giving the devil dominion over you.”

Merry opened her mouth to correct him for intentionally twisting everything that she’d said, but he cut her off, calling forth two names she didn’t know, Owen of Ailswyth and Donald of Tees.

Stomach cramping, Merry saw two unkempt men shuffle forward. To her dismay, she recognized them as the mercenaries who had disappeared with Cullin’s body, rather than leave it to the raptors. Worse and worse, she thought. She’d warrant that they would say anything to avenge their friend’s death.

With a black dread rising up in her, she braced herself to face more questioning. Merciful God, get me through this, she prayed, feeling the tremors that racked her body. Where is Luke? I need him now!

Again, she scanned the faces for any sign of him. As some of the crowd moved restlessly on their feet, her gaze homed in on a dark head not so very far away after all.

He sat on a bench beneath a window, partially blocked by someone who’d come to stand later. Her heart lurched to see him. Luke! In her dizzying delight, she nearly called his name but his steady gaze enjoined her to stay calm. How long had he been sitting there, willing her to see him?

A smile of relief lit his face when he realized she’d spied him at last. Strength flowed into her limbs. As he closed his eyes briefly and drew a deep breath, it was clear he’d been frustrated by her inability to see him. His eyes opened. Here I am, they seemed to say. Ever at your side.

Fastening her gaze to his, Merry let his love sustain her. While nothing could ease her dread, merely his presence alone had stopped her shivering. She knew without question he had done everything within his power to affect the outcome of the trial. Having saved her before from circumstances equally as precarious, he would do so again.

Pinning her faith on that simple truth, Merry listened to the soldiers describe the manner in which Merry joined them. Their voices seemed to come from a great distance, and she strained to hear and understand them.

“It were clear she were a witch from the first,” said Owen, scratching his chest. “She practically talked to her cat what followed her where’er she went. The moon till we met her had been full an’ round, but the night we took her to her home, the moon stayed hid.”

His voice faded completely for a moment, then swelled in volume though she’d lost track of his story, “. . . heard it scream as it fell. No animal could’ve survived such a fall, yet there she was the next day sitting astride it with the horse bearing naught but a limp. She brought it back to life, she did.”

“An’ then,” continued his companion, “it were one bad thing after another. On the night of our arrival at Iversly, the baron sickened and was carried to his chamber . . .” Donald of Tees became scarcely audible. “She came on the wall where we was busy at work . . . the cat brushed up against his leg . . . nearly died . . . She put Cullin under a spell so he was inflamed wi’ lust fer the witch . . . grabbed her one night . . . She’d asked fer it, mind you!”

His voice blended with the exclamations of the witnesses. The entire chamber began to turn, first slowly and then more swiftly, whirling around the two witnesses who kept their audience spellbound with their superstitious tales.

Merry fought to remain standing. She had to defend herself from these ignorant fools. However, the sparkle of lit tapers and tallow candles were bleeding one into the other, so that the room turned a murky haze of yellow.

As the chamber grew dimmer and the voices more distant, she felt herself falling but could do naught to stop herself. The last thing she felt was her skull hitting the hard floor.