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‘Why are you hiding?’ I whispered.

‘I have my reasons,’ he said gruffly. Then, glancing out to where Jack stood waiting, he said acidly, ‘I won’t keep you from your friend.’ Only he could imbue that pleasant, inoffensive word with such dark meaning. ‘You’re to come out with me tonight. There’s a task you must perform.’

Must?’ I repeated, instantly angry. ‘On your orders, Hrype?’

He gave a sound expressing his impatience. ‘No. The prime concern isn’t mine.’ He hesitated. ‘There is someone else; someone who-’

‘Lassair?’ Jack called. ‘Are you all right?’

‘Get rid of him!’ Hrype hissed.

‘No!’ I hissed back.

Hrype muttered a curse, and then, as both of us stepped out from the shadows, I witnessed the extraordinary thing I’d seen once or twice before: Hrype changed his appearance. Somehow, using no more than adjustments in how he stood, his attitude and how he held his head, he turned from a tall, straight and proud man in vigorous middle age to a cringing, crippled peasant, worn down to decrepitude by decades of toil. In a thin, reedy voice quite unlike his own, he looked up at Jack, bowed and said, ‘Good evening to you, sir.’ Pulling his hood forward to conceal his face, he slipped away.

I knew why he had stopped me. He wanted me to look into the shining stone; to attempt once more to extract what he so badly wanted to know. My first reaction was to feel distressed and afraid.

Then, as I stood staring after Hrype, another emotion stirred. The shining stone was rightfully in my keeping; my own grandfather had told me so. It had been in his possession and he had given it to my Granny Cordeilla, trusting her to keep it safe until the right hands were ready to receive it.

Those hands were mine.

I wanted to be left alone with the stone. To form my own links with it; to explore it slowly, waiting to see what it offered in return. Discovery promised to be an exciting, seductive and mysterious path, and, that very afternoon, I had made my first solo steps on it.

I was no longer prepared to use the stone at someone else’s bidding, even that of a man as powerful and persuasive as Hrype. I raised my chin, squared my shoulders and gave a nod.

Beside me, Jack gave a soft laugh and said, ‘Have you finished?’

I spun round, to see that he was studying me closely. ‘What?’ I demanded sharply.

‘You’ve just been going through some personal crisis, I’d say,’ he replied, his tone mild. He jerked his head in the direction in which Hrype had melted away. ‘That man asked you to do something, and you don’t want to. At first you looked cowed, and you started chewing on your thumbnail in the way you always do when you’re worried. Then you made up your mind you were going to be strong – I saw it in your face – and refuse him.’

Chewing on my thumbnail? Really? Surreptitiously I glanced down at my hand: four decent nails on the fingers, and the one on the thumb nibbled down to its limit.

I looked up, straight into Jack’s clear, honest eyes. He said softly, ‘Lassair, you can tell me it’s nothing to do with me, but I’d like to help you.’

I didn’t answer. I just went on looking at him.

‘I’m trying to tell you that you can trust me, which isn’t really fair when you know next to nothing about me,’ he said. ‘You know where I live and what my work is. As I said, I was once a soldier, and the change from fighting man to lawman was an obvious and relatively easy step.’ He hesitated, weighing his words. ‘I dislike and distrust the man who gives me my orders – Picot is a crook and a rogue, out to make his own fortune – but I believe it is right to have laws, and that those laws must be upheld and defended. The alternative is every man for himself, and, under that regime, the strong prosper and the weak are trampled in the dust.’

I nodded. Rollo had once said something very similar.

My thoughts veered away from Rollo as if I’d been burned.

Jack shrugged, and I sensed his passionate explanation of himself had made him uneasy.

Then, thinking back, I remembered something he had said earlier: the innocent are never to blame, yet so often it’s they who suffer most.

I looked at him. As if he was prepared for my scrutiny and wanted to stand firm before it, he stared right back at me. He stood easily, yet, even at rest, his broad shoulders and chest revealed his solid strength. What had he been through to be such a champion of the weak, the innocent and the powerless? Had he been a Saxon, I could have understood, for you didn’t have to walk many miles to find people who had suffered appallingly when the Normans came; people whose lives had been changed in a flash from comfort and security to wretched poverty and brutal violence. In the red-hot mood of conquest, William the Bastard, his lords and his soldiers had had neither the time nor the inclination to be merciful.

But Jack Chevestrier hadn’t even been born back in 1066. No blame could attach to him personally for William the Conqueror’s barbarities.

Still he did not speak. He was waiting, I thought, to see what I would do. Whether I would trust him or keep my secrets to myself.

After what seemed a long time, I said, ‘I have made up my mind about something.’ I paused, for I wanted this to sound right. ‘I do believe you wish to help me, and I’m grateful.’ He began to speak, but I stopped him. ‘I’m not ready to tell you what it’s about,’ I hurried on, ‘but please understand that it’s not because I don’t trust you. I do.’

His eyes widened.

‘I’m honoured,’ he said after a moment, his voice low. ‘I respect your right to privacy, but, if you change your mind, I’ll be there.’

For no very clear reason, suddenly I felt moved almost to tears. I sensed that Jack rarely made such offers, and that he had just presented me with a very precious gift.

He looked at me, his face solemn. ‘Lassair, sometimes the hardest thing is standing up for yourself, especially when you’re accustomed to doing what others tell you.’ He paused. ‘For all of us, there’s a moment when we have the chance to assert ourselves, and if we fail to take it, that moment sets the pattern for the rest of our lives.’ He paused, his clear green eyes holding mine. ‘I just wanted to say,’ he concluded, ‘that, if this is your moment, make the most of it.’

He smiled briefly, then turned and walked away.

Just then, the first drops of rain began to falclass="underline" heavy, insistent. Jack broke into a run, haring off up the track towards the shelter of Lakehall as if the god of thunder were after him. I pulled my shawl over my head and hurried off to Edild’s house before I was soaked through.

As I flung the door open and burst inside, desperate to be out of the increasingly awful weather, I could still hear Jack’s parting words inside my head. Despite being drenched, I felt as warm as if I’d been sitting snug beside the fire.

Edild came in late, tired but satisfied; the carpenter’s wife had been delivered of a healthy girl. She fell on the food I’d prepared, and, while she ate, I remembered my resolve to ask if she knew anything about the disappearance of Granny Cordeilla’s brother Harald.

‘Edild,’ I began, ‘did Granny Cordeilla speak much about her three brothers?’

‘She had four,’ Edild corrected. ‘One of them, Sihtric, became a monk.’

I had forgotten about Granny’s cloistered brother; it tended to happen when a family member shut themselves away within an enclosed order. But Sihtric the monk wasn’t the man I was interested in. ‘Tell me about Harald,’ I said

‘He was a likeable man,’ my aunt said, her expression softening. ‘He was big and brawny, like so many of the men of the family, but kind-hearted beneath the tough, bluff exterior. Cordeilla took his loss hard,’ she added quietly, ‘and missed him sorely. It troubled her greatly, not knowing his fate.’

‘Could he have died at Hastings, like the other two?’ I asked. I felt very guilty about the rush of hope that rose up in me. I might have preferred Harald dead in battle to Harald as the father-in-law of Lady Rosaria, but that wasn’t very fair on him.