Clarise eased the kerchief from her flame-colored hair. The abbot put jeweled fingers to his mouth and gasped with recognition. “I know you,” he said in a voice so intimate her innards seemed to curdle. “You are the one who has written Alec words of defilement and temptation.”
“But, Your Grace,” she protested, realizing he made reference to her many letters. “I merely reasoned with his choice—”
“Silence!” he hissed. He stepped back suddenly, his face lost to shadow. “You are a woman, an ancestor of Eve. You would lure Alec from his holy vows,” he insisted.
“Not true!” she cried. “I have come for . . . for . . .” She stuttered, for in truth, she had come to lead Alec from the Church. “I have come for sanctuary,” she amended. It was a means to gain entrance; she had nowhere else to turn.
The abbot pressed himself to the gate. In a wolfish smile he bared his teeth. “Sanctuary?” he repeated. Then his head fell back as laughter, harsh and mirthless, rose from his throat. “Is that what you call it?” Suddenly he was deathly serious. “Horatio!” he snarled over his shoulder.
The man who’d answered the gate loomed behind him. “Show this woman your face,” the abbot commanded.
The monk pulled the hood from his head.
Clarise sucked in a breath of horror. The man’s face was speckled with lesions. Puss oozed from every pore. The wounds seemed to weep, lining his cheeks in flaky traces. She changed her mind at once about wanting to enter.
“Does this look like refuge to you?” the abbot inquired. There was a mad gleam in his onyx eyes.
Clarise drew her kerchief closer to her nose. She swallowed hard as the vision of illness threatened to upend her empty stomach. “Let Alec go,” she begged. “He is the only one who can help me, Your Grace. I have great need of him.”
“I am sure you do,” said the abbot with oily implication. “Nonetheless, he cannot leave. Until the illness runs its course, no one leaves. You run the risk of infection yourself.”
She stepped back instinctively. “I am going now,” she said.
“Just a moment,” the abbot ordered. “It comes to mind that Horatio might have infected you already. We cannot contribute to the spread of disease. Can we, Horatio?”
“Nay, Your Grace.” The monk seemed to smirk.
Clarise looked from one man to the other. She weighed the benefit of seeing Alec against the risk of being stricken. “I must go,” she repeated, staggering backward several paces as she pulled her head covering into place. “I will call again when the illness is gone.” She could not afford to be locked in the abbey’s walls indefinitely. Ferguson had given her two months’ time to accomplish her assignment. After that, her mother and sisters’ lives were forfeit.
With a nameless fear she turned and hurried down the grassy slope. As the earth dropped sharply beneath her feet, she began to run, desperate to put distance between herself and the sickness that polluted the abbey. She pinched her slippers with her toes, skirting hollows and leaping over rocks as she raced toward the river and the trading town at its shore.
Clarise dived into the midst of traffic. A trail of carts and traders swept her along. The cheerful throng was headed toward the market at the river’s edge. To her relief, there was no sign of illness in the sweating faces of those who milled around her.
The busy air of the market town contrasted sharply with the deathlike stillness of the abbey. Stalls and tents crowded the grassy riverbank. Tables overflowed with goods brought from other places—leather, samite, mink, trinkets, and jewels. Clarise stumbled through the throng, dismayed by the turn of events.
The scent of meat pies lured her toward the food stands. Ducklings sizzled over spits. Barrels swelled with luscious fruit. Over the shouts of the hawkers she heard her stomach rumble.
“Have a gooseberry?” a kind old lady offered, extending her the prickly ball of fruit.
“Thank you!” Clarise ripped off the skin with her teeth and stuffed the juicy globe in her mouth.
Now what? she wondered. It had never occurred to her that the Abbey of Rievaulx would be anything but a haven of refuge. Alec had flown there to keep from being murdered by the Slayer. Yet illness now despoiled the place, and the abbot’s strange behavior made it all the more frightening.
She thought of Alex, trapped behind the walls. He must be desperate to leave! But until the illness ran its course, he could not. Perhaps he’d never even received her letters. The abbot could have kept them to himself, fearing Alec would rescind his vows if he knew of Clarise’s desperate situation.
She seized the explanation with relief. While it meant that Alec knew little of her plight, it also meant that he might still help her. If she found a way to reach him.
How long until the quarantine was lifted? Could she afford to bide her time in this trading town while every day brought her mother and sisters closer to death?
The sound of one woman scolding another roused her from her thoughts. “Megan, are ye mad?” hissed the woman, tugging at the other’s elbow. “Do ye want to live at Helmesly and be nursemaid to the Slayer’s son?”
At the Slayer’s name, Clarise gave a guilty start. She followed the direction of the women’s stares and spied a man sitting astride a horse. The man wore no armor in the afternoon heat. By the hopeless look on his battle-scarred face, he hadn’t met with any luck in his search for a nurse.
That can’t be the Slayer, Clarise thought, swallowing hard. A gooseberry seed moved painfully down her throat. As the women moved hurriedly away, whispering to themselves, Clarise eyed the Slayer’s representative.
The Slayer had spawned a son on the baron’s daughter. Ferguson wouldn’t like that at all, she thought with a faint smile. Yet it made her mission that much easier. For the sake of her mother and sisters, she needed to approach the knight and offer her services as a nurse.
I am not equipped to feed a baby, she silently resisted. Yet that was not exactly true. She’d fed her youngest sister goat’s milk when their mother suffered the birth fever. It wasn’t an impossible task. Besides, she couldn’t stay in this trading town indefinitely, waiting for the quarantine to lift.
With leaden feet, Clarise crossed the grassy expanse that separated her from the horseman.
The man caught sight of her and stared with interest. To her relief, he did not appear to be a vicious warrior. Below a full head of graying hair, his eyes were light and keen. Though his face was crosshatched by scars, one end of his mouth was caught up in a perpetual smile, giving him a congenial look. He dismounted as she approached him.
“Are you in search of a nurse?” she asked in the Saxon tongue. As Ferguson had suggested, she would play the part of a freed serf.
He took hold of his animal’s bridle. “I am,” he said, giving her a quick but thorough inspection.
“I can care for the baby,” she offered, sounding more certain than she felt.
He gave her a skeptical look. “Where is your child?”
My child? Mary’s blood, she was supposed to have birthed a child! “It . . . it died of fever just a day ago.”
The knight’s expression turned sympathetic. “And you would care for another,” he finished gently. “What does your husband think?”
Husband? She balked at the unexpected question. Having not intended to go through with Ferguson’s plan, she’d given little thought to what she would say under the circumstances. “I have no husband,” she answered automatically. At the knight’s odd look she added, “He died in a skirmish.”
The knight frowned and paused. “You have suffered much for one so young,” he said.
His sympathy gave her courage. It would be easier than she thought to find her way into the Slayer’s home. “I have no money,” she added pathetically. “No way of feeding myself. Please, take me to Helmesly Castle. Let me care for the baby.”