Joanna stared at the bishop’s messenger, a man unknown to her. She and Hugh had scarcely returned to Castle Manhill when the messenger appeared. Joanna was still trying to understand what had happened to her; how she could respond so completely to Hugh. She was his hostage and he was her captor. How was it that, riding with him, she was so at ease in his company? So glad of his touch? So happy?

The messenger, Sir John Woodvine, clad in the blue and purple of the bishop’s entourage, woke her out of her girlish daydream. She was inside again, trapped within stone walls again, and with work to do. Hugh might speak of loving her for a week, but he was not soft enough to release her to Sir John.

Not that Sir John was asking for anything so overt, merely to “have words” with her in private. A dapper, older man with smooth fair hair and a baby-fine complexion, he reminded Joanne of a ferret: sleek and dangerous. She would not want to meet him in any street in West Sarum alone: not with the burning looks of interest he kept giving her. Standing in Sir Yves’s private solar behind the great hall, straddling a wolf-skin rug and occasionally touching the coat of arms emblazoned on the front of his surcoat, Sir John seemed all courtesy. But each time he glanced at her, sitting on a stool beside the fireplace with a scrap of another woman’s embroidery on her lap—provided by Sir Yves, who thought it made her look “aptly feminine”—Sir John stripped her with his eyes.

Standing at the other end of the fireplace, fanning his long tunic by the flames, Sir Yves looked bored and embarrassed. Hugh meanwhile prowled around the solar, asking if she needed a drink, or a cushion, or a maid: any question to claim her attention and make it clear to Sir John that if he so much as breathed on her, Hugh would rip out his heart and roast it on a spit. The tension crackled between the pair as much as the roaring fire in the grate, an opulent, showy fire that Joanna longed to escape. Her left side felt to be scorched and at one point she was certain she could smell her own hair singeing.

“I see from your sword belt and its repair that you have fought in Outremer,” Hugh was saying, pacing relentless beside the couch on which his father sat and threw scraps of old bread to his dogs. “Did you go on crusade?”

“I am with a military order,” Sir John replied, glancing at Joanna as she tried to lean away from the fire. “Are you too hot, my lady?” Somehow the tone of his question suggested she would be cool if she allowed him to peel off her gown, and his sharp brown eyes were a fire in themselves.

Before Joanna could answer Hugh was beside her, lifting the stool off the floor timbers and moving her and her seat away from the blaze. He touched her hand and then confronted the messenger afresh.

“Templars or Hospitallers?”

“The Templars, Hugh Manhill. And before you ask”—Sir John held up a narrow hand on which his third finger was missing—“I am here as friend and herald of my lord Bishop Thomas, not as the emissary of my order.”

There was an astonished silence, but only for a moment.

“By all the teeth in hell!” Hugh smacked his thigh in frustration. “David is in your order, man! You will have known him in Outremer! You will have fought beside him! He is your brother-in-arms!”

Sir John stiffened. “I did not know him. I never saw him or met him anywhere and I have not seen him in West Sarum. All I do know is that the charges against him are heavy—”

“False!” Hugh spat.

“—and as such, reflect badly on my order. Sir David is obdurate,” he went on. “My lord bishop had ordered him placed in the lowest prison of the donjon but he has lately allowed Sir David back into the first-floor chamber. Still your brother refuses to deny these charges.”

“Hell’s teeth! He put David into that hellhole!”

“He is out of it now, Sir Hugh, so save your protestations.”

Joanna clutched the scrap of embroidery in her lap and willed herself not to be sick. David trapped in that foul lower prison, beneath the trapdoor, in the darkness…She gagged and swallowed a bitter mouthful of bile.

Sir Yves raised his eyebrows at this exchange but said nothing. He seemed unconcerned at the fate of his middle son and the pain of his youngest son. “State your terms, Sir John,” he remarked, motioning to a thin, limping page—not the lanky, curly-haired Peter, this time—to refill his wine cup.

Sir John glanced at his own empty cup, deposited by him on one of two great chests, but when no wine was forthcoming, he sighed and spoke. “My lord bishop shall, as a gesture of his goodwill, release his prisoner into the care of the Manhills.”

On what terms? Joanna wanted to yell at him, but Hugh was already asking that vital question.

Sir John appeared surprised. “Why, that my lord may see this lady for himself, on neutral ground. That, and some other minor issues.”

He meant the gold, Joanna knew. She had spoken of it eloquently in her previous messages and the bishop was interested. But she would not hand it to a messenger.

“That is between my lord and me,” she said quickly.

Sir Yves frowned at her interjection: in his eyes, her function at this meeting was supposed to be decorative, nothing more.

Hugh nodded. “Agreed. So when will this exchange take place?”

Sir John looked at them one by one, a ghost of a smile suggested on his narrow lips. “Today at sunset, if it please you all. My lord Thomas is returning to West Sarum this very day and can break his journey here to resolve this matter.”

“Do you trust him?” Joanna asked Hugh later. They had remained in the solar by the ruse of Hugh offering her a game of chess. She had accepted, though she did not know how to play it, and now they were bent over the chessboard on one of the chests, their heads close together. A maid was sweeping a twig broom slowly round the chamber: Sir Yves’s idea of a chaperone.

“What now?” Joanna whispered, pointing to the maze of pieces.

“Move your queen, to the fourth square. There!” Hugh whispered. He was playing both sides, and to Joanna’s amusement she was winning.

Hugh rubbed at his chin as if deep in thought and lowered his head still more, as if studying the board. “I do not trust the bishop for a moment,” he admitted. “And now, after hearing that news of David spending time in the oubliette, I understand why you do not trust him, either. Hell’s teeth! It makes me livid to think of it! Such filthy behavior is against all forms of honor.”

Joanna waited, not daring to ask Hugh what he meant by her not trusting Bishop Thomas. Memories of their night together swept through her, making it impossible for her to think. She had to know one thing, however. Half-knowledge would drive her mad.

“Do you blame me?” she asked. “For last night? Do you see how I was—acted—as a betrayal of the bishop?”

He stared as if her question surprised him, his ready color fading from his lean features, and then he shook his head at her. “No, Joanna. You have betrayed no one.”

Hope flared in her. “Truly?”

“Truly, wench! But now we must play what we have. If Bishop Thomas is at all honorable, if the meeting goes well, then there will be an exchange: you for David.”

Unless the prisoner was her father, Solomon, Joanna thought, wishing with all her heart and will that it would be. Her father was older than David: he would fare less well in the donjon or worse, the oubliette. She was very sorry for David, appalled that he had been treated so, but her wish remained the same.

Hugh picked up his own queen and cradled it in his large hand, tracing the rough-hewn features of the figure with a thumb. “We shall all be back in our own worlds: my brother with the Templars, should he care to trouble with them, you with your elixirs, me with the joust.”

He replaced the queen on the board with a small snap. “If you ever wish for a change, send me another of those golden tassels and I will bear you off to a tourney. The life is interesting, though I do not think you could practice your arts, which would be a pity. I think in the end you would miss it too much.”

Joanna gave him a sharp look, wondering if he meant as the bishop’s leman, but his face was solemn.

“Send me word when you find gold, eh?” He looked deeply into her eyes. “I will be glad to know you have attained your heart’s desire, my lady alchemist.”

Say more, please! Joanna felt the passion in her heart brimming as tears in her eyes. But what could Hugh say? He was a landless knight with less treasure than he had begun with at the beginning of the year: he could support her but not give her a home. She was as he termed her: an alchemist. For her to continue her work she must have a constant place, not a traveling tent.

He took her cold hand in his and warmed her fingers. “This is a maze, but we may yet find our way out.”

“I pray so,” Joanna said, stopping before she broke down and wept.