The Frenchman Mercury was outside her chamber when Joanna, accompanied by Hugh and Hugh’s squire Henri, returned to it at daybreak.

“I have a message from your father,” Mercury said in southern French, nodding to Hugh.

“What did he say to you?” Hugh demanded, stepping between her and Mercury.

Joanna repeated what the Frenchman had said, careful to translate it exactly. A tiresome three-way conversation ensued, with Mercury talking to Joanna and her translating to Hugh.

It seemed her father was well and the “red work” was going very well. Joanna took comfort in the thought that Solomon was back to pursuing his goal of finding the perfect elixir, the secret of life and all things, symbolized by gold.

“He thinks of you and prays for you every day,” Mercury added. “He may have added more, I forget.” He lowered his head, as if in penitence. “Do you forgive me?”

When Joanna did not instantly say, “I do,” Mercury dropped to his knees on the flagstones. “Sweet lady, let me know I am pardoned, or I die!”

“Of course.” Waving him to his feet, Joanna wondered how she had ever found Mercury charming. “How is David?”

Mercury’s blankly handsome face grew still more blank.

“The man imprisoned in the donjon with you.”

“Ah, the Templar! Good!”

“Is he in health? I heard he had been taken elsewhere.”

“As to that, I know nothing. He is back with me. More quiet than before, more moody.”

“Is he allowed out at all? Have any of his order visited West Sarum?”

Her urgent questions earned her another blank look. “He plays chess quite nimbly,” Mercury said at length, as if he was imparting a major secret.

And that was all Joanna could discover. Mercury did not claim loss of memory or ignorance: he did not say anything. Joanna wanted to shake him.

Clearly she was not alone in her feelings, for Hugh suddenly slapped the nearest wall with a hand and said bluntly, “I’m for the garderobe. Watch him, Henri.”

He stalked away, Beowulf padding along by his heels, and Joanna knew her chance had come. “I must get back to my father,” she said in the French of Languedoc, confident that Henri knew nothing of what she was saying. “I do not know how I can do it, do you?”

Faced with a direct appeal, Mercury took her hand and kissed it.

“My lady, you must not distress yourself. If I may help in any way, I swear to you I will. Smile now, so this fat youth thinks we are flirting.”

Joanna attempted a smile that she was sure was a grimace.

“Good! Now your father thrives and he is a good man: he was always kind to me.”

“But I do not know what is happening!”

“Smile, my dear. We are all in that state, are we not? I have no memory, but see? I trust in God and his saints. I have an amulet, a luck charm.” Mercury deftly tucked at the small purse on his belt and dropped a small green- and blue-striped stone onto her palm. “Take this from me. It brings good fortune.”

The stone was bright in her hand, and strangely, Joanna found herself touched. It was not much, but Mercury was trying. “Thank you,” she said.

“That is better! A lady as pretty as you should not despair: it pains your looks. All will be resolved.”

Joanna lifted the stone and held it up, as if admiring it in the light from the arrow slit. “I have to escape,” she said in Languedoc. “My lord has given me another month to work, but I cannot work properly here and I have to see for myself that Solomon is safe.”

“As is natural. You are a good child, and I will help you, if I can.” Mercury looked beyond her. “The man returns. Say no more for now.”

“Agreed,” Joanna said quickly, her spirits lifting as Hugh strode back toward them. Yes, he was a lightweight, but Mercury would want to escape as much as she did, so they were natural allies. It was not much but perhaps it was a start.

Before she could make any kind of plan, however, the page Peter came with a message that SirYves was waiting for them in the great hall.

The lord of Castle Manhill was happy: it showed in his gleaming eyes and the way he swept from side to side on the dais, waving his arms as Joanna, Mercury, and Hugh filed into the hall.

“Join us!” he called, beckoning to his youngest son, and now Joanna saw the others, standing beside the benches and trestles that were drawn to the walls of the hall. It seemed every servant in the castle, from the lowest spit boy and laundress to the grandest steward, had been summoned.

Hugh gripped his sword hilt. “What is this? What has happened?”

“Is it David?” cried Joanna. “Is there news?”

At once Hugh shook his head: he had less faith in his father than she.

“Has King John died? No? Then has he been readmitted to the church again?”

Hugh pointed discreetly with the smallest finger on his left hand to a man folded into a stool on the dais beside the lord’s central chair. When he stood up from the stool, Joanna guessed the stranger would be the tallest man she had seen: he was certainly the thinnest and most bald. The top of his high, domed head shone like a ram’s skull. Dressed in mud-stained cloak and drab brown leggings, he wore no badge, no rings, yet it was clear Sir Yves knew him.

“Here is Capet, come fresh from your eldest brother’s,” Sir Yves announced, while Hugh said in an undertone to Joanna, “That explains it. Nigel treats his messengers like the meanest of serfs: none stay with him for long. This Capet is new to me.”

Joanna looked at Capet more closely but could read nothing from the man’s smooth, skinny face. He must not have brought bad news; at least nothing bad for Sir Yves.

“How is my elder brother?” Hugh asked, but Sir Yves spoke before the messenger.

“Nigel is well, he is always well. He has sent me a fine pair of gloves and a fine leather belt, a brooch, very finely wrought…”

“Is there another word coming, I wonder?” whispered Hugh to Joanna, who kicked him softly with her foot.

“…and such excellent provisions! Rock samphire and pepper, the finest salt. Fresh morel mushrooms and spring black truffles from his wife’s family estates in Perigord. Even your strange fellow, who speaks only the language of the south of France, will know of such truffles. They are famous throughout Aquitaine!”

In an appalling, horror-struck flash, Joanna understood. Sir Yves had no news of David or of any great event: he had summoned them to the great hall in order to brag.

A squire was holding up each of the gifts as his lord spoke: first the embroidered gloves, then the bags of pepper and salt. He knelt by the fireplace to undo a small bag and the rich scent of truffles swept through the hall.

The servants standing by the trestles and wall hangings glanced at each other and began a pitter-patter of applause as the squire rose to display the truffles. The dogs were yapping in excitement, held back from mobbing the squire by Hugh’s curt command. Hugh’s face was thunderous.

Mercury, meanwhile, the “strange fellow,” strolled up to the squire and put his face into the bag containing the small, dirty-looking spheres: the scent of the truffles was amazing but their appearance was a disappointment.

Mercury, his long nose still in the bag, inhaled deeply, then surfaced. “Good,” he said, in the language of the south. “Not as exquisite as some I have known but very good.”

“What does he say?” Sir Yves asked, his face reddened with pleasure.

“That they are exquisite,” Joanna said quickly.

Hugh folded his arms across his chest and tapped a booted foot. “How does he know?”

But before Joanna could ask Mercury that very pertinent question, the Frenchman flung an arm around a startled Sir Yves and tried to do the same with Hugh, who struck aside his reaching hand. Mercury shrugged and whispered in Sir Yves’s ear, who first looked startled and who then began nodding.

“The fellow does speak our French! He says he has just remembered it! That is as may be, but I think you should hear this, Hugh.”

Hugh looked at Joanna as he stepped toward his father and in that instant, glimpsing Mercury’s sanguine face, she knew.

Mercury, smiling, boyishly handsome, carefree Mercury, was betraying her confidences. He had suddenly and conveniently “remembered” how to speak Norman French and now he was telling SirYves and Hugh that she could not work properly at Castle Manhill, that she was still determined to escape. The man was only interested in himself and what he might win from such tale-bearing: he was not the least concerned what his “news” would mean for her.

I knew that he was charmingly selfish—why did I not consider how far that selfishness would go? Just because I would never tell a secret, why did I assume that all men are the same? Especially a man like Mercury?

Her heart felt as if it had dropped down within her body and the scent of the truffles seemed to clog her breath. She wanted to run from the great hall and keep on going. She felt people staring at her, marking her as different, strange, dangerous. She had not felt this way for years but she knew the dread too well: the stark yet creeping fear she and Solomon had struggled with, on and off, for all their lives.

On and on Mercury whispered, first in Yves’s listening ear and then in Hugh’s. Would he never be done?

Soon she would have to face her captors and give her own account.

Soon she would have to face Hugh.