Hugh heard the bishop speaking to a guard on the first-floor landing. He could not hear the words, but a few moments later he heard the barking of dogs and the rushing of heavy bodies up the spiral staircase.

“They are coming here,” he said, wondering for an instant if Thomas would try to set the dogs on them, then dismissed the idea. Those rowdy alaunts would obey him as before, as all dogs and good beasts heeded him, so Thomas’s ploy, if ploy it was, would be in vain.

David, who had not yet left his bed, groaned and pulled the covers over his head.

“He dislikes my lord bishop and so would feign sleep,” said Solomon. “He has done so before, especially since his return from the prison pit.”

He spoke as if David was a substance, Hugh thought, rather than a man. Indeed, since David had accused Joanna of betraying the Manhills, her father had not uttered one direct word to his brother. Such a habit was good kinship, perhaps, but Hugh was frustrated by the silence between them. “You are worse than women!” he had roared at both yesterday, but it had made no difference.

“Will you not meet the fellow on your feet, man to man?” He appealed to the lump that was his brother and to Solomon, who, though sitting up, was also still abed. For what would they rise? Their food was not due for another hour.

Hugh, not yet resigned to imprisonment, had been up and pacing for hours. Resuming what he done every day, he had tried the locked door and rattled the lock and kicked at the doorjamb until his feet, even in their stacked boots, were sore. He had tried to thread his bedding through a window slit before admitting it was folly. He had peered at his jowls in his washing water, wondering if the dark stubble was showing yet through the reddened skin. He was weary of his disguise, of pretense.

Give me a sword and I will clear this place from top to bottom!

“You should rise,” he said, irritated with his despairing companions. “I have told you—we need to be ready to leave at a finger-snap’s notice.”

David rolled down his bedding to show his scowling face beneath his fair hair. “No one is coming for us. She is not coming.”

“Should the dogs not be leashed, sir?” asked Joanna outside the chamber, proving David’s assertion a lie. Solomon turned his back on David and began feeling beside his rough heap of bedding for his shoes.

Good, old man. Do it for your daughter, if not for yourself.

Hugh heard the great key clank in the lock. He stood back, too wily to make a rush and be battered afresh by the cluster of guards. Yipping with excitement, the alaunts launched into the chamber and instantly rushed to David’s bed to worry at his bedding, and David yelled.

“Stop that!” Hugh snapped his fingers and the alaunts fell back, coming to sniff his fingers and receive a friendly pat. And now Joanna was in the room beside three guards. She carried a jug and cups and stared at him as if she would know all of him afresh.

Their eyes met. How open and sultry and yearning she was: his harem girl in another master’s drab garb. He longed to strip her there and then on the spot, tear off the bishop’s proofs of ownership, and make her truly his.

Bishop Thomas, sleek as a weasel, was also staring. “You are the second man to charm my dogs. Are you a warlock, redhead?”

“Eh?” Hugh strove to think straight. What did the fellow mean? Had he seen through the disguise, or remembered Hugh Manhill’s skill with beasts? He had made a stupid mistake, there, quelling the alaunts.

“It is written that witches have red hair,” Solomon remarked, coming to his rescue. He rose and bowed to the bishop. “My lord.”

“A word.” Thomas beckoned Solomon as casually as if he were the least page, but his ill grace gave Hugh the chance to give David’s bed another kick, further rouse the despairing idiot. As Solomon stepped warily past the dogs, Hugh nodded to Joanna.

“Is that our breakfast wine, girl?”

“Yes, sir.” Her voice was as pretty, and as dry, as the substance of mercury. It gave him no clue to her feelings.

“Will you serve me, then?” He sat on a stool beside the chess table. Off to one side, Thomas was hissing in Solomon’s ear, while David aped slumber. He was tempted to fling his brother out of bed, but then heard the loud click in the lock.

Joanna, having placed the cups on the chessboard and now pouring something—is that wine drugged?—glanced at the door. “My lord, we are locked in!”

Is her panic real or false?

“As I instructed, I would have no interruptions.” Bishop Thomas waved off her alarm. “Do you doubt these sturdy fellows?” He glanced at the alaunts, haunting meekly by Hugh’s heels, and said nothing of them. “Pour the wine for us, girl. You.” He pointed at the shorter of the three guards. “Rouse that prisoner. I would have us all drink a toast to our good king, John.”

David wallowed half-upright on his pallet and Thomas was on him, snatching a goblet from the chessboard and thrusting it toward him.

“Drink, man, drink! Even Templars pledge allegiance to kings! Drink!” Thomas swung round, spilling part of a second cup. “You drink, too, Red-face!”

Do I trust Joanna now?

Hugh did not hesitate. He took the cup and gulped it down.

“Drink, drink!” Thomas instructed his own men in a frenzy of excitement. “I would know all, so drink!”

David had not taken the cup, so Thomas flung the contents in his face while the guards hastily swallowed and drank.

“More!” Thomas snapped his fingers at Joanna. “More for the Templar, and you hold his head and you make him drink!”

“Please, my lord—”

“Silence!” Thomas bawled, overriding Joanna’s protest. “I will have those relics now! They are mine, for the Almighty brought the Templar to me! What are they, man? A part of the true cross? A lock of our savior’s hair? Tell me now, while you still have a tongue!”

David, the lees of wine dripping from his face, shook his head. The guards put down their empty cups and nodded to each other.

“Seize him! Hold him! I would know.”

Two guards stepped closer to David and then one rubbed at his eyes while the other clutched at his belly. They tottered another pace and then sank to the floor, the third guard slumping down with them but falling across Hugh’s pallet.

Thomas opened his mouth to scream and Hugh punched him hard in the face. The bishop of West Sarum crumpled in a gaudy heap on the floor and lay as still as his guards.

“Fine wine, that,” said Hugh. “What was in theirs?”

“Treble-strength sleeping potion in the bottom of their cups. I had no means to stir it properly, but I knew it would work. I have the antidote here, but had no means to give it you, so I had to know which goblet to give you, without the sleeping draught.”

Answering, Joanna was already hurrying for the door.

“That was risky,” David said, wiping his face on a bedsheet. “What if Thomas had seen the potion in the goblets?”

“I walked behind Thomas on the stairs and added it then,” Joanna said, kneeling by the lock and pulling a flask out of her baggy work gown. “We must hurry, David, or are you still in doubt of me?”

“I never doubted.” Hugh was eager to establish this point, even at the expense of some exaggeration.

“Never?” Her voice was very soft. “Had it been me, in your place—” She stopped, looking down at the flask in her hand as if she did not know what it was, and then glancing everywhere but at him.

“Come, David, let us tie up these guards and the bishop.” Solomon dragged at the Templar, compelling him to stir.

Hugh stepped over the prone figure of Bishop Thomas and knelt beside Joanna. Padding beside him, the alaunts whined.

“What must I do to help?” he asked, making his voice and manner gentle. “I know we have little time here.”

She stared despairingly at her hands. “I must feed this into the lock and let it burn, little by little. There will be foul smoke, so you must cover your nose and mouth, and I must be steady.”

She lifted her hands to him and he could seem them trembling. “Hugo, I do not know if I can do this.”

He lifted the flask from her, set it on the flags, and gathered her close. “Easy, there.” He trailed his thumb across her dark brows and lashes, feeling the cheekbone beneath her pale skin, feeling how she had lost weight in the time she had been back here. He stroked her hair, his wish to comfort warring with his desire. “I will be your surgeon here. Tell me what to do.”

“Make haste, Hugh, before more guards come.” David was changing his clothes with those of the taller guard. “A pity none of these have keys.”

That was the first comment of sense his brother had made, Hugh thought, and now he answered, “Search them in case they have something we can use. No rough stuff,” he added. For himself, he might have dispatched all three, but he knew Joanna would disapprove.

He tore a sleeve from the bishop’s robe and wrapped it about his head, picking up the flask again. Reunions were sweet and Joanna his girl with wide and dreaming eyes, but they could not woo like lord and lady in a French romance: they must get out of the donjon first. “Tell me what to do,” he said again, shaking the flask before her eyes.

“Do not do that, Hugo!”

His ploy worked: Joanna’s attention snapped back into focus and her face blazed with concentration. “Never shake or tip aqua fortis, ’tis too dangerous! Here, give it to me!”

She shoved him aside and took the flask, tipping it to allow the liquid to slip into the door lock. A loud hissing and sizzling broke from the metal and a cloud of acrid smoke bloomed from the lock. Joanna leaned sideways, coughing, her eyes streaming, and Hugh tore a length from David’s bedsheet and wound it across her mouth and nose.

She tipped the flask a second time and more sizzling ensued. Hugh saw a trickle of something—waste metal?—weep from the lock.

“It works, keep going!” He gagged on the foul acid smoke but ignored it, pressing his shoulder to the door and pushing with all his strength. “David, help me!”

It was Solomon who came, pounding at the door with narrow fists while he shoved and Joanna poured.

With a final groan and sizzle the lock broke and their way was open. Hugh snatched the sword David had taken from the taller guard and whistled to the alaunts. “I go first,” he said. “Upend those pallets and get behind them now. There may be archers coming. I go out first and you follow only when I say. Agreed?”

David and Solomon grunted something. Joanna said only, “I have never seen a man wear a veil before. You look well in it.”

Behind his “veil” Hugh grinned, and grabbed a stool as a shield, ready for the next.