For two long days the sun had sat upon her shoulders and sucked the moisture from her moth. Beneath the cloth hiding her hair, Clarise’s scalp was drenched with sweat. The gown that disguised her as a peasant chafed her limbs where her shift failed to cover her. Her slippers were worn to tatters. She was lucky to be alive.

Ferguson, her stepfather, hadn’t cared about the dangers of the road when he’d cast her out upon her mission. He knew the threat to kill her mother and sisters was enough to ensure that she would fight to survive any hardship.

Ferguson had instructed her to go straight to the Slayer’s castle. Ye mon gain admission to Helmesly as a freed serf in need o’ work, he’d commanded. Drop the powder into his drink at the first chance ye get. If the Slayer isn’t dead in two months’ time, I’ll hang yer mother an’ sisters in the courtyard.

There were others he could have sent in her stead, men and women more adept at subterfuge. But Ferguson had a reason for sending Clarise to do his dirty work. She had attempted to avenge her father’s murder numerous times. Her sharp, strategic mind made her an ever-present danger to Ferguson. He could not control her except from afar.

The toxic powder was concealed in a pendant that hung on a chain about her neck. Clarise felt the weight of the pendant swing between her breasts as she pushed her way up the abbey’s hill. Ferguson’s plan was sneaky and cold-blooded. It was riddled with flaws. The likelihood that she would be exposed and hanged for spying was high, but that did not cause Ferguson any great concern. Clarise was as dispensable as her mother and sisters.

Only one alternative existed to the plan: that Alec could help her. Six months ago Alec had been Clarise’s betrothed; now he was a monk. The wedding would have taken place last Christmas, had the Slayer of Helmesly not attacked without warning on the eve of the nuptials. In a bloody assault he had killed Alec’s father, prompting Alec to flee to Rievaulx Abbey in fear of his life. Clarise’s dream of escaping her stepfather’s clutches through marriage had been crushed.

She told herself Alec would stay at Rievaulx only a short while. He was a knight, after all, not a man of the cloth. But the days turned to weeks and then to months. In letters too many to count, she pleaded for Alec to take up his sword and rescue her family from the Scot’s abuses. Until now, her efforts had been in vain.

Today she would petition him in person. How could Alec refuse to help when she told him of Ferguson’s threat to kill her family? Honor dictated that he summon an army and challenge her stepfather once and for all.

The scent of cooked meat wafted from a nearby village, distracting Clarise from her introspection. Her stomach gave an empty growl, but she ignored it. The monks would feed her at Rievaulx.

Her footsteps faltered as she approached the abbey’s only gate. The wall that rose toward the cloudless sky reminded her of her father’s tomb. It was hewn from the same gray stone.

Alec is here, she reminded herself, shaking off her sudden foreboding. When he saw her in person, he would remember his love for her. He would be her hero once again.

The only way to signal her presence was to tug on a bell rope. At the bell’s high jingle, the peephole snapped open. “Aye?” came a voice from the folds of a cowl.

Clarise greeted the faceless monk in Latin. “I must share a word with Alec Monteign.”

The monk showed no reaction to her words. “We have an illness here. The abbey is quarantined,” he said stoically.

Alarm rippled over her. “What manner of illness is it?” she demanded. Without Alec’s help, she would have no choice but to execute her mission.

“Fever,” said the monk shortly. “Boils and lesions.”

Clarise repressed the urge to cover her mouth with one corner of her headdress. “Nonetheless, I must speak with Alec.” Desperation made her dizzy. She blinked her eyes to clear her vision, and when she opened them, the monk was gone.

Where did he go? Clarise stood tiptoe and peered into the abbey’s courtyard. The cobbled square looked strangely abandoned. An inscription over a pair of double doors drew her gaze. Hic laborant fratres crucis, said the message. Here labor brothers of the cross.

No one labored now. Neither did they tend the vineyards outside the abbey’s walls. The rows of trellises stood bereft of vine or grape. She was left with the dampening suspicion that she’d come to the wrong place for help.

The sound of footsteps echoed off the courtyard. Another man approached the gate. He did not wear a cowl over his dark, tonsured hair but a stole that designated him an abbot. Clarise’s hopes took wing, then plummeted as his black gaze skewered her through the little opening.

“You should not be here,” he informed her cryptically. “There is a great scourge within these walls.”

“I wish only to speak with Alec Monteign,” she said deferentially.

“Brother Alec tends the sick. He cannot be interrupted.”

“He isn’t ill, then?” she asked, hopeful once again.

“Not yet.” The abbot spoke with no inflection in his voice. She couldn’t tell if he was angry or dispassionate.

“I was once his betrothed, Your Grace,” Clarise rushed to explain. “If he knew I had come so far, I am certain he would want to—”

His gaze had sharpened with her words. “Remove the cloth, so that I might see you,” he interrupted.

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.