“Oh, Father,” she choked, invoking the memory of Edward DuBoise, “I have tried to protect Mother, Merry, and Kyndra—I have. But everywhere I’ve turned for help, men have betrayed me. I’ve done all that I can do. Please forgive me.”

Over the sound of her weeping came a low humming that recalled her from her pain. Clarise caught back her sobs and listened. The sound seemed to be coming through the wall. She pressed an ear to the stone. Someone was chanting a canticle in the chamber next to her. “Who’s there?” she called, unwilling to alert Horatio, who was standing guard in the hallway.

The chanting stopped. She heard the eerie scrape of chain across stone. “ ’Tis I, Ethelred. Lady Clarise, is that you?” She barely recognized the good abbot’s voice. It sounded raspy, weak.

“It is I, Your Grace,” she answered with happiness and sorrow intermixed. She was so relieved not to be alone, yet so remorseful for not bringing help.

“Why did you follow me? Is anyone else coming?”

She swallowed the bitter taste in her mouth. The abbot sounded terrible. He must have caught the scourge, after all. Those lesions she’d seen on the monks’ mouths must be popping up on his throat and tongue.

“Lord Christian has come to the abbey twice now,” she sought to encourage him, “but they won’t admit him. He’s sent an urgent message to the archbishop. Oh, Your Grace, please forgive me,” she added, bursting into tears anew. “I ought to have told the others how to get inside the abbey, but I didn’t. I followed you on my own.”

“Why?” he asked. She thought she could hear him sinking onto the floor.

Why, indeed? What in heaven’s name had she hoped to accomplish, but to prove to Christian that she didn’t need his help—not that he had offered it. “Lord Christian and I had a falling out,” she admitted.

Ethelred said nothing for so long, she thought he’d fallen asleep. “Don’t drink the wine, my child.”

“What’s that?” She pricked her ears to his sudden warning.

“Don’t drink the wine,” he rasped. “You will . . . seem to show the symptoms of the plague.”

“Show the symptoms? I don’t understand. If the wine makes you sick, then it cannot be the plague.”

“ ’Tis a simulation.”

“Quiet in there!” Horatio shouted through the bars. “You two are not meant to talk.”

She obeyed the monk, too stunned by Ethelred’s news to think of anything to say. So, the disease was a fraud, no doubt made possible by the many plants growing in the abbey’s garden! What on earth was Gilbert hoping to accomplish by poisoning his monks?

When she whispered this question to Ethelred moments later, she got no reply. He had either fallen asleep or fainted. The chill of isolation struck her to the bone, and she sank to her knees. The chains weren’t long enough to let her sit. She was left in a posture of penitence that was supremely painful. How long could she stand it? she wondered, beset by panic.

Ironically, this was the treatment she had feared from the Slayer. Instead he’d given her a feather mattress and colorful gowns. Even when he learned the truth of her identity, he’d forgiven her and offered her his sword arm. His stipulation had been simple enough. A warm embrace. A body willing to receive him.

Hadn’t he proven that his touch was more than tolerable? She spent a moment warming herself with the memory of his intimate caresses. Oh, what she would give to feel his arms around her now, to curl herself into the security of his sure embrace.

Then she remembered her anger and his cruel words. Was his threat prompted by jealousy? Did he really think her in love with Alec?

She found a ray of hope in the thought. If he were jealous, then it meant he truly cared for her. Her heart expanded, then folded in on itself. His feelings would have little impact on her situation now. No one knew where she was, at least not until Nell admitted to their scheme.

How long would that take? Knowing her lady’s maid, no more than three days. Could she live that long without a drop to drink?

“Psssst. Clarise, is that you?”

Clarise shook her head. In her misery, she must have imagined the ghostly whisper.

“Lady, look to the door!” This was said more urgently.

She looked. Her eyes widened, and her heart leaped up at the sight of Alec’s boyish face. He peered through the bars at her, looking amazed and nonplussed. “What are you doing here?” he asked.

She struggled to her feet, her chains jangling noisily. Alec, of course! She’d forgotten all about him and the possibility of his help. “Where is Horatio?” she asked, hopeful that Alec had clubbed him over the head.

“Supping in the refectory.”

Some of her elation dimmed. Alec didn’t have the keys to set her free. “Oh, Alec,” she stammered, not knowing where to start. “I’ve been trying to reach you.” Now that she could finally speak to him, she found that the words she had poured to him on printed page would not come forth. “I have long needed your help,” she managed lamely.

“For what?” he asked, glancing fearfully over his shoulder.

He was afraid. She understood that he would fear his abbot, and yet his temerity only dampened her spirits.

If he couldn’t even face Gilbert, there was simply no hope that he would battle the burly Ferguson. “Can you get me out of here? The Abbot of Revesby is in the chamber next door. They have tortured him, I fear. He sounds unwell.”

Alec gazed at her, stricken by her predicament and clearly stunned by her words. “I have no key,” he said after a moment. “But I will try to get it. I don’t understand what brought you here.”

She sighed. “You left me to live with Ferguson,” she accused him flatly. “You abandoned my family to his treachery and fled to Rievaulx.”

“The Slayer seized Glenmyre,” he defended himself, curling a hand around one of the bars. “I had no choice. He killed my father; he would have killed me, too!”

She shook her head at him. “He had no intention of killing your father. He’s been trying for weeks now to give you back Glenmyre.”

“That’s what Ethelred told me,” the young man admitted. “But why would he do that?”

“Remorse,” she answered simply. “He only meant to put an end to our marriage alliance. Your father, who was no doubt given false information, mistook his intentions.” She changed subject midstream. “You never wanted to marry me, did you?” She felt only calm acceptance in the asking; her bitterness had faded.

Alec took his time in answering. “Clarise, my calling was always clear to me,” he said uncomfortably. “That doesn’t mean I didn’t love you.”

“As one Christian loves another,” she finished for him.

He gazed sadly into the light of the candle.

Clarise looked, also. The candle’s wax was melting at an alarming rate. Soon the cell would be plunged into darkness. “You have to help us,” she told him firmly. “Your abbot is a madman. Listen to me. The wine here is poisoned, you mustn’t drink it.”

“I never have,” he said. “I’m allergic to elderberry.”

So that was why he hadn’t caught the illness. “Gilbert is making the monks here very ill. I don’t know what his purpose is, but Ethelred knows. That’s why he is imprisoned here. Gilbert fears that he will reveal his depravity to the archbishop.”

Alec’s brow furrowed with disbelief. “But he preaches the Word of God. How can this be?”

She had once found his innocence appealing. Now she wanted to shake him until his teeth rattled. “Alec,” she said succinctly, “your abbot is making me thirst until I beg for the wine. You must find a way to set us free. There is another way out of the abbey besides the gate. Just get these doors open, and no one will know it was you who helped us. We will disappear without a trace.”

He gazed at her with thoughtful gravity. “I will find the key,” he promised at last.

Her knees quivered with relief. “Horatio has it,” she said. “Hurry.” She put her forehead to the wall. When she next glanced at the door, he was gone.

The disappointment he had seen in Clarise’s eyes reminded Alec of the looks his father had often sent him.

Alec tried to force his mind back to his morning meditations. Normally he didn’t notice how hard the flagstone flooring was or that his legs had fallen asleep beneath him. But this morning he could not abandon himself to spiritual ecstasy. Reality intruded. The knowledge that Clarise had been chained in a cold cell all night kept him from peace with his God. The knowledge that the abbot was causing innocents to suffer disturbed him greatly. But who was he to rebel against authority?

If not you, who else? asked his conscience. His bedridden brethren were useless, though he’d dumped all the wine he’d come across down waste holes, giving water to the sick, instead. If he had doubts about the poisoning, he had only to consider the evidence. He was one of a handful who hadn’t yet fallen ill.

There were other things about Gilbert that had troubled him over the months. The unseemly fits of laughter, the stains on his hands and vestments. He had overheard the abbot boast that he would heal the ill at Rievaulx with his knowledge of herbs. Perhaps he meant to make a name for himself by reversing the process he’d initiated.

With a sigh Alec abandoned his prayers and stood. Fortunately, most of his other brothers had left the chapel before him. He bowed to the host and wandered to the nearest window slit to look outside. The walls at Rievaulx were impossibly high, obscuring the view of the countryside from nearly all the windows but this one.

What man could concoct evil in the midst of such beauty? The morning sun spun a coppery web across the sky. The land below undulated like a counterpane quilt, with patches of earth tones, patches of green. Helmesly loomed in the distance, a mighty stronghold, holding up the horizon with its four towers.