1

IN THE NIGHT

Yet again Kate was undone by her mother’s biting tongue. A gift of fresh berry tarts was received with delight by her mother’s three companions, but Eleanor Clifford responded with a tirade about Kate’s lack of religious fervor. A month earlier, the three beguines would have looked confused at Dame Eleanor’s odd response to such an offering from her daughter, but apparently they had grown accustomed to this peculiar aspect of their benefactor’s behavior and simply removed themselves to the other side of the hall. Their movement did nothing to disrupt Eleanor from her recitation of opportunities for spiritual advancement ignored by her errant daughter—joining their morning prayer, attending daily mass, saying the rosary and evening prayers before the lady altar in the hall, encouraging her wards to join her in all these activities.

“Yours is a singularly ungodly life, Katherine,” she concluded.

A strange lecture from the mother who had raised Kate to view with skepticism all those who wore their spiritual beliefs like a badge and who had never encouraged such activities in their home. Growing up in the border country of Northumberland, Kate had been taught to rely on her kin, her wits, and her knowledge of the countryside rather than prayers. “Prayers are for spineless cowards and addle-pated sophists,” Eleanor had told her children time and again. Their remote parish shared a priest with several other clusters of farms and manors so that they heard mass infrequently, and, when they did, the cleric’s rambling sermons occasioned much eye-rolling and giggling among the children, while the adults sat with heads bowed in slumber.

So Kate might be forgiven for questioning the sincerity of her mother’s newfound piety. She was not the only person perplexed by Eleanor’s return to York in the company of three beguines, or poor sisters, with whom she intended to found a Martha House. It had caused a stir in her cousin William Frost’s household and more widely among Kate’s fellow merchants and guild members. All wanted to know what catastrophe had left Eleanor widowed, pious, and fleeing from Strasbourg.

“Well? What of that?” Eleanor loudly demanded.

Glancing up at her mother’s flushed face enclosed in the incongruous wimple, Kate could do nothing but shrug, having stopped listening early in her mother’s tirade. After all, she’d heard it all before.

Growling, Eleanor took Kate by the shoulders and shook her. A mistake.

Kate’s father had trained her to defend herself, and she had spent her years since his death perfecting her martial skills. In one sweeping motion she caught her mother’s hands and used them to push her so that she lost her balance and stumbled backward against a—fortunately—heavy table.

Sisters Clara, Brigida, and Dina rushed to Eleanor’s aid, helping her to a chair.

Knowing there was nothing she could say or do to make peace in the moment, Kate turned to leave.

But Eleanor was not finished. “What will the children you claim to hold so dear think when they learn their guardian is a bawd? Have you thought of that?”

Kate had established her guesthouse on Petergate before she added two wards and a niece to her household. The fees wealthy merchants and the occasional noble or cleric paid for a discreet night with their mistresses had been necessary to pay off her late husband Simon Neville’s debts and provide for the masses he had requested for his soul. By the time Simon’s children by a prostitute in Calais had been brought to Kate upon their mother’s death, the household servants were already in the habit of discretion. Indeed, her clients paid for secrecy. However, worldly-wise Marie and Phillip had ferreted out the nature of the guesthouse, their own mother having been the mistress of many married men. The first thing Phillip, a boy of eleven, had said in Kate’s presence was a matter-of-fact explanation of what her brother-in-law Lionel had intended in Calais: He meant to comfort Maman and fill her with another baby she could not feed. Too late to shelter them. Pray God her mother never discovered how much they knew. But how had Eleanor learned of it?

“And who is to tell them? You, Mother? Is that what your sudden obeisance to the Church has taught you—to slander your daughter? To undo all my work in healing three children who have already lost so much?” God in heaven, Kate had said it aloud. She had vowed to remain silent, to refuse her mother’s bait.

“Your life is a shambles, Katherine.” With every word, Eleanor sought to undermine all that Kate had accomplished. Why? Why would a mother abuse her daughter in such wise?

“I am leaving you now,” Kate said, stepping through the door and out into the night.

At least she did not include me in the attack, her dead twin whispered in her mind.

Yes, at least that, Geoff.

Eleanor had brought Kate to York shortly after Geoff’s death in the hope that distance would sever the powerful link between the twins that remained strong even in death. She did not understand that, as twins, Kate and Geoff shared souls, life force. There could be no sundering. Her twin’s spirit lived within Kate, and she feared the bond between mother and child, though not nearly so strong as that between twins, might allow Eleanor to sense his presence. Apparently not. Or at least, not this night. A mercy.

Her mother’s tumble did not prevent her from pursuit. “You are a young widow whose husband left you mired in debt and burdened with his two bastards, and yet you have turned away all the prominent men who have asked for your hand,” Eleanor proclaimed from the doorway.

Kate knew she should keep walking. In such a mood, her mother could hear nothing. But the word bastards. If Marie and Phillip learned she spoke of them that way . . . “I have asked you not to call them that, Mother,” Kate threw back over her shoulder.

“It is only the truth.”

Kate paused, turned to shake her head at the gray-robed, white-wimpled taunter in the doorway. “You do not say that of your grandchild Petra, though it is equally true of her.”

Eleanor took a step across the threshold. “If you care for the three of them as you claim, you have a duty to remarry. Yet look at you, bone buttons instead of silver, your hair untidy, skimping on the cloth in your skirts—you are revealing your penurious situation, frightening off future suitors.”

“A duty to remarry?” Kate stepped closer so that all the neighborhood might not hear. “Were you not listening when I explained Simon’s will? I lose the business if I remarry.”

“You will not need it.”

“No? After all my unpleasant discoveries about Simon, I trust no man.”

“You have a duty to those children—”

“As did you to me. Yet you betrothed me to Simon Neville without a care as to his true circumstances. Or did you know of his profligate ways? Perhaps you knew he had a mistress with children in Calais. But you were so eager to be rid of me that you handed me over to the first man who showed an interest.”

“The marriage was to protect you.”

“Protect me? I was barely fifteen, Mother. My parents should have protected me. I was grieving for my twin brother. And my brother Roland. Did you ever stop to think of my feelings?”

“How can you say such things to me?” Eleanor raised a hand to slap Kate.

Kate blocked her, turned, and hurried away through the hedgerow gate, cursing herself for again being caught up in the fray.

Of course Kate was aware of her delicate situation. It kept her awake at night, it curdled her food. When Simon had died over two years earlier she discovered that he had left enormous debts and a will that left her in control of his business only until such time as she remarried, when it would go to his brother, Lionel. And then, almost a year to the day of Simon’s death, Lionel appeared on her doorstep with the unpleasant surprise of the recently orphaned Marie and Phillip. Swallowing her pride and hurt, Kate had taken them in, determined to love and care for them as her own.

For more than a year she had worked hard to care for her wards while using all her wits to accrue wealth at a speed sufficient to appease her creditors with frequent payments, while quietly setting enough aside that she would someday have the means to choose whether or not to marry, according to her own desire. Once she had set aside sufficient funds in her own name, she would sell off the assets of Simon’s business, pay the remainder of the debts, and hand Lionel his brother’s business, with pleasure.

And then, in late winter last, a tragedy of her mother’s making brought Petra, the daughter of Kate’s eldest brother, into the household. The child had been orphaned by Eleanor’s careless rekindling of an old feud that had earlier cost the lives of two of her sons. That winter her last son died as well as three others, strangers, and, if it had not been for Petra’s help, Kate’s ward Phillip would have been murdered as well.

Her niece was a dear child for whom the city was even more alien than it had been for Kate six years earlier. But however much Kate welcomed her, Petra’s arrival upset the fragile balance of the household; now Marie and Phillip needed to be reassured that with her niece’s arrival, a blood relative, they were no less cherished than before. Indeed, Marie’s rivalry with Petra had hastened her brother’s decision to lodge in the home of Hugh Grantham, a master mason at the minster stoneyard under whom he was apprenticed. Though Phillip was realizing his dream with the apprenticeship, Kate worried that he had felt pushed out betimes.

On the heels of the tragedy, Eleanor Clifford herself arrived unexpectedly in York, announcing that she meant to establish a Martha House in the city with three beguines who accompanied her from Strasbourg. Newly widowed, for a second time, Eleanor gave no explanation for her hasty departure from Strasbourg on the death of Ulrich Smit. To say that Kate did not welcome Eleanor’s return was an understatement.

And now her mother had moved into a house just across the hedgerow.

As Kate shut the gate behind her, her kitchen door opened and her Irish wolfhounds rushed out to greet her. Lille butted Kate’s hand, wanting her ears rubbed. Ghent leaned his warm bulk against Kate, lifting his head so she might scratch his throat. Here she was welcome, loved, treasured.

“Did they enjoy the tarts?” Her cook, Berend, had followed the hounds from the kitchen, his powerful, battle-scarred bulk a reassuring presence.

Kate gave each hound one more round before she straightened. “The sisters blessed you for them, but Mother took the offering as an opportunity to lecture me on my lack of piety.”

Berend chuckled. “A riddle. How is a fruit tart like a penance? I should hope it would be received as a blessing.”

“You are a blessing, Berend. And no doubt Mother is now happily partaking of one of your berry tarts with the beguines. Who can resist them?”

“Perhaps. But I doubt she is any merrier than you are,” he said.

“She is troubled, I know. And that is the cause of this vexing behavior. But why she will not confide in me—why she instead attacks me, despite choosing to live so close . . .”

“God tests you.”

Kate heard the smile in Berend’s voice. He was her cook, and so much more. Confidant and confessor, Berend was the person she most trusted. He was bemused by the contradiction in her sense of responsibility for her mother’s welfare despite their contentious relationship.

“I tell myself she chose the only house that was offered to her. It is as simple as that,” Kate said.

The tenant of the house, Agnes Dell, a recent widow, had offered to transfer her lease to Eleanor if she would accept her as a sister, or beguine. It was a house of modest size, smaller than Kate’s. With Eleanor’s maidservant and Agnes’s maidservant Nan, who now assisted the four sisters, it was crowded, though not intolerably so. Many large families lived in less space. It had not been an unreasonable choice.

“She will come round,” said Berend.

“By then she may have difficulty picking over the rubble of my future.” Kate told him about her mother’s threat to inform the children she ran a discreet brothel.

“She is too late to shock Phillip and Marie. They already know the nature of your guests.”

“But Petra.”

“Your niece is more worldly-wise than her grandmother. She would not flinch.”

Berend was right; her mother’s words held no danger unless she took them to heart. “I should go in. See how Petra is feeling.”

“I’ve not noticed her hurrying past to the privy this evening as she did last night.”

“So her stomach is on the mend. That is a blessing. Sleep well.”

Kate called to the hounds to follow her into the hall for the night.

She woke to the deep-throated barks of her wolfhounds. Kate sat up, listening for running footsteps, her father or one of her brothers calling the warning—Attack! The Scots!

But it was her manservant Matt she heard addressing the hounds down below in the hall, his voice rising in questions. She was in York. She was not on the borders, she was in the city of York, her cage, her home. Her brothers and her father, all dead. Her mother—this was not the time to think of her.

The hounds continued barking. They would not be silenced. Did Matt recognize the tone, that these were not about a passing dog or a demand to be let out, but warnings? Danger.

That was real. The danger. It might be York, not the borders, but it was still a place of danger. Especially now.

Kate threw off the light covers, grateful it was summer and her feet would not meet an icy floor.

“Dame Katherine?” her niece, Petra, called from outside Kate’s door. She and Marie slept in opposite ends of the solar to keep the peace, with Kate’s chamber in between. The girls were as different as night and day, but Kate hoped that, in time, they might grow close.

“Come in, come in. I’ve heard them. I’m dressing.” Kate was fumbling with the bone buttons on her gown.

The girl, a seven-year-old version of her aunt, all wiry dark hair and tall for her age, began to enter but paused, tilting her head to listen as the door opened down below and the hounds’ warning barks subtly changed. “Jennet,” Petra whispered. Kate’s maidservant and, like Berend, fiercely loyal and ever ready to defend the household. “They think she’s come to let them out to search.”

“Stay up here, in the solar, you and Marie, until I return.” Kate finished her preparations by concealing her knife beneath her belt, then she kissed Petra’s forehead and hurried down to the hall.

Her mother was not the only threat to the peace of York. Henry of Lancaster’s return from exile was why Matt slept down below now, not out in the smaller house across the yard, on the street—to assist Kate in protecting her niece and ward. Duke Henry was believed to have landed just northeast of them, on the coast of the North Sea. A royal messenger had arrived in the city several days ago with orders from Edmund, Duke of York, to hold the city against Duke Henry. The sixty knights and esquires and hundred archers who had been readying for a march to Ware were now to defend the city. The city sheriffs were paying out money for carpenters, plasterers, and masons to repair the defenses. That Henry had chosen to return almost as soon as King Richard himself landed in Ireland in the company of most of the military might of the realm meant to Kate that Duke Henry was here to wrest the crown from his cousin, the anointed but not-so-beloved king of England. Blood would be shed before their feud was resolved, and she doubted that both would survive.

No one in York slept easy at present. In times of war, civic law and order suffered. She had learned that all too well in her childhood on the border with Scotland. And York, the great city of the north, a wealthy city of merchants, seat of the second most powerful archbishop in the land, one who might be persuaded to support the Lancastrian army—Duke Henry might find it an irresistible first stage in his coup.

Armed men had been passing through the four gates of the city for a week or more. Strangers. Each of them lusting for a fight. Had one of them found a combatant in the night? Is that what had set Lille and Ghent to this insistent barking? Or did the hounds sense an intruder on the property? Had a siege begun? Or was it merely her mother, marching through the hedgerow to resume her tirade? For once, that was Kate’s hope. But the hounds knew Dame Eleanor; they would not be so alarmed were it her.

As Kate reached the hall Lille and Ghent rushed up to her, leads in mouths. She smiled at Matt’s whimsical training. While she bent to attach the leads, the dogs nuzzled her, their rough gray fur warm with their agitation, Ghent gazing up with his soulful eyes, seeking reassurance. Lille danced sideways, her eyes a little wild.

Jennet and Matt began talking at once.

Kate straightened up and raised a hand, silencing them. “Jennet first.”

“I noticed nothing out of place in the yard or the garden.” Jennet wore a man’s linen shirt over leggings, easily donned. “But Lille and Ghent will be far better judges of that.”

“Matt?”

“They rose up as one. I first noticed their heads up, on the alert even before they stood and began to bark. Ghent sidled over to see that I was awake, but he kept his watch on the garden door. I’ve never seen one of them behave so.” Kate had taught Matt since spring to work with Lille and Ghent. Young, eager to prove himself of use, Matt had learned quickly.

“Arm yourself and stay in here,” said Kate. “Petra is awake and knows to keep Marie up above. Come, then.” She gave a gentle tug on the hounds’ leads and led them out into the night garden. Softly, “Lille, Ghent!” She signaled them to track—silently.

Her eyes were still adjusting to the dark as the hounds led her straight toward the hedgerow separating her garden from that behind the house on Hertergate that her mother had leased. Dear Lord, no, not Mother, she prayed.

A futile prayer, Kate’s twin said in her mind, his presence a sure sign of danger.

I know, Geoff, I know. Trouble shimmered in the air about their mother. But of our family, I have only Mother and Petra. I mean to keep them safe.

Petra I understand, but you know better with Mother. And after yesterday’s attack? No thanks for a peace offering?

Kate shrugged him off.

As the dogs continued on to the shut hedge gate, Kate signaled a halt so she might listen. Lille and Ghent sat, heads high, scenting forward to sense what might be across the way.

There was no light in her mother’s house, or the kitchen nearer the hedgerow. With seven women in residence, if anything were wrong, surely one would light a lamp. They would be moving about, calling out to each other. But all was still. Whatever had disturbed Lille and Ghent, Kate saw no sign of anything amiss.

Bending to the hounds, Kate whispered that she understood, the scent was still there, but all was now quiet. She led them away from the hedge and around her own property—the house, the smaller building out on the road, back to her kitchen, the small lodging and the garden shed behind it. When she was satisfied that no one lurked in the shadows, she joined Berend, who stood in the kitchen doorway, barefoot.

“Lille and Ghent are keen to cross through to your mother’s house.” He spoke quietly, as if they might be overheard.

It was true. They sat at her feet on alert, ears pricked, eyes trained on the gate. “I see no disturbance over there,” she whispered. “If someone came to harm in the night, one of them would hear and wake the others. We would see lamps lit, movement. But there is nothing.” She looked back toward the latched gate. “I pray my irritation with Mother does not cloud my judgment.”

“With the influx of armed men to defend the city, we can expect strangers wandering about, folk following the army, hoping for work,” said Berend. “They must find their own lodgings, food. Some help themselves.” He spoke from experience, years in the field, some as a soldier, the latter years as an assassin for hire.

Kate knew he was right about the situation in the city. She watched him now as he walked over to the gate in the hedgerow. Jennet joined him there, peering into the dark, her long braid swinging as she moved her head back and forth, apparently listening. Taking a deep breath, Kate followed, Lille and Ghent moving to surround and protect her.

The hounds were formidable in size—though Kate was a tall woman, the tops of their heads reached her shoulders, and the three moved as one, alert to one another’s slightest shift in direction of speed, divining each other’s intentions. Berend once told Kate, “Often I cannot detect how the hounds see your hand signals—they suddenly change direction, or halt, and I’ve seen nothing, nor have I noticed them watching you.” Kate took pride in that. And comfort. Her father’s master of hounds had praised the twins for their connection with the hounds. He had teased her father, asking how far back in family history a Clifford had wed a shape-shifter.

A few feet from the closed gate, Lille and Ghent halted and pricked their ears. Kate rested her hands on their backs, signaling them to hold still. Light footsteps. Stealthy, pausing, hurrying on, pausing, coming from Hertergate down the alley beside the Martha House. Kate considered moving back out of sight, the brightening predawn light both a gift and a threat. No, best to hold steady. The footsteps continued toward them. She felt the hounds’ muscles tense, noticed Jennet slightly shifting, reaching for the latch, poised to move quickly through the gate. Berend touched Kate’s arm, as if to steady her.

From round the corner of the Martha House a woman appeared. By her slight limp Kate recognized Agnes’s maidservant, Nan, a young woman whose colorful clothing was a topic of dissent in Eleanor’s household. Her mistress had chosen to take vows of humility and chastity, but not Nan. Kate wondered what she had been doing moving about the sleeping city. The young woman paused, glanced down, lifted her skirts, and shook one foot, as if she had stepped in a puddle. But it had not rained for days.

Lille growled.

More slowly now, her steps more furtive, Nan moved through the garden to the kitchen. She paused at the door of the small detached structure, looking back toward the alley, as if checking whether someone followed, then stepped inside. Without opening the door. Why had the door been open? A moment of silence, then Nan pushed open a shutter, moved away. Kate heard the soft sound of a poker stirring the embers. Now a lamp glowed. So a servant’s day began.

Kate eased a little, but the hounds did not.

“Shall I just go peek?” Jennet whispered.

Kate nodded. “The hounds are still on alert.”

Jennet was halfway to the kitchen door when Nan appeared in the garden, holding a lantern. “Sister Dina? God be thanked, I was so worried when I saw—Oh, Jennet. I hoped you were—” Her voice quavered with emotion. “Something has happened. Sister Dina is not in her room and there is blood!”

Jennet placed a hand on Nan’s shoulder as if to steady her. “Start from the beginning. What did you see in the alley?”

Back at the gate, Berend leaned close to Kate to whisper, “Do you see Nan’s shoes in the lantern light?”

She glanced down. “They are wet,” she said.

“Though it has not rained in days.”

“No, it has not.” Kate moved through the gate with Lille and Ghent. “Shine the lantern down on your shoes, Nan.” She offered her arm for support.

Someone called down from a solar window. “Is there trouble?”

“Is Sister Dina up there?” Jennet called back.

Murmurings, the sound of movement.

“God help me, I thought it was water,” Nan whispered, covering her mouth as she lifted a foot, saw the blood.

“You did not smell it?”

Nan shook her head. “I do now.”

Kate nodded, then left her, letting Lille and Ghent lead her out to the alleyway, where they stopped by a pool of blood that was beginning to soak into the earth. Ears back, the hounds growled at the strong scent, then wanted to track on, but Kate led them back to the kitchen, where Jennet now held the lantern aloft. Bloodstains pocked the rush-strewn floor, especially vivid where the rushes had been scuffed away. Jennet shone the lantern round—a bloody handprint on a small door to the side. Lille and Ghent strained at their leashes.

“Sister Dina’s bedchamber,” Nan whimpered.

There were several more bloody prints on the inside of the outer door.

“What is it, Katherine? Why are you here with the hounds?” Dame Eleanor demanded as she approached across the small garden.

Seeing to your latest disaster, Kate thought. But this was not the time for grudges. “Lille and Ghent sensed trouble. Then Nan cried out. There is blood in the kitchen—on the floor, the walls, the doors, and pooled in the alleyway.” Kate stepped back to let her mother see, Jennet holding the light down toward the floor.

“God help us.” Dame Eleanor turned to Nan. “Where is Sister Dina?”

Nan ducked her head. “I know not, mistress.”

“Come with me,” said Kate, taking the lantern from Jennet, nodding to Nan to follow her into Dina’s bedchamber. She shone the light on the small space. No blood on the floor. But smears on the bed. “Look round. Is anything missing?”

“Gown, hose, shoes,” said Eleanor, who had come in behind them. “How is it that you did not raise the alarm at once, Nan? Where were you when all this was happening?” She stood with hands on hips, chin forward, eyes steely. Despite her new, modest garb—white wimple and veil, soft gray gown: she had several, well cut of the finest wool and silk, her household keys hanging from a simple leather girdle—Eleanor still impressed one as the lady of the manor ready to call down her armed servants to fend off an attack. Always quick to blame.

Nan shook her head with a small cry and scuttled from the room to the garden. Kate nudged her mother aside and followed.

The widow, Agnes, had her arms round Nan and was rubbing her back as one might do to calm a sobbing child. Agnes was a short but substantial woman, half as wide as she was tall, with upper arms as big as hams. She stuck out her heavy chin as if defying Eleanor to say her nay.

“She has just returned from her nightly vigil at her mother’s bed, is that not so, Nan?”

A sniffle, a nod.

“Nightly vigil?” Eleanor looked to Sisters Clara and Brigida, who stood in the garden halfway between the house and the kitchen, holding hands, looking unsure where they should be. “Did you know of this, either of you?”

Sister Clara, plain, competent, the guiding spirit of the house, said, “No. I should have been informed.” Sister Brigida, bold-featured, tall, a brilliant scholar, seemed diminished by the early waking, the confusion of the scene. She simply shook her head.

“And have you left the kitchen door unlocked when you depart each night?” Kate asked the maidservant.

“Well of course she does,” Agnes snapped. “She does not hold the keys, Dame Eleanor does.”

Kate looked to her mother, who visibly trembled with righteous indignation.

“I don’t understand,” said Eleanor. “I lock the house and the kitchen every night. It is the rule in a Martha House. Have you found a way to unlock it, Nan?” By now Agnes and Nan stood apart. When Agnes began to answer, Eleanor snapped, “Be quiet. Let the truant answer.”

“I know how to prop the door open so that it is not noticeable but the lock is useless,” said Nan.

Eleanor took a deep breath. “Sister Agnes, I—”

“You might deal with that later,” Kate said quietly to her mother as she turned to address Dina’s two companions. “Brigida, Clara, have you seen Dina this night? Did you hear anything?”

“I heard nothing, nor have I seen her since we parted at the end of evening prayers,” said Sister Clara in her Bavarian accent.

Sister Brigida shook her head. “Nor I. May God be watching over her.” Her accent was softer than Clara’s, more French, like that of Kate’s wards, Marie and Phillip.

Both women crossed themselves. Dame Eleanor did as well.

“Agnes? Did you hear or see anything?” Kate asked.

“Nothing.” She was a bit breathless, but then so were they all.

Kate took her at her word. For now. “What was Dina’s room used for in the past?” she asked.

“Boarders, I screened it off for boarders,” said Agnes. “But I’ve had none since autumn. Or course there will be no more, as it is now a Martha House.” So very breathless, and her eyes scanning the garden as if looking for something.

“Come into the kitchen,” said Kate. The woman bowed her head and followed. “Do you notice anything missing?”

“No, but perhaps in daylight . . .”

Sweat shone on the woman’s face. It could be many things—concern for Sister Dina, remorse for keeping Nan’s nighttime absences a secret, fear for her own safety. Agnes might even regret offering the house to Eleanor. She would not be the first to realize too late the risk involved in participating in Eleanor’s schemes.

Kate stepped into the bedchamber, pulled off the bloody sheet, and wadded it up in her hand. Back in the kitchen she nodded to Jennet. “Stay with them. Berend and I will take Lille and Ghent, see whether they are able to track Sister Dina.” She led the hounds out into the garden.

Matt, pacing by the hedgerow gate, called out, “What is it? What has happened?”

Kate shook her head. “No time now. Protect the children.”

He nodded and turned back to the house.

Berend joined her as she let Lille and Ghent smell the sheet. “Track.”

She had little need to command them. They were already following a scent, noses down. They returned to the pool of blood in the alley, a dark stain in the pale, predawn light. A pause as they reached Hertergate—glancing to the right, toward the King’s Staithe, then to the left, toward Castlegate. The scent moved in both directions? The hounds chose the staithe, snuffling their way down the street, onto the dock area, lost the scent at the water. No, no, now they picked it up a bit upriver, along the staithe, then lost it again in the incoming tide. On a gamble, she led them up to Ousegate. They snuffled around, lifting their heads, lowering them, then sat. Nothing strong enough to warrant tracking.

Berend was still standing at the edge of the water. He pointed to a small boat on the opposite bank. Shrugged. They returned to Hertergate, silent, thoughtful. She knew that he knew the memories called up by the blood, and a young woman she cared for gone missing. Her friend Maud, long ago . . .

“We will find her, Dame Katherine.”

“I pray we find her alive, Berend. So much blood.”

“May God watch over her.”

Mother, Mother, what have you done?

And she will find a way to blame you for all the ill that comes of this, Geoff whispered in her mind.

Eleanor had expected trouble from the silly maidservant. But not of this sort. Considering Nan’s bright clothes and roaming smiles, she had anticipated a lover sneaking in, or Nan sneaking out. She felt betrayed, a too-familiar experience and one that she would not tolerate. She would have her man Griffin investigate the story of a dying mother. As Katherine and her implausible cook withdrew with the dogs, Eleanor resumed her challenge to Agnes and her maidservant.

“Was Sister Dina aware you were not here at night, Nan?” Eleanor asked, not troubling to soften her tone.

Agnes and Nan had settled on a bench in the garden, arms round each other, looking frightened.

“So much blood,” Agnes whispered. “Who is to protect us?”

Coddled city women with no backbone. “I will send for my man Griffin,” said Eleanor. She should not have agreed to the sisters’ injunction against men on the property. “Now answer my question, Nan. Was Sister Dina aware of your absence at night?”

“We did not speak of it, mistress.” The minx kept her eyes downcast. Oh, yes, now she played humble.

“Did it not occur to you that you were exposing her to danger?”

“No.”

Agnes sniffed and pushed out her ample bosom as if to impress upon Eleanor the weight of her words. “We never had trouble here.”

“That is no excuse.” And what precisely would she call trouble, Eleanor wondered, when she kept a maidservant like Nan. She bit back a threat to let Nan go. Too soon. First she would have Griffin find out just where the young fool had been. “For the short term, Griffin will sleep in the kitchen, and Nan will take her rest with my maidservant.”

“On a pallet at the foot of your bed?” Agnes huffed. “And what of Nan’s mother? Who will sit with her at night while the children sleep?”

Eleanor had not considered that. “We shall discuss that later. Sister Dina’s welfare is our first concern.” As it should be theirs. But both seemed entirely wrapped up in their own self-protection. Eleanor glanced at her daughter’s maidservant, Jennet. She was such an odd young creature, freckle-faced and petite with a walk and a manner of speaking far more like a young lad. “Might I trouble you to summon my man Griffin? I want him to search for Dina.”

Jennet nodded. “As soon as I repair this lock.”

“It is broken?” Eleanor went to look.

“As Nan said, it is stuck, not broken.” The young woman took out a small metal tool and fussed with the latch. “There.” She stepped back with a look of satisfaction.

Eleanor thanked her.

“Let us withdraw to the hall and kneel in prayer for Sister Dina’s safety,” said Sister Clara, stepping out of the kitchen and into her role as senior sister. Sister Brigida followed, head bowed, hands folded in prayer.

“I suppose you must leave the door unlocked for Griffin,” Eleanor said to Jennet.

“You need not worry, Dame Eleanor. This tool will allow me to let him in. Shall I tell him to await you in the kitchen?”

“You are able—” Eleanor stopped. “You will find Griffin in—”

“I know where he bides, Dame Eleanor.”

“How—” She stopped herself again. “Bless you, Jennet. Yes, ask him to wait here in the kitchen.”

So the young woman might enter the house whenever she pleased. And knew where Griffin was staying. Eleanor had chided her daughter for her choice in servants, but they certainly seemed to earn their keep and provided her with a sense of safety. She said a prayer of thanks for the help of Katherine and her servants as she followed Clara and the others into the hall, though her gratitude was tempered by a worry that they would discover more than she would wish brought to light. A dilemma.

As Eleanor knelt, the enormity of Sister Dina’s disappearance blotted out all other concerns. Merciful Mother, protect gentle Dina, guide her to a safe haven where we might find her and bring her home to be comforted.

As Kate and Berend neared the Martha House, someone hurried down Hertergate toward them.

“One of the sisters from the maison dieu,” said Kate. She handed him the dogs’ leads and went to meet the woman.

“Magistra Matilda sent me.” Matilda was the mother superior of the poor sisters who tended the sick in the maison dieu attached to the parish church across Castlegate. The three beguines had lodged there while Dame Eleanor was away for a time in the spring. “Sister Dina is in the church, lying before the altar, and . . . there is blood on her gown.” The woman crossed herself. “Magistra Matilda says come quickly.”

Out on Castlegate a few folk were stirring, though so early in the morning they did not pause to chat, focused on going about their business, opening shops, stoking fires, delivering goods for the day’s work. The sister led Kate and Berend to the side door of the church, offering to watch the dogs. “My father raised hounds. I miss them.” Lille and Ghent sniffed her outstretched hand, then her face, and sat obediently as Kate handed her the leashes. The woman’s little cry of delight as Lille nuzzled her hand convinced Kate. Berend was holding open the door.

Kate stepped over the threshold, pausing a few paces in, blinded by the dimness after the early morning sun. Across the church, a figure in gray knelt on a prie-dieu before the lady altar. As the door swung shut behind Berend, the figure straightened, turning toward them. Magistra Matilda. She gestured toward a prostrate figure on the ground before the altar. Gray gown, white veil. Slender. Sister Dina. Kate approached as quietly as possible, lowering herself to her knees beside the woman, placing a hand on her upper back.

“Sister Dina, praise God that you are here. Safe. Your sisters have been so worried.”

At first Dina did not move, not even a twitch, and Kate feared the worst, though there was no evidence of blood pooling beneath her. She sat back on her heels and waited. The prie-dieu creaked as Magistra Matilda rose. Tucking the paternoster beads up her sleeve, she approached, but stopped as Sister Dina drew in her arms and tried to push herself up. She wobbled. Fearing she might fall back on her face, Kate reached out to support her. But Dina went limp in her arms. Kate glanced back toward Berend, nodding.

Berend came forward, and, bending to the slight woman, gently lifted her up in his arms.

Magistra Matilda rushed over with a cry of distress. “What if she wakes and sees him? If it was a man who attacked her . . . Forgive me, my good man, but you look . . .”

Scarred, missing an ear, several fingers, and with a muscular build, Berend was intimidating, Kate was well aware of that. She found it useful. “I need him. And Dina is in a faint, Sister. She is unaware of us. Carry her back to my home, Berend.”

“No. The maison dieu is closer,” said Magistra Matilda. “Let us nurse her.”

Kate looked at Berend, who nodded his approval. “Bless you, Sister. It might be best that Dina not wake in the house in which she experienced whatever frightened her so.”

As Berend carried Sister Dina into the light he paused, gazing down at the woman’s gown. Kate saw it now, blood on her right sleeve and across her torso. Hers? Or someone else’s? They would soon know.