priest tried to prise Raffe's great fist from his clothes, but without success.
'Don't be a fool, my son, it's far too dangerous. You said yourself that Lord Osborn almost caught the boy — what if he should catch me? I can't simply walk into a bustling manor with a hundred pairs of eyes watching me. Besides, God will hear my prayers for Gerard's soul just as well in France as over his coffin.'
'But I cannot,' Raffe retorted. He let the man go, and the priest shuffled as far back in the tiny hut as he could get.
'Now,' Raffe said firmly, 'I will go and make arrangements for your passage to France. When all is ready I'll send word to the boy to bring you to the manor after dark. When you've done your duty by Gerard, you'll be taken to the boat. If you don't come to the manor when I send for you, the boat will depart without you. You have a choice, Father: freedom and safety, or starving out here on the marshes until I get tired of waiting and tell the king's men where to find you.'
'You would betray me?' The priest's eyes widened in alarm.
'I would not betray a priest, but if you will not act as a priest should, if your miserable little skin is worth more to you than another man's immortal soul, then you have abandoned your vows and you are no priest.'
Elena lay curled up on the turf seat in the darkened garden, but she wasn't sleeping. She was so drained and exhausted that she felt she might never again have the energy even to lift her head. But she couldn't sleep. She couldn't bear to close her eyes in case he came to her again in her dreams.
The green scales glinting in the candlelight, the long black horns and the sharp fangs protruding from the blood-red mouth. The only things that moved were his eyes, glittering in the shadow of his wooden mask.
She saw him over and over again walking slowly towards her, silent and expressionless. Just those cold green eyes flickering over her body. She felt again the ropes tying her to the post, keeping her helpless, tangled like an insect in a web, waiting for the spider to sink his fangs into her. She crushed her fists into her eyeballs till they hurt, trying to make them stop seeing what was burned on to them. The water, the cold water from the great fat lips of the fish, pouring down over her head, running over and under her mask, till she thought she was drowning, her lungs tearing as she struggled to breathe.
Far above, the stars prickled in the small square of hell- black sky caged by the high walls of the courtyard. Elena's cheek was crushed against the rough stems of the thyme, but she ignored the scratches. It was nothing to the pain that engulfed her whole body and burned between her legs.
Most of the women had already staggered back to their own chamber or else lay sleeping in the arms of customers who had paid to stay all night. The giggles and shrieks had long since ceased, but still Elena didn't stir from the garden.
She was shivering, but she couldn't bring herself to go inside, to be near hot human flesh, to smell the stench of sweat and semen on the women's bodies. She tried in vain to draw in the cleansing scent of the thyme to rid herself of his stench that returned again and again to her nostrils like an echo that wouldn't stop.
A year and a day, Raffaele had said she must stay. A year and a day to gain her freedom, but if she couldn't prove her innocence, who knew how long? And how many times in a year could that man come again, or others like him? If only she knew how long she had to endure this place, maybe she could teach herself to bear it. But what if she waited and hoped and never got out? Never again felt Athan's arms around her or saw her son's little face? She had to know if there would be an end.
Although she had thought herself unable to move, Elena pushed herself upright. Her knees almost giving way beneath her, she stumbled towards the communal sleeping chamber. Carefully stepping around the bodies of the prone women, so as not to awaken them, she found her own sleeping pallet and, lifting the edge,