Elena took a few steps towards the crowd, who as one drew back from her as if they feared she was going to attack them.
'I didn't hurt him. You have to believe me. I gave him away to keep him safe. Athan, tell them, please! You know I wouldn't do anything to hurt our son. You told Joan I couldn't have done it. Tell them, Athan, tell them!'
Even beneath his tan, Elena could see the blood draining from Athan's face.
Osborn jerked his head in Athan's direction. You, boy, are you the baby's father?'
Athan twitched rather than nodded, his face stricken with anguish, but Osborn took the movement for assent.
'Have you anything to say in this girl's defence? Did you give her permission to take your son to this cunning woman?'
Athan stared from his mother to Elena, his mouth working convulsively. Silent tears began running down his cheeks. He made a desperate gesture, holding out his arms as if he was reaching for Elena.
'I'm sorry, so sorry,' he whispered. 'I love you . . . even if. . . I'll never stop loving you.'
Then he bolted for the door, shoving through the servants clustered around it, and fled out into the sunlight.
Osborn raised his eyebrows. 'I think we can take that as a no. So we'd better proceed to sentence.'
'But surely,' Raffaele protested, 'Elena should have the chance to prove her innocence?'
'How exactly do you propose she does that, Master Raffaele? She cannot produce the living child, nor the woman to whom she says she entrusted him.'
'We could wait and question Gytha when she returns.'
Elena felt a surge of hope leap up in her, and she fixed her eyes on Osborn's face, praying that he would agree.
Osborn snorted. 'You should pay more attention to your own eloquent testimony, Master Raffaele. Was it not you who told us that this cunning woman had taken her infirm mother and all her possessions with her? Plainly she has no intention of returning to Gastmere, which leaves us with the problem of what do with the girl. If this land were not under the Pope's Interdict, then she could be tried by the ordeal of water or fire and I would not have had to waste a good day's hunting over this matter. But since, thanks to the Pope, there is not a priest left to administer the oath, I must be the judge of her innocence or guilt. By order of our beloved sovereign King John, I am commanded to keep the king's peace in these parts and see that those who break it are justly punished. The girl will hang at first light tomorrow.'
He delivered the last sentence in such a matter of fact tone, as if he was giving orders for his horse to be groomed, that Elena couldn't grasp what he had said.
'Wait!' A voice rang out from the minstrels' gallery at the far end of the hall. Everyone turned and stared upwards. Lady Anne was gripping the gallery rail.
'It is the Church's teaching, is it not, that an infant who dies before baptism is not counted a human creature for he has no soul? Therefore a woman who does away with her newborn child before baptism is not guilty of murder.'
Osborn smiled the smile of a torturer who revels in his work.
'How gracious of you to take an interest, Lady Anne. But as I was just explaining to my steward here, who like you seems to be woefully ignorant of such matters, we are suffering under an Interdict. Who knows how long it will be before children may be baptized again? Why, these babes may be men themselves by then, and are we to say that if they are then murdered their killers should go unpunished?
'And please, mistress, do not waste my time in pleading that the girl was acting in a fit of melancholy and did not know what she did. On her own admission she had been dreaming about committing this crime for months, even torturing her poor mother-in-law by openly threatening it. But even if that was not the case, I am not punishing her for murder alone.'
Osborn turned a faintly amused glance on Raffaele, as if he was deriving a great deal of pleasure from Lady Anne's challenge. 'I take it neither this girl nor her husband were born freemen. They both are villeins?'
Raffe nodded dejectedly.
'Then the dead child was a villein also and as such belonged to the manor. This girl has not only deliberately