a pace towards Cecily, standing so close to the kneeling woman that his crotch was pushing into her face.
'I take it you are the girl's mother. It was you, was it not, who screamed when sentence was pronounced yesterday, the only villager who raised any protest to her hanging? A mother would do anything to save her own daughter, wouldn't she?'
Cecily raised a tearstained face. 'I couldn't believe my own bairn . . . my own flesh and blood would do such a wicked thing. I'd . . . heard her speak of this . . . dream, same as Joan, but it's well known pregnant women are often tormented in their sleep by demons who are jealous of the babes they carry. I never thought she'd really . . .'
'So you helped her escape,' Osborn said quietly. 'That was foolish, extremely foolish, but then all women are fools for their children.'
'I didn't, my lord. I swear I didn't!' Cecily wailed. 'No woman wants to see her own bairn hang, but what could I have done to prevent it? Even if I'd had the courage to help her, how would I have got the key to unlock the pit or her irons?'
There was an instant buzzing among the servants. Osborn held up his hands for silence.
'Your daughter admitted that she was in the habit of consulting a cunning woman. Doubtless you did the same and managed to release your daughter by witchcraft.'
Cecily moaned and swayed as if she was about to faint. 'No, no!'
Raffe, with a sick feeling of dread, knew exactly where this line of questioning could end. Desperate to stop it, he broke in.
'M'lord, the cunning women have gone from the village. Wasn't it their very absence that helped to convict the girl in the first place? So where would Cecily have got help to conjure such a powerful sorcery that would have made locks fly open without a key?'
Osborn took a step back from the sobbing woman; the expression on his coarse features was one approaching triumph.
'So, Master Raffaele, you are minded to pit wits with me, are you? If you are so certain that this is not witchcraft, then we must resume our search for mortal hands. So tell me this, who obtained the key to release the girl? Consider your answer carefully, Master Raffaele. For I promise you there shall be a hanging today, if not of the girl, then of her accomplice.'
Raffe swallowed hard, realizing too late what he'd said. He stared into those mocking grey eyes, trying to discover if Osborn already knew the truth and this whole exercise had just been a mummers' play designed to display Osborn's power and his own humiliation.
Raffe had never lied in his life to avoid just punishment, but to let Osborn hang him like a pickpocket, to have Osborn's laughter be the last thing he ever heard — he would not submit to that. And what of Elena? Osborn would surely try to extract her whereabouts from him before he hanged him. Raffe could bear pain better than most men — over the years he'd learned that the mind could force the body to fight almost anything — but Osborn was capable of inflicting hurt far beyond the imagination of most men.
Raffe, acutely conscious that Osborn was waiting, opened his mouth without the faintest idea what he intended to say, but before he could say anything, a voice behind him interrupted.
'I released the girl, Lord Osborn.'
Raffe spun round to see Lady Anne, composed but pale, her hands clasped across her stomach. 'I believed your sentence to be unjust. I know all the families of this manor — for years they were in my care and charge. Elena was my personal maid for a short time and I could not stand by and see her punished for something I am certain she did not do.'
For a moment Osborn just gaped at her, the colour rising in his face. "Your maid?' Osborn crossed towards her in three swift strides, thrusting his bearded face into hers. Your son is no longer master here, I am, and by God, I will teach you what that means.'
Anne regarded him calmly. 'Even you cannot have a noblewoman hanged on your whim, Lord Osborn.'
'No, but I will make you wish I could. You were very close to your son, weren't you, m'lady? How would you like to be even closer? Let's see if a month chained in the pit next to his rotting