healer who rejected medicine as practised by physicians; and a nun who made enthusiastic love to her man whenever she could get away with it. If I wanted a normal relationship, Merthin told himself, I should have picked a normal girl.
The hall was full of people. Some were working, laying down fresh straw, building up the fire, preparing the table for dinner; and others were simply waiting. At the far end of the long room, sitting near the foot of the staircase that led up to the earl's private quarters, Merthin saw a well-dressed girl of about fifteen. She stood up and came towards them with a rather stately walk, and Merthin realized she must be Lady Philippa's daughter. Like her mother she was tall, with an hourglass figure. "I am the Lady Odila," she said with a touch of hauteur that was pure Philippa. Despite her composure, the skin around her young eyes was red and creased with crying. "You must be Mother Caris. Thank you for coming to attend my father."
Merthin said: "I'm the alderman of Kingsbridge, Merthin Bridger. How is Earl William?"
"He is very ill, and both my brothers have been laid low." Merthin recalled that the earl and countess had two boys of nineteen and twenty or thereabouts. "My mother asks that the lady prioress should come to them immediately."
Caris said: "Of course."
Odila went up the stairs. Caris took from her purse a strip of linen cloth and fastened it over her nose and mouth, then followed.
Merthin sat on a bench to wait. Although he was reconciled to infrequent sex, that did not stop him looking out eagerly for extra opportunities, and he surveyed the building with a keen eye, figuring out the sleeping arrangements. Unfortunately the house had a traditional layout. This large room, the great hall, would be where almost everyone ate and slept. The staircase presumably led to a solar, a bedroom for the earl and countess. Modern castles had a whole suite of apartments for family and guests, but there appeared to be no such luxury here. Merthin and Caris might lie side by side tonight, on the floor here in the hall, but they could do nothing more than sleep, not without causing a scandal.
After a while, Lady Philippa emerged from the solar and came down the stairs. She entered a room like a queen, aware that all eyes were on her, Merthin always thought. The dignity of her posture only emphasized the alluring roundness of her hips and her proud bosom. However, today her normally serene face was blotchy and her eyes were red. Her fashionably piled hairstyle was slightly awry, with stray locks of hair escaping from her headdress, adding to her air of glamorous distraction.
Merthin stood up and look at her expectantly.
She said: "My husband has the plague, as I feared; and so do both my sons."
The people around murmured in dismay.
It might turn out to be no more than the last remnants of the epidemic, of course; but it could just as easily be the start of a new outbreak - God forbid, Merthin thought.
He said: "How is the earl feeling?"
Philippa sat on the bench next to him. "Mother Caris has eased his pain. But she says he's near the end."
Their knees were almost touching. He felt the magnetism of her sexuality, even though she was drowning in grief and he was dizzy with love for Caris. "And your sons?" he said.
She looked down at her lap, as if studying the pattern of gold and silver threads woven into her blue gown. "The same as their father."
Merthin said quietly: "This is very hard for you, my lady, very hard."
She gave him a wary glance. "You're not like your brother, are you."
Merthin knew that Ralph had been in love with Philippa, in his own obsessive way, for many years. Did she realize that? Merthin did not know. Ralph had chosen well, he thought. If you were going to have a hopeless love, you might as well pick someone singular. "Ralph and I are very different," he said neutrally.
"I remember you as youngsters. You were the cheeky one - you told me to buy a green silk to match my eyes. Then your brother started a fight."
"I sometimes think the younger of two brothers deliberately tries to be the opposite of the elder, just to differentiate himself."
"It's certainly true of my two. Rollo is strong-willed and assertive, like his father and grandfather; and Rick has