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Mór’s colour was high and her dark blue eyes were sparkling. Despite an excess of weight, she was a very pretty girl. And, of course, it had been surprising that the German should have left the hall without partaking of the sweetmeats and the malmsey wine. Perhaps that wink exchanged between himself and Mór had been an agreement for an assignation – it had been a little odd that she had allowed her kitchen maids to serve the sweet course and had not appeared herself with it. Mara remembered thinking that Blad had not looked too pleased either. His good manners as host had not allowed him to leave the ladies on either side of him, but she had seen him look towards the door to the kitchen in a puzzled fashion. Mór had been somewhere else. Hans Kaufmann had not gone to his room; there had been no sound of footsteps going up the steps – he had crossed the cobbled surface of the courtyard and then had gone … where?
    And then, above the exuberant shouts, laughing comments and the exaggerated smacking of Mór’s full lips as she chased Cormac around the room, there was a thunder of heavy boots in the passageway outside and Sorley, the sexton, burst into the room. His face was red and his grey hair, cut very short, seemed to stick straight from his head. He glared at Mór.
    ‘Where’s my key?’ he shouted. ‘It’s gone from my jerkin. And I left my jerkin here in the kitchen. Who touched the key to the tower?’
    Mara took a quick step forward. There was a note of hysteria in the man’s voice. He was an odd fellow. Perhaps digging graves and shovelling old bones aside every week of his life for as long as she could remember had had a strange effect upon him, but she had never seen Sorley smile. His face was white now and small patches of red appeared in places, one right in the middle of his forehead. The boys stopped laughing and stared at him uneasily.
    Mór had flushed a bright poppy-red, but now her face grew pale at the look in his eyes. Mara stepped forward quickly. ‘It’ll be somewhere, Sorley,’ she said soothingly. ‘It’s such a big key that it won’t be mislaid. And Father MacMahon has his key, doesn’t he?’
    His face turned even redder. ‘I’m talking about
my
key, Brehon,’ he said. She had a feeling that only respect for her office stopped him short of shouting at her. He nodded stiffly, but managed to keep his mouth shut after that. His angry eyes swept from Mór to the two aghast faces of the kitchen maids. Mara saw them exchange looks and guessed that they knew something about the key. Quickly she intervened again.
    ‘You probably lost it in the courtyard,’ she stated. ‘Come along, boys. Let’s all go and search. Come with us, Sorley. You can show my scholars exactly where you walked.’
    His hand went to the empty cord dangling from the belt of his jerkin and he looked once more around the kitchen. Sorley had been offered the same meal as they had, and probably plenty to drink also, but he had dined in the kitchen. Even now, with the door ajar, with the windows widely opened to the river, and the fire reduced to embers, the place was hot. When they were cooking there would have been charcoal braziers burning as well. He would have removed his jerkin and hung it up before sitting down to his food and ale. Just as she thought of this, she saw his eyes go to the floor beneath the row of hooks on the wall at the far end of the kitchen. But Mór ran an efficient kitchen and there was not even a crumb to be seen. Mara touched his arm reassuringly.
    ‘It will be found,’ she said with conviction, and signed to him to go ahead of her in the wake of her young scholars.
    ‘What is the best way to find it, Domhnall?’ she asked once they were all in the courtyard and Sorley was safely surrounded by her young helpers.
    ‘Search the whole area,’ he replied decisively. ‘It’s difficult to remember exactly where you’ve walked. We’ll do the whole thing, Sorley. Don’t worry. It