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Welsh after all, but the fellow crossed and roused himself. “If you dare to interrupt her work, you shall answer to me.”
    Still gripping the cross, he stalked from the chapter house, leaving Geraint cursing under his breath. That did not go well, not at all. Fool—when will I learn to play humble with the great? Pray God he does not take it out on Yolande.
     
    Her ears burning, Yolande hurried away from the door and down a flight of steps to the cloisters. When a monk sped past carrying a steaming poultice on a shovel, en route from the kitchen to the infirmary, she backed into deeper shadows.
    I did hear right last night when Geraint said he cared for me. He admitted it to the abbot.
    She was sorry and glad together—sorry to hear it through listening at a door and glad he had said it. He had fought for her with the proud and haughty Abbot Simon. No one had ever done that for her before.
    And are you not indulging in the sin of vanity? Are you not thinking of Geraint instead of what ails this place and the reason why you have been summoned? The reason why Abbot Simon sent on the cross of the Magdalene to you? Is this not frivolous and uxorious behavior of the very kind the abbot warned against?
    “But he loves me,” she said aloud. “And of his own free will.” Abbot Simon cared for her, she knew, in a Christian way, and her parents had loved her because she had been theirs. Geraint was the first to love her for herself.
    Even though I talk sometimes in my sleep. She was only mildly disconcerted to learn that, for as soon as she had heard it another thought followed— Geraint will never betray me by anything I say then.
    He had his darkness, her honeyman, but he strove for others, raged against unfairness and accepted her as she was.
    As radiant and joyous as an angel, she lengthened her stride so she would reach the monastery church before the abbot.
    * * * * *
     
    It was not the time for a holy office and the church was deserted. Yolande stood quietly at the back, against the north wall, and slowly inhaled.
    She smelled stale robes, stale sweat, candle wax and incense.
    She knelt where she was and prayed to the Magdalene, companion of Christ. Why Saint Michael and the Magdalene? She did not understand it any more than Geraint. The abbot had not explained either and was probably unlikely to do so now.
    She rose and watched the door open. Abbot Simon strode across the nave to her.
    “I sense no restless dead here but I cannot pray,” she said.
    “None of us can pray here.”
    She stared at him. Part of her had feared it was her thoughts and feelings about Geraint that had made her unable to focus on prayer.
    “And during holy services?” she asked, hoping the abbot did not see the relief shining in her face.
    He beckoned her to follow and approached the high altar. “Candles go out,” he admitted in a low monotone. “Singing is flat. There are errors in the responses, tiny pauses, the wrong words. Monks claim forgetfulness, lack of sleep, indigestion…”
    Are these mistakes or sins? Yolande wondered.
    “There is less charity and consideration among the brothers.”
    And to others. Yolande, inwardly ashamed, recalled the all-too-recent quarrel between Abbot Simon, herself and Geraint.
    “Some things I cannot speak of, for they are under the seal of confession.” Abbot Simon stopped and bowed before the altar. “There has been an erosion, almost a breach, by unkind forces.”
    The candles flickered and she sensed a change in the air. She whipped ’round, took the bow off her shoulder and readied an arrow, her body, bow and arrow together making the sign of a cross.
    “ Pax , my Yolande.” Geraint entered the nave. “Is it always so cold in here?”
    It was not, of course, Yolande recollected. Cold was another sign that things were amiss.
    “Come.” Abbot Simon replaced the crucifix within its ornate silver reliquary upon the altar, bowed again to the sacred marble table and its relic and stepped