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“Marry or avoid, I suppose it’s all one in the end. There’ll still be hunting and arms and friends.” A poor lookout, thought Cadfael, shaking his head, for that small, sharp, dark creature, Cristina daughter of Tudur, if she required more of her husband than a good, natured adolescent boy, willing to tolerate and accommodate her, but quite undisposed to love. Though many a decent marriage has started on no better ground, and burned into a glow later.
    They had reached the archway into the inner ward in their circlings, and the slanting sunlight, chill and bright, shone through across their path. High in the corner tower within there, Gilbert Prestcote had made his family apartments, rather than maintain a house in the town. Between the merlons of the curtain wall the sun just reached the narrow doorway that led to the private rooms above, and the girl who emerged stepped full into the light. She was the very opposite of small, sharp and dark, being tall and slender like a silver birch, delicately oval of face, and dazzlingly fair. The sun in her uncovered, waving hair glittered as she hesitated an instant on the doorstone, and shivered lightly at the embrace of the frosty air.
    Elis had seen her shimmering pallor take the light, and stood stock-still, gazing through the archway with eyes rounded and fixed, and mouth open. The girl hugged her cloak about her, closed the door at her back, and stepped out briskly across the ward towards the arch on her way out to the town. Cadfael had to pluck Elis by the sleeve to bring him out of his daze, and draw him onward out of her path, recalling him to the realisation that he was staring with embarrassing intensity, and might well give her offence if she noticed him. He moved obediently, but in a few more paces his chin went round on to his shoulder, and he checked again and stood, and could not be shifted further.
    She came through the arch, half-smiling for pleasure in the fine morning, but still with something grave, anxious and sad in her countenance. Elis had not removed himself far enough to pass unobserved, she felt a presence close, and turned her head sharply. There was a brief moment when their eyes met, hers darkly blue as periwinkle flowers. The rhythm of her gait was broken, she checked at his gaze, and it almost seemed that she smiled at him hesitantly, as at someone recognised. Fine rose, colour mounted softly in her face, before she recollected herself, tore her gaze away, and went on more hurriedly towards the barbican.
    Elis stood looking after her until she had passed through the gate and vanished from sight. His own face had flooded richly red.
    “Who was that lady?” he asked, at once urgent and in awe.
    “That lady,” said Cadfael, “is daughter to the sheriff, that very man we’re hoping to find somewhere alive in Welsh hold, and buy back with your captive person. Prestcote’s wife is come to Shrewsbury on that very matter, and brought her step, daughter and her little son with her, in hopes soon to greet her lord again. This is his second lady. The girl’s mother died, without bringing him a son.”
    “Do you know her name? The girl?”
    “Her name,” said Cadfael, “is Melicent.”
    “Melicent!” the boy’s lips shaped silently. Aloud he said, to the sky and the sun rather than to Cadfael: “Did you ever see such hair, like spun silver, finer than gossamer! And her face all milk and rose… How old can she be?”
    “Should I know? Eighteen or so by the look of her. Much the same age as your Cristina, I suppose,” said Brother Cadfael, dropping a none too gentle reminder of the reality of things. “You’ll be doing her a great service and grace if you send her father back to her. And as I know, you’re just as eager to get home yourself,” he said with emphasis.
    Elis removed his gaze with an effort from the corner where Melicent Prestcote had disappeared and blinked uncomprehendingly, as though he had just been startled out of a deep