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God, Margaret. I’ve never sinned. Well—not sinned that way, at any rate.”
    “It’s not sin, if you’re married, and if you—like—the person, and if you—want to,” I answered him.
    “It’s not just that, you know—it’s them too. Always prowling around, checking up. This is the first night they haven’t all been up here, ready to count how many times—just like one of Father’s stud horses. I couldn’t bear it.” I reached out and put my hand on his arm. I could feel him shaking all over.
    “Oh, God, you’re so beautiful,” he said, just before I kissed him, pulling him down on me. I didn’t need to show him much. Somehow he seemed to know already. It was I, I who had known everything who knew nothing. What could I ever have understood of a lifetime of passion, all locked behind high walls, until the moment I had opened the gate to be drowned in the flood of it? I could feel the heat of his body blazing on mine, my skin all damp and flickering with the strange shivering glow of the lightning that leapt within us and between us. I don’t even know what to call what we did that night. The heart of a fire, the eye of the sun—it consumed us to leave only a whisper of white ash behind. And somewhere in the midst of it I realized that this must be the passion of the body that the bards sing of: the stuff of dreams and damnation, that only leaves you the hungrier for the having of it. Mindless and mad, it kindled itself and belonged to itself. A thought, like the drift of a sinking ship, swirled to the surface: Is this death? Die here then. Then we were pulled under again by the maelstrom.
    It was nearly dawn before we fell asleep, racked and exhausted by lovemaking. It wasn’t until several days later I remembered that in the last moment before I closed my eyes, I heard something like the sighing breeze, and felt the Cold Thing, even though the curtains were pulled tight.

CHAPTER TWO
    A S DAWN POKED THROUGH THE BED curtains, I could hear stirring and groaning in the room outside. The world, the ordinary world, was out there again, as if nothing had happened. Someone had been sick in the rushes, and it didn’t smell nice. The tower door was open—somehow they must have dragged the old man up to his great bed in the tower room. But most of those who’d got upstairs at all hadn’t got farther than the solar. I could make out Hugo’s head and one arm among the tangled bodies in the bed opposite. There were more bodies, still clothed, strewn about on the floor. It looked as if the plague had been through the house. Gregory opened one eye, pulled me back from the open curtain, and looked out himself.
    “Hmm. The battlefield of Bacchus,”he said, and brought his head in again. Then he leaned back in the feathery mess and put both his hands behind his head. He looked speculatively up at the sagging canopy, and a slow smile spread across his face. A thin beam of light through the open bed curtains picked out the line of his arm, and the dark hairs glistened, as if they still glowed with the fast-fading night blaze.
    “Haven’t we had a time, though? I never expected it to turn out like this. I mean, being married and all.” His voice had a contented ring. Oh, morning, morning, why must you come? Why must we be so plain by day? I hugged the last of the fading glow to me, as if I could save all of last night to feed on through the cold day.
    “I’m hungry, Gregory.”
    “Me too. Remember when you used to make me eat breakfast before you’d have your lesson? You said I wasn’t fit to be spoken to without breakfast.” How could he be just the same, after what had happened? How could everything be just the same?
    “I could go downstairs, and see if anyone’s in the kitchen.” Suddenly I was starving.
    “You had good breakfasts at your house. Of course, Father says breakfasts are for sick people, and anyone who isn’t a weakling can wait until eleven for a proper dinner.” I couldn’t believe