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square stone-lined pit near the end of the room. A remnant of the meters-long swags of drapery that had once ran the course of both long walls hung in one pitiful scrap there near the door, replaced with long swoops of cobwebs, gossamer threads of dirt, and crumbling vines straggling over the painted plaster murals set near the beamed ceiling. The floor was only marginally clearer than the bailey he’d left behind, the intricate pattern of stonework hidden beneath a thick layer of dirt and dead vines and broken furnishings.
    Only the lord’s table still stood aright, a lumpy pile of what looked like discarded cloth resting on its center. Whoever had built the fire had likely left it, Roderick thought, and he wondered if the person in residence was of Cherbon or just some wanderer who had stumbled upon the deserted castle in a spot of luck.
    Behind him, Roderick’s horse stamped and blew quietly, shaking him from the scene of destruction before his eyes. His eyes sought the doorway at the opposite end of the room, leading to the kitchens and the interior well within, and was readying to limp in that direction when the pile of cloth on the table stirred.
    â€œHarliss!” the lump of clothing shouted, and Roderick stopped. He knew that voice. “Roderick? Is that you, my son?”
    Roderick wanted no one to ever address him as “son” again in that room, not even Friar Cope, but he limped around in a circle all the same. “Yes, Friar.”
    The older, rotund man immediately reached for the jug at his elbow. After a long swallow, he stood. “I’m glad you’ve returned,” he said, as if Roderick had just come back from a day of hunting in the wood beyond Cherbon’s walls. “Glory be to God. But, my son, your father is dead.”
    â€œGood.”
    The friar nodded. “Cherbon is yours.”
    â€œI know,” Roderick said with a touch of impatience. “My horse thirsts.” He turned back toward the kitchen doorway and was met by yet another ghost from his past, the ghost of the woman Friar Cope had called out for in the midst of his stupor, and the source of the knot in Roderick’s stomach.
    â€œGood day, Roderick,” Harliss said in her thin, stingy-gray voice.
    Before him was the woman who had sought to take the place of his mother, the nurse who had cared for him and reared him under Magnus’s orders. Perhaps more skeletal, more gray, than when he’d left Cherbon, but still the same severe coif, the same dire gray gown and apron, the same permanent, disapproving frown. Her hands were clenched before her waist. How many times had those hands struck him?
    When Roderick gave her no return greeting, she spoke again. “Do my eyes deceive me, or are you entertaining your animal in the great hall?”
    â€œYou will address me as ‘my lord,’ servant ,” Roderick stated flatly. “And yes, this is my animal, and yes, he is in the hall, although it is of no concern to you save that had you cared for the bucket in yon well, he would not be here. As it is, this chamber is akin to a sty, and were my father still alive, I’m certain you would be whipped.” Take that, you bitch .
    Harliss’s knife-thin nostrils flared. “Oh, I do doubt he would resort to that. My lord .” Harliss turned her crone’s face to Friar Cope as he puffed to a stop between she and Roderick. “Have you told him, Friar?”
    â€œYes, he has,” Roderick snapped.
    â€œNo,” Friar Cope wheezed. “Roderick—”
    â€œSo there are others about,” Hugh said merrily as he entered the doorway, his voice rather loud for the large, quiet space. “They aren’t transients, are they? I do so crave a hearty meal and Leo is— my God! This hall is a disgrace! No matter—I will go fetch my own mount and we shall have a pagan feast upon the floor.”
    Hugh had unbound Leo from his back and re-seated