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quickly.
     
    "You still wish to claim sanctuary? Because that means that when the sheriff comes, he'll have to know and there'll be the question of why, and what law you broke and what king's officer you're fleeing."
     
    "We're guilty of nothing," she said in a level voice.
     
    "But are accused of something, and need protection until you can prove your innocence?"
     
    Maryon hesitated before answering warily, "We're accused of nothing but we need safety until we can leave here."
     
    "All the men who attacked you this afternoon were killed. There's nothing more to fear from them."
     
    "No, not from them," Maryon agreed.
     
    "From who then?"
     
    Maryon did not answer.
     
    Choosing her words carefully, Frevisse asked, "Do you still serve ... the lady that you did?"
     
    Somewhere among the stones a cricket was chirruping; there was no other sound in the quiet thick as the darkness around them except their own breathing for the betraying while until Maryon said, "Yes."
     
    "And the boys are her children, not yours."
     
    As if the word came between clenched teeth, Maryon answered, "Yes."
     
    "God help us," Frevisse breathed fervently.
     
    Maryon grasped her arm in the dark with fingers far stronger than their white slenderness suggested and said, as near to open desperation as Frevisse had ever heard her, "It's your help we need right now. For pity of the Virgin who suffered for her Child, hide these children here just this little while until we can go on our way. Help me to hide them."
     
    "From whom? From what? Their mother is the queen dowager. Their half brother is the King of England." The words sounded unreal even as she said them. "Who threatens them?"
     
    Maryon held silent.
     
    Pushed by her own fear, Frevisse said harshly, "I need to know more before I can agree to anything."
     
    "How much do you want to know? All of it?"
     
    "No!" Frevisse exclaimed, with belated realization that she wanted to know only as much as necessary of the matter. What she did not know, she could not be held responsible for. But there was danger here beyond what had happened today. A danger she had helped to bring into St. Frideswide's, and she had to understand at least a little of it. "Are you in flight from . . . their mother? Is that it? If so—"
     
    "She sent them away. We're all of her household. She entrusted them to us, to see them to safety with their father's folk in Wales."
     
    "Why?"
     
    A night bird in the garden and the cricket still chirruping filled the silence.
     
    Frevisse put her hand over Maryon's still on her arm, gripping it as tightly as Maryon was holding to her, to make her understand the urgency of what she was asking. "Who wants these boys so badly and frightens her so much, their mother sent them in secret flight across the country? Not the King, surely."
     
    King Henry was fourteen years old and still governed by his royal council, but by all reports he was a competent, clever youth, not someone his own mother would fear.
     
    "Of course not! But he doesn't rule, does he? It's the lords around him who have power."
     
    "And they've learned these children exist and want control of them."
     
    Again rigidly, Maryon admitted, "Yes." But then as if that had freed something—with so much said, more might as well be—she added, "My lady kept them secret all these years because she was afraid of this. She wanted her marriage to be simply her marriage, not something talked over, considered, arranged by lords who cared nothing and knew nothing of her.
     
    "So when she and Lord Owen fell in love, they both knew they had no right to but they were not able to help it. Truly they're lovely together, like a lord and lady of a romance, but she knew she could only marry him secretly. The lords of the Council had already cut her off from her own son. She's not allowed to live with him, nor have any say in his raising. Visit him sometimes and send him pretty presents but that's all, because she's a woman and