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infirmary.
    'Can you tell us who you are and what happened to you?'
    The question came from an elderly nun. She was tiny and thin as a twig, but her gaze was a piercing pale blue and she had an air of authority that dwarfed her size.
    'The tide,' he said and swallowed.
    'You perhaps fell overboard from a ship?'
    Nicholas shook his head. The looming faces swam out of focus and all he could see was water, all he could hear were the screams of drowning men and horses. And cutting through that sound, the incessant tolling of a bell. He closed his eyes and wished he had not woken.
    A rim was set against his lips and warm liquid flowed over his tongue. He fought to push it aside, imagining it was sea-water, but his head was held in an inexorable grip, his nose was pinched and when he opened his mouth to breathe, the brew was forced down his throat, not salty, but bitter as aloes. Then he was parcelled up like a fly in a web and left.
    The bell ceased to ring and silence descended. Behind his lids, the darkness was shot with lightning flashes of nightmare. He was swimming in glutinous, liquid mud, his arms hampered by a bulky wooden coffer that grew heavier and heavier as he tried to kick for the shore. Every time he looked at the beach to see how much progress he had made, he discovered that he had gained no distance at all. From below, the hands of those already drowned began
    pulling him down.
    A loud crash jerked him into awareness, and he gulped with desperate greed at the cool, herb-scented air.
    A young nun was swearing to herself as she crawled around on her hands and knees, picking up the pieces of a broken clay pitcher. A white wimple framed her face, sapping her
    complexion, but not the strength of her features. Her language would have done justice to a fishwife. Had he possessed the strength, Nicholas would have laughed, but he was too weak and stupefied with exhaustion to do anything but stare.
    She must have sensed his attention for she swung round, the shattered pieces in her hands. Their eyes met and for a moment he saw blind panic in her expression before she schooled it to a nun-like impassivity. Dropping the shards in a wicker basket, she dusted her palms. 'It shouldn't have been left so close to the trestle edge - what else do they expect?' She shrugged defensively. 'They'll blame me just the same when they return from prayers.' She came and stood over him, one hand on her hip, the other cupping her chin in a curiously masculine gesture. He could not know that she was aping the stance of a sixty-year-old weaver.
    Her eyes were gold-brown, her nose thin and aquiline. She reminded Nicholas of a falcon he had once owned.
    'Don't you have a name?' she demanded.
    'Nicholas,' he said weakly, and a shiver ran through him. He wondered if he was wise to tell her, but in the same thought decided that it did not matter. Other survivors, if they existed, would have more on their minds than pursuing him.
    She continued to rub her chin and a slight frown appeared between her sharp brows. 'You had been in the sea.'
    'Crossing the causeway - caught by the tide.' He closed his eyes, feeling nauseous and drained. The shivering began again and he could not stop.
    'Then you are more than lucky to be alive,' she murmured and once more a cup was pressed to his lips. Nicholas turned his head from the bitter taste.
    'Drink,' she commanded. 'It will give you ease.'
    He did not have the strength to thrust her away. The touch of her hands and her closeness as she leaned over him were as recently familiar as her voice.
    'You found me, didn't you?' he asked hoarsely.
    She removed the cup. 'Yes, fortunately for you. Sister Margaret says another hour and you would have died.'
    'I thought I had.' He gave her a bleak smile. 'When I woke up, I believed I was in hell.'
    Her eyes widened, and for an instant he thought that he had shocked her, but that notion vanished as she burst out laughing.
    'I have the same experience every day when the matins