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head…” Martyn started.
    “… there’d be a puddle on the ground,” Giles finished.
    Masters Geffers caught the beginning of a laugh behind his hand. Lionel turned an angry look on Giles and might have spoken, but Mistress Knyvet, hurriedly passing the goblet to her husband again, glanced aside at him, and Lionel held back what he might have said and turned again to Martyn, who had not changed color or expression. He might not have heard Giles at all, except he did not finish his sentence but said, “Try this. In a garden was laid a pretty fair maid, as fair as the light of the morn. The first day of her life she was made a wife, and she died ere she was born.”
    Giles, done with the goblet, yawned his boredom and lay back on a cushion behind me. The Stenbys and Father Henry looked utterly lost, but the rest of them set to the problem, Lionel with open delight. Dame Claire repeated, thinking about it, “ ‘And died ere she was born’?” Her literal mind that served her so well as infirmarian was a liability when it came to riddles, and no one else seemed to be faring any better. Only Frevisse, given to thinking aside from other people’s usual ways even at the best of times, suddenly saw the way of it and declared, “It’s Eve of course! She was made from Adam’s rib and never born at all.”
    Martyn declared, “You have it!” Lionel laughed and clapped his hands in admiration. Everyone else groaned or continued to look bewildered.
    “Now you have to ask one,” Lionel declared. “Make it hard. She’ll match you, Martyn, and serve you right. You’ve had your own way at this too long.”
    “You’re jealous because you can’t keep a riddle in your head long enough to bring it to me and ask it,” Martyn returned in kind.
    “And I swear you’ve cheated by sending to London for a riddle book and kept it secret. That’s how you manage to look so clever,” Lionel shot back.
    “And you wish you’d thought of it first,” Martyn returned.
    That was bold, between servant and master, but Lionel only laughed. Frevisse wondered how it went in the Knyvet household with them more like to friends than master and steward; but she had her riddle and said before they could go on, “A shoemaker made shoes of no leather but all the elements taken together—earth, water, fire, and air—and every customer had two pair.”
    “Ah!” Lionel cried. “Martyn, where’s your book? I’ve heard that one and can’t remember it!”
    Dame Claire murmured, “A shoemaker? ”Earth, water, fire, and air‘?“
    Away along the hedge one of the horses stamped at a fly, his hoof thudding softly against the turf. Martyn Graves-end’s expression changed, betraying he suddenly had the answer, but Mistress Knyvet cried out before he could, “Horseshoes! It’s horseshoes, isn’t it?”
    “Yes, horseshoes,” Frevisse agreed.
    Pleased beyond measure, Mistress Knyvet exclaimed, “Lionel, I finally guessed one! All on my own!”
    Lionel and Martyn were both laughing at her, as pleased as she was, and Lionel reached out to take and squeeze her hand. “Haven’t I told you that all you need to do is think crookedly, like Martyn does, and you could do it?”
    Mistress Knyvet’s delight shifted to dismay. “But now I have to have a riddle. Giles, can you think of one for me?”
    Her husband had occasionally watched what was going on through half-opened eyes, but now to his wife’s plea, he only shook his head and closed his eyes completely.
    “Giles!” she pleaded.
    “The cat one from the other day,” he said.
    “But that’s no good! Lionel and Martyn already know it!”
    “Then tell them they can’t guess.”
    Lionel rescued her with, “What we should do is not be guessing anything but being on our way.”
    Dame Claire, Father Henry, and Frevisse had finished eating, and he was undeniably right. It was time they were all about their business again.
    “But we’ll all meet at Minster Lovell,” Lionel added, “and