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range and was long enough that her wide bed with its canopy and curtains set at one end of it left ample room at the other for the aumbry, two chests with her clothing and other belongings, two chairs, a low stool, and the square, tall-legged table with shelf underneath where Lady Eleanor kept her few books. A painted tapestry brightened one of the white-plastered walls, and at this hour of the autumn afternoon the westering sunlight through the window spread across the dark polished wooden floor and golden matting of woven rushes.
    Lady Eleanor’s two dogs, ankle-high pieces of white fluff, hurtled out from under the foot of the bed in a scrabble of nails and eagerness to see who had come, but Lady Eleanor countered them with a sharp word, stopping them where they were. “Not now,” she added, and disconsolately they removed themselves back under the bed. To Frevisse and Joice she said, “The chair by the brazier would do best, I think. Let me move it nearer.”
    She did, and Frevisse sat Joice down in it while Lady Eleanor tucked the cloak more closely around her, murmuring, “You’ll be fine now, dear. Just sit and be still until the wine is ready.”
    “And you should sit, too,” Frevisse said, drawing the other chair close to the first. “Here.”
    Lady Eleanor looked momentarily surprised, then smiled and did as Frevisse bid, before leaning toward Joice to ask, “Is it better with you now?”
    Stiffly upright in her chair, her hands gripping its curved arms, the girl shook her head. “No, it isn’t better and it’s not likely to ever be ‘better’ again, is it? Not after this!” She let loose of the chair to make fists and pound them on the arms. “I could kill them for doing this to me! Benet and all the rest! I could kill them!”
    Margrete coming to set the pan to heat over the coals cast her a look of question more than alarm, and Lady Eleanor took Joice’s nearest fist, gentling it between her hands as she asked, “You haven’t been… harmed, have you?”
    Joice snatched her hand away, striking the chair arm again. “Not that way. They grabbed me and flung me onto Benet’s saddle, that’s all they did, but do you think Sir Lewis will marry me after this? Do you think anyone will marry me after this?” Her face and voice and body were all rigid with rage. “Not without my father having to pay twice the dowry he meant to and my taking less marriage settlement than I should have had! That’s what they’ve done to me!” Her voice dropped to brooding bitterness. “And likely anyone who has me will make me listen every day of my life afterward to how good he was to take me even at that.”
    Not if he knew what was good for him, Frevisse thought. Slight of build and delicate of face though Joice was, there was nothing slight or delicate about her temper.
    With the fury that seemed to have driven out her brief facing of fear, Joice sprang to her feet, throwing the cloak back onto the chair behind her. “And all that supposes I’m ever able to leave here to make any kind of marriage at all! I heard what Sir Reynold said. He won’t let me leave. I’m worth too much. He’ll try to take me himself if he has to, I’ll warrant!”
    Lady Eleanor began a soft denial of that. Ignoring it, Joice spun around, pointing at Frevisse. “And don’t think I’ll ever become a nun, because I won’t!”
    Frevisse held back from saying aloud her sharp-edged thought that a less likely possibility for a novice she had rarely seen.
    Lady Eleanor, as if oblivious to the girl’s fury, said thoughtfully, “You could possibly change your mind and marry Benet, you know. He’s an uncomplicated boy and there’s property to be had with him when he inherits.”
    “All I want from Benet is his death!”
    “Ah,” Lady Eleanor said. “But if you married him first, my dear, you could then be a widow, and that’s frequently a very pleasant thing to be.”
    Joice stared at her, shocked to silence by outrage,