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didn’t frighten me so much; he’d have taken my baby away without a thought.
    Gyltha was informing the struggling kitten. “You see, lad,” she said, bending to put her face close, “we come to see Bishop Rowley.”
    “No, no, that is impossible. His lordship departs for Normandy tomorrow and has much to do before then.” Somehow, horizontally, the little priest achieved dignity. “I attend to his affairs….”
    But the door had opened and a procession was entering in a blaze of candles, bearing at its center a figure from an illuminated manuscript, majestic in purple and gold.
    Gyltha’s right, Adelia thought immediately, the miter doesn’t suit him. Then she took in the set of jowls, the dulled eyes, so changed from the man she remembered.
    No, we’re wrong: It does.
    His lordship assessed the situation. “Put him down, Mansur,” he said in Arabic.
    Mansur opened his hand.
    Both pages carrying his lordship’s train leaned out sideways to peer at the ragbag of people who had floored Father Paton. A white-haired functionary began hammering on the tiles with his wand of office.
    Only the bishop appeared unmoved. “All right, steward,” he said. “Good evening, Mistress Adelia. Good evening, Gyltha, you look well.”
    “So do you, bor.”
    “How’s Ulf?”
    “At school. Prior says as he’s doing grand.”
    The steward blinked; this was lèse-majesté. He watched his bishop turn to the Arab. “Dr. Mansur, as-salaam alaykum. ”
    “Wa alaykum as-salaam.”
    This was worse. “My lord…”
    “Supper will be served up here as quickly as may be, steward, we are short of time.”
    We , thought Adelia. The episcopal “we.”
    “Your vestments, my lord…Shall I fetch your dresser?”
    “Paton will divest me.” The bishop sniffed, searching for the source of a smell. He found it and added, “Also, bring a bone for the dog.”
    “Yes, my lord.” Pitiably, the steward wafted the other servants from the room.
    The bishop processed to the bedroom, the secretary following and explaining what he had done, what they had done. “I cannot understand the antagonism, my lord, I merely made arrangements based on the information supplied to me from Oxford.”
    Bishop Rowley’s voice: “Which seem to have become somewhat garbled on the journey.”
    “Yet I obeyed them as best I could, to the letter, my lord…. I cannot understand….” Outpourings of a man misjudged came to them through the open door as, at the same time, Father Paton divested his master of cope, dalmatic, rochet, pallium, gloves, and miter, layer after layer of embroidered trappings that had employed many needlewomen for many years, all lifted off and folded with infinite care. It took time.
    “Rosamund Clifford?” Mansur asked Gyltha.
    “You know her, you heathen. Fair Rosamund as they sing about—the king’s pet fancy. Lots of songs about Fair Rosamund.”
    That Rosamund. Adelia remembered hearing the ha’penny minstrels on market days, and their songs—some romantic, most of them bawdy.
    If he’s dragged me here to involve me in the circumstances of a loose woman…
    Then she reminded herself that she, too, must now be numbered among the world’s loose women.
    “So she’ve near been murdered, has she?” Gyltha said, happily. “Per’aps Queen Eleanor done it. Tried to get her out of the way, like. Green jealous of Rosamund, Eleanor is.”
    “The songs say that as well, do they?” Adelia asked.
    “That they do.” Gyltha considered. “No, now I think on’t, can’t be the queen as done it; last I heard, the king had her in prison.”
    The mighty and their activities were another country, in another country. By the time reports of what they were up to reached the fens, they had achieved the romance and remoteness of myth, nothing to do with real people, and less than nothing compared to a river flooding or cows dead from the murrain or, in Adelia’s case, the birth of a baby.
    Once, it had been different. During the war of