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tight to the breast of her guardian. Morgase sang quietly, stroking her Lady’s temple. Henry caught Morgase’s eye: she couldn’t reassure. Henry waded to his Lady through the thickening sludge.
    â€œInstead of increasing in strength and frequency, her contractions weaken,” Morgase told Henry. “If she isn’t delivered of this child soon, the Sacred Cauldron of the Five Trees will putrefy,” Morgase continued. “Both Our Lady and the Holy Child will die.”
    Athol Gunn footed a ladder and opened the hatch. Sunlight pierced the hold. Sweet air flooded in.
    â€œBoth fore- and aft-castles have sustained severe damage, but are in tact,” he reported. “The aft-mast stands. The main mast has been snapped in two.”
    The news below decks was better than that from above. Amid the ruined provisions, rasped skin and broken bone, Henry saw that none of his Knights of the New Temple had perished. Reclamation ’s entire company, including her most precious cargo were shaken but alive. Their strength had been tested, Henry thought. They had been judged and found worthy. The smithies, wheelwrights, ship’s carpenters, glaziers, masons—all the unmarried, childless artisans chosen for their skill and, more importantly, their monklike loyalty to both Henry and Eugainia—had survived to build Her New Arcadia.
    In her delirium, Eugainia walked a forest path, her skin indistinguishable from the scented air. She turned at the sound of the voice, a man’s voice calling her name. No man stood behind her. Where her feet had fallen, moss expired and decayed. No birds sang. Leaves fell green to the ground where they shrivelled and died. Eugainia turned and ran. The ground fell from beneath her. She willed her shadow to rise. She tumbled end for end into a fiery pit from which, she knew, there was no hope of escape. A devil’s child, scorched and twisted, caught her eye and beckoned.
    â€œI’d rather die than follow you,” she whispered.
    Morgase bent close.
    â€œEugainia?”
    Reclamation keeled to starboard as the tide fell and nested in the mud. Sunlight bounced from the surface of the slop, shot up at an angle, brightening the makeshift grotto in the peak of the bow. Eugainia woke to the feel of light on her face. Fresh air filled her nostrils.
    â€œTake me from this stinking hole,” she begged.
    Morgase ordered her pallet carried toward the hatch.
    Henry joined Sir Athol on the listing deck. The wide, pleasant bay in which the ship had come to ground was still. The morning sun sat well established halfway to the zenith. In the near distance, a plume of smoke rose from the highest elevation in a range of moderate hills. The smoke, curious though it was, rising as it did from the earth with no visible flame, didn’t hold Henry’s interest for long. Neither he nor his kinsman Sir Athol Gunn could fathom what drew near.
    From the wide mouth of a bay a hundred canoes, each carrying two adults, many with several children, approached at speed. The flotilla swept around and past Reclamation . On board the ravaged ship, not a hand reached for sword or lance, axe or bow. Even burley Athol Gunn’s arms hung loose. A feeling akin to joy tugged at the corners of his battered spirit. There was no need for alarm. The revellers in the sleek canoes laughed and chatted among themselves, shouting what Henry assumed to be good-natured jibes aimed at laggard and braggart alike.
    Was this a dream? If so, it came as a welcome relief from the nightmare they’d survived. The travellers’ smiles were friendly and open. Blue black hair glistened in the sun. White teeth flashed as they directed the briefest of smiles up to the dishevelled creatures lining the sides of the enormous, stinking apparition that had appeared overnight in the Bay of the Smoking Mountain, also known to The People, the Europeans would come to learn, as Claw of Spirit Bird Bay.
    The