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it,” said deSteny. “But if it must be done, then—”
    “It is necessary,” said Wroughton, his voice rising. “With the father and mothers gone, and the oldest child. And no sign of them. They cannot be left this way.” He looked around as if he expected the early afternoon shadows to stretch out and surround them.
    There was a silence between them all, as massive as the walls of Windsor.
    Then the Red Friar bent down and rolled the first of the bodies out onto the ground. He held out his hand to deSteny. “Your sword.”
    Slowly deSteny pulled it from the sheath over his shoulder, and handed it to the Red Friar. “Go ahead,” he told the monk, and turned away so he would not have to watch the children being decapitated. He heard the whistle of the sword and the solid thunk as it severed flesh and bone.
    “This one can be buried now, face down,” said the Red Friar, addressing deSteny. “I’ve done all that I can.”
    “You heard him. Make two graves,” said deSteny. He knew his men thought him faint-hearted for not watching the friar cut the head off the child, but he had seen—and done—more than his share of that in the Holy Land. He watched as Chilton handed a shovel hanging on the side of the wall to Wroughton, indicating the area where the graves were to be dug.
    “This isn’t my work,” Wroughton protested, not wanting to be stuck with the menial task of digging.
    “I’ll do it,” said deSteny, glad to be doing something. He held out his hand for the shovel and set to work, his chain-mail weighing on him as he labored. By the time he had made a grave big enough and deep enough for the first child, the Red Friar had the second ready, and was reciting prayers over the bodies.
    “Put them both in the same hole,” Wroughton recommended, squinting up at the sky. “Otherwise we’ll be in the forest come sunset.”
    This timely warning alerted deSteny as nothing else could. He held out his hand to Chilton, to be helped out of the grave, then gave a long, steady look at the Red Friar. “What do you advise, Brother?”
    “I think it would be best to be away from here. The men are right. If we linger here we face the chance of being caught in the forest when the sun goes down.” The Red Friar crossed himself and looked at his pyx. “I could anoint all of you for the journey. That might give us a little security.”
    “If we are hunted by what I fear most,” said deSteny, “we should avail ourselves of everything that might guard us from harm, even if it means using methods the Church would not endorse.” He glanced down at the two children’s bodies. “Tend to them.”
    The Red Friar got on his knees and set the two pathetic corpses in the grave side by side, turned so that they lay prone and not supine, their heads set under their feet, also facing down. After sprinkling Holy Water on the wretched bodies, he made the sign of the cross over them and rose to let deSteny cover them with earth.
    “What do you think? Are they at rest?” deSteny asked the Red Friar as he hurried to complete his work.
    “They are, if God is good,” said the Trinitarian, with emphasis on “they.” He indicated the mats. “But regarding the rest of the family, I do not think so, not after—” He gave deSteny his sword again, the blade wiped clean.
    “Nor I,” agreed deSteny as he slipped the weapon across his shoulder and into the scabbard. “It troubles me.” He resumed his work with the shovel.
    The Red Friar crossed himself. “Any sensible man would be troubled, given what has happened.”
    “Truly,” said deSteny, and shaded his eyes to look at the angle of the sun. “We will leave not a moment too soon.” He shoveled the last of the earth on top of the children. “I have heard nothing of missing travelers, not recently.”
    “Nor have I. But if they are missing, it may be that there has been none to look for them, and anyone who has searched—”
    “Might suffer the same fate as the ones