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my wife’s chickens, dead to a hen!”
    “Nay, I heard of that, but I hoped it wasn’t true!” Elayne exclaimed, brazening it out. “Sir Guy said that all in town were taken.”
    “Aye, there’s not a poultry to scratch,” he said. “Between last night and morn they all took dead, and we found ‘em laying about the yards and streets.”
    “Dread news,” Elayne said. She wanted desperately to sit down, but she remained standing. She knew what they would say next.
    “Aye, dread enough. ‘Tis the Devil’s work,” he said harshly, staring at her.
    Elayne crossed herself. She assumed her most profound air of concern. “Does the priest say so?”
    He instantly looked away, crossing himself, too, as she met his stare, and glanced aside at Cara. “Happen your sister has the Evil Eye, lady, God save us,” he muttered.
    Cara looked flustered. “What a wicked thing to say!” she snapped. Her ire turned from Elayne to the villager. “I not never allow such words in this abode, I warn you!”
    “ ‘Tis the color,” he said. “It is no natural blue.”
    “You show ignorance,” Cara said. “Lady Elayne descends of noble blood. Such purple tinge be a mark of wellborn in our people.”
    “Aye,” Willem said forebodingly. “Foreigners.”
    Cara’s mouth pursed. Her eyes and complexion were their own betrayal of distant birth—Cara was olive-skinned, with eyes of deepest brown. She far preferred to speak her elegantly fluent Italian tongue with Elayne. But she always took ill to any suggestion that she was not as thoroughly English as the man she had married. “Bah, I am too busy with you. You take this complaints to Sir Guy,” she said with hauteur.
    “That I will, lady,” Willem said. “I want ten crowns of him to repay my fighting cock, and another twenty shillings for the loss of the hens.”
    “Ten crowns!” Cara cried. “You not never saw ten crowns in your wretched life. Why Sir Guy should pay for your dead cock that took ill?”
    Willem narrowed his eyes. “He’s your husband and master over your sister, now aren’t he not? Me wife says the girl was there, giving her fine gifts for to be let at the hens, and the next day they all die…. ‘Tis witches’ work, and I know it. You kept that foreign witch woman here, and she taught this girl her heretical ways, and now look you! My cock as was to fight at Shrovetide is lifeless as a stone!”
    “Mistress Libushe used no heretical ways,” Elayne said firmly. “She was sent by the Countess Melanthe herself, God keep her, to instruct me in herbs and medicines.”
    “Aye, and ask what else she instructed you in. Creeping about the countryside and meeting with men at the mill, even this very day!”
    At the sudden look Cara cast her, Elayne lost her courage. She evaded her sister’s eyes. “I did naught to harm your fowl, Will,” she said. “Libushe taught me to heal the sick animals, not hurt them!”
    “Meeting with men at the mill?” Cara demanded in Italian. “Meeting with men at the mill?”
    “I only passed Sir Raymond there on his way to leave town,” Elayne replied quickly in their native tongue. “I spoke to him briefly, to tell him farewell.”
    “Elena, you are the veriest little fool,” Cara hissed. “Great God, you will end a whore upon the streets in your recklessness!”
    Elayne bowed her head. She had no defense for herself.
    “Foreigners,” Willem grumbled, watching them with his jaw pushed forward.
    Cara turned to him. “This was certainly not Elayne at the mill,” she snapped. “All day she do my bidding here at the castle. And you—I do not like you with your Evil Eye and rude claims to defame my sister. Be gone now.”
    “I will see Sir Guy,” Willem said.
    “Be gone at once!” Cara demanded. “Or the guard will cast you from the gate.”
    “Foreigners!” Willem snarled, and turned without even a bow for the ladies of the castle. “Heretics! The priest will hear of this.”

Chapter Two
    Elayne sat on a bench in Lady Melanthe’s solar, her hands locked together in her lap so tightly that her