The note of triumph in his voice was faint, but unmistakable.

“I,” he said softly, “I have had him as you could never have him. You are a woman; you cannot understand, even witch as you are. I have held the soul of his manhood, have taken from him what he has taken from me. I know him, as he now knows me. We are bound, he and I, by blood.”

I give ye my Body, that we Two may be One…

“You choose a very odd way of seeking my help,” I said, my voice shaking. My hands were clenched in the folds of my skirt, the fabric cold and bunched between my fingers.

“Do I? I think it best you understand, Madam. I do not beseech your pity, do not call upon your power as a man might seek mercy from a woman, depending upon what people call womanly sympathy. For that cause, you might come to my brother on his own account.” A lock of dark hair fell loose across his forehead; he brushed it back with one hand.

“I prefer that it be a straight bargain made between us, Madam; of service rendered and price paid – for realize, Madam, that my feelings toward you are much as yours toward me must be.”

That was a shock; while I struggled to find an answer, he went on.

“We are linked, you and I, through the body of one man – through him. I would have no such link formed through the body of my brother; I seek your help to heal his body, but I take no risk that his soul shall fall prey to you. Tell me, then; is the price I offer acceptable to you?”

I turned away from him and walked down the center of the echoing nave. I was shaking so hard that my steps felt uncertain, and the shock of the hard stone beneath my soles jolted me. The tracery of the great window over the disused altar stood black against the white of racing clouds, and dim shafts of moonlight lit my path.

At the end of the nave, as far as I could get from him, I stopped and pressed my hands against the wall for support. It was too dark even to see the letters of the marble tablet under my hands, but I could feel the cool, sharp lines of the carving. The curve of a small skull, resting on crossed thigh bones, a pious version of the jolly Roger. I let my head fall forward, forehead to forehead with the invisible skull, smooth as bone against my skin.

I waited, eyes closed, for my gorge to subside, and the heated pulse that throbbed in my temples to cool.

It makes no difference, I told myself. No matter what he is. No matter what he says.

We are linked, you and I, through the body of one man… Yes, but not through Jamie. Not through him! I insisted, to him, to myself. Yes, you took him, you bastard! But I took him back, I freed him from you. You have no part of him! But the sweat that trickled down my ribs and the sound of my own sobbing breath belied my conviction.

Was this the price I must pay for the loss of Frank? A thousand lives that might be saved, perhaps, in compensation for that one loss?

The dark mass of the altar loomed to my right, and I wished with all my heart that there might be some presence there, whatever its nature; something to turn to for an answer. But there was no one here in Holyrood; no one but me. The spirits of the dead kept their own counsel, silent in the stones of wall and floor.

I tried to put Jack Randall out of my mind. If it weren’t him, if it were any other man who asked, would I go? There was Alex Randall to be considered, all other things aside. “For that cause, you might come to my brother on his own account,” the Captain had said. And of course I would. Whatever I might offer him in the way of healing, could I withhold it because of the man who asked it?

It was a long time before I straightened, pushing myself wearily erect, my hands damp and slick on the curve of the skull. I felt drained and weak, my neck aching and my head heavy, as though the sickness in the city had laid its hand on me after all.

He was still there, patient in the cold dark.

“Yes,” I said abruptly, as soon as I came within speaking distance. “All right. I’ll come tomorrow, in the forenoon. Where?”

“Ladywalk Wynd,” he said. “You know it?”

“Yes.” Edinburgh was a small city – no more than the single High Street, with the tiny, ill-lit wynds and closes opening off it. Ladywalk Wynd was one of the poorer ones.

“I will meet you there,” he said. “I shall have the information for you.” He slid to his feet and took a step forward, then stood, waiting for me to move. I saw that he didn’t want to pass close by me, in order to reach the door.

“Afraid of me, are you?” I said, with a humorless laugh. “Think I’ll turn you into a toadstool?”

“No,” he said, surveying me calmly. “I do not fear you, Madam. You cannot have it both ways, you know. You sought to terrify me at Wentworth, by giving me the day of my death. But having told me that, you cannot now threaten me, for if I shall die in April of next year, you cannot harm me now, can you?”

Had I had a knife with me, I might have shown him otherwise, in a soul-satisfying moment of impulse. But the doom of prophecy lay on me, and the weight of a thousand Scottish lives. He was safe from me.

“I keep my distance, Madam,” he said, “merely because I would prefer to take no chance of touching you.”

I laughed once more, this time genuinely.

“And that, Captain,” I said, “is an impulse with which I am entirely in sympathy.” I turned and left the church, leaving him to follow as he would.

I had no need to ask or to wonder whether he would keep his word. He had freed me once from Wentworth, because he had given his word to do so. His word, once given, was his bond. Jack Randall was a gentleman.

What did you feel, when I gave my body to Jack Randall? Jamie had asked me.

Rage, I had said. Sickness. Horror.

I leaned against the door of the sitting room, feeling them all again. The fire had died out and the room was cold. The smell of camphorated goose grease tingled in my nostrils. It was quiet, save for the heavy rasp of breathing from the bed, and the faint sound of the wind, passing by the six-foot walls.

I knelt at the hearth and began to rebuild the fire. It had gone out completely, and I pushed back the half-burnt log and brushed the ashes away before breaking the kindling into a small heap in the center of the hearthstone. We had wood fires in Holyrood, not peat. Unfortunate, I thought; a peat fire wouldn’t have gone out so easily.

My hands shook a little, and I dropped the flint box twice before I succeeded in striking a spark. The cold, I said to myself. It was very cold in here.

Did he tell you all the things that passed between us? said Jack Randall’s mocking voice.

“All I need to know,” I muttered to myself, touching a paper spill to the tiny flame and carrying it from point to point, setting the tinder aglow in half a dozen spots. One at a time, I added small sticks, poking each one into the flame and holding it there until the fire caught. When the pile of kindling was burning merrily, I reached back and caught the end of the big log, lifting it carefully into the heart of the fire. It was pinewood; green, but with a little sap, bubbling from a split in the wood in a tiny golden bead.

Crystallized and frozen with age, it would make a drop of amber, hard and permanent as gemstone. Now, it glowed for a moment with the sudden heat, popped and exploded in a tiny shower of sparks, gone in an instant.

“All I need to know,” I whispered. Fergus’s pallet was empty; waking and finding himself cold, he had crawled off in search of a warm haven.

He was curled up in Jamie’s bed, the dark head and the red one resting side by side on the pillow, mouths slightly open as they snored peacefully together. I couldn’t help smiling at the sight, but I didn’t mean to sleep on the floor myself.