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not begin to overcome the fear in her eyes as she rose to leave. She hesitated with one last word before shutting the small attic door behind her, "I will be praying."
    Juliet watched her retreat, not knowing for whom Clarissa would be praying but sensing it wasn't for her. She stared at the note. Fear surrounded her, alone with the faintest trace of perfume, this strange ring, and the note in her hand. As if the hot stinging pain that made her tremble was only a warning of what lay ahead. As she spent many lonely hours trying to sleep, her desperation grew, and from it she knew she had to ask Tomas to forsake his father's rules and marry her at once. Tomorrow might be too late.
    Just before the eighth bell each morning, a carriage left Fairwoods Manor to travel along the well-kept road leading to the Bristol shipyard and docks. It was the habit of Master Stoddard to make the trip every day except the sabbath, and Garrett and his men knew all of Stoddard's habits. A thick grey mist covered the land and sea, serving as a convenient shield for the ten armed and mounted men waiting for the imminent arrival of the carriage, but no shield was necessary, for an entire platoon of red coats could not stop Garrett from his revenge.
    Garrett's men stood out along the roadside in plain view of passersby. Not that an English military presence would interfere. Bristol's small garrison had orders from the highest authority, orders to refrain from aiding its most prominent citizen on this day, orders to leave twelve of the finest mounts on Port Street and to take the rest of the day on leave. Orders no one objected to.
    A meadow opened before them, spreading out like an enormous green blanket. A thin forest of birch and pine trees lined the road. A small farm sat in the distance, complete with cows and plow horses roaming free in the field. The idyllic scene contrasted sharply with the tension gripping the mounted men, men who were as accustomed to danger as most others were to monotony, and while Leif eagerly filled his lungs with the fragrant morning air, he imagined it held the taste of the blood that would be spilt this day.
    Leif watched Garrett in silence. Garrett looked like the mad and dangerous man he had become: the dark, unbound hair and a two-weeks growth of beard added harsh color to his face, while he wore only sailing breeches, a vest, and thick black boots. He wore no weapons save for a dagger in his boot. Tension constricted his heavily muscled frame. Normally, Garrett enjoyed drink little, far less than most men, but since the early morning hours he had been drinking. Though he showed no outward sign, he walked on a thin line of oblivion, a necessary condition in order to do what he must this day. More than anywhere, the madness revealed itself in his eyes, as if he saw his brother everywhere, a vision he must extirpate. Where humor and passion normally marked a lusty thirst for life, the tension now betrayed a thirst for revenge, a thirst to be quenched this day.
    Leif knew well that revenge was a primitive, destructive force. Yet destruction was often necessary for life; Garrett needed his revenge as an eagle needs the wind. Not just to right the wrong or to murder the murderer, or even to merely blot out the horror of his brother's gruesome death, but to extirpate his feelings of rage and helplessness at not having been there to protect the much-loved boy who had so desperately needed him, a helplessness foreign to men and their actions, far more so to a man like Garrett.
    Garrett's dark gaze finally rested uneasily on the curve of the road in the distance where the carriage would first be seen. With heightened senses, an anticipation of this thing he must do, he heard the rumble of the carriage wheels in the far distance even before young Gayle and Heart, waiting up the road. Through the thick mist he made out the movement of those two men's horses. His hand rose in a signal to his men. "Remember, I want him alive at