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hundreds, and there were people and animals and filth everywhere. The only time there was quiet was on Sundays. The earl held services and all were required to attend for the endless hours. Until a week ago.
    Edmond of Clare was devoutly religious. He spent the hours from five in the morning until seven on his knees in the cold Tyberton chapel. Then his priest held a private Mass for him and only for him, for which all the castle folk were grateful. The earl had been on a rampage for the past four days, for his priest had left Tyberton during a storm one night and no one knew why.
    Daria knew why, as, she suspected, did most of the inhabitants of Tyberton, though they would never say so. The priest had no calling for such sacrifice as Clare demanded. He was fat and lazy and all the services had finally ground him down. He’d hated the cold dark chapel, hated the endless hours of absolving the Earl of Clare. Daria had heard him mumble about it, complaining bitterly that he would die of frozen lungs before the winter was out.
    Well, now the chapel was empty. There was no mumbled illiterate Latin service to suffer through, no chilled bones from the damp cold air blowing through the thick gray stones from the River Wye. No more suffering for the nose, for the priest had smelled as foul as the refuse pile at the back of the castle. The fellow was gone. All were relieved except the earl.
    Daria had found it odd, though, that the earl, such a fanatic in matters of the soul, didn’t speak a bit of Latin. The priest had slurred his words, creating them from the sounds he knew the earl would accept, for he himself couldn’t pronounce half of them properly and the earl seemed not to notice.
    Daria spoke and read Latin, as did her mother, who’d been her teacher. She’d said nothing to the earl about it.
    She turned at the knock on her small chamber door. It was one of the earl’s men, a thin-faced youth named Clyde who had the habit of looking at Daria as if she were a Christmas feast and he a man begging to stuff himself. She simply stared at him, not moving.
    â€œThe earl wishes to see ye,” he said, and as he spoke, his eyes traveled down her body, stopping only when they reached the pointed toes of her leather slippers.
    She merely nodded, still not moving, waiting for Clyde to leave, which he finally did, his expression sour. Once she’d moved to do his bidding, only to feel Ena’s hands on her as she passed.
    â€œYe be careful, young mistress,” Ena hissed in her ear. “Ye stay out of his reach. Pray until yer tongue falls out, but keep away from him.”
    â€œPlease,” Daria said, shook off Ena’s hand, and left the chamber. She lifted her skirts as she stepped carefully down the deeply cut stone steps that wound downward into the great hall of Tyberton. There were only three men in the hall and one of them was Edmond of Clare. He was speaking in a low voice to his master-at-arms, a Scotsman named MacLeod. Daria watched Edmond make a point with his hands, and shivered, remembering when his right hand, palm open, had struck her cheek. He was a big man, with the fierce red hair of his Scottish mother and the dark Celtic eyes of his father. His complexion was white as a dead man’s. He usually spoke softly, which made it all the more unsettling when he suddenly exploded in a rage. He was a giant of a man, his chest the width of a tree trunk, the lower part of his pale white face covered with a curling red beard. He was handsome in a savage sort of way, Daria would give him that, but she’d heard that his wife, dead for only six months now, her infant son with her, had lived in fear of him. She was inclined to believe it.
    She didn’t move, but rather waited until he noticed her, which he did. “Come hither,” he called. “I have gained us a new priest. His name is Father Corinthian and he will say Mass for us tomorrow. He is a