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then two more. One deep breath and she lifted her chin, cocked her head for that confident and slightly arrogant air, then she slid her feet forward in “the glide,” a motion that resembled a swan atop a glassy lake.
    A few steps and she winced. The soles of her slippers grated against the stone floor and sounded like steel against a grindstone. She could hear it from her ears to her teeth.
    She clasped her embroidered robe daintily in her hands, bowed her head, and said, “Welcome, sir knight.” She started to sink into a curtsy, then straightened, tapping a finger impatiently against her cheek. “No, no, that is not how ’tis done,” she muttered with a frown.
    She backed up again, squared her shoulders, and raised an outstretched hand, then let it fall—suitably limp for an aura of feminine frailty—before she slowly moved forward.
    “Sir Merrick. ’Tis wonderful to meet a knight of such renown.” She did her curtsy, then rose with a surprising amount of grace. “You must tell me, sir, what has kept you occupied these past four years? Lopping off heads?” She drew her hand across her neck in a slicing motion and made a face with her tongue sticking out of the corner of her mouth.
    “Boiling people in oil?” She picked up a water jug near a window and poured it over the ledge while she feigned a wicked laugh.
    “Or …” She spun around with both hands clenched high over her head holding on to an imaginary weapon; then she did her best male swagger and twisted her face into a grimace. “… merely cleaving”—she swung her arms down and grunted loudly—”the sorry infidels with your battle ax?”
    She straightened once again to her courtly pose, faced the column, and smiled sweetly. “A mace, you say? With spikes? Why, no, I have not seen one used.” She fluttered her eyelashes like a dolt. “What is that you ask?” She threaded her fingers as if in prayer and raised them to her cheek. “Aye, sir knight. I can see your fine thick muscles.”
    Pausing, she widened her eyes in mock wonder. “Would I like to touch them? Certainly, but you will have to kneel, since I cannot reach your fat head from here. I am but a small, weak woman, good for nothing but waiting for to wed.”
    Clio heaved an exaggerated sigh and clutched her hands to her breast. “Waiting for a man is such a trial. Say you, sir knight, whenever did you decide to deign to come and wed me?”
    She looked beseechingly at the column. “Perhaps you were concerned that I might outgrow my childbearing years.” She nodded, raised one finger high in the air as if she were speaking to all the world; then she spun around. “Aye, ’tis so. A man must have an heir, now, mustn’t he? A male child, of course. And what, pray tell, will you do with our girl children?”
    She waved her arm around in the air as if she were swatting at a bothersome fly. “No doubt toss the useless creatures into the moat until you have a son you can train to be as insensitive and boorish as yourself.”
    Clio raised a hand to her cheek in mock concern. “Oh dear, I did forget. How very foolish of me. Of course you will foster your sons out to some other churlish oaf so that they will learn nothing of a mother’s love. For surely ’twould make them sniveling cowards and certainly not true men .”
    She gripped the seams of her woolen robe in each hand. “We women being such flighty and useless creatures, good for little else but childbearing and female sport.” Shuffling on her tiptoes, she spun in a circle, holding her robe out as if it were a gown of silken velvet, then sank to her deepest curtsy.
    It was at that very moment that she heard the applause.
    The loud applause.
    She shot upward and whipped around so quickly one of the rush lights flickered out, casting dark shadows in the room from the one light still burning.
    Two tall knights stood in the chamber doorway. One of them was leaning against the doorframe. He was laughing.
    The other man looked