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Mara pushed through the people beside Nicholas.

“Tell them,” she said. “You told them first. Tell them you lied.”

He caught her arm before she could run forward.

“Be still.”

“She was good to you.”

“I know.”

The words escaped him. He had not meant to say anything the girl might carry away.

Elspeth heard his voice and found him in the crowd.

“You gave them my words,” she called.

Nicholas’s grip tightened upon Mara’s sleeve.

“You have betrayed me.”

He had told himself that the churchmen had judged her, that officers had brought her here, that she need only have spoken differently to prevent it. None of those thoughts would make her stop looking at him.

Her fingers moved against the rope.

A turn loosened without a hand touching it. The man beside the stake cried out and caught her wrists. Elspeth gasped. He drew a fresh binding tight, then stepped back beyond her reach. The chain remained about her body; the loosened rope had bought her nothing.

Nicholas felt Mara trembling beneath his hand. He ought to let her go. He ought never to have brought Hewet into the house.

The priest spoke. Elspeth tried to answer, but a gust took the sound away.

A lighted brand touched the brushwood.

Nicholas turned his face.

“Look at me!”

Her voice made him obey.

A little length of linen thread lay between her fingers. She had drawn it from the loose cuff. He knew the movement she began; he had watched her make it beside a tenant’s bed and afterwards accepted thanks for what she had done.

For one moment the loop opened.

Then her eyes went past him to the house.

“That house,” she said. “All you would keep.”

She pulled the inner strand tight.

Mara stopped struggling. Nicholas felt the change in her before he understood what he was seeing.

“Within those walls,” Elspeth said. “When women are brought to bed. Let the binding hold.”

The thread drew into a hard little knot. A coldness struck Nicholas’s hand where it held Mara, though heat reached his face from the wood. The girl cried out.

“Elspeth! The women!”

His wife’s eyes came back to her.