Mirrum found it hard to believe, after a while, that it hadn't always been so, and that she had once spent weeks, months, walking in a vague half-dream during which there had been nothing but Sybilla and Ammet – who both kept their own counsel, in many ways. Mirrum would never have dared to call Lady Sybilla friend. Friends do not generally risk your life for you, as Sybilla had done. And she had done it with a worrying ease. And Ammet? Ammet kept to herself. Hard to tell what she thought, or what she hoped for. She was …remote, like a distant glacier; beautiful but careful to show a frosty nature to any who approached. Mirrum sometimes, wondered in her slight, odd little way if Ammet too had caught, like a cold, the manners of her mistress. The servants had a peculiar, glorious snobbery of their own that would have rivalled the Court itself for sheer caprice of manner. It would never have occurred to Mirrum before now, but Sybilla took a certain thoughtless pleasure in making daring little sallies against the established role of dutiful wife, and that she was not humbled by the weight of lives on her conscience. She merely dived recklessly after another quarry, like a fluttering hawk. Oh, not thinking better of it, but merely… forgetting it. This was possibly worse. She dismissed the sacrifices as the loss of some brief, useful piece which had served its time, nothing more.

Mirrum, the poor pale corn stalk of a girl, could not understand this. She had quick wits in some instances; the terrible fear of discovery had prompted the swift mummery of a half-wit. But that there was peril in serving Sybilla had not quite occurred to her at first – and it was not that fear of a knife in the dark. That was not quite in the Princess. No. But in being caught and being finished for a sin that was entirely Sybilla's… That alone made Mirrum's soul troubled. After all, there were already so many little sins she could never confess to a priest lying heavily upon her – for Sybilla's sake. The sin of lying before God, the little service of the letters, which made the forgery of churchmen's safe-passage look like child's play; a light trifling sin in comparison to this. But for some little while before her second meeting with the Physician, it seemed quite as though Mirrum were lying in a straightened coffin of lead that quite crushed her into hardly daring to step outside the safe boundaries of being nursemaid, safely away from her previous position as intelligencer. The very thought of the perilously close brush with discovery made Mirrum weak at the knees when she thought about it, made her lower her eyes, made her feel vaguely sick and dizzy when she saw the distant sweep of a pale Templar's cloak in the cloistered walks…

To be completely fair to Guy, Mirrum's eyes often took on, in their pale glow, quite exaggerated colours as to people. Whilst Sybilla remained, and would remain, a confusing smudgy grey of a moral colour, moving from dark to light however Mirrum tried to look on her, Guy remained the blackest of villains in her eyes from that single terrifying moment onwards. No matter that, in one sense, Guy got so besotted with drink because he was aware of the hostile, barely tolerant flicker of his wife's eyes from him to the table, and that it was perhaps a more sympathetic mix of loneliness and vague, swelling pride of a man not accustomed to being baulked in his will. He remained a villain from a dark Arthurian legend to Mirrum, a serpent in the ivory Eden that she had fallen into so innocently by chance, and through a few odd throws of the dice by some mysterious player…

She rarely saw the author of her good fortune now. The Lord Marshal had other things to think about than trifling lady's maids – and if she had been momentarily useful, Mirrum thought with a sigh, or perhaps mildly amusing, then that was more than she would have thought. The occasional glimpses of Raymond of Tiberias, however, were odd things, in that Mirrum was never quite sure what would play out. Occasionally it might be a brusque, briefly perfunctory glance thrown her way, scarcely taking her in at all. More often a brief nod, as one acquaintance to another, which puzzled and quite flattered Mirrum's pitiful stock of little vanities. As her first acquaintance, however lowly a position she had now, she felt a lively interest in the bear-who-was-no-bear at all. But it did trouble her, the court business. Was everyone, then, intent in some carefully marked throw that might determine good or ill? Did even the Lord Tiberias – who had a kindly look, beneath that bear-like antagonism – play games with Fortune in order to be lifted upon her wheel?

Mirrum actually asked the question on her second visit to the Physician, when she had outgrown some of her unreasonable terror of being caught by De Lusignan himself. And even then, the brief thought that perhaps the Physician, close to the King as he was, might dabble with the caprices of Fortune too, crossed her mind.

The Physician thought about the question for a long time. It grew so still that Mirrum feared he might have been called away, and that she had lost her acquaintance as soon as she had heard his voice. But he was merely pondering his answer.

'I would not always trust my word as your Oracle upon these matters,' he said at last. Faintly wearily, Mirrum thought – there was a note of tiredness in that peculiar voice of his. It stumbled a little. 'Especially not politics. Take most – I say most – of it for what it is and leave well alone for the rest. It hardly matters to you, does it? I cannot say that I think you plot and plan like a furtive baron in your waking hours…' The arch note of wry amusement had come back. That reassured her. The halting words had made her feel a little concerned for her Physician – had the question troubled him? Was he well?

'Not I.' She said plaintively. She made an odd sight; vaguely imp-like, if anything. A long-limbed, gangling child, caught halfway between an unwanted womanhood and a poor scrap of girlhood – and all topped with a shock of frowsy pale hair that looked like the whispers of dandelion seeds blown crazily about her head in tight feathers, like a troll maiden from the old Danish tales. 'I… Physician, you know I serve the Lady Sybilla?'

'I guessed it.' The Physician paused, briefly, the shrouded head turning a little as though scenting some note of discord. 'Is there much amiss in the Lady Sybilla's service?'

The note of genuine concern struck home, like an arrow finding it's mark. Mirrum's shoulders slumped. 'Not now.' She said miserably. 'I should be glad it is over and think no more of it – only it does haunt me… a little, Physician. A little. And I can't confess to a priest because it goes beyond sin – beyond any sin I ever had to confess before, and…' Mirrum gulped. There was a harsh lump in her throat that quivered when she spoke, shamingly.

'I am no priest.' The Physician said quietly. Kindly, Mirrum thought, inexpressibly kindly – she glanced up in earnest gratitude for her ghostly friend. 'I have ears. And a little knowledge. If you wish to speak, I am willing to listen.'

And by spurts and starts it all came flooding out from Mirrum. Everything. Even down to the shameless forgeries of letters of safe-passage, the propulsion of Mirrum from a life in service of a Northern fen-woman to Sybilla's waiting-maid, the kindly intervention of Lord Tiberias… The new tasks. The unsought dangers. The meeting with Prince 'Perseus', the solemn waxen Baldwin, which the Physician surely knew already, but patiently did not halt the tide of confession. And, finally, the encounter with Lord Guy. The discovery that there were dead in her service, there were souls gone in helping Sybilla, and that she flew from them as unconcernedly as a cat drops a dead mouse that she sports with in her claws for better prey…

The Physician said nothing. Occasionally he would interrupt, to test her words with a brief, gentle question: how did she know Lord Tiberias? What did she know of him? Until at last Mirrum's words – and the faint drip of tears, for which Mirrum praised Heaven it was dark – trickled to a halt, and there was silence once more in the darkness of the garden, save for the slight dry whisper, far above Mirrum's head, of the Physician shifting slightly – leaning a little over the parapet, although he was still swathed in his customary shadow. It hurt to try to make out any features, anything other than the sharp outline of deeper shadow against the faint ruddy glow of a light somewhere high above, but Mirrum felt that she was being keenly watched behind the darkness…

'What do you wish of me?' The Physician said at length. He spoke tranquilly, but it was still a direct question. 'Penance? After the manner of a confessor? You do not need penance.'

'But the sin…'

'Ah, you show your innocence there.' There was a smile in the voice again, a softly rueful one. 'Have you never heard, Dane lady, of a thing called a sin of necessity? In your scholarly gleanings?'

Mirrum could not say she had. Her pale face twitched into curiosity.

'No? Well, Dane lady – a sin of necessity is something God sees the reasoning for. Even if man may not tolerate the logic behind it. Your forgeries protected your mistress, did they not? Who would have fallen foully, and you with her?'

'Well, yes, but they were churchmen's letters…'

'Did you protect your mistress with the letters?' The Physician said sharply. 'Well. No matter whose they were, you did right. And if churchmen were all they pride themselves to be, where would be the need for forgery? You saved a life by using the wits God gave you. I am no strong theologian, but even I can see a paradox in allowing a death in obedience to God. What would the world be if the Lord of Heaven is as petty-minded as His servants?'

Mirrum had not thought of it like this. It sounded faintly heretical, and not a little dangerous to declare, but the Physician had spoken it as if it was clear common sense… and it was. It was the sort of faintly rebellious thought that lodged at the back of the mind when one passed the Patriarch of Jerusalem. Never to be spoken, surely?

'What about the Lady Sybilla?' she asked wretchedly. 'What am I to do there, Physician? There is a life on my conscience…'

'But you did not kill the serving maid.' The Physician pointed out, gently. 'Neither did you cause her death.'

'I started to play the same game, though. I thought I was so clever…' Mirrum stared at her long-boned, red-knuckled hands, as though there was a crimson spatter of blood upon them. 'I'm a fool.'

'If you were a fool you would not be in the Lady Sybilla's retinue.' The Physician remarked, his voice firm. 'She does not suffer lack-wits gladly. I would not think her cruel, no – but I rather think she can turn so. If provoked. She merely holds the faith in which she was bred, child. And she is reckless with her allies as she is foolish with her enemies. Lord Guy is not the mummer's Satan you think, no more than Sybilla is an angel of light. Men are men, for good or ill; and it holds true in court as well as anywhere else.'

Mirrum nodded. 'Yes…' she said uncertainly, plucking at a loose scrap of linen thread straggling from her skirts. 'It does. But it's still all so… confusing. I shall never make sense of any of it.' She looked upwards, faintly ashen-faced. The knot of almost physical fear in Mirrum's stomach, whilst loosened, was not entirely dispelled. She was almost reluctant to let go of her fright, unsettling as it was.

'I think I am a coward, Physician. I'm frightened I shall have to be a spy again...'

'You chose not to be.' The Physician said peaceably. 'And Sybilla, out of a little guilt, I should think – may let you remain where you are.' He took a breath; Mirrum heard a faint, hollow sigh emerge above her head. 'Does the business…trouble you? If that is not a foolish question. In your – loyalty to the Lady Sybilla?'

There was something rather sharp about this question, which stung Mirrum into an instant defence. She bridled. 'No! She loosed me, didn't she? She has my love. And my loyalty.' She added, indignantly . 'It just… frightened me. A little. Because I did not understand it. What do you make of it all, Physician? You've been at Court longer than I.'

'Most of my life.' The voice said soberly. 'If that is anything to boast. I see somewhat little of it now.'

Mirrum bit her lip. The second meeting had gone sadly awry from what she had intended, and now Mirrum had the distinct impression she was skirting around the lip of somewhere she should not tread…

'Nothing to regret, Dane lady,' the Physician said, reading her thoughts by uncanny tact. 'I rather think I miss nothing very great or very glorious, hmm?' It was spoken cheerfully, to Mirrum's surprise.

'Does it go well with you, Physician? When you tend to the King?'

'Tending to his beard?' the Physician said wryly, the silhouette shaking a little as though in quiet laughter. 'See, wisdom is a terrible thing. You stay solemn as a plaster saint.' He considered the question. 'The King is well enough.'

'And you?' Mirrum said anxiously. 'You aren't worked too hard, Physician?'

This seemed to afford the Physician some merriment. 'I? No. Good heavens, not I.' He said amiably. 'Thank you for the thought, Dane lady, but I am quite in spirits. And you should keep yours, and forget the intrigue.' The Physician was firm once more. 'You have good sense when you don't consider too much and too long – and in a way – you were helping the little Prince Perseus better than you could by playing legend with him. I fear I make a poor ghostly confessor, but the best penance you can do for that is to forget it, for now.'

It was good advice, Mirrum considered, as she made her usual sally over the wall in a tumble of snagged linen skirts. Better than any you would get from a holy man. And on the whole, rather more practical. It was just to put it into practice that would be the trouble…