Mirrum half-felt a queasy longing, that clenched her stomach and numbed her mind when she thought of it too much, to run away. Not to anywhere – there was no destination in mind apart from 'away'. Away from all the difficulties, the things that weren't said. Away from Tiberias, whom she would miss – and yet she unreasonably resented him for the interference, the firm hints that she would return cured from Cana – or Ibelin – from all memory of the Physician. As though a few mindless weeks of trudge on the roads and drowsy devotions had the same power as a blow to the head. To run away from the pity, the knowing looks, the uncertain sideways glances. From Sybilla's studied ignorance. From Ammet too – although Mirrum did not quite know whether she minded Ammet knowing or not. Ammet had trusted her back. That was almost a friendship. But the most urgent reason Mirrum could think of to run away – the thing she hated most – was almost certainly herself.

Because she wanted everything to be as it was, the old days of the walled garden, a private secret, and more than most of her common sense screamed that could not be. Because reason and God-given wit told her that to do so now was folly, there were a thousand reasons why she could not go, that the farewell had been… final. The last goodbye had been the last. That one unreasonable, murderously angry part of herself - a savage part, perhaps something left over from a wild Danish ancestor screamed defiance at the world and all reason for preventing it.

For knowing her impulse to be wrong, and crushing it. Mirrum could curb mad thought, yes – but with a stern effort and a sullen will, and so she both loved and hated the prospect of pilgrimage with Sybilla. She felt like a lonely Lucifer cast out from a dim and serene Eden – to stay in the palace meant madness and she knew it if she had to hold herself back much longer. Cana, hateful thought it would be, meant escape. A brief respite from the… empty space where a friend had been.

Sometimes she talked to the Physician in the privacy of her own head. But she could never quite capture his answers as he would have spoken. It sounded false and sickly, the answers she concocted for him. Wrong. So, after a protracted struggle, Mirrum gave up the pretence and the wishing. There was no point to it anyway. It would hardly change anything.

And after all, there was a good deal to do to keep her occupied. A Royal Progress (for Sybilla, discreet though her retinue was, still had the pride of a princess) was no small matter.

Yet Ammet, as Sybilla's confidante and lady-in-waiting, was curiously… slack in the preparations. Ammet, who had so often snapped sparks at lazy squires, now hung back, let Mirrum hesitantly prepare for the journey, merely following acquiescently in Mirrum's wake. As though she were… testing her. Mirrum didn't know what to think anymore. Ammet was a mystery Mirrum could not hope to fathom without some sort of guide – and her motives were her own. But she suspected that in some way Ammet had relaxed her authority because, sooner or later, it wouldn't matter any more…

'I think I shall rather regret your departure,' Tiberias said decidedly over his customary glass of spiced wine. He had eased on the drink of late; since Godfrey's death –

Odd, perhaps. A death normally edged Raymond of Tripoli closer to the gloomy philosophy found only at the bottom of a wine-glass, because the insubstantial comforts of religion did nothing to hide the gulf yawning in turn beneath Tiberias' feet. But no – of late the wine remained neglected. It was possible he felt too keen an anxiety over this business. Yes. That was it. The sooner the poor child was away from temptation the better.

But he would miss the games. Hnefetatl had acquired a sharper interest in the light of Mirrum's leaving.

'I cannot believe that Jerusalem is ever without duty for you, my lord.' Mirrum's pale cloud of hair hung like a mist before her face as she pondered her next move, chin in hands. She had lost the slight edge of veiled hostility she had borne for so many weeks after the forced separation from the Physician – if anything, it was possible Mirrum was a little guilt of throwing the ardour with which she had planned the garden visits into their games of chance. There was a certain hungry restlessness about her movements which spoke not a little desperation…

Tiberias found himself idly wondering how long he could remain an unwilling buffer state between coldness - on both sides. Mirrum was not the only one who had greeted Tiberias with a little frost. Certain of the King's attendants already had the vague conception Tiberias was markedly out of favour for some political slip, and was merely awaiting disgrace and confiscation of his lands as an outlawed nobleman…

Thank God Mirrum, at last, had thawed.

'Oh, there's duty aplenty, but – I shall have no gaming partner for as long as Sybilla chooses to idle her time in –' Tiberias pulled a grotesque face of false piety at Mirrum, 'Prayer, shall we say? The duties of a fervent woman?' Tiberias pushed the gaming board away from him with a impulsive motion of one hand. 'There! Take it. You'll be practicing the months you're away, I'll be sworn – making devilment for when you return to best me again…'

Mirrum smiled, meant to return some light pleasantry – but the smiled failed, became a little pinched at the corners of her mouth in sudden thoughtfulness. She stared at the little pieces frozen in their battered wood-hewn war. True, it was a remnant of her ancestors, a secret thing – it had never left the saddle-roll of her father in all his vague wanderings from monastery to monastery – but she felt oddly guilty about removing it. It was too curt – as though saying she were still offended. And whilst it had been a bitter struggle to forgive Tiberias – it would be a churlish thing to deny that she had forgiven him.

'Keep it,' she said, to her own astonishment. 'Games will keep.' The pinched edges of the smile broke a little, but she kept it pinned to her face, to show she meant goodwill. Tiberias looked almost as astounded as she – and oddly gratified, too, a slight relief unpuckering the habitual graven lines of his forehead. 'I – I am returning, after all…'

Tiberias looked at her both gravely and gently across the table, the candlelight softening his face a little. 'Of course you will,' he returned seriously. 'And in allowing me the lending of your game, lady, you show a kindness I did not expect from you.'

Mirrum flushed to the roots of her hair. 'I am sorry if- it is only a game, after all –'

'This means much to you. Sybilla, whilst generous to a fault, gives nothing that means anything to her. What is precious to her she hoards, like a miser, because she cannot bear to lose anything.'

Tiberias had hardly meant to say so much, but struck by a courteous impulse – perhaps not entirely disconnected with an awkward sense of chivalry that had not plagued him since his long-forgotten youth – he rose as Mirrum stood to leave, and stooped over her hand to brush it with his lips for all the world as though she were some distant yet well-loved niece.

'I rather believe I shall miss you, girl-child,' he said puzzledly, as though he astonished even himself by the inexplicable vanities of the human condition. 'Jesu knows why…take care of Sybilla, eh? So you come home safe?'

'I – I shall,' stammered Mirrum, withdrawing her hand unthinkingly, as though she were a stiff Dutch doll, rather than a human being. It was so utterly unexpected in a gruff-and-glum bear like Tiberias...

'My lord…'

She practically fled from the room. Poor frightened quickwit, Tiberias thought exasperatedly. Sybilla's meddling had not quite loosened bits hold over her yet. Ah well. There were other considerations to take into hand…

Marcus Aurelius was a fine statesman and a good example of a human being borne down under the weighty affairs of state. His Meditations had been of more use to a ruler than the Bible is to a cleric. The Physician (whilst that brief, mayfly like being had lived instead of the King) had been almost ready to instruct Mirrum in its beauties – it was something he would perhaps have eagerly grasped at teaching after the subtleties of Catullus. Now – for kings are men, and men have their frailties and their moments of unreason and madness – the Meditations were being sifted through, restlessly, front to back, back to front, the linen spine fraying under the merciless treatment.

The little wisdom Marcus Aurelius had to offer might as well have been a reflection of Tiberias' cautions.

"But a little while and I am dead, and all things are taken away. What more do I require, if my present work is the work of an intelligent and social creature, subject to the same law as God?"

The gloved finger resting on this particular line started, angrily, and fumbled with the stiff pages a little while before closing the book with a cold kind of fury, and then tightly snapping it open again.

"Let no-one any longer hear you finding fault with your life in a palace; nay, do not even hear yourself."

This was borne a little longer, perhaps because he had often pondered on the sad truth of Marcus Aurelius' strictures on himself. That no matter how – for Marcus Aurelius had been a hale and hearty man, vigorously capable where politics were concerned – or what the time and place, kings were perhaps left alone with their dissatisfaction as they were with their high and lonely destiny as a ruler.

It was perhaps because he permitted himself to acknowledge the truth of this, that his gaze slid up the page in the eighth book of the Meditations.

"Even if you break your heart, nonetheless they will do just the same."