Company of Liars by Karen Maitland

before. Now, as this terrible sickness rolled inexorably towards us, I glimpsed for the first time the form death might assume and felt the panic rising in my throat.
    Zophiel was anxious to be off at first light. The gorge made him nervous; being away from his wagon made him nervous;we made him nervous. I think he hoped that as soon as he was clear of the gorge, he could rid himself of all of us, especially Adela.
    Adela seemed stronger after a night's sleep, but she was still pale and didn't look as if her new-found strength would hold out for long. But after Zophiel's jibes of the night before, she was determined to show that she could walk as well as the rest of us, and even Osmond seemed to want to prove his wife's stamina to Zophiel. But Rodrigo, gallant as ever, was having none of it. He insisted that if we were to pull and push the wagon filled with Zophiel's boxes out of every water-filled rut on the track, Zophiel should at least assist by leading his horse on foot and Adela should be allowed to ride and save her strength.
    Zophiel, seeing no way out of the gorge without our help, acquiesced with ill grace, venting his spleen for the next mile or so by tormenting the morose Jofre. Having realized that Jofre had kept the wager from his master, Zophiel was amusing himself by constantly turning the conversation back to the point where he seemed about to reveal the secret, before deftly turning aside from it. Zophiel enjoyed the game of cat and mouse and he was a skilled practitioner.
    But this time it was Rodrigo himself who created the diversion. He suddenly clapped his hand to his forehead.
    ‘Camelot, I meant to tell you that a friend of yours, a child, was asking for you at the fair yesterday. I should have told you before, but all the commotion when we had to leave drove it from my head.’
    I frowned. ‘I don't know any children.’
    ‘She said she knew you. She was a pretty child, unusual. Her hair, it was… like frost.’
    I felt a chill as if cold, wet rags had been drawn over my skin. So Narigorm had been at the fair. I didn't knowwhether I was relieved or disturbed. I had begun to think that I had imagined seeing her. Then a thought struck me.
    ‘Rodrigo, there were hundreds of people at the fair, how did she know that you knew me? Did you tell her?’
    He shook his head, then shrugged. ‘Maybe she saw us together. But she asked me to tell you she will be with you soon. That is good news, yes?’
    ‘You didn't tell her where we were going, did you?’ I said, struggling to keep the note of alarm out of my voice.
    Again he shook his head. ‘No, she did not ask.’
    I breathed out heavily. I could see by the perplexed expression on Rodrigo's face that my reaction had not been what he expected and I couldn't explain my disquiet, not even to myself. Why would she send me such a message? Was she following me? No, that was a foolish thought. Now I really was imagining things; why on earth would a child want to follow an old man she'd barely met?
    ‘Camelot, this child, is she –’ Rodrigo began.
    But his question was cut off by a sudden shriek which echoed through the gorge, freezing us in our tracks. There was no mistaking this sound; it was human and the human was in desperate trouble. The sound came from a little way ahead of us round the curve of the track, but our view was blocked by an outcrop of rock. As the shrieks continued, Rodrigo and Osmond pulled out their knives and sprinted down the track in the direction of the cries, closely followed by Jofre. But even as they ran, the screams stopped abruptly as if severed with an axe. Zophiel, Adela and I followed more slowly with the wagon, but as we cautiously rounded the bend we saw the others standing in the track, staring at something beyond.
    Two men, their hoods drawn low over their heads, were bending over a third man lying in the mud. One of thehooded men was dragging a leather pack away from the prone body, the other rummaging clumsily