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speakers. This was what the evening was supposed to be about, not some hole-in-the-corner hastily performed marriage. The priest had been bundled off under escort, well rewarded for his fearful experience, and Ari had been grateful that the attention had been so quickly diverted from her and back to the real purpose of the evening. She steered clear of Ivor, and he made no attempt to press himself upon her, dancing with the young girls and the established matrons as merrily as if everything was perfectly normal.
    Just what was to happen when the evening finally drew to a close? she wondered. Would she and Ivor simply go to their separate cottages? There had been no time, surely, to prepare a bridal chamber. But she knew the marriage would have to be consummated. Rolf hadn’t gone to all the trouble of trapping her into the ceremony only to run the risk of annulment if she managed to get clear of the valley.
    Someone was singing a melancholy ballad to the accompaniment of a solitary fiddle, and the room had fallen quiet, just the single voice and the single plaintive note of the instrument, and then other voices joined in, low and tuneful as they sang the old man to his last rest. And as the last notes died away, the mood changed again.
    Rolf’s voice rose above the crowd. “Come, it’s time to put the bride to bed,” and a cheer went up to the smoky rafters.
    Ariadne gasped. Dear God, she hadn’t expected this horror, not on top of everything else. But why on earth would she be spared it? she thought helplessly. She looked to Ivor, who had momentarily closed his eyes, his own expression filled with distaste. At least he hadn’t been a party to this planned barbarism, then. But there was nothing she could do to stop it. They would ignore her protests and would carry her forth as easily as if she were a sparrow chick fallen from its nest. Best to turn in on herself, a trick her mother had taught her long ago when bad things happened in the valley: ignore what was happening, ignore the ribaldry, and protect what she could of her self.
    They descended upon her, a drunken group of large Daunt men, scooping her up, seating her on her uncle’s shoulder. He held her easily with a hand at her waist, and the entire party surged from the Council house into the torchlit night. Singing and chanting, a drum beating a barbaric rhythm that reminded her of some primitive blood sacrifice, which in many ways this was, the procession wound along the river path. Behind them came the young men surrounding Ivor, their bawdy sallies greeted with gales of drunken laughter. Lamps shone in the windows of Ivor’s cottage, and a small party of young women stood waiting for them outside the door.
    Tilly was among them, which gave Ari a little comfort. Tilly could be quite fierce at times, and she might be able to protect her from the worst of the excesses of indignity that lay ahead. Presumably, all the preparations for this bedding had been made during the wake. She would have laid any odds that Tilly had known nothing of the surprise wedding when she had helped her dress for the evening.
    Rolf swung Ariadne off his shoulder and tucked her under his arm before ducking beneath the lintel of the cottage, which downstairs was in every detail a copy of Ariadne’s own. He headed for the narrow wooden stairs at the rear, still carrying her, slung now over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes. He went up the stairs, the group of young women scampering behind him, the men crowding them as they struggled up to the loft bedchamber.
    This was much more spacious than Ariadne’s. The eaves were high enough for a man to stand upright, and therewas room for a four-poster bed, a carved chest at its foot, a dresser, and the linen press. The bed was hung with white muslin and strewn with lavender and dried rose petals. A three-branched candlestick stood on the sill of the round window, and the candles emitted a delicate