Jesu forgive me, I did not have it in me to stay by. I turned away and left him to his wretched dreams.

Over the next few days, I learned much of life in the East. Sick as he was, he did not mind talking to anyone who would listen to his fevered ramblings. Out of pity, I undertook to bring him his evening meal, to give my mother a respite from the tedium of the chore, and sat with him while he ate. Thus, I heard more than most about his life in the County of Edessa. In this way, I also discovered what had befallen poor Skuli.

True to his word, Lord Baldwin had given Torf and Skuli land in return for service. Nor was he ungenerous in his giving. The two brothers had taken adjoining lands so as to form one realm which they then shared between them. 'Our fortress at Khemil was crowned with a palace that had fifty rooms,' he boasted one night as I fed him his pork broth and black bread. His teeth were rotten and pained him, so I had to break the bread into the broth to soften it, and then feed it to him in gobbets he could gum awhile and swallow. 'Fifty rooms, you hear?'

'That is a great many rooms,' I allowed. He was obviously ill and somewhat addled in his thoughts.

'We had sixty-eight menservants and forty serving-maids. Our treasure house had a door as thick as a man's trunk and bound in iron-it took two men just to pull it open. The room itself was big as a granary and hollowed out of solid stone.' He mumbled in his bread for a moment, and then added, 'God's truth, in those first days that room was never less than full to the very top.'

I supposed him to be lying to make his sad story less pathetic than it might have been by dreaming impossible riches for himself, and it disgusted me that he should be so foolish and venal. But, Cait, it was myself who was the fool that night.