CANNY LIFTED HER head from the swirls of gold and red and put down the brush, stretching her frozen fingers. The sun fell through the scriptorium window in warm panels, but the room was still cold, and she’d been at work on the manuscript in front of her for many hours without moving.
She looked outside at the monastery herb garden and beyond the stone walls to the fields below and then to the sea, blue as a cornflower this late summer morning. How she longed to escape down to the beach. She would run along the wet sand and let the salt-tanged wind sweep away all her fears. Because Canny was almost always afraid. She could lose herself in the manuscript work or forget her dangerous secret out running in the wind, but always, when she came back to the real world, she had to take up the mantle of her disguise.
“Are you done with the initial, David?” said a tall monk appearing by her side.
She remembered to pitch her voice low and gruff. “I am, Brother William.”
The monk looked over her shoulder at the gleaming parchment. She had been set to copying a
