"Prelate Haldane," she said through the door. "My father has ordered that no one enter this room."
"Your father is not here, my lady. And I have a duty older than your father." The voice did not change. "If there is a Wilkin within these walls, it is a danger to every child in Thornhallow and to your own soul. Open the door. I give you my word no harm will come to you."
"And to it?"
A silence.
"My lady," Haldane said, more gently, "I think grief has made you vulnerable to a very old deception. These creatures know how to make themselves loved. That is how they get into cradles. Let me help you."
She thought of the candle shaking in her father's hand. She thought of Mirelle in the north tower, grey as tallow, pushing the basket at her with both hands.
"No," she said.
"Dunstan," said the Prelate. "The bar, please."
The nursery doors had been built to keep out drafts, not soldiers. She heard a mattock set into the gap, the old oak groaning, then a shriek of iron as one of the bar's brackets tore loose. She had perhaps a minute. The window was barred. The candelabra was iron and taller than she was.
She took it.
It was heavier than she had thought. The candles fell and rolled, and one hissed out in a puddle, and the others guttered on the flags and threw her shadow huge across the vaulting. She set the foot of it against the floor and leveled the crown, with its five iron cups, at the door, the way she had seen men brace pikes in the tiltyard, and stood with her back to the cradle.
The second bracket gave. The doors swung in.
There were four of them: the Prelate, tall and spare in black with a silver chain on his breast; Pellam behind him, white-faced; and two guardsmen in mail, one with the mattock, the other—young, ginger-haired, a boy she had seen grooming horses in the yard not a year ago—with a short spear. Dunstan. And at the edge of the cloister, the kitchen boy Hob, his face crumpled at what he had started.
"Put that down, my lady," said Haldane.