Mistress of the Art of Death

Love- however doomed, had the capacity to attach bouys to the soul.

She had a quality he had never known- she WAS quality.

Welcome to the gates of heaven Adelia, and what did you do with your life? My Lord, I was a bishop's whore.

She thought, watching him, 'I am in a bath, naked in a bath with no bubbles, and a man is washing me; my reputation is doomed and to hell with it. I've been to hell and all I wanted in it was to be alive for this man. Who carried me out of it.

... Turn over that stone" - she pointed to a flint nearby - "and you will find a charlatan who will dazzle you with the favorable conjunction of Mercury and Venus, flatter your future, and sell you colored water for a gold piece. I can't be bothered with it. From me you get the actuality.

Sister Walburga ate some of the sausage she was taking upriver for the anchorites, but you'd think from her distress that she was a Horseman of the Apocalypse and the Whore of Babylon rolled into one.

Adelia, you must not quail. You are confounding inhumanity.

Man hovers between Paradise and the Pit,” Gordinus told her cheerfully. “Sometimes rising to one, sometimes swooping to the other. To ignore his capacity for evil is as obtuse as blinding oneself to the heights to which he can soar.

This infatuation must be dispelled; it is necessary for me not to admire you. I do not wish to fall in love.

You are a drab, she told herself, seduced into infatuation by a soldier’s tale. Outremer, bravery, crusade, it is illusory romance. Pull yourself together, woman.