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The gold was more lasting than the flowers—stolen from old hoards as the lady had said. He did not find it tempting at all—not being an antiquarian except in the matter of his martyrdom, and honestly having no care for such things.

THE MORNING AFTER the Sidhe came to his tower, the hermit was up at dawn. He struggled out of his bed of lilies and roses, shedding bloodred petals, and pulled off the rings and armlets and brooches with which he was weighed down. There was nothing to be done about the shimmering glory of his robe but hope that daylight would turn it to plain brown serge again.

There was no sign of the lady. Her relatives seemed all to have retreated under hill, having made an uproarious and nightlong carouse up one side of his tower and down the other. It was a miracle he had slept through it.

His boots were standing by the door. They had been repaired at every point and polished until they gleamed, but they were still their sturdy selves. He pulled them on and tramped out in the pale grey light.

He had not left his hill since he came to it in the spring. It was strange to set foot on the road again, winding down it toward Bally-nasloe. The stream that crossed it was empty of wild black horses, magical or otherwise.

By the time he passed the first house of the village, he had lost most of what courage he had. His plan was worthless. He would do much better to stay in his tower, try to keep his multitude of guests under control, and pray that the priest never learned where the faerie folk had gone.

His feet carried him onward. He had nothing to do with it. They brought him to the tavern and deposited him in the empty taproom, face-to-face with a startled Pegeen.

PEGEEN BELIEVED HIS STORY, wilder bits and all. Better yet, she knew exactly what to do about his rickety bones of a plan.“Leave it to me,” she said.

He had no choice but to trust her. There was no one else in the village to whom he dared go. She fed him oat bread fresh from the oven and tea with milk that had not quite begun to turn, then sent him back to his fantastically crowded tower.

THE BISHOP’S MAN was peacefully clopping down the road to Cashel, with no thought in his head but his dinner, his pipe, and his well-earned bed. He was shocked to the marrow to be halted in mid-clop by an apparition of power and terror.

The younger of the two women gripped his horse’s bridle. The elder sat in the buggy that had been in her family for time out of mind and peered at him through her little round spectacles, just as she had when she was his housekeeper in the parish of Ballynasloe. “Monsignor Edward O’Reilly,” she said. “I’d like a word with you, if I may.”

Monsignor O’Reilly would never rise so high in the Church that he could defy the will of the formidable Mrs. Murphy. He bowed, as speechless as he had been in his raw and undignified youth.

It was more than a word and more than a moment, and as he heard it, he remembered who he was and what responsibility he had to the bishop and the diocese.When she was done, he said, “A crusade can be a marvelous thing. A crusade without the sanction of one’s superiors in the Church . . . that could be another matter.”

“It is a great matter,” Mrs. Murphy said, “and a matter of some urgency. If you could see your way to speak with the bishop sooner rather than later . . .”

“I’ll speak to him this very night,” Monsignor O’Reilly said. He meant it, too. The bishop was a great and terrible personage, but Mrs. Murphy was a close relative to the wrath of God.

For a shrinking moment he knew she would announce that she was coming with him to make sure he kept his word. But she nodded briskly and cocked a brow at the buxom lass who restrained his horse. The young woman let go the brown cob’s bridle and climbed into Mrs. Murphy’s buggy and took up the reins. Without another word spoken, she turned the buggy and sent the neat little bay at a fast trot toward Ballynasloe.

THE BISHOP’S MAN ARRIVED in the village on Sunday morning,