They brought him up from the cells to wait at the Warden's table. That was the custom at Northby. On the night of the harvest feast, the condemned man stood behind the Warden's chair with the wine ewer in his two fists, so the shire could see how gentle the law could be. Thomas Bradshaw held the ewer until his arms shook.

The hall smelled of roast hog and tallow. Rector Fenwick said a long grace over the bread. Warden Croft chewed with his eyes on the great door. The bailiff read the fines. Wives gossiped in felt hats. Children pointed at the chains and laughed.

Margaret stood at the far table, pouring ale. She wore the grey gown she had worn on the day of her husband's trial. She did not look at him. That was the bargain. If she looked at him soft, the Warden would bar her from the hall for good. So Thomas watched the shutters. Beyond them the fen lay flat and pale in the moonlight. The reeds stood in ranks, bending, rising, bending. The water between them was white as bone.

He had a reed in his pocket. Margaret had given it to him the morning they took him away. Hold this, she said. It won't break while you hold it. He had pressed it so often that his thumb wore it smooth, and it lay against his leg like a live thing.

The Warden raised his cup. Fill it, keeper.

Thomas tilted the ewer. Wine spilled over the rim.

Well, said the Warden. He knows how to hold. He held Piers Grieve all night, breastbone to back, and the man breathed come morning. The law cannot abide that. The law abides a dead prisoner. That is why we feed him.

Laughter went round the table. Thomas said nothing. That was the first lesson of the cells. Words become evidence.

The feast went on. Hams came. Geese came. Sweetbreads and little pies. Sweat ran down Thomas's back. He kept thinking of the fen cell and the tide that had lied in the books. They had told him the water would fall. It rose. It came up through the floor, cold as a priest, while he held Piers Grieve's head in his lap and prayed to a God he did not believe in. The hinges gave. He carried Grieve on his back through the ditch to the Warden's own yard. Grieve lived. The court sent him out of the shire. The law took from Thomas everything the word law could reach. They kept the rope for later.

A whisper came at his elbow. Edward Ashworth had moved up to fill the Rector's cup.

Tonight, Ashworth said. The grate. You remember the grate.

I remember.

There is a boat. Staithe-under-the-willows. My cousin's ketch. She will take you down the channel past Lydd.

Why?

Ashworth glanced at the Warden. Because the law has gone mad, Tom. You saved a man and they mean to hang you. That is no law. That is a toll gate with a rope for a bar.

The law is the law, Thomas said.

Ashworth's face pinched. Say that to Margaret when they put the hood on you.

Thomas looked at his wife. She had turned at last. She was watching him across the smoke. There was no weeping in her face. There was something graver than weeping. It pulled at him like the tide.

I'll come, Thomas said.

Ashworth clapped his shoulder once and moved off with the jug. The feast roared. Later the Rector gave Thomas a cup of small beer with his own hands, and the beer smelled of cheap charity. Thomas drank it and watched the moon climb over the fen. The reed turned warm in his pocket.

The key turned an hour past midnight.

Turnkey Elias was old and owed Ashworth money, or Elias's wife owed something. He unlocked the cell with a muttered blessing and left the keys in the lock. There is a thing in the fen tonight, he said. Mind you do not meet it. He crossed himself and went away down the stair.

Thomas worked the grate in the floor. It was a drain grate, for the old soak-water, and the bars had gone soft. He had tested them every night since the trial. They gave like chalk. He dropped into the wet dark and lay still. Then he moved along the shadow of the wall to the north staithe.

The mist had risen. It stood taller than a man in the hollows, pale as milk, and the fen breathed through it. Somewhere a bird cried twice and was still.

Then he saw them.

Out on the flats, beyond the sheepdyke. Pale figures. Tall and white and moving. They did not walk. They swayed. They swayed like reeds in a slow wind. Five of them. Nine. A dozen. The count would not hold still. They came toward him over the water, and the water did not break around them.

The Pale Dance. Thomas stopped dead.

The old people said it was the drowned. Carters. Smugglers. The five lost in the great storm. They rose in the mist and danced the way the reeds dance. Whoever saw them came to them, and their name was added to the water. Thomas felt the cold climb his legs. His mouth went dry. The reed was all he held, and he held it hard.

Thomas.

A voice he knew. A live voice.

Thomas Bradshaw.

Not a dead voice. He knew the cut of a shoulder. The tilt of a hat.

He took a step. Another. The mist swirled. One of the pale figures lifted a lantern, and the white gown fell open and was a shepherd's smock, and under the hood was the face of Turnkey Elias. Beside him stood the smith, Hodge. And beside Hodge stood Warden Croft, with the rope coiled in his hand.

You see, said the Warden. I knew you would come by the ditch. We left the grate easy for you. Did you find the boat? The boat was never there.

At the back of the little crowd, in a paler coat than the rest, stood Edward Ashworth. He would not meet Thomas's eyes. He looked at his feet, and his feet stood in black water.

The dance was men. It was always men.

Thomas laughed. It was a dry sound. He stood in the reeds up to his knees and laughed, and they did not like it.

Fool, he said to Ashworth. You told me the boat. You had me measured for the rope.

Ashworth's voice came thin. I had no choice, Tom. My own neck. They knew we were friends. They said bring him out to the marsh or hang me in your place. A man chooses himself.

Thomas looked at the Warden. You would hang your own clerk.

I would hang whoever the law requires, said the Warden. The law requires an example. You broke your trust. You opened the king's door.

I saved a man.

A man's life belongs to the court, not to a keeper. You took the court's property out of keeping. That is theft. Thieves hang. The Warden sounded patient, like a man explaining rain to a child. It does not matter that he breathed after. You gave him what was not yours to give.

Thomas stood in the water. The mist was cold. He looked at the rope, and the rope looked back at him.

A law that hangs a man for a life saved is no law, he said. It is a levy. A toll exacted by men who own the only door. You have made a death tonight, Warden Croft. You will tell yourself it is common sense. It is murder with a fine of nothing.

The Warden shrugged. Walk or be dragged. Either way the marsh takes you.

Thomas's hand went into his pocket. The reed came out, pale and smooth and warm as a finger. He had held it for a hundred days. He had told himself it did not break because he held it. But a reed is not a rope. A reed holds nothing. It only stands, and the water wears it, and in the end it gives. He let it fall.

The reed stood upright in the current for a moment. Then it moved off, away from the lanterns, toward the channel, toward the sea. It went lightly. It was the only thing in the marsh that did not wear a chain.

Margaret, Thomas said. I want her let go.

The Warden nodded. She is nothing to the court. She may stay.

Swear it.

I swear it by my office.

Thomas turned to Ashworth. The man's face was wet, but it was only mist, or a hard spirit. You were my friend, Thomas said. You did what you could. It was not the kind I wanted. But it is all the kind you had. Now stand out of my way.

Ashworth opened his mouth. No sound came. Thomas walked past him to the rope.

They took him kindly enough. The rope was soft with handling. The Warden's men were practiced. They turned him to face the dyke, and the village had come down with their lanterns. Margaret stood in front of them all. Her grey gown was dark with dew. She did not weep. That was the bargain. She looked at him, and he looked at her, and the thing between them had no name and no law in it.

Hold fast, she said. That was all.

I held, he said. I let go. It is the same holding.

The rope took the slack. The mist came in over the marsh. Behind the hanging, the reeds bent and rose, bent and rose, all the way to the sea. The pale dance of them went on, silent, water-boned, older than any court, and it would go on when the court was gone.

The last thing Thomas Bradshaw saw was the pale faces of the living. Far off, on the current, a worn reed rode the dark out to the channel. The mist closed. The lanterns sank.

Someone said his name once, soft. Then the tide took the sound and carried it away.