When the shadows stopped dancing, the fool was gone.
Another figure had appeared from the blackness beyond the doorstep.
A woman holding a pomegranate.
“Cornelia!” John’s voice cracked.
She must be a hallucination, he thought, a sign he had been stricken with the plague.
Strangely, the thought made him thankful.
Or might she be a shade?
Without hesitation she stepped forward into the torchlight, into his embrace.