1356 (Special Edition)

turning towards the abbey steps where the torches’ sparks flickered and died by the open door through which Thomas could hear monks chanting, the sound slow and beautiful, deep and rhythmic, ebbing and flowing like the tides of the sea. He climbed the steps slowly, and gradually the interior of the building revealed itself, a glory of bright candles and painted stone and carved pillars and shining altars. So many candles! And the long nave was filled with black-cowled monks, chanting and genuflecting, and it struck Thomas that the sound was threatening now, as if the swelling tide was breaking into deep waves of menace. He could distinguish the words as he stepped into the light of the candles and he recognised them as coming from a psalm. ‘Quoniam propter te mortificamur tota die,’ the male voices chanted, drawing out the long syllables, ‘aestimati sumus sicut oves occisionis.’

‘What is it?’ Genevieve whispered.

‘For your sake we look on death all day,’ Thomas translated softly, ‘and we are judged as sheep to be slaughtered.’

‘I don’t like it,’ she said nervously.

‘I just need to speak with the abbot,’ Thomas reassured her. ‘We’ll wait for the service to end.’

He gazed into the lofty choir where he could just see a great wall painting of Christ in judgement. Sinners were tumbling to a fiery hell on one side, their ranks surprisingly filled with gowned priests and mantled monks. Closer, in the nave, was a painting of Jonah and the whale, which struck Thomas as a strange subject for a monastery so far inland, but reminded him of his father telling him that old tale and how as a small boy he had gone down to the shingle beach at Hookton and stared in hope of seeing a great whale that might swallow a man. Opposite Jonah, and half shadowed by pillars, was another painting that Thomas realised was Saint Junien. It showed the monk kneeling in a patch of land cleared of snow and gazing upwards in rapture towards an arm that reached down from heaven to offer him a sword. ‘That’s it!’ he said in wonderment.

The monks standing at the back of the nave heard him and most of them turned to see Genevieve and Bertille. ‘Women!’ one of them hissed in alarm.

A second monk hurried towards Thomas. ‘Pilgrims can only come to the church between Matins and None,’ he said indignantly, ‘not now! All of you, leave!’

Robbie, Keane, Sire Roland and the three Gascons had followed Thomas into the church, and the indignant monk spread his arms as if to drive them all away. ‘You’re wearing swords!’ the man protested. ‘You must leave!’ More monks turned, and the chanting was interrupted by a growl, and Thomas remembered his father saying that a pack of monks was more frightening than any band of brigands. ‘Folk think they’re nothing but gelded milksops,’ Father Ralph had said, ‘but they’re not, by God they’re not! They can fight like savages!’ These monks were spoiling for a fight, and there had to be at least two hundred of them. They must have reckoned that no man-at-arms would dare draw a sword inside the abbey, and the monk closest to Thomas had to believe that because he thrust a meaty hand hard against Thomas’s chest just as a bell rang from the high altar. It rang frantically, and was reinforced by the sound of a staff being beaten on the stone floor. ‘Let them stay!’ a great voice bellowed. ‘I order them to remain!’ The remnants of the chant drained away raggedly, finally fading to nothing. The monk still had his hand on Thomas’s chest.

‘Take it away,’ Thomas said softly. The man looked at him with hostile eyes, and Thomas reached up and took hold of the hand. He bent it backwards, using the strength that comes from hauling back a war bow’s cord. The monk resisted, then his eyes widened in fear as he felt the archer’s strength. He tried to pull his hand away and Thomas bent it harder until he felt the wrist bones fracture. ‘I told you to take it away,’ he said.

‘Thomas!’ Genevieve gasped.

Thomas looked at the high altar and saw a figure rising there, a massive man swathed in red, gross and tall and commanding. The pilgrims were led by Cardinal Bessieres. And he was not alone. There were crossbowmen at the edges of the nave and Thomas heard

the clicks as their cords were caught by the trigger mechanisms. There were at least a dozen archers, all wearing the livery of a green

horse on a white field, and with them were men-at-arms, and there, beside the cardinal at the top of the altar steps, was the Count of Labrouillade. ‘You were right,’ Thomas said softly, ‘I should have brought the archers.’

‘Bring them here!’ Bessieres ordered. The cardinal was smiling, and no wonder; his enemies had come straight to him and he had them at his mercy, and Cardinal Bessieres, Archbishop of Livorno and Papal Legate to the throne of France, had no mercy. Father Marchant, tall and grim, stood just behind the cardinal, and Thomas, as he was forced up the nave between the monks who parted to let them through, could see more men-at-arms in the shadows at the abbey’s edges. ‘Welcome,’ the cardinal said, ‘Guillaume d’Evecque.’

‘Thomas of Hookton,’ Thomas said defiantly.

‘Le Batard,’ Father Marchant said.

‘And his heretic whore of a wife!’ the cardinal said.

‘My wife too,’ Labrouillade muttered.

‘Two whores!’ the cardinal said, sounding amused. ‘Keep them there!’ He snarled that order to the crossbowmen who were guarding Thomas. ‘Thomas of Hookton,’ he said, ‘le Batard. So why are you here in this place of prayer?’

‘I was given a task,’ Thomas said.

‘A task! And what was that?’ The cardinal spoke in mock kindness, as though he indulged a small child.

‘To prevent a sacred relic from falling into evil hands.’

The cardinal’s mouth twitched in a half-smile. ‘What relic, my son?’

‘La Malice.’

‘Ah! And what hands?’

‘Yours,’ Thomas said.

‘You see what infamy le Batard is capable of!’ The cardinal was addressing the whole abbey now. ‘He has taken it upon himself to deny Holy Mother Church one of her most sacred relics! He is an excommunicate already! He has been declared outside of salvation, and yet he dares come here, bringing his whores into this most holy place to steal what God has given to his faithful servants.’ He raised a hand and pointed at Thomas. ‘Do you deny that you are an excommunicate?’

‘I plead guilty to only one thing,’ Thomas said.

The cardinal frowned. ‘And that is?’

‘You had a brother,’ Thomas said. The cardinal’s face darkened and the outstretched finger quivered, then dropped. ‘You had a brother,’ Thomas said, ‘and he is dead.’

‘What do you know of that?’ the cardinal asked in a dangerous tone.

‘I know he was killed with an arrow shot by a devil’s whelp,’ Thomas said. He could have begged for his life, but he knew that would achieve nothing. He was trapped, surrounded by crossbows under tension and by men-at- arms, and all that was left was defiance. ‘I know he was killed by an arrow cut from an ash tree at sundown,’ he went on, ‘killed by an arrow peeled of its bark with a woman’s knife, tipped by steel that was forged in a starless night and fledged with feathers taken from a goose killed by a white wolf. And I know that the arrow was shot from a bow that had lain for a week in church.’

‘Witchcraft,’ the cardinal whispered.

‘They must all die, Your Eminence,’ Father Marchant spoke for the first time, ‘and not just the whores and excommunicates, but those men too!’ He pointed at Robbie and the Sire Roland. ‘They have broken their oaths!’

‘An oath to a man who tortures women?’ Thomas sneered. He could hear horses’ hooves in the cobbled yards outside the abbey. There were voices there and they were angry.

The cardinal had also heard the voices and he glanced towards the abbey’s door, but saw nothing menacing there. ‘They will die,’ he said, looking back to Thomas. ‘They will die by la Malice.’ He snapped his fingers.

There had been a dozen monks standing beside the high altar, but they now moved aside, and Thomas saw a friar there. He was an older man, and he had been beaten so that his white robe was spattered with blood that had dripped from his broken lip and nose. And beyond him, in the shadows behind the altar, there was a tomb. It was a