stone casket, carved and painted, resting on two stone pedestals that stood in a niche of the apse. The lid of the casket had been slid aside and now a familiar figure came from the shadows. It was the Scotsman, Sculley, the bones tangled in his long hair clicking as he walked to the tomb and reached inside. He had more bones attached to his beard that knocked against the breastplate he wore over his mail coat. ‘You lied to me,’ he called to Robbie, ‘you made me fight for the goddamned English, and your uncle says you must die, that you’re a weak fart of a man. You’re not worthy of the name Douglas. You’re a piece of dog shite is what you are.’
And from the tomb he drew a sword. It was nothing like the swords in the wall paintings. This sword looked like a falchion, one of those cheap blades that could serve as a hay knife as well as a weapon. It had a thick curved blade, widening towards its tip, a weapon for crude hacking rather than piercing. The blade itself looked old and uncared for, it was pitted, darkened, and crude, yet still Thomas had an urge to fall to his knees. Christ himself had looked on that sword, he had maybe touched it, and on the night before his agony he had refused to let that weapon save him. It was the sword of the fisherman.
‘Kill them,’ the cardinal said.
‘Blood should not be shed,’ a tall grey-bearded monk protested. He had to be the abbot.
‘Kill them,’ the cardinal repeated, and the crossbowmen raised their weapons. ‘Not with arrows!’ Bessieres called. ‘Let
And the archer loosed, and the arrow flew.
The arrow struck Sculley plumb on his breastplate. The missile was tipped with a bodkin, an arrowhead made to pierce armour. Bodkins were forged from steel. They were long, slim and pointed arrowheads without tangs, and this arrow’s leading inches of ashwood had been replaced with a short length of heavier oak. If any arrow could slide through steel it was a heavy bodkin that concentrated the arrow’s weight and impetus onto one small point, but this arrowhead crumpled like cheap iron. Few blacksmiths knew how to make good steel, and some smiths cheated, sending iron bodkins instead of steel, but though the bodkin had failed to pierce Sculley’s breastplate, the force of the arrow’s strike was sufficient to throw him three staggering paces backwards so that he tripped on the altar steps and sat down heavily. He picked up the arrow that had struck him, looked at the bent head and grinned.
‘If anyone does any killing in this damned church,’ a voice shouted from the back of the abbey, ‘it will be me. Now what the damned hell is happening here?’
Thomas turned. The back of the abbey was filling with men-at-arms and archers, all of them wearing the same badge: a golden lion rampant against a background of golden fleurs-de-lys on a blue field. It was the same badge Benjamin Rymer wore, the livery of the Earl of Warwick, and the snarl of the voice and the confidence of the newcomer suggested it had to be the earl himself who now strode up the nave. He was wearing a suit of fine mud- spattered armour that clinked as he walked, and his steel-shod boots crashed brutally loud on the nave’s stones. He wore no jupon, so displayed no badge, though his status was proclaimed by a short, thick chain of gold that hung over a blue silk scarf. He was a few years older than Thomas, thin-faced, unshaven, and with unruly brown hair that had been compressed by the helmet that was now held by a squire. He scowled. His quick eyes darted around the abbey and seemed to scorn everything he saw. A second man, older and with grizzled grey hair, a short beard and wearing much-battered armour, followed him, and there was something familiar to Thomas about the man’s blunt, sun-darkened face.
The cardinal slammed his staff on the altar steps. ‘Who are you?’ he demanded.
The earl, if it was the earl, ignored him. ‘Who the devil is killing who here?’ he asked.
‘This is a church matter,’ the cardinal said loftily, ‘and you will leave.’
‘I will leave when I’m goddamned ready to leave,’ the newcomer said, then turned fast as a scuffle sounded at the back of the abbey. ‘If there is any damned trouble in here I shall have my men clear the goddamned lot of you out of the monastery altogether. You want to spend the night in the goddamned fields? Who are you?’
This last question was directed at Thomas, who, assuming it was the earl, went to one knee. ‘Sir Thomas Hookton, sire, pledged to the Earl of Northampton.’
‘Sir Thomas was at Crecy, my lord,’ the man with grizzled grey hair said quietly, ‘one of Will Skeat’s men.’
‘You’re a bowman?’ the earl demanded.
‘Yes, my lord.’
‘And knighted?’ He sounded both surprised and disapproving.
‘Indeed, my lord.’
‘Deservedly knighted, my lord,’ the second man said firmly, and Thomas remembered him then. He was Sir Reginald Cobham, a man renowned as a soldier.
‘We were at the ford together, Sir Reginald,’ Thomas said.
‘Blanchetaque!’ Cobham said, remembering the ford’s name. ‘Oh my sweet God, but that was a rare fight!’ He grinned. ‘You had a priest fighting with you, yes? Bastard was splitting French heads with an axe.’
‘Father Hobbe,’ Thomas said.
‘You two have finished?’ the earl snarled.
‘Nowhere near, my lord,’ Cobham said happily, ‘we could reminisce for another few hours.’
‘Damn your bloody guts,’ the earl said, though without rancour. He might be an earl of England, but he knew well that he had better listen to the advice of men like Sir Reginald Cobham. Such men were attached to all the great lords, appointed by the king as advisers. A man could be born to wealth, rank, title, and privilege, but that did not make him a soldier, and so the king made sure his nobles were advised by lesser men who knew more. The earl might command, but if he was wise then he only commanded after Sir Reginald had decided. The Earl of Warwick was experienced, he had fought at Crecy, yet he was also wise enough to listen to advice. At this moment, though, he seemed too angry to be prudent, and his anger grew when he saw the red heart on Sculley’s grubby jupon. ‘Is that the crest of Douglas?’ he asked in a dangerous voice.
‘It is the most sacred heart of Christ,’ the cardinal answered before Sculley had a chance to speak. Not that Sculley had understood the question, which had been asked in French. The Scotsman had got to his feet and was now glowering at Warwick so fiercely that the cardinal, thinking the bone-hung Sculley might start a fight, pushed him back into the small crowd of monks who stood by the altar. ‘These men,’ Bessieres gestured at the crossbowmen and men-at-arms wearing the livery of Labrouillade, ‘are serving the church. We are on a mission for His Holiness the Pope, and you,’ he raised a threatening finger to point at the earl, ‘are hindering our duties.’
‘I’m hindering goddamned nothing!’
‘Then leave this precinct and allow our devotions to continue,’ the cardinal demanded grandly.
‘Devotions?’ the earl asked, looking at Thomas.
‘Murder, my lord.’
‘Righteous execution!’ the cardinal thundered. His finger quivered as he pointed at Thomas. ‘This man is an excommunicate. He is hated by God, loathed by man and an enemy to Mother Church!’
The earl looked at Thomas. ‘Are you?’ he asked, sounding thoroughly disgruntled.
‘He says so, my lord.’
‘A heretic!’ The cardinal, seeing an advantage, pressed it hard. ‘He is condemned! As is that whore, his wife, and that whore, an adulteress!’ He pointed at Bertille.
The earl looked at Bertille, a sight that seemed to lift his evil mood. ‘You were going to kill these women too?’
‘The judgement of God is just, it is sure, it is merciful,’ the cardinal said.
‘Not while I’m standing here, it isn’t,’ the earl said belligerently. ‘Are the women under your protection?’ he asked Thomas.
‘Yes, my lord.’
‘Stand up, man,’ the earl said. Thomas was still kneeling. ‘And you’re English?’
‘Indeed, my lord.’
‘He is a sinner,’ the cardinal said, ‘and condemned by the church. He is outside man’s law, subject only to
