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themselves, but the pursuit was galloping towards the main body of the French, and it would be only a matter of minutes before that army reacted and sent heavily armed and armoured men to counter-attack. And so the captal swerved up the small slope and vanished back into the trees. The valley, which had looked so peaceful, was flecked blood red, and littered with bodies.
    The armies had met.
     
    ‘Saint Junien’s abbey?’ the peasant had said. ‘For sure, my lord, along the valley,’ he pointed north with a grubby finger, ‘not far, lord. You can drive an ox there and back in a morning.’ The man had been threshing grain when the Hellequin came to his village, and he had been oblivious of the horsemen until their shadows darkened the door of his barn. He had stared in dumb astonishment at the mounted men, then gone to his knees and scrabbled a
hand at his forelock. Thomas had told him he was safe, that they meant him no harm and then, as he had a hundred times on this journey, asked the man whether he knew of the abbey of Saint Junien, and now, for the first time, someone did. ‘There are monks there, my lord,’ the man said nervously, trying to be helpful. His eyes flickered to the left, doubtless to where his family lived.
His flail, two wooden clubs joined by a length of leather, lay discarded in case these grim men on horseback mistook it for a weapon.
    ‘Who is your lord?’ Thomas asked.
    ‘The abbot, my lord,’ the man said.
    ‘What sort of monks?’ Thomas asked.
    The question puzzled the man, ‘Black monks, lord?’ he suggested.
    ‘Benedictines?’
    ‘Ah yes! Benedictines. I think.’ He smiled, but it was obvious he did not know what a Benedictine was.
    ‘Have other soldiers been here?’
    He was more sure of this answer. ‘Not in a long while, lord, but some came on Saint Perpetua’s day, I remember that. They came; they didn’t stay.’
    ‘None since?’
    ‘No, lord.’
    Saint Perpetua’s day was half a year past. Thomas tossed the man a silver coin and turned his horse away. ‘We go north,’ he told his men curtly, and spurred that way.
    It was dusk, which meant it was time to seek shelter for the night. A river twisted in the valley bottom where a pair of hovels lay dark under oak trees, but at the valley’s northern end, hidden by a spur of wooded land, was a village or small town, betrayed by the thickness of smoke from its kitchen fires. The abbey had to be there. Two crows flew across the river, black against the darkening sky. A bell rang, calling men and women to their evening prayers.
    ‘Is there a town here?’ Rymer, the Earl of Warwick’s man, had spurred alongside Thomas.
    ‘I don’t know, but usually a village grows beside a monastery.’
    ‘A monastery!’ Rymer seemed surprised.
    ‘I’m going there.’
    ‘To pray?’ Rymer suggested lightly.
    ‘Yes,’ Thomas replied.
    Rymer was embarrassed by that answer and went silent. Thomas rounded a bend in the valley and he could see a willow-edged river, and, just beyond it, a large village and the towers of a monastery. The monastery was surprisingly big, surrounded by a high wall and dominated by its large abbey church. ‘We can stay in the village,’ Rymer said.
    ‘There’ll be a tavern there,’ Thomas said.
    ‘That’s what I was hoping.’
    ‘My men will stay there too.’ Thomas stared at the monastery, its high walls dark in the gathering dusk. Those walls looked as formidable as any castle’s ramparts. ‘Is that the place?’ he asked the Sire Roland, who had spurred his horse to catch up with Thomas.
    ‘I wouldn’t know,’ Roland replied.
    ‘It looks more like a fortress than a monastery,’ Thomas said.
    The virgin knight frowned at the distant walls. ‘Saint Junien was told to keep Saint Peter’s sword safe, so maybe it is a fortress?’
    ‘If it even is Saint Junien’s.’ As Thomas rode closer he could see that the monastery’s huge gates were open. He supposed they would not be closed till the sun finally vanished in the west. ‘He’s buried there, yes?’
    ‘His earthly remains are there, yes.’
    ‘So perhaps
la Malice
is there too.’
    ‘And maybe we should leave it there,’ Sire Roland said.
    ‘I would, if I didn’t believe Bessières is looking for it, and if he finds it he’ll use it, not for God’s glory, but for his own.’
    ‘And will you use it?’
    ‘I told you,’ Thomas said curtly, ‘I shall lose it.’ He turned in the saddle. ‘Luc! Gastar! Arnaldus!