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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 Bessières. 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!’ Bessières ordered. The cardinal was smiling, and no wonder; his enemies had come straight to him and he had them at his mercy, and Cardinal Bessières, 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 Bâtard
,’ 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 Bâtard
. So why are you here