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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 Bâtard
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 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!’ Bessières called. ‘Let
la Malice
do her duty and serve the church as she is intended to serve. Let her do her