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hills, had been used against their champions, so that when Robbie was summoned, and ordered by his uncle to obey the summons, he crossed the hall nervously. He bowed to the king, then followed the servant to the table where the cardinal had four trenchers in front of him. ‘You will sit beside me, young man,’ the cardinal ordered. ‘Do you like roasted larks?’
    ‘No, Your Eminence.’
    ‘Suck the flesh from the bones and you will find the taste delectable.’ The cardinal placed a tiny bird in front of Robbie. ‘You fought well,’ he said.
    ‘We fought as we always fight,’ Robbie said.
    ‘I watched you. In another moment you would have beaten the Count of Berat.’
    ‘I doubt it,’ Robbie said ungraciously.
    ‘But then your master’s beast intervened,’ the cardinal said, watching Sculley, who was hunched over his food as though he feared men might take it from him. ‘Why does he wear bones in his hair?’
    ‘To remind himself of the men he’s killed.’
    ‘Some think it is sorcery,’ the cardinal said.
    ‘Not sorcery, Your Eminence, just deadly skill.’
    The cardinal sucked at a lark. ‘I am told, Sir Robert, that you refuse to fight against the English?’
    ‘I made an oath,’ Robbie said.
    ‘To a man who was excommunicated from the church. To a man who married a heretic. To a man who has proven to be an enemy of Mother Church, to Thomas of Hookton.’
    ‘To a man who saved my life when I caught the plague,’ Robbie said, ‘and to a man who paid my ransom so I could go free.’
    The cardinal pulled a sliver of bone from his teeth. ‘I see a man who wears bones in his hair, and you tell me you caught the plague and lived with a heretic’s help. And this afternoon I watched you defeat fifteen good men, men who are not easily beaten. It seems to me, Sir Robert, that you have unnatural help. Perhaps the devil aids you? You deny using sorcery, but the evidence suggests otherwise, wouldn’t you agree?’ He asked the questions silkily, then paused to sip wine. ‘I might have to talk to my Dominicans, Sir Robert, and tell them that there is the stench of wickedness in your soul. I might be forced to encourage them to heat their fires and wind the ropes of their machines that stretch men till they break.’ He was smiling, and his plump right hand was massaging Robbie’s left knee. ‘One word from me, Sir Robert, and your soul will be in my care.’
    ‘I’m a good Christian,’ Robbie said defiantly.
    ‘Then you must prove that to me.’
    ‘Prove it?’
    ‘By realising that an oath made to a heretic is not binding in heaven nor upon earth. Only in hell, Sir Robert, does that oath have power. And I want you to do me a service. If you refuse me then I shall tell King Jean that evil has entered his kingdom and I shall ask the Dominicans to explore your soul and burn that evil from your body. The choice is yours. Are you going to eat that lark?’
    Robbie shook his head and watched as the cardinal sucked the meat from the fragile bones. ‘What service?’ he asked nervously.
    ‘A service for His Holiness the Pope,’ Bessières said, carefully not saying which Pope he meant. The service was for himself, who prayed nightly that he would be the next man to wear the fisherman’s ring. ‘Have you heard of the Order of the Garter?’
    ‘I have,’ Robbie said.
    ‘Or the Order of the Virgin and Saint George?’ Bessières continued, ‘or the Order of the Sash in Spain? Or, indeed, King Jean’s Order of the Star? Bands of great knights, Sir Robert, sworn to each other, to their king, and to the noblest aims of chivalry. I have been charged with creating a similar order, a band of knights sworn to the church and to the glory of Christ.’ He had made it sound as if the Pope had commanded the creation of the order, but it was all Bessières’s idea. ‘A man who serves in the church’s order,’ he went on, ‘would never know the torments of hell, nor the agonies of purgatory. A man who serves our new order would be welcomed into heaven and sung into the company of saints by choirs of shining angels! I want you, Sir Robert, to serve in the Order of the Fisherman.’
    Robbie was silent. He watched the cardinal. Men were cheering a performer who was juggling half a dozen flaming brands while balancing on stilts, but Robbie did not notice. He was thinking that his soul would be freed of its perplexities if he were to be a knight in the service of the Pope.
    ‘I want the greatest