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surrender peaceably,’ Roland de Verrec told Thomas, ‘I shall plead with the Count of Labrouillade to treat you leniently.’ He paused, as if expecting Thomas to lower the blade. ‘Take him,’ he ordered the guards when the knife stayed at Brother Michael’s throat.
    ‘You want him dead?’ Thomas shouted. He tightened his grip on the young monk’s throat, provoking a terrified whimper.
    ‘A reward to the man who takes him,’ Roland de Verrec announced, stepping forward himself. The thought of a reward excited the students, who had been gazing wide-eyed at the sudden drama that had enlivened their theology lecture. They gave a roar like hunters seeing their prey close, and kicked over the benches in their hurry to capture Thomas.
    ‘He’s dead!’ Thomas bellowed, and the students stopped, fearing that the monk’s blood would suddenly spurt. ‘Tell Genevieve,’ Thomas whispered in Brother Michael’s ear, ‘to join Karyl.’ Genevieve, barred by her gender from entering the monastery, had stayed at the tavern with Hugh, Galdric and the two men-at-arms.
    ‘Jesus God, save me!’ Brother Michael gasped, and Thomas let go with his left arm and thrust the monk violently forward into the press of students, then ran left into another open corridor. The pursuers roared again, whooping and bellowing. Doctor Lucius shouted for order, but in vain, and Thomas heard the footsteps, saw a door to his right and slammed it open. A lavatorium! Three monks were at stool, perched on stone benches that ran down the sides of the stinking room, which had an arched door at its far end. The monks gaped at Thomas, but dared not move, and Thomas seized one by the beard and spilled him, naked arse, filth and all, across the floor. He did the same to a second one and ran on to the room’s far end. Pursuers crowded into the lavatorium, tripped over the fallen monk, and Thomas was through the door. No bolt to lock it shut. A passageway stretched ahead with doors on either side. Monks’ cells? He ran hard, cursing the old wound in his leg that meant he was not as fast as he used to be, but he was managing to stay ahead of his pursuers. He burst through a further door with a bolt on the wrong side. Through that into what seemed to be a laundry room with big stone bowls, jugs and heaps of robes. He spilt robes on the floor, pushed through a further door and was in a small enclosed herb garden. No one there and no way out except the door he had just used, and men were shouting in the passage, they were close, too close. It was raining harder. A high wall barred one side of the garden and Thomas jumped, took hold of the coping and used his huge archer’s muscles to haul himself up. He kicked up a leg, straddled the wall, stood and ran along the wide coping to where the wall joined a sloping tiled roof. Men spilt into the herb garden as he climbed the roof. The rain made the tiles slippery and he flailed for a few heartbeats before scrambling up to the ridge. ‘He’s there!’ the Irishman Keane shouted enthusiastically. ‘Going towards the kitchens!’
    Thomas ripped a tile from the roof and hurled it down at the students, then another. Keane swore vilely, ducked, and then Thomas was on the roof ridge, running, lost to sight, but he could hear the students whooping and shouting, released to the joy of the hunt. Chasing an heretical Englishman was far more enjoyable than discussing the four cardinal virtues or the necessity of infant baptism.
    A crossbow bolt whipped past Thomas, and he looked left to see a man in the city’s livery reloading a weapon on the scaffolding about a church. Damn. He sat on the ridge, then slid down the roof’s greasy slope until his feet crashed hard into a small stone parapet. ‘He’s on the refectory!’ a man shouted. Thomas ripped another tile free and hurled it far and high, through the rain and over the roof to fall wherever it might. He heard it crash home, heard the clatter of shards. ‘Other way!’ a voice called. ‘He’s on the chapter house!’ A bell started to toll, then another joined in, and Thomas heard feet on the roof beyond the ridge. He looked left and right, saw no easy escape, and so peered cautiously over the low stone parapet. There was another garden beneath him, a small one, thick with fruit trees. ‘Go left!’ a voice shouted somewhere behind him.
    ‘No, he went this way!’ It was the Irish student, Keane, and he sounded very sure of himself. ‘This way!’ he