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distinctly chilly. Are you a heretic?’
    ‘No.’
    ‘Someone must think you are! What did you do? Deny the Trinity?’
    ‘I upset a cardinal.’
    ‘That’s not very wise of you. Which one?’
    ‘Bessières.’
    ‘Oh, that man is quite horrid! A pig! But a dangerous pig.’ She paused, thinking. There were voices beyond the inner door, women’s voices, but faint. ‘We hear things in the convent,’ the countess went on, ‘news from the world. Didn’t I hear that Bessières was looking for the Holy Grail?’
    ‘He was. He didn’t find it.’
    ‘Oh, my dear, of course he didn’t. I doubt it exists!’
    ‘Probably not,’ Thomas said, lying. He knew it existed because he had found it, and having found it he had thrown it into the ocean where it could do no harm. And the sword he sought? Was he to hide that too?
    ‘So whose wife did you steal?’ the countess asked.
    ‘The Count of Labrouillade’s.’
    The countess clapped her thin hands. ‘Oh, I like you more and more! Well done! Well done! Labrouillade is a vile creature! I always felt sorry for that girl, Bertille. A pretty little thing, too! I can’t imagine her marriage bed, or rather I can! How horrible. It would be like being rutted by a grunting sack of rancid lard. Didn’t she run off with young Villon?’
    ‘Yes. I got her back, then took her away again.’
    ‘You make it sound very complicated, so you’ll have to begin at the beginning.’ The countess suddenly paused, bent forward in her chair and hissed between her teeth. The hiss ended in a moan.
    ‘You’re unwell,’ Thomas said.
    ‘I’m dying,’ she said. ‘You would think that all the doctors in this city could do something, but they can’t. Well, one of them wants to cut me open, but I’m not allowing that! So they smell my water and then say I should pray. Pray! Well, I do.’
    ‘There’s no medicine?’
    ‘Not for living eighty-two years, my dear, that is incurable.’ She was rocking backwards and forwards in her chair, clutching the blanket to her breasts. She took deep breaths and slowly seemed to feel less pain. ‘There’s some mandrake wine in a green bottle, there, on the table. The nuns of the infirmary boil it up for me, they’re very kind. It does relieve the pain, though it makes my mind very wobbly. Would you pour me a cup? No water with it, my dear, and then you can tell me your tale.’
    Thomas gave her the medicine and then told her some of his tale, how he had been hired to defeat Villon and how Labrouillade had tried to cheat him. ‘So Bertille is in your fortress?’ the countess asked. ‘Because your wife likes her?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘Does she have children?’
    ‘Bertille? None.’
    ‘That’s a blessing. If she had children, that wretched Labrouillade would use them to lure her back. Instead you can just kill Labrouillade and make her a widow! That’s an excellent solution. Widows have so many more choices.’
    ‘Is that why you’re here?’
    She shrugged. ‘It’s a refuge, I suppose? My son doesn’t like me, his wife hates me, and I was too old to find a new husband. So here I am, just me and Nicholas.’ She stroked the cat. ‘So Labrouillade wants you dead, but he’s not here in Montpellier, is he? So who was chasing you?’
    ‘Labrouillade sent a man to fight me. He started the chase and the students all joined in.’
    ‘Who did Labrouillade send?’
    ‘He’s called Roland de Verrec.’
    ‘Oh, my dear!’ The countess seemed amused. ‘Young Roland? I knew his grandmother very well, poor soul. I hear he’s a wonderful fighter, but oh dear, no brain.’
    ‘No brain?’
    ‘It’s been rotted by romances, my dear. He reads all those ridiculous stories of knightly valour and, being brainless, believes them. I blame his mother; she’s a forceful creature, all prayers and spite, and he, poor thing, believes everything she says. She tells him chivalry exists, which I suppose it does, but never in her husband, who was a goat. Not like his son! The virgin knight!’ she chuckled. ‘How silly can a young man be? And he’s very silly. You heard how the Virgin Mary appeared to him?’
    ‘Everyone’s heard that.’
    ‘He was just a silly boy and I suppose his mother made him drunk! I’m sure the Virgin Mary has better things to do than spoil a young man’s life. Dear me, poor boy! Now young Roland dreams of being a knight at your King Arthur’s round table. I’m afraid you’ll have to kill him.’
    ‘I