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there’s a way out to the street through the almoner’s room which is at the far end. It won’t take you more than a minute, but till then we must pass several hours together.’ She looked at him dubiously, then suddenly brightened. ‘Tell me, do you play chess?’
    ‘A little,’ Thomas said.
    ‘I used to be adequate,’ the countess said, ‘but old age?’ She sighed and looked down at the cat. ‘My mind is as fluffy as your fur, isn’t it?’
    ‘If it would please you to play,’ Thomas said.
    ‘I won’t play well,’ she said sadly, ‘but all the same, shall we make it more intriguing by playing for money?’
    ‘If you like,’ Thomas said.
    ‘Say a leopard for each game?’ she suggested.
    Thomas flinched. A leopard was worth almost five shillings of English money, a week’s wages for a highly skilled craftsman. ‘A leopard?’ he asked, prevaricating.
    ‘Just to make it interesting. But you must pardon my forgetfulness. The mandrake wine makes me dozy, I fear,’ she sounded vague, but managed to pull herself together, ‘very dozy, and I do make the silliest mistakes.’
    ‘Then perhaps we shouldn’t play for money.’
    ‘I can afford a few leopards,’ she said tentatively, ‘maybe one or two, and it does add spice to the game, doesn’t it?’
    ‘A leopard, then,’ Thomas agreed.
    The countess smiled and gestured that he should bring the chess board and pieces to the small table beside her chair. ‘You can play silver, my dear,’ she said, and she was still smiling as Thomas advanced his first pawn. ‘This is going to hurt you,’ she went on, sounding anything but vague, ‘so very much!’

Six
     
    It was easier leaving the convent than Thomas had dared to hope. The countess had been right. Down the passage, through a room stacked with vile-smelling cast-off clothes that were to be given to the poor, and out to the street through a door secured by a single bolt. Thomas had been given a lesson in chess and was seven leopards poorer, but he had discovered the name of the saint receiving Peter’s sword, though that knowledge was useless unless he managed to escape Montpellier. He had waited till deep in the night before leaving the convent, knowing that the city gates would be locked till dawn. He would have to wait till then, because he doubted he would be able to drop down from the walls. The city’s flag-hung ramparts had looked too high and were doubtless well guarded.
    He drew his dark cloak around him. It had stopped raining, but the streets were still wet, glistening the shivering reflection of a feeble lantern hanging in the archway of a house across the street. He needed somewhere to hide till sunrise, and then he needed good fortune to escape the men who were doubtless hunting for him.
    ‘A soldier who speaks Latin,’ the voice said, ‘now isn’t that just a miracle?’ Thomas turned fast, then stopped. The two tines of a pitchfork were pointing at his belly, and holding the pitchfork was the tall Irish student, Master Keane. He was swathed in his scholar’s gown, black in the night. ‘I’m supposing you still have the knife,’ Keane said, ‘but I’m thinking my pitchfork will pierce your guts before you can cut my throat.’
    ‘I don’t want to kill you,’ Thomas said.
    ‘Now that’s a relief to hear, and there was me worrying that I’d be dead before Matins.’
    ‘Just put the pitchfork down,’ Thomas said.
    ‘I’m comfortable where it is,’ Keane said, ‘and feeling sort of pleased with myself.’
    ‘Why?’
    ‘They all chased you half around the town like a bunch of puppies hunting a stag, but I reckoned you could only have dropped into Saint Dorcas’s, and right I was. Now isn’t that clever of me?’
    ‘Very clever,’ Thomas said, ‘so why did you send them all away from Saint Dorcas’s?’
    ‘Away?’
    ‘I heard you shouting I’d gone in the other direction.’
    ‘Because they’re offering money to the man who catches you! To a poor student that’s a wonderful enticement! Why share it with others? I keep the pitchfork just where it is and I get a couple of months of free ale, free whores, free wine, and singing.’
    ‘I’ll offer you more,’ Thomas said.
    ‘Now that’s good to hear. The singing’s free, of course, but the ale, wine, and the whores? Expensive in this town. Have you ever noticed how the whores’ fees go up in towns where there’s a lot of churchmen? Strange that, or perhaps not considering how many