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horses stamped in the nave, someone called from the village, but otherwise the world seemed silent. Darkness was falling fast and throwing lumpy shadows across the graveyard next to the church. The graves had no markers. This village must have been struck hard by the terrible plague that had carried away so many souls, and the bodies lay in their shallow pits. Roland remembered seeing the wild dogs dig up plague victims. He had been a boy, and he had wept for the pity of seeing the dogs tear the rotting flesh of his mother’s tenants. His father had died, as had his only brother. His mother had said that the sickness was sent as a punishment for sin. ‘The English and the plague,’ she had said, ‘both are works of the devil.’
    ‘They say the English have the plague too,’ Roland had pointed out.
    ‘God is good,’ the widow had said.
    ‘But why did Father die?’ Roland had asked.
    ‘He was a sinner,’ his mother had said, though she had still turned her house into a shrine for her husband and for her eldest son, a shrine with candles and crucifixes, black hangings and a chantry priest who was paid to say masses for the father and heir who had died vomiting and bleeding. Then the English had come, and the widow was turned out of her land and had fled to the Count of Armagnac who was a distant cousin, and the count had raised Roland to be a warrior, but a warrior who knew that the world was a battlefield between God and the devil, between light and darkness, between good and evil. Now he watched the darkness darken as the shadows crept across the plague-humped land. The devil was out there, he thought, sliding through the dusk-blackened trees, a serpent coiling about the ruined church.
    ‘Perhaps they didn’t follow us,’ he said almost in a whisper.
    ‘Perhaps the first bows are being drawn now,’ Genevieve said, ‘or perhaps they’ll light a fire beneath us.’
    ‘Be quiet,’ he said, and his tone now was pleading, not commanding.
    The first bats were flying. A dog barked in the village and was hushed. The dry branches of pine trees rattled in a small wind, and Roland closed his eyes and prayed to Saint Basil and Saint Denis, his two patron saints. He gripped his scabbarded sword, Durandal, and touched his forehead to the big pommel. ‘Let not evil come to me in this darkness,’ he prayed. ‘Make me good,’ he prayed as his mother had taught him.
    A hoof sounded in the trees. He heard the creak of saddle leather and the chink of a bridle. A horse whinnied and there were more footsteps. ‘Jacques!’ a voice called from the dark. ‘Jacques! Are you there?’
    Roland lifted his head. The first stars were glinting above the hilltops. Saint Basil’s mother had been a widow. ‘Let not my mother lose her only son,’ he prayed.
    ‘Jacques, you bastard!’ the voice shouted again. The men-at-arms sheltering in the tower looked at Roland, but he was still praying.
    ‘I’m here!’ Jacques Sollière called into the dark, ‘is that you, Philippe?’
    ‘I’m the Holy Ghost, you idiot,’ the man called Philippe shouted back.
    ‘Philippe!’ The men-at-arms in the tower were on their feet now, shouting a welcome.
    ‘They’re friends,’ Jacques told Roland, ‘the count’s men.’
    ‘Oh God,’ Roland breathed. He could not believe the relief that flooded through him, so much relief that he felt weak. He was no coward. No man who had faced Walter of Siegenthaler in the lists could be called a coward. The German had killed and maimed men in a score of tournaments, always claiming the carnage was an accident, but Roland had fought the man four times and humiliated him in every bout. He was no coward, but he had been terrified in this creeping dusk. War, he was realising, had no rules, and all the skill in the world might not be enough to help him survive.
    Philippe appeared as a shadow beneath the tower. ‘The count sent us,’ he called up.
    ‘Labrouillade?’ Roland asked, though the question was unnecessary. The count’s men-at-arms had greeted their comrades familiarly.
    ‘The English are marching,’ Philippe explained. ‘Are you the Sire de Verrec?’
    ‘Yes. Where are the English?’
    ‘Somewhere north,’ Philippe said vaguely, ‘but that’s why we’re here. The count wants all his men-at-arms.’ More soldiers were coming from the dark, leading their horses into the ruined nave. ‘Can we light a fire?’
    ‘Of course.’ Roland hurried down the steps. ‘The count sent