1356

‘So what do you know, my son?’
    ‘It is the sword Saint Peter carried in Gethsemane,’ Roland had said, ‘a sword that was drawn to protect our Saviour.’
    ‘A holy weapon,’ Father Marchant had said gently.
    ‘But cursed, father. They say it is cursed.’
    ‘I have heard that too,’ Father Marchant had said.
    ‘Cursed because Saint Peter drew it and Christ reproved him.’
    ‘“
Dixit ergo Iesus Petro mitte gladium in vaginam
…”’ Father Marchant had begun the quote from the gospel, then checked because Roland had looked so distressed. ‘What is it, my son?’
    ‘If evil men hold the sword, father, they will have such power!’
    ‘That is why the Order exists,’ the priest had explained patiently, ‘to ensure that
la Malice
belongs only to the church.’
    ‘But the curse can be lifted!’ Roland had said.
    ‘It can?’ Father Marchant had seemed surprised.
    ‘It is said,’ Roland had told him, ‘that if the blade is taken to Jerusalem and blessed within the walls of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre then the curse will be lifted and the sword will become a weapon of God’s glory.’ No other sword, not Roland’s Durandal, not Charlemagne’s Joyeuse, not even Arthur’s Excalibur could compare to
la Malice
. She would be the holiest weapon on God’s earth if her curse could be lifted.
    Father Marchant had heard the awe in Roland’s voice, but instead of saying that a journey to Jerusalem was about as likely as Saint Peter reappearing he had nodded solemnly. ‘Then we must add that duty to the Order’s tasks, my son.’
    Now, in the candle-bright chapel, Roland was inducted into the Order. He had made his confession, he had received absolution, and now he knelt at the altar step. The other knights were behind him, standing in the small, white-painted nave. Roland had been pleased to find Robbie in the Order, but the second Scotsman, the bone-hung Sculley, had shocked him. Even a few moments in Sculley’s presence was to be struck by the man’s coarseness: the perpetual sardonic grin, the curses, the malevolence of the man, the mockery and the appetite for cruelty. ‘He is indeed a crude instrument,’ Father Marchant had told Roland, ‘but God makes use of the humblest clay.’
    Now Sculley was shuffling his feet and mumbling about wasting time. The other knights were silent, watching as Father Marchant prayed in Latin. He blessed Roland’s sword, laid his hands on Roland’s head, and placed a sash with the fisherman’s embroidered keys around Roland’s neck. And as he prayed, the candles in the chapel were being extinguished one by one. It was like the service of Good Friday, when to mark the Redeemer’s death the churches of Christendom were plunged into darkness. And when the last candle guttered, there was only the pale light of the moon beyond the chapel’s sole high window and the small red flame of the eternal presence, which cast shadows the colour of dark blood on the silver crucified Christ at which Roland gazed with adoration in his eyes. He had found his cause, he had found a quest worthy of his purity, and he would find
la Malice
.
    Then Genevieve screamed.
    And screamed again.
     
    Keane and Father Levonne had ridden close to the drawbridge where the Irishman shouted up at the sentinel, who just glanced at the two horsemen in the moonlight and then walked a few paces along the gatehouse parapet. ‘Are you listening?’ Keane shouted. ‘Tell your lord we’ve got his woman! He wants her back, doesn’t he?’ He waited. His horse stamped its foot. ‘Jesus, man, are you hearing me?’ he called. ‘We’ve got his lady here!’ The sentinel leaned between two of the merlons to look at Keane again, but he offered no answer, and after a moment he pulled back behind the stones. ‘Are you deaf?’ Keane asked.
    ‘My son,’ Father Levonne shouted, ‘I am a priest! Let me talk to your lord!’
    There was no answer. The moon illuminated the castle and shivered white on the wind-rippled moat. There had only been the one man visible on the gatehouse wall, but he had now vanished to leave Keane and Levonne seemingly alone. The Irishman knew Thomas and a dozen other men were looking on from the trees, but he wondered who else watched from the dark slits in the curtain wall and in the moon-shadowed towers, and whether those watchers had tensioned crossbows loaded with short heavy bolts tipped with steel. The two wolfhounds who had followed Keane whined. ‘Is