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anyone hearing us?’ Keane called.
    A gust lifted the flag on the castle’s keep. The banner stirred, then dropped as the small wind died. An owl called across the valley, and the two hounds lifted their heads and smelt the air. Eloise growled softly. ‘Gentle now,’ Keane told her, ‘quiet yourself, girl, and tomorrow we’ll run some hares. Maybe a deer if you’re lucky, eh?’
    ‘Englishman!’ a voice bellowed from the castle.
    ‘If you must insult a man,’ Keane called back, ‘can you not be clever about it?’
    ‘Come back in the morning! Come at first light!’
    ‘Let me talk to your lord!’ Father Levonne shouted.
    ‘You’re a priest?’
    ‘I am!’
    ‘Here’s your answer, father,’ the man shouted, and a cord thrummed in one of the towers and a crossbow bolt slammed through the moonlight to strike the track twenty yards short of the two horsemen. The bolt tumbled on the turf, skidding to a halt between the startled dogs.
    ‘It seems we have to wait till morning, father,’ Keane said. He turned his horse, kicked back his heels, and rode out of range of the crossbows.
    Till the morning.
     
    The Count of Labrouillade had been at supper. There was a venison pastry, a roasted goose, a ham coated in thick lavender-flavoured honey, and a platter of millet-fattened ortolans, which was the count’s favourite dish. He had a cook who knew how to drown the tiny birds in red wine, then roast them fast on a fierce fire. The count sniffed one. Just perfect! The aroma was so delicious it almost made his head swim, and then he sucked on the tiny bird and the yellow fat dribbled down his chins as he scrunched the fragile bones. The cook had roasted three woodcock too, drenching the needle-beaked birds with a mixture of honey and wine.
    The count liked to eat. He was mildly annoyed that his guests, the severe Father Marchant, Sir Robbie Douglas, and the risible virgin knight, were fooling around in the chapel, but he would not wait for them. The ortolans were piping hot, and the woodcocks’ dark breasts too delicious to delay, and so he left word that his guests could join him at their leisure. ‘Sire Roland has done well, eh?’ he remarked to his steward.
    ‘Indeed, my lord.’
    ‘Fellow got hold of
le Bâtard
’s wife! Roland might be a virgin,’ the count chuckled at that, ‘but he can’t be a total idiot. Let’s have a look at her.’
    ‘Now, my lord?’
    ‘Better entertainment than that fool,’ the count said, gesturing towards a minstrel who played a small harp and sang of the count’s excellence in battle. The song was largely invented, but the count’s household pretended to believe it. ‘Is everything ready for the morning?’ the count asked before the steward could leave on his errand.
    ‘Everything, my lord?’ the steward asked, confused.
    ‘Packhorses, armour, weapons, provisions. Christ’s belly, man, do I have to do it all?’
    ‘Everything is ready, my lord.’
    The count grunted. He had been summoned to Bourges by the Duke of Berry. The duke, of course, was just some snot-nosed child, and the count had been tempted to pretend the summons had never arrived, but the snot-nosed child was a son of the French king and the
arrière-ban
had been delivered with a letter which delicately pointed out that the count had ignored two previous summonses, and that a failure to obey an
arriere-ban
justified the confiscation of land. ‘We are sure,’ the letter said, ‘that you wish to retain your estates and so we anticipate your arrival at Bourges with joy, knowing you will come with many arbalists and men-at-arms.’
    ‘Arbalists,’ the count grumbled. ‘Why can’t he call them crossbowmen? Or archers?’
    ‘My lord?’
    ‘The duke, you fool. He’s a damned child. Fifteen? Sixteen? Still wet. Arbalist, by Christ.’ Still, the count would take forty-seven arbalists and sixty-seven men-at-arms to Bourges, a considerable force, greater even than the small army he had led against Villon to retrieve Bertille. He had thought to let one of his captains lead the force while he stayed at home where he would be guarded by the twenty crossbowmen and sixteen men-at-arms who would garrison the castle, but the threat of losing his land had persuaded him to travel himself. ‘So fetch the woman!’ he snapped at his steward, who had hesitated, thinking his lordship might have further questions.
    The count crammed a woodcock against his mouth and gnawed at the honey-flavoured flesh.