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whom does he serve? Cardinal Bessières. Cardinal Louis Bessières, Archbishop of Livorno and Papal Legate to the court of France. What do you know of Bessières?’
    ‘He’s a cardinal,’ Roland said, but plainly knew no more.
    ‘His father was a tallow merchant in the Limousin,’ Father Levonne said, ‘and young Louis was a clever boy and his father had enough cash to see that he was educated, but what chance does a tallow merchant’s son have in this world? He can’t become a lord, he wasn’t born, as you were, to privilege and rank, but there is always the church. A man can rise far in the holy, catholic and apostolic church. It matters not if he was born in a gutter, so long as he has a good brain, and a tallow merchant’s son can become a prince of the church, and so the church draws in all those clever boys, and some of them, like Louis Bessières, are also ambitious, cruel, greedy and ruthless. So
one face of the church, sire, is our present Pope. A good man, a little dull, a little too attached to canon law, but a man who tries to do Christ’s will in this wicked world. And the second face is Louis Bessières, an evil man, who wants, above everything, to be Pope.’
    ‘Which is why he seeks
la Malice
,’ Roland said quietly.
    ‘Of course.’
    ‘And I told Father Marchant where to find it!’ Roland went on.
    ‘You did?’
    ‘Or perhaps where he can find it. I don’t know. It might not be there.’
    ‘I think you must talk to Thomas,’ Father Levonne said gently.
    ‘You can tell him,’ Roland said.
    ‘Me? Why me?’
    Roland shrugged. ‘I must ride on, father.’
    ‘To where?’
    ‘A
arrière-ban
has been pronounced. I must obey.’
    Father Levonne frowned. ‘You’ll join the army of the King of France?’
    ‘Of course.’
    ‘And how many enemies will you have there? Labrouillade? Marchant? The cardinal?’
    ‘I can explain to Father Marchant,’ Roland said hesitantly.
    ‘You think he’s amenable to reason?’
    ‘I took an oath,’ Roland said.
    ‘Then take it back!’
    Roland shook his head. ‘I can’t do that.’ He saw the priest was about to interrupt so hurried on, ‘I know things are not black and white, father, and perhaps Bessières is evil, and I know Labrouillade is a vile creature, but is his wife any better? She is an adulteress! A fornicator!’
    ‘Half Christendom is guilty of that sin, and most of the other half wish they were too.’
    ‘If I stay here,’ Roland said, ‘then I condone her sin.’
    ‘Good God,’ Father Levonne said in astonishment.
    ‘Is it so bad to wish for purity?’ Roland asked, almost pleadingly.
    ‘No, my son, but you’re not making sense. You accept that you made oaths to evil men, but now you won’t break them. How pure is that?’
    ‘Then maybe I break the oaths,’ Roland allowed, ‘if my conscience tells me to, but why break an oath to support a man who fights against my country and who shelters an adulteress?’
    ‘I thought you were a Gascon. The English rule Gascony, and no one disputes their right.’
    ‘Some Gascons do,’ Roland said, ‘and if I fight I will fight for what I think is right.’
    Father Levonne shrugged. ‘You can do no more than that,’ he agreed, ‘but at the very least you can say farewell to Thomas.’ He glanced out of the casement and saw that dawn was greying the world’s edge. ‘Come, he’ll want to thank you.’
    He led Roland downstairs into the big kitchen. Genevieve was there, a bandage across her left eye, and Hugh was sleeping in the corner while Thomas sat beside his wife with an arm about her shoulder. ‘Father,’ he greeted Levonne.
    ‘The Sire Roland wishes to leave,’ Father Levonne said. ‘I tried to persuade him to stay, but he insists he will go to King Jean.’ He turned and gestured for Roland to say whatever he wished, but Roland said nothing. He was staring, entranced, at the third person sitting at the table. He seemed incapable of speech or, indeed, of motion. He just stared, and through his head were running all the lines of poetry that the troubadours had sung in his mother’s castle, lines about lips that looked like crushed rose petals, about cheeks as white as doves’ wings, about eyes that could light the darkest sky, and about hair that was the colour of ravens’ wings. He tried to speak again, but nothing came, and she was gazing back at him with eyes just as wide.
    ‘You haven’t met the Countess of Labrouillade,’ Thomas said. ‘My lady,