But he was not done. ‘But fuck that. I am not the Antichrist, even if God himself decrees I should be. I will be what I will, not what anyone else wills, as can you. Be what you choose. You love Jesus?’ he asked, and something black passed into his mind. ‘What has he done for you? Love me instead.’
‘I will not,’ she said, quite calmly.
He didn’t will himself to walk away. He didn’t feel a thing – he didn’t feel an urge to reply. It was like being cut with a very sharp sword, and watching your arm fall to the ground.
The next he knew, he was standing in the guard box over the gate.
Bent, the duty archer, stood with his arms crossed. When he saw the captain he twirled his moustaches. ‘You’ve sent out a sortie,’ he said. ‘Or somewhat similar. I can’t find Bad Tom or half the men-at-arms for duty.’
‘It’s about to happen,’ the captain said, mastering himself. ‘Tell the watch to be alert. Tell them-’
He looked up. But the stars were silent and cold.
‘Tell them to be alert,’ he said, at a loss. ‘I have to attend the Abbess.’
He got himself to the jakes and threw up. Wiped his chin on an old handkerchief and threw it after his puke, which would have scandalized a laundress. And then he pulled himself up straight, nodded, as if to an invisible companion, and walked back into the hall.
The Abbess was waiting for him.
‘You met with my handmaiden,’ she said.
His armour was adamantine. He smiled. ‘A merry meeting,’ he said.
‘And you saw to your guards,’ she said.
‘Not enough,’ he said. ‘Lady, there are too many secrets here. I do not know what the stakes are. And perhaps I am simply too young for this.’ He shrugged. ‘But we have two foes – the enemy outside and the enemy within. I wish you would tell me what you know.’
‘If I told you everything I knew you would scourge me with whips of fire,’ said the Abbess. ‘It is a passage in the Bible on which I often ponder.’ She rose from her throne and crossed the hall to the book. ‘You have solved this riddle?’ she asked.
‘Using the enormous hints provided,’ he answered.
‘It was not my place to tell you,’ she said. ‘When our kind swear oaths, those oaths bind our power.’
He nodded.
‘You are as tense as a bowstring,’ she said. ‘Is that the effect of Amicia?’
‘I have played a trump card tonight,’ he admitted. ‘And I let my tryst interfere with duty. Things are not done as I would like on an evening when I have taken a gamble that now seems reckless.’ He paused, and said what he had boiling inside him. ‘I do not enjoy being toyed with.’
The Abbess picked up her onyx rosary and adjusted her wimple. She shrugged. ‘No one does,’ she said dismissively. ‘I don’t deal in the imagery of gambling,’ she said. ‘But perhaps we can do some good, and by our presence prevent the dicing and the deflowering you were worried about,’ she said. ‘Let’s walk among our people, Captain.’
They walked out, and she put a hand on his arm, very much the lady, and a veiled sister came and carried her train, which was longer and more ornate than any other sister’s in the convent. Indeed, the captain suspected that her habit was far from the rule as laid down for sisters of Saint Thomas. She was a rich and powerful woman who had somehow turned to this life.
When they entered the courtyard all conversation stopped. A ring of dancers moved to the sound of a pair of pipes and a psalter played by none other than the captain’s squire. The musicians continued to play, and the dancers paused, but the Abbess gave them a firm nod of approval and the dancing continued.
‘When will they come at us?’ the Abbess asked quietly.
‘Never, if I have my way,’ the captain said pleasantly.
‘It’s better to make your money without fighting?’ she asked.
‘Always,’ he said, bowing deeply to Amicia, who stood watching the dancers. She nodded coolly in return. But he had armed himself against her and he continued without a pause. ‘But I also like to win. And winning requires some effort.’
‘Which you will make eventually?’ she said. But she smiled. ‘We spar so naturally I might have to do some penance for flirtation.’
‘You have a gift for it that must have won you many admirers,’ he said gallantly.
She struck the back of his hand with her fan. ‘Back in the ancient times when I was young, you mean?’
‘Like all beautiful women, you seek to make an insult of my flattery,’ he returned.
‘Stand here. Everyone can see us here.’ She nodded to Father Henry, who was standing hesitantly between the chapel and the steps to the Great Hall.
The captain thought that the man was a-boil with hostility. A year ago, the captain, in one of his first acts on taking command, had executed a murderer in the company – an archer who had started to kill his comrades for their loot. Torn had been a non-descript man, an outlaw. The captain eyed the priest. He had something of the same look. It wasn’t really a look. A feel. A smell.
‘Father Henry, I don’t believe that you’ve been properly introduced to the captain.’ She smiled, and her eyes flashed – a glimpse of the woman she had been, who knew that a flash of her eyes would restore any admirer to obedience. A predator who liked to play with her food.
Father Henry offered a long hand to shake. It was moist and cold. ‘The Bourc, his men call him,’ he said. ‘Do you have a name you prefer?’
The captain was so used to dealing with petty hostility that it took a moment to register. He turned his full attention on the priest.
The Abbess shook her head and pushed the priest by the elbow. ‘Never mind. I will speak to you later. Begone, ser. You are dismissed.’
‘I am a priest of God,’ he said. ‘I go where I will, and have no master here.’
‘You haven’t met Bad Tom,’ the captain said.
‘You have a familiar look about you,’ Father Henry added. ‘Do I know your parents?’
‘I’m a bastard, which you’ve already found cause to mention,’ the captain said. ‘Twice, man of God.’
The priest withstood his glare. But his eyes were as full of movement as a man dancing on coals. After too long a pause, the priest turned on his heel and walked away.
‘You go to great lengths to hide your heredity,’ the Abbess noted.
‘Do you know why?’ the captain asked.
The Abbess shook her head.
‘Good,’ said the captain. His eyes were on the priest’s back. ‘Where did he come from? What do you know about him?’
The dance had finished, and men were bowing, women dipping deep courtesies. Michael had just noted that his lord had witnessed his troubadour skills and flushed deep red in the torchlight, and the Abbess cleared her throat.
‘I told you. I took him from the parish,’ the Abbess murmured. ‘He has no breeding.’
The sky to the east lit up, as if from a flash of lightning, but the flash lasted too long and burned too red, for as long as it took a man to say a Pater Noster.
‘Alarm!’ roared the captain. ‘Gate open, all crossbows armed, get the machines loaded. Move!’
Sauce had been watching the dancers. She paused, confusion written on her face. ‘Gate open?’ she asked.
‘Gate open. Get a sortie ready to ride, you’ll be leading it.’ The captain pushed her towards her helmet.
Most of his men were already moving, but if he hadn’t been beguiled by the evening’s revelations, they’d have been in their armour already.
Already, a dozen men-at-arms stood by their destriers in the torchlit gateway, their squires and valets scrambling to arm them. Archers scrambled from the courtyard onto the catwalks around the curtain walls, some even bare-arsed in the light of the courtyard fires, their hose down and their shirttails dangling.
There was a second flash of fire to the east, half as long as the last.
The captain was grinning. ‘I hope you didn’t need olive oil for anything really important,’ he said, and squeezed her arm in a very familiar way. ‘May I take my leave? I should be back with you before the next bell.’
She eyed him in the fire-lit darkness. ‘This is your doing, and not the enemy’s?’ she asked.