‘Silence!’ roared Joan. ‘Or you will be sorry.’
‘This is a holy place, too,’ Michael reminded her as the din petered out. ‘Part of the chapel. If you spill blood up here, you will be damned for all eternity.’
‘Who said anything about spilling blood?’ asked Joan shortly.
Bartholomew sat up, acutely aware of the snap and crackle of the fire below. Smoke oozed through the floorboards. He blinked tears from his stinging eyes, and saw the peregrini and staff huddled at the far end. So were the Jacques.
‘You think burning people alive is acceptable, but shooting them is not?’ breathed Michael. ‘Please, Joan! Think of your immortal soul!’
‘I am thinking of it,’ snarled Joan. ‘Which is why I must avenge Winchelsea. It would be a far greater sin to pretend it never happened.’
‘It is not for you to dispense justice!’ cried Michael. ‘It–’
‘Who will, then?’ she demanded tightly. ‘The survivors of Winchelsea? All the fighting men are dead. The King? He is too busy with his war. Mother Church? She brays her horror, but her priests lack the courage to act.’
‘Not them – God,’ said Michael. ‘He will punish the guilty.’
‘Quite,’ said Joan. ‘And I am His instrument, doing His will.’
‘He does not want this!’ Michael was shocked. ‘And your actions will only compound the atrocity. Murdering more people will not make it better.’
‘On the contrary, those whose loved ones were butchered by French raiders will take comfort from it. They said so as I helped them bury their innocent dead.’
Michael indicated the peregrini. ‘They also lost loved ones that day. Delacroix’s brothers were killed defending Winchelsea.’
‘They are spies,’ stated Joan uncompromisingly. ‘They wrote to the French, advising them when best to attack Winchelsea. The Mayor told me personally. It is their fault the slaughter was so terrible and they will pay for their treachery today.’
Her eyes blazed, and Bartholomew knew Michael was wasting his time trying to reason with her. Meanwhile, the smoke grew denser with every passing moment, and her prisoners were already struggling to breathe.
‘You cannot be party to this, Leger,’ shouted Michael, snatching at straws in his desperation. ‘You are a knight – your duty is to protect the weak.’
‘My duty is to protect England from the French,’ countered Leger. ‘Which is what I am doing. Besides, you may have forgotten Norbert, but I never shall.’
‘Norbert?’ blurted Michael. ‘What does he have to do with it?’
‘He was murdered in that skirmish by foreign scholars. And since Tulyet refuses to take a stand against them, I have joined ranks with someone who will.’
He nodded to his fellows and they prepared to leave. Bartholomew was in an agony of tension. He had to stop them! Once the door was locked – and he was sure Joan would have the only key – their victims’ fate was sealed. There would be no escape from the flames.
‘Joan used Norbert,’ he yelled, hoping Leger would turn against her if he knew the truth. ‘Deceived him. It was not Alice who told him that the Spital harboured French spies – it was Joan. She deliberately misled him by aping Alice’s scratching.’
‘But French spies are hiding here,’ shrugged Leger. ‘And Norbert would not have cared which nun the information came from – just that she was right.’
‘You will not live long once you leave,’ warned Bartholomew, opting for another strategy. ‘Like Goda, you will be stabbed to tie up loose ends. And if you want proof, look at Joan’s shoes – stained with the oil that spilled as she chased Goda around this–’
Eudo tore at Joan, bellowing his rage and grief. Leger shot him. The big man thudded to the floor and lay still.
‘I did chase her,’ admitted Joan, regarding the dead man with a chilling lack of emotion. ‘But I did not kill her – she had grabbed a knife from the kitchen and she fell on it as we raced around. Her blood is not on my hands.’
‘Paris,’ said Michael, declining to argue semantics with her. ‘You killed him for–’
‘For being French,’ spat Joan. ‘And his death is your fault – I would not have known he even existed if you lot had not made such a fuss about him stealing someone else’s work. And as for that spicer – well, he had to die after he had the audacity to inform me that the Dauphin only did in Winchelsea what English soldiers do in France.’
Most of the prisoners were on their knees or lying down, gasping for air. Only Delacroix remained stubbornly upright, glaring defiance through streaming eyes.
‘And the Girard family?’ asked Michael. ‘I assume you could not bring yourself to knife the little girl, so you put a soporific in her milk.’
Joan winced. ‘It was cowardly of me.’
‘Yet you helped to rescue Hélène. Were you not afraid she would identify you?’
‘One nun looks much like another to children. And as for pulling her from the shed … well, suffice to say that I was caught up in the moment.’
‘How did you stab four adults with such ease?’ asked Michael, casting an agonised glance at Bartholomew, begging him to act while he kept her talking. ‘Two were Jacques – experienced fighters.’
‘Experienced fighters who turned their backs on a nun,’ said Joan shortly. She opened the bag she carried over her shoulder and began to rummage about inside it. ‘Now, enough talking. I am–’
‘Bruges and Sauvage were next, even though neither was French,’ persisted Michael.
‘I pray that God will forgive my mistake.’ Joan pulled two daggers from the bag and dropped them on the floor, where they joined a number of others already lying there. ‘I collected these after Winchelsea, when I vowed that a French life would pay for every English one. Today will see that oath more than fulfilled.’
‘You only found one of the batch she left when she dispatched the Girards,’ put in Leger gloatingly. ‘You might have had answers a lot sooner if you had been more thorough.’
Michael ignored him and continued to address Joan. ‘And when these weapons are found, I suppose you will have a flash of memory, which will “prove” that the peregrini killed Paris and the others.’ His expression was one of deep disgust.
Joan inclined her head. ‘Although your Junior Proctor will have to act on my testimony now, given that you will not be in a position to do it.’
‘Wait!’ shouted Michael desperately, as she turned to leave. ‘You cannot do this!’
Joan paused and regarded him thoughtfully. ‘Before I go, answer one question: how did you guess it was me? Not from that stupid comb I dropped when I dispatched Paris? I had a feeling that Abbess Isabel recognised it before I managed to reclaim the thing. Is that why Alice took it from my bag? To give to her, so she could be certain?’
‘Yes, and Isabel has told everyone her suspicions, so you can never return to Lym–’
But Joan was already sweeping out, Amphelisa’s cloak billowing around her. The soldiers followed, and the door slammed shut behind them.
For a moment, the only sounds were the growing roar of the flames below and footsteps thumping down the stairs. Then the Jacques released bellows of rage and ran at the door like bulls, kicking and pounding on it with all their might. But the wood was thick, and Bartholomew knew it would never yield to an assault, no matter how determined. The other adults began to wrap cloaks and hats around their faces and those of the children.
‘Tangmer!’ shouted Bartholomew. ‘Is there another way out?’