The hooded woman smelling of rosemary caught Grajcarek by the sleeve and pushed him up against a wall, beyond a buttress by the baptismal chapel.

“What do you want?” she snapped. “What do you have that’s so desperately urgent? I told you not to meet me during the day. Never mind on a day like this.”

Grajcarek looked around, wiped sweat from his brow and licked his lips. The woman watched him attentively. The spy cleared his throat, opened his mouth and shut it again. And suddenly paled.

“Aha,” said the woman, guessing at once. “So the bishop has paid you more?”

The spy stepped back, shuddered, feeling the hard resistance of the wall against his spine, and tried to draw in the air a magical character with a trembling hand. The woman was on him. She punched him with a short movement. Then shoved him against the wall with her knee.

“A good Jew doesn’t betray,” she hissed. “You are a bad Jew, Grajcarek.”

A knife flashed, the spy choked and grabbed his throat with both hands, blood pumping between his fingers. The woman pulled his cloak over his head, knocked him to the ground and vanished into the crowd.

“Seize her!” yelled Kuczera of Hunt to his agent. “Seize heeeer!”

The crowd teemed.

Advenisti desiderabilis,

quem expectabamus in tenebris…

Burrowing into the crowd like a mole into the earth, one of the agents caught up with the woman and seized her arm. He saw yellow-green eyes. But had no time to scream as a knife flashed and severed his trachea and gullet. As another agent blocked the woman’s way, the crowd swayed and closed around them. The agent wailed, his eyes glazed over, but he didn’t fall, instead held upright as limp as a doll, suspended between Heaven and Earth in the throng. People began to shout and a young girl screamed shrilly as she tried to rub the blood from her white Sunday dress with stiff little hands. Kuczera of Hunt pushed his way through the crowd but found only dead bodies. Blood trodden into the cobbles. And the faint odour of rosemary.

Alleluia, alleluia!

The Resurrection procession was approaching the Holy Cross Collegiate Church.

“M’lord…” gibbered Father Felicjan, bending over in a bow. “You commanded me to inform… I am ready… May I speak?”

“You may.”

“So I will… It is like this, m’lord… There was a horse fair in Karłowice… They were trading horses—”

“Get to the point,” hissed the Wallcreeper. “Get to the point, damned priest. Slowly, clearly and to the point.”