“This painting,” he continued, “is considered a true likeness of the Mother of God. It is reputedly the work of the first icon painter, Luke the Evangelist, supposedly painted on a board from the Holy Family’s table. That explains its remarkable wondrousness and determines its immense value as a relic. And as a symbol. A symbol of the light of faith and the power of the Cross. A symbol of the strength of the spirit of the nation, its spiritual unity and its faith. Its steadfast faith, which will help the nation to ride out every calamity and will save its spirit in the most troubling of times. Symbols are important. Very important.

“The Holy Mother inspired me. She showed me the way and taught me what to do. And there will be no Polish intervention in Silesia. Polish help for the Czech heretics will cease. Heretical indoctrination will stop, heretical miasmas will stop poisoning Polish souls. The Czech Hussites and their Polish henchmen will become hated and reviled by all Poles, from the king down to the meanest serf. They will be hated as servants of the Antichrist. For only the hordes of the Antichrist raise their iconoclastic hands to strike symbols. And mutilate them hideously.”

The bishop bent over and picked up Ostrog’s dussack from the ground.

“I shall take this sin on my conscience. For my faith and for the fatherland. For the peace of God. For the future. Ad maiorem Dei gloriam.”

Heedless of Reynevan’s groans and his desperate attempts to crawl over and impede him, Zbigniew Oleśnicki hewed the painted boards twice with the dussack. Twice, hard and deep. Across the Holy Virgin’s right cheek. Parallel with the line of her nose.

Reynevan saw no more. He plunged into the chasm.

And fell for a long time.

He came to, covered in bandages, lying on sacks of straw in the back of a trundling wagon. The roadside elderflowers smelled so springlike that for a moment he thought he had gone back in time or that everything he had lived through during the previous two years had been a dream. That it was May 1428 and he was being carried, wounded, to the hospital in Oława. And that Jutta, alive and loving, was waiting at the Poor Clare convent in White Church.

But it wasn’t a dream, nor a journey back in time. He was in manacles and fetters. And the soldiers riding alongside the wagon were talking in Polish.

He raised himself up onto an elbow with difficulty and realised that his whole body was sore and pulled tight from the sutures. He saw a hill lit by the setting sun. And a stone castle on top of it, a veritable eagle’s nest, crowned by the column of a keep.

“Where…” he said, overcoming his dry throat. “Where are… you taking me?”