“I am searching for something,” Guy replied calmly. He was not sure how much danger he was in, but ever since he was a little boy, his father had told him: “In front of animals, or a mob, never show fear.”

“What is it you seek?”

“A gold pendant. It was on a chain. It is not of great value, but it was given to me by my grandmother just before she died, and for that reason I would not lose it for all the world.”

“But why do you come here, monsieur, to the tavern of the Rising Sun, where there are only honest men and poets?”

If there was some ironic humor in this, the young man ignored it.

“I saw the man who robbed me. I followed him. And I am sure he came in here.”

“No one has come through the door in the last hour, except yourself,” Le Sourd answered blandly. “Isn’t that right?” he asked the room, and forty throats echoed his sentiments, until Le Sourd raised his hand and they instantly fell silent.

Young Guy de Cygne let his gaze travel around the tavern. It was hard to see into the shadows.

“You will not mind, then, if I satisfy myself that the man I seek has not slipped in by some other entrance,” he replied coolly.

Le Sourd gazed at him. This young aristocrat might be a stranger, but he could not fail to realize that he was at their mercy. The cool effrontery, the reckless courage of the fellow appealed to the ruler of thieves.

“Please do so,” he said.

Guy de Cygne moved swiftly around the big room. He knew he might be about to die, but he could not go back now. In the shadows, he found the stooping man.

“This is him,” he said. “He’s tonsured like a priest, but this is him.” He’d heard there were cutpurses and other rogues in Paris who tonsured themselves in the hope of being tried by the protective Church courts instead of the harsher provost. He assumed this fellow must be one of them.

“Connard!” Le Sourd called out to the stooping man. “Let this gentleman search you.”

The stooping man submitted. Guy de Cygne found nothing.

“This man of God has been here all day,” declared Le Sourd. “But I can think of others in the quarter who resemble him. It must have been one of them.” He paused. And now his voice became soft and dangerous. “I hope you will not call me a liar, monsieur.”

Guy de Cygne had been made a fool of. He knew it and they knew it. But there could be no mistaking Le Sourd’s meaning: call him a liar in this den of iniquity, and he’d be dead.

Yet he must retain some honor.

“I have no reason to call you a liar,” he answered calmly. He moved carefully to a place where he could draw his sword and use it. If they attacked him, he could probably kill two or three before they brought him down. The men in the room noticed, but nobody moved.