“Tom’s long gone. Five minutes or more. We need to get clear before the archbishop gets his head together and has us taken. Their constable has gathered twenty men-at-arms and he’ll have more, no doubt.” Gavin was fussing with his mount’s girth.

“Gavin, I have totally misplayed this.” Gabriel found himself staring at Nell, who was handing him his reins.

“Tell me another time. In the name of God, get on the horse.” Gavin suited action to word and got his armoured leg across. “Have I mentioned what an idiot you are?”

Nell grinned, and vaulted onto her own rouncy. “Toby rode with the knights,” she said.

The box—barriers on three sides—protected them from view, at least for a moment.

“Come on!” shouted Gavin.

“Amicia’s—”

Gavin put the spurs to his horse and rode out of the box, headed east into the smoke.

Gabriel turned to his page. “I’m going for Sister Amicia,” he said.

She nodded—and drew her sword.

Gabriel smiled. “God bless you,” he said. He didn’t even think about it.

Nell followed him as he turned south, towards the stands. The archbishop was in the middle of a knot of armoured men, and being moved—quickly—to the north, out of the smoke. Thousands of men and women and children were running, but the space of the lists themselves, because of the barriers, was mostly clear, and Gabriel rode along the lists, over his fallen enemy’s forgotten corpse, and towards where he could feel the pulse of Amicia’s working.

There was shouting behind them. Armoured men on horseback had noticed them.

Nell pointed. “Black and yellow coat armour,” she shouted.

Gabriel wished he was not in harness, or on a war horse. But Ataelus was the best big horse he’d ever known, and he put on a pretty burst of speed—a tremendous spurt for a heavy horse—and they rode around the end of the wreckage of the stands. There was a crowd—a thick crowd, perhaps a thousand people. Bodies lay on blankets, and there were men—and women and children—in blood-soaked bandages, a long line leading to a small circle—

“She went into the fire!” said an old woman. “She’s a living saint, sent by God himself!”

A hundred people were on their knees. Others collected the injured—and the dead.

They were not just the dead of the collapse of the wooden stands, either. Here was a young boy with a heavy war arrow that had ripped his soft flesh, and there, a toddler trampled to death by panicked people. Her mother had her in her arms and raised her to Gabriel.

“I stepped on her—oh, Jesus save me, I stepped on her, and she’s dead.” She had the misery in her voice of the inconsolable.

A man shouted, “Soldiers coming!”

A woman screamed.