The archbishop ordered Corcy’s sons hanged. De Vrailly remanded the order. The archbishop sat and dictated a dispatch, claiming victory as that they held the battlefield, and denouncing the Queen as a whore and strumpet who was spreading a false rumour that she’d born an heir.

De Vrailly made himself as distant as he could. The routiers were happy enough to burn Picton, but the Gallish knights were drawing away, in body, from the archbishop.

When the archbishop slept, de Vrailly summoned a herald and sent him to the Red Knight, at Lorica.

Then he went to his pavilion, where his squires had already laid out his plain bed and his prie-dieu with the triptych of the Virgin, Saint Gabriel and Saint Michael. He poured a cup of water from a magnificently ornate gold and crystal bottle on a shelf in the prie-dieu, blessed himself, and placed the cup carefully behind the flange that covered the inside of his right knee.

He knelt for a long time, in his harness, without even a single candle. His knees ached, and he ignored them. He ignored the feeling that his greave tops and his knee articulation were cutting gradually through his padded hose.

Pain is penance.

Come, beautiful angel. I have things to ask and say.

The pain continued, and so did the darkness. From time to time his meditations were broken—outside, he heard Jehan, his squire, trying to explain to the Corcy boys that he had saved their lives and that they should be grateful for being alive.

The archbishop’s tempers were infantile.

De Vrailly thought of the figure of the Queen, seen in the distance, riding across the hillside, the banner streaming behind her. It had moved him, at some point beyond simple decisions.

So easy to believe that she is a witch.

He thought of the King—his friend. In many ways, his closest friend. No man in Galle had ever been so close to him.

I failed to protect him.

I never even saw the arrow, because I was sulking in my tent—because I was ensorcelled.

His rage grew.

His hands began to shake, and an unaccustomed heaviness grew in his throat and chest.

And then the angel manifested.

He hovered above de Vrailly’s head, his fair form shining almost perfectly gold, his robes a paler white gold and his armour paler yet. In his right hand was a heavy spear, and his left hand held a small round shield with the cross in stark black.

You called for me, my knight.

De Vrailly looked at the angel and struggled for his rage and his belief.

We were tricked by the vile sorceress, and thwarted. But all is well, my knight. All is as it should be. Today, you will defeat the Queen’s army and her cause will collapse. You will kill her champion—