His cry achieved its effect, although not the way he had intended. Wolfher and Wittich, momentarily forgetting their adulterous sister-in-law, pounced on Reynevan, raining down a hail of punches and kicks on the boy. He cowered under the blows, but rather than defend or protect himself, he stubbornly pulled on his trousers as though they were some kind of magical armour. Out of the corner of one eye, he saw Wittich drawing a knife. Adèle screamed.

“Don’t,” Wolfher snapped at his brother. “Not here!”

Reynevan managed to get onto his knees. Wittich, face white with fury, jumped at him and punched him, throwing him to the floor again. Adèle let out a piercing scream which broke off as Morold struck her in the face and pulled her hair.

“Don’t you dare…” Reynevan groaned “… hit her, you scoundrels!”

“Bastard!” yelled Wittich. “Just you wait!”

Wittich leaped forward, punched and kicked once and twice. Wolfher stopped him at the third.

“Not here,” Wolfher repeated calmly, but it was a baleful calm. “Into the courtyard with him. We’ll take him to Bierutów. That slut, too.”

“I’m innocent!” wailed Adèle of Stercza. “He bewitched me! Enchanted me! He’s a sorcerer! Sorcier! Diab—”

Morold silenced her with another punch. “Hold your tongue, trollop,” he growled. “You’ll get the chance to scream. Just wait a while.”

“Don’t you dare hit her!” yelled Reynevan.

“We’ll give you a chance to scream, too, little rooster,” Wolfher added, still menacingly calm. “Come on, out with him.”

The Stercza brothers threw Reynevan down the garret’s steep stairs and the boy tumbled onto the landing, splintering part of the wooden balustrade. Before he could get up, they seized him again and threw him out into the courtyard, onto sand strewn with steaming piles of horse shit.

“Well, well, well,” said Nicolaus of Stercza, the youngest of the brothers, barely a stripling, who was holding the horses. “Look who’s stopped by. Could it be Reinmar of Bielawa?”

“The scholarly braggart Bielawa,” snorted Jentsch of Knobelsdorf, known as Eagle Owl, a comrade and relative of the Sterczas. “The arrogant know-all Bielawa!”

“Shitty poet,” added Dieter Haxt, another friend of the family. “Bloody Abélard!”

“And to prove to him we’re well read, too,” said Wolfher as he descended the stairs, “we’ll do to him what they did to Abélard when he was caught with Héloïse. Well, Bielawa? How do you fancy being a capon?”

“Go fuck yourself, Stercza.”

“What? What?” Although it seemed impossible, Wolfher Stercza had turned even paler. “The rooster still has the audacity to open his beak? To crow? The bullwhip, Jentsch!”