“Don’t you dare beat him!” Adèle called impotently as she was led down the stairs, now clothed, albeit incompletely. “Don’t you dare! Or I’ll tell everyone what you are like! That you courted me yourself, pawed me and tried to debauch me behind your brother’s back! That you swore vengeance on me if I spurned you! Which is why you are so… so…”

She couldn’t find the German word and the entire tirade fell apart. Wolfher just laughed.

“Verily!” he mocked. “People will listen to the Frenchwoman, the lewd strumpet. The bullwhip, Eagle Owl!”

The courtyard was suddenly awash with black Augustinian habits.

“What is happening here?” shouted the venerable Prior Erasmus Steinkeller, a bony and sallow old man. “Christians, what are you doing?”

“Begone!” bellowed Wolfher, cracking the bullwhip. “Begone, shaven-heads, hurry off to your prayer books! Don’t interfere in knightly affairs, or woe betide you, blackbacks!”

“Good Lord.” The prior put his liver-spotted hands together. “Forgive them, for they know not what they do. In nomine Patris, et Filii—”

“Morold, Wittich!” roared Wolfher. “Bring the harlot here! Jentsch, Dieter, bind her paramour!”

“Or perhaps,” snarled Stefan Rotkirch, another friend of the family who had been silent until then, “we’ll drag him behind a horse a little?”

“We could. But first, we’ll give him a flogging!”

Wolfher aimed a blow with the horsewhip at the still-prone Reynevan but did not connect, as his wrist was seized by Brother Innocent, nicknamed by his fellow friars “Brother Insolent,” whose impressive height and build were apparent despite his humble monkish stoop. His vicelike grip held Wolfher’s arm motionless.

Stercza swore coarsely, jerked himself away and gave the monk a hard shove. But he might as well have shoved the tower in Oleśnica Castle for all the effect it had. Brother Innocent didn’t budge an inch. He shoved Wolfher back, propelling him halfway across the courtyard and dumping him in a pile of muck.

For a moment, there was silence. And then they all rushed the huge monk. Eagle Owl, the first to attack, was punched in the teeth and tumbled across the sand. Morold of Stercza took a thump to the ear and staggered off to one side, staring vacantly. The others swarmed over the Augustinian like ants, raining blows on the monk’s huge form. Brother Insolent retaliated just as savagely and in a distinctly unchristian way, quite at odds with Saint Augustine’s rule of humility.

The sight enraged the old prior. He flushed like a beetroot, roared like a lion and rushed into the fray, striking left and right with heavy blows of his rosewood crucifix.

“Pax!” he bellowed as he struck. “Pax! Vobiscum! Love thy neighbour! Proximum tuum! Sicut te ipsum! Whoresons!”