Beside him, behind the fence, stood a boy of about six in a felt cap and a blouse reaching halfway down his calves, tied around his waist with twine.

“Psst! To the cheese store, m’lord… The cheese store… Yonder!”

He looked where the boy was pointing. A stone’s throw away was a rectangular wooden construction, a kind of booth with a pointed shingle roof, raised more than five yards above the ground on four sturdy posts. The structure looked more like a large dovecote than a cheese store, but above all, it resembled a trap without an exit.

“To the cheese store,” urged the boy. “Quickly… You can hide in it—”

“That?”

“Aye. We always hide there,” he lisped.

Reynevan didn’t debate the point, particularly since someone whistled nearby, and a loud sneeze and stamp of a horse’s hoof heralded the approach of the snivelling Rotkirch. Fortunately, Rotkirch rode straight into a goose shed and the birds began squawking raucously. Reynevan knew that this was the moment. He ran, bent over, beside the wattle fence and reached the cheese store. And froze. There was no ladder and no way of clambering up the smooth oaken posts.

Cursing his stupidity under his breath, he was about to continue running when he heard a soft hiss, and a knotted rope descended like a snake from an opening above him. Reynevan seized the rope with his hands and feet and climbed up it in a flash, to find himself in a gloomy, stuffy space permeated by the smell of old cheese. The person who had let the rope down and helped him climb inside was the goliard in the red jerkin and tailed hood. The same one who had just read out the Hussite declaration.

“Hush,” he whispered, putting a finger to his lips. “Be quiet, m’lord.”

“Is it—”

“Safe here? It is. We always hide in here.”

Reynevan might have tried to ascertain why, if they hid there so regularly, they weren’t regularly found, but there wasn’t enough time. A sneezing Rotkirch rode right past the cheese store without giving the building a second glance.

“You are Reinmar of Bielawa,” said the goliard in the gloom. “Brother of Piotr, who was murdered in Balbinów.”

“Correct,” Reynevan replied. “And you are hiding here out of fear of the Inquisition.”

“Correct,” the goliard confirmed. “What I read in the tavern… The Articles—”

“I know what those articles were. But the men who just arrived are not the Inquisition.”

“Could have been, though.”

“Indeed. And it looks as though you have protectors. But you hid, nonetheless.”

“And didn’t you?”