“I’ll find out everything, anyhow,” she said and looked him straight in the eyes. “Everything. Every detail. But I wouldn’t like to see you on the scaffold.”

“I’m glad they didn’t catch you, then.”

“They didn’t have a chance.”

“M’lady.” The esquire turned around and coughed into his fist. “Have mercy…”

“Farewell, Aucassin.”

“Farewell to you, Nicolette.”

Chapter Twenty

In which the old truth is confirmed once again that when all’s said and done, you can always rely on old university friends.

“You know, Reynevan,” said Heinrich Hackeborn, “it is generally believed that the source of all the misfortune that befalls you is that Frenchwoman, Adèle of Stercza.”

Reynevan didn’t react to this very original statement. His lower back was itching and there was no way he could scratch it with both his hands tied at the wrists and his elbows held against his sides by a leather strap. Hooves clattered as the party’s horses rode along the bumpy road. The bowmen were swaying drowsily in the saddle.

He had been locked up for three days in the tower of Ziębice Castle, but he was a long way from losing heart. For although he had been imprisoned, he wasn’t being beaten and was fed every day, even if the rations were meagre and dull. He had got out of the habit of eating recently and was pleased to be back into it.

Sleep had been more difficult to come by, and not just because of the huge fleas infesting the straw. Each time he closed his eyes, he saw Peterlin’s white, pockmarked face. Or Adèle and Jan of Ziębice, in various configurations. He didn’t know which was worse.

The barred window in the thick wall offered a tiny patch of sky, but Reynevan hovered around the alcove, clutching the grating, full of hope that any moment he would hear Scharley climbing like a spider with a file in his teeth. Or watched the door, dreaming that any moment it would fly from its hinges under a blow of Samson’s mighty shoulder. Justified faith in his friends’ omnipotence was keeping his spirits up.

No rescue was forthcoming, however. Early in the morning of the fourth day, he was dragged from his cell, bound and put on a horse. He left Ziębice through the Paczków Gate, escorted by four mounted crossbowmen, an esquire and a knight in full armour with a shield bearing the eight-pointed star of the Hackeborns.

“Everybody says that humping that Frenchwoman was your downfall,” Heinrich Hackeborn went on.

Reynevan didn’t reply that time, either, but he couldn’t help nodding his head pensively.