For inside the apparent ruin stood a huge, stately hall with a high ceiling. The light from candelabras and torches in iron cressets accentuated the frescos on the bare walls portraying religious and knightly scenes. There was Percival, kneeling before the Holy Grail, and Moses, carrying the stone tablets down from Mount Sinai, and Jesus, falling beneath the cross for the second time. Their Byzantine eyes gazed down upon the great round table and the knights in full armour and hooded cloaks sitting around it.

A huge wallcreeper flew in through the window on a gust of wind.

The bird wheeled around, casting a ghastly shadow on the frescos, and alighted, puffing up its feathers, on one of the chairs. It opened its beak and screeched, and before the sound had died away, not a bird but a knight was sitting on the chair, dressed in a cloak and hood, looking almost identical to the others.

“Adsumus,” the Wallcreeper intoned dully. “We are here, Lord, gathered in Your name. Come to us and be among us.”

“Adsumus,” the knights encircling the table repeated in unison. “Adsumus! Adsumus!”

The echo spread through the castle like a rumbling thunderclap, like the sound of distant battle, like the booming of a battering ram on a castle gate. And slowly faded among the tenebrous corridors.

“May the Lord be praised,” said the Wallcreeper, after the echo fell silent. “The day is at hand when all His foes will be reduced to dust. Woe betide them! That is why we are here!”

“Adsumus!”

“My brothers, providence is sending us another chance to smite the Lord’s foes and to beset the enemies of the faith,” the Wallcreeper intoned, lifting his head, his eyes gleaming with the reflected light of a flame. “The time has come to deliver the next blow! Remember this name, O brothers: Reinmar of Bielawa. Reinmar of Bielawa, called Reynevan. Listen…”

The hooded knights leaned in, listening. Jesus, falling beneath the cross, looked down on them from the fresco, and there was endless human suffering in his Byzantine eyes.

Chapter Three

In which there will be talk of things having apparently little in common with each other, such as hunting with falcons, the Piast dynasty, cabbage and peas, and Czech heresy. And also of a dispute about whether one should keep one’s word. And if so, when and regarding whom.

The ducal retinue made a long stop on a hillock above the River Oleśniczka, which wound its way among black alder wetlands, a copse of white birches and bright green meadows, looking down on the thatched roofs and smoke of the village of Borów. Not in order to rest, however, but rather to tire themselves out by indulging in lordly pursuits.