“Indeed.” The swarthy man sneered knowingly. “Why not? I wonder.”

Konrad Kantner cleared his throat loudly. Barfuss pretended that all his attention was taken up with cabbage and peas while Maciej Korzbok bit his lip and nodded grimly.

“It is true,” the swarthy man admitted, “that the Holy Roman Emperor has more than once shown he is no friend of the Polish kingdom. Yet I can vouch that every Greater Pole will come to the defence of the faith—but only if Sigismund guarantees that no Teutonic Knights or Brandenburgians will attack us as we march south. And how can he give such a guarantee if he is scheming with them to divide Poland up? Am I right, Duke Konrad?”

“Why are we prattling on about this?” Kantner’s smile lacked sincerity. “We politick unduly, and politics is an ill partner for vittles. Which, incidentally, grow cold.”

“But we ought to talk of this,” protested Jan Nejedlý, to the delight of the younger knights, whom two pots had reached almost untouched by the loquacious magnates. Their delight was premature, however, for the magnates proved they could talk and eat simultaneously.

“Please observe, m’lords,” the prior from Saint Clement’s continued while devouring the cabbage, “it is not only a Czech matter, this Wycliffite plague. The Czechs—whom I know—are liable to come here, too, as they did to Moravia and Austria. They may come after you, gentlemen. All of you, sitting here.”

“Pshaw.” Kantner pouted, poking his spoon around in the bowl in search of scraps of meat. “I don’t believe that.”

“I even less,” said Maciej Korzbok, snorting beery foam. “It would be a long march to Poznań to find us.”

“And to Lubusz and Fürstenwalde,” said Melchior Barfuss, his mouth full. “Blow that, I fear them not.”

“And rightly so,” added the duke with an unpleasant sneer, “given that the Czechs will be receiving guests before they can pay anyone else a visit. Particularly now they’ve lost Žižka, I think the Czechs can expect their guests any day.”

“A crusade?” Korzbok said. “You know something, Your Grace?”

“Not at all,” replied Kantner, while his expression suggested quite the opposite. “I’m simply pondering. Innkeeper! Ale!”

Reynevan slipped noiselessly out into the courtyard, from there behind the pigsties and then into some bushes beyond the vegetable patch. After relieving himself and before returning to the chamber, he went outside the gate and gazed for a while along the highway, which was vanishing in a blue haze. He felt reassured not to see the Stercza brothers galloping towards him.

Adèle, he suddenly thought, Adèle is not at all safe with the Cistercian nuns in Ligota. I ought…

I ought. But I’m afraid. Of what the Sterczas might do to me. Of what they are talking about doing in such detail.