Because the builders had been mixing mortar there, the earth was rich with lime. The child was thus in an advanced state of decay. And yet, Annie clutched the rotting thing to her bare bosom as if it still lived and might take nourishment.

“You see? You see?” she cried up at the horrified farmers. “He was trying to get out. Tick-tick, tick-tick. I heard him. He was trying to come back to me all along.”

As I looked from her wild face to the faces staring down at her, I knew I must act at once. Thus I began to spread my story about the plot of the Jews.

It was some months prior to this that the murder of the child was first proposed to me. Anselm himself summoned me from my bed in the hour after Lauds and led me without a word across the silent cloisters to his lodging. There, seated at a table in one corner, was a man I had never seen before. He was outfitted as a brother of the Knights Templar, of whom I had then only heard reports from the pilgrims returning from outremer. But I recognized the red mantle and the gules cross blazoned on his robe.

Before him, on the abbot’s table, was a small brazier with a cauldron set upon it. The steam from the boiling liquid within wreathed the templar’s face in mist, the glow of the coals gave a fiery cast to his long, melancholy features. This was my first view of William, who had but lately returned from Jerusalem.

As I make no confession, I make no excuses either. The moment the three of us were seated at the table, I knew it was a dark business. The fact was revealed by our lowered voices and huddled postures, our faces leaning together over the steaming cauldron. The mist with its thick, sour smell and the unholy glow rising around us seemed to me even then the visible token—the aura—of a bloody conspiracy.

The blacks of William’s eyes were gleaming as he pressed in towards me. “Tell me,” he murmured in his low, oily tone. “Why did you become a monk?”

I explained briefly that I had been brought to the abbey in my eighth year, had been raised and schooled there and had known little else.

“And yet you received the tonsure as a man,” he said. “You freely took the vows of poverty and of obedience”.

“I did,” I said.

“And of chastity,” said he.

I averted my eyes from him. “Of chastity too.”

“A life dedicated to labour and prayer. In the hope surely of an eternal life of joy hereafter.”

“It is written that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish but have everlasting life,” I replied cautiously.

At this, William only nodded.