“Naturally,” he blurted out. “It must. I was found guilty in advance. I’m a rapist, which was determined by the testimony of a person as credible as Notker Weyrach, a brigand and a bandit. Biberstein will order me executed as his daughter’s molester and rapist. Without giving me, naturally, the chance to defend myself. And the fact that I shall pale and blush by turns while being dragged to my death, protesting my innocence? Every rapist does the same. But who would lend credence?”

“You are so righteously and sincerely indignant that I almost do—”

“Almost?”

“Almost.”

She spurred on her mare and rode ahead. And waited for him. Watching him with a smile he couldn’t decipher.

“Faulbrück is up ahead.” She pointed to a church steeple sticking above the trees. “We shall stop here. I am hungry. And thirsty. Neither should you disdain the chance to drink, Reinmar. Carpe diem, my boy, carpe diem. Who knows what tomorrow may bring? And thus… let us make merry as my kinsman, the Bishop of Krakow, Zawisza of Kurozwęki, used to say. Does that surprise you? I am, know you, of the Greater Polish Topór coat of arms, related to the bearers of the Różyc. Spur on your horse, Sir Knight. Let us make merry.”

The Green Lady’s decisive movements, the way she held her head—proudly yet naturally—and particularly the way she drank—gracefully and easily, cup after cup—in all that, there was indeed something that brought to mind Zawisza of Kurozwęki. The Green Lady might, the suspicion grew somewhat in Reynevan’s mind, simply be confabulating regarding her consanguinity. A good five hundred families in Poland bore the Topór coat of arms, and all of them, as was normal in Poland, could prove all sorts of family ties. Kinship with the Bishop of Krakow paled in the face of the blood ties declared by some families with King Arthur, King Solomon and King Priam. But looking at the Green Lady, Reynevan couldn’t rid himself of associations with Zawisza, the now legendary hell-raising bishop. And other associations following on from them, for the bishop had died as a consequence of immoral desires—he had been battered to death by a father whose daughter he had tried to ravish. And the lecher’s soul had been transported straight to Hell by devils, calling in wild voices, heard by many: “Let us make merry!”

“I drink to you, Reinmar.”

“Your good health, madam.”