The valley of the Biała led them straight into the Kłodzko valley, where they stopped to rest in a tavern outside the village of Żelazno. The wealth of taverns and inns wasn’t surprising since they were travelling along a trade route particularly popular with merchants wanting to avoid Kłodzko’s tolls on the way to Bohemia. Owing to the considerable height of the Krutvald Pass, the road was too arduous for laden-down wagons, but merchants carrying light loads often took that route. The company chose it for other reasons.

In the tavern in Żelazno, apart from merchants, travellers and in recent times war refugees, there was a group of goliards, troubadours and merry scholars making a lot of noise and disturbance. Rzehors and Bisclavret naturally couldn’t help themselves. It was too tempting. After telling a dozen obscene stories about the Pope, the Bishop of Wrocław and the clergy in general, a game of political riddles began.

“Why does the Roman Curia tend its sheep?” Rzehors asked.

“To fleece them!” the goliards shouted back, banging their mugs on the table.

“And now heed!” called Bisclavret. “This’ll be about the Roman hierarchy! Who’ll guess this? Virtus, ecclesia, clerus, diabolus! Cessat, calcatur, errat, regnat!”

“Virtue perishes,” the students deftly paired up the words. “The Church oppresses! The clergy goes astray! The Devil reigns!”

The innkeeper shook his head and several merchants ostentatiously turned their backs on them. The goliards’ amusement was clearly not to the liking of five travellers dressed in dull clothing at a table alongside, particularly a fellow with a complexion as dark as a Gypsy’s.

“Keep it down!” demanded the Dark Man finally. “Keep it down, there are others here! We can’t talk for your clamour!”

“Oho!” the goliards shouted back. “Hark at him! A peasant wishes to object! Well, well!”

“Enough, I said!” The swarthy man wasn’t giving up. “Enough easy manners!”

The goliards drowned him out with whistles and catcalls. They went on revelling, but now a little less exuberantly and with slightly lowered voices. Perhaps that’s why what happened, happened. Reynevan’s hearing wasn’t now dulled or drowned out by the laughter at foolish anecdotes about popes, anti-popes, bishops and priors, and he began to listen for other sounds and noises. All of a sudden, he began to pick out snatches of the five dull travellers’ conversation from the bedlam and pandemonium. There was something in their conversation that enticed his ear, some words, syntax, phrases. Or a name, perhaps? Not knowing why, Reynevan wetted a finger in his beer and drew on the tabletop the Supirre sign, which was used for eavesdropping. Feeling Samson’s astonished eyes on him, Reynevan traced over the sign with a dry finger, deliberately thickening the line. He began to hear more clearly at once.

“Might one ask,” Samson enquired gently, looking up from his whittling, “what you have in mind?”