Thomas feels the knife prick his skin, but he no longer cares. If he is to die then let it be now, and let it be quick. He brings his wooden clog crashing down on the toe of Riven’s boot. Riven roars and Thomas turns and crashes his elbow into his open mouth. Riven tumbles back, his shirt open, the rosary beads sliding into the mud. Thomas bends to take them.

The giant starts towards him.

‘Stop!’ It is the Prior, his arms raised, his voice high with emotion. ‘Stop in the name of God! Stop in the name of all that is sacred!’

Without breaking stride the giant chops him in the face with the back of his hand. The Prior collapses and the giant kicks his body aside like a child’s plaything and advances on Thomas.

Thomas stands a moment before finally doing as the Dean instructed. He tucks the beads away and turns and runs for the cloister roof, hauling himself scrabbling up across the slates.

‘Kill him!’ he hears Riven scream, and he feels the giant’s fingers on his cassock. He kicks out and pulls free. The giant tries again but misses and Thomas scrambles away, up over the roof of the refectory with a clatter of his clogs, the tiles warm beneath his palms, and then down heavily in the yard. He staggers to his feet.

Through the door behind him he can hear the crash of someone running through the frater house. He unbars the beggars’ gate and hurries through. The rain has softened the ground, and the millwheel is turning again. Smoke rises from blackened circles where Riven’s men lit cooking fires the night before, but they’ve moved on and now the furlong is deserted save for two of the lay brethren, shovelling something down by the river’s bank by the ford.

Thomas stops. Where to? He cannot think. He turns and the giant is in the yard, ducking through the gateway after him, moving fast on his bare feet, that great axe still in his hand. Thomas catches a glimpse of someone moving down by the river, near the mill, where the ferryman’s lighter lies still upturned on the bank. He cuts that way.

‘Help!’ he shouts. ‘Help me! Jesus!’

Whomsoever he’d seen there is gone now or maybe had always been a flit of his imagination. He grabs the lighter. It is a rough-built, flat-bottomed thing, turned over, and heavier than he’d thought. He bends and tries to right it, but isn’t strong enough. He looks for the ferryman’s boat pole: if he cannot use it to lever the boat over, then at least he can use it as a weapon.

The giant comes on.

The pole is nowhere to be found.

There is nothing for it.

He turns and faces the giant.

‘Why?’ he shouts. ‘Why me?’