Thomas wavers again, looks back to the priory, at the low clutch of stone buildings that huddle around the stump of the church’s tower. He sees the frater house roof leaking smoke into the pale sky and he wishes he were safe behind those walls again, readying himself for prime, perhaps, or even still asleep and dreaming again of the summer to come.

Curse the Prior. Curse him for waking him. Curse him for sending him on this errand.

And why? Why him? Why not this John who set the snare in the first place? Thomas is a scribe, an illuminator, not a lay brother, no longer some farm boy. He’d meant to pass that day applying leaf to one of the capitals, burnishing it with Brother Athelstan’s dog’s tooth tool. But now his fingers are like sausages.

This is the Prior’s design, of course. Thomas understands that. The Prior means to knock the pride from him. He said as much the night before, when he’d preached against the sin during supper. Thomas had felt the old man’s eye settle on him more than once during the meal, but had thought little of it. He hadn’t looked contrite enough; that was it. A lesson there.

He carries on to where the snow is deeper, undisturbed since it started falling the day after Martinmas this last year. He breaks through the snow crust up to his knees, stumbles, flounders. Soon he is sodden. On he goes, up the gentle slope until he is only a few footsteps from the tangled borders of the copse. It hurts to breathe. He peers through the lattice of unruly branches. He sees nothing, only darkness, but something is in there. Again the hair on his nape bristles. He raises his stick to hook aside a bough.

There is an explosion. A rattling boom. There is a cry, a tearing sound, the beating of wings. It comes at him, soot-black, straight at his face, at his eyes.

He bellows. He ducks, swings the staff, throws himself to the snow.

But the crow is gone before it is really there.

It flies off with a dismal caw.

Thomas’s heart is pounding. He hears himself blubbing, making no sense. When he gets to his knees, his hands are blue, his cassock quilted with snow.

The crow has settled on a snow-capped post by the dung heap.

‘Bastard bird!’ Thomas calls, shaking the staff. ‘Bastard bloody bird!’