He had no need to raise his voice to a shout, he had only to unsheathe itlike a knife, and it sliced through the babble as through cheese. They recoiledas though his nearness seared, but they did not go far, only out of range ofthe burning. They hopped and hovered and clamoured, indignant, aggrieved, butwary of tempting Heaven. They drew off from a miserable fragment of a man, flaton his face up the altar steps, soiled and crumpled and bloodied, and no biggerthan a boy fifteen years old. In the brief, daunted silence before theyscreamed their charge against him, every soul present could hear how his breathheaved and laboured and clapped in his ribs, toiling for dear life, threateningto break his meagre frame apart. Flaxen hair dabbled with dust and bloodspilled against the fringes of the altar-cloth he gripped so frantically.Skinny arms and legs hugged the stone as if his life depended upon the contact.If he could speak, or lift his head, he had too much sense left in him toventure the attempt.

“How dare you so affront the house of God?” demanded the abbot, darklysmouldering. He had not missed the steely flash of reflected light in the handof one squat fellow who was sliding roundabout to get at his victim privily. “Putup that knife or court your soul’s damnation!”

The hunters recovered breath and rage together. A dozen at least gavetongue, crying their own justification and the hunted man’s offences, sovariously that barely a word conveyed any meaning. Radulfus brandished adaunting arm, and their clamour subsided into muttering. Cadfael, observingthat the armed man had done no more than slide his weapon out of sight, tookhis stand firmly between, and advanced his candles with a flourish in thedirection of a fine bushy beard.

“Speak one, if you have anything of worth to say,” ordered the abbot. “Therest be silent. You, young man, you would seem to put yourself forward…”