“I am content,” said Stephen. “This does well.You, gentlemen, bear it in mind, and see to it you keepfaith.” His blue, bright gaze swept over them both with thelike broad, impersonal warning. Neither face meant anything to him,not even to which faction they belonged. Probably he had never seeneither of them before, and would forget their faces as soon as heturned his back on them.

“Then I will put the case also to the lady,” saidRoger de Clinton, “and declare terms when we gather tomorrowmorning.”

“Do so, with my goodwill!” said the king heartily,and strode away towards the groom who was holding his horse withinthe gate.

The lady, Cadfael observed when he looked again towards thedoorway of the guesthall, had already withdrawn her aloof anddisdainful presence from the scene, and retired to her ownapartments within.

Yves fumed his way in black silence to theirlodging in one of the pilgrim houses within the precinct, half in aboy’s chagrin at being chastened in public, half in aman’s serious rage at having to relinquish his quarrel.

“Why should you fret?” Hugh argued sensibly,humouring the boy but warily considering the man. “De Soulis,if that was de Soulis, has had his ears clipped, too. There’sno denying it was you began it, but he was nothing loth to spityou, if he could have done it. Now you’ve brought about yourown deprivation. You might have known the Church would take itbadly having swords drawn here on their ground.”

“I did know it,” Yves admitted grudgingly, “ifI’d ever stopped to think. But the sight of him, stridingaround as if in his own castle wards… I never thought hewould show here. Good God, what must she feel, seeing him sobrazen, and the wrong he has done her! She favoured him, she gavehim office!”