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“Take a little more beer, comrade,” he said. “Never a rabbit ran more bravely.”

The fugitive sulked under their attentive and jeering faces.

“Go to perdition,” he retorted. “It was fifty to one, there, in the woods. Messire Gaillard must hear of it. You will all be very brave, sirs, when these devils begin to shoot at you from behind a hundred trees.”

Gaillard heard of it soon enough, as did Etoile, and Peter of Savoy. Barnabo had been waylaid in the woods that morning, and the pole-cats had clawed him off his mule. For no man was more hated than Dan Barnabo in those parts, a hard, shrewd man who held many benefices, and saw that his steward ground out the dues. The Italian could not speak ten words in the vulgar tongue. His ministrations would have been ridiculous had he ever troubled his soul about the people. It was told that a woman had once waylaid Barnabo, and demanded to be shriven. The Italian had understood nothing of what she said to him, but since she was pretty and importunate, he had created a scandal by misunderstanding her whole desire, and by seeking to comfort her in a fashion that was not fatherly. The woman had scratched Barnabo’s face. There were many people who had lusted to scarify him more viciously. Barnabo baptised no children, sought out none of the sick, buried none of the dead. Twice a year perhaps he had said mass in the churches that belonged to him. Few of the people had come to hear Barnabo’s Roman voice. He was a better lute player and lap-dog than priest, and the people knew it.