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The body with the black face was still twisting to and fro as a joint twists on a spit before the fire. The arms had been pinioned, and the man’s tongue been drawn out, and the head of an arrow thrust through it. The face could scarcely be recognised, but by the clothes Gaillard knew him for Dan Barnabo, the Italian, lutanist, lover, spoiler of the poor.

Gaillard touched the body. It was still warm. His men were crowding in, peering over each other’s shoulders so that the doorway was full of faces, shields, and swords.

Gaillard waved them back. He swung his sword, struck at the rope that held Barnabo, and cut it so cleanly that the body came down upon its feet. For a moment it stood, poised there, before falling forward to hide its black face in the rushes.

Gaillard looked at it a little contemptuously, thinking of Etoile, and the rivalry between her and this thing that had been a man.

“Only fools come by such a death,” he said. “A dog’s death. This man had a woman’s hands.”

Dusk was falling, and Gaillard and his men settled themselves to pass the night in dead Barnabo’s house under the oak trees. Gaillard, who did not trouble himself about such a thing as a “crowner’s quest,” had the two bodies buried in the garden at the foot of a holly tree. Waleran de Monceaux had hanged Barnabo, and the priest was not pretty to look at with his black face and his swollen tongue. Nor was Gaillard going to quarrel with so convenient a coincidence. He called his archers back out of the woods, posted two sentinels, had the horses brought in and stabled in the hall. A fire was lit on the hearth, and the men gathered round it, and opened their wallets for supper.