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reached up to his throat, unhooking his cloak. He threw it off. Beneath it he wore the blood-red uniform of the Bishop’s Guard.
    Phillipe froze, as other men began to rise from the tables, removing their cloaks. The regular patrons sat numbly, their faces taut with fear. Their strange behavior suddenly made perfect sense to him, now that it was too late. More than a dozen guardsmen had surrounded him, silently drawing their swords. A small curse escaped him as he watched Jehan rise from a dice game near the fire with the Captain of the Guard at his side.
    “If you’d stuck to the woods you might have stood a chance, Gaston,” Marquet said.
    “You’re right,” Phillipe said miserably. He stared at the half-eaten meal on a nearby table with a kind of desperate longing, before he cleared his throat. “That is . . . actually I was trying to find you, Captain.” Marquet stared blankly at him; he rushed on, stumbling over the words. “One of your men was cruelly murdered not far from here. But you’re in luck. I’m willing to exchange the name of his killer for a pardon from you.” Phillipe realized, hopelessly, that this time it even sounded unbelievable to him.
    Marquet glanced at Fornac. “Kill him,” he said.
    Fornac lunged forward with his sword out. Phillipe threw his drink into the guard’s eyes and dove under the nearest table, slipping away through the villagers’ legs like quicksilver.
    A group of guards rushed for the heavy table and turned it over, dumping food, plates, and pitchers heedlessly over the patrons and onto the ground. There was no one beneath it.
    “There he is!” Fornac shouted. Phillipe darted out from behind a man sitting at the next table—straight into the waiting arms of another guard.
    “Got him!”
    Phillipe squirmed wildly until he freed an arm. Planting a well-aimed elbow in the guard’s face, he broke away and disappeared back under the tables.
    The guards leaped after him, searching every corner, upending tables and hurling chairs aside in heedless anger, throwing the courtyard into pandemonium. Patrons screamed and ran; the guards forced them back as they tried to flee the yard. But Phillipe the Mouse seemed to have disappeared into thin air.
    A sudden silence fell, as Marquet glared with deadly intent from one frightened face to another. Then the silence was broken by a shriek from the edge of the courtyard. Phillipe crawled out from behind the voluminous woolen skirts of an immensely fat and immensely indignant middle-aged woman.
    “Purely unintentional, madam,” he gasped in apology. Looking frantically right and left, he faced the gauntlet of guards that waited between him and the gateway. This time there would be no escape. He was a dead man even if he surrendered. He pulled his dagger defiantly, unable to think of anything else to do, and leaped back into the crowd, struggling toward the entrance of the yard and freedom.
    Watching Phillipe’s progress, Marquet pushed through the patrons on a course of interception, as inevitable as night following day. A guard caught Phillipe’s arm just as Marquet arrived behind him, wrenching him around. Phillipe’s free dagger hand swung in a wide arc through the air—raking Marquet’s cheek with the tip of the blade.
    Marquet stopped dead in front of his prisoner, his face frozen in a mask of rage. Blood trickled down his jaw from the jagged scratch. His hand rose slowly, touched the blood, confirming the reality of the wound.
    Phillipe sagged in the guard’s grasp, equally aghast as he realized what he had done, and what it was going to mean for him. “I’m . . . so terribly sorry . . .” The words tumbled mindlessly out of his mouth.
    Marquet gestured to his men. Two of them jerked Phillipe back against a roof pole, pinning him there; a third raised his broadsword over their helpless prisoner. Marquet grinned, lifting his hand.
    Phillipe turned his face away, his eyes squeezed shut. “May God help me!” he