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look like I’m doing?’
    ‘Oh, I see. You’re being punished.’
    ‘No, no, I enjoy it. I’m training to be a doorstep.’
    He snickers. His boots are covered in tallow and dried egg. They look enormous, from this angle.
    ‘How long do you have to do that?’ he asks.
    ‘Who knows? Probably until someone trips over me and breaks every bone in their body.’
    ‘I almost did. You’re hard to see, down there.’
    He moves away, and I can’t work out what he’s doing. There’s a clinking noise. And a scraping noise. And a squeaking noise like wet wool on metal. Is he cleaning something, by any chance?
    ‘Are you cleaning something, by any chance?’
    ‘Yes, I am.’ He sounds surprised. ‘How did you guess?’
    ‘It isn’t hard. People are always cleaning things in here. That Father Bernard must have been weaned on a pumice stone.’
    ‘Bernard Blancus?’
    ‘Is that what you call him?’
    ‘That’s what the monks call him. I don’t know what it means.’
    ‘It means he’s white.’
    ‘Oh.’ More vigorous squeaking, as if he’s rubbing something hard with a soft cloth. ‘It’s because there are so many Bernards,’ he says at last. ‘There’s the fat Bernard. He’s Bernard Magnus.’
    ‘Bernard the Big.’
    ‘And then there’s Bernard Surdellus. He’s the one in the refectory.’
    ‘Bernard the Deaf?’ I don’t believe it. ‘You mean he’s deaf, that Bernard?’
    ‘Yes. Didn’t you know?’
    ‘No, I didn’t.’ Thinking hard. ‘But then again, we never talk in the refectory. We always use signs. So how could I possibly have known?’
    He grunts, and falls silent. God, I’m so bored. If this goes on for much longer, I’ll end up chewing my way through the floor-tiles. Come on, somebody! I’ve learned my lesson!
    ‘What did you do?’ The servant, still squeaking away. ‘I mean, what did you do wrong?’
    ‘Nocturnal perambulation.’
    ‘What?’
    ‘Walking around at night.’
    ‘Oh.’ Pause. ‘Which way did you go?’
    ‘Pardon?’
    ‘Which way did you go? Were you going through the refectory?’ Shuffle, shuffle. Suddenly his feet are in 45 front of my nose again. ‘Because if you’re trying to get to the kitchens, at night, you should never go through the refectory. You should open the gate in the herb-garden wall – it’s barred from the inside – and walk all the way around. The circators never go out there.’
    Is that so? Well, well. ‘But what about the kitchen door? Surely that must be barred too?’
    ‘Yes. But if you knock three times, I’ll let you in.’ He squats down, and waves a damp rag smelling of rose oil in front of my face. ‘I’m the scullion. I sleep in the kitchens. My name is Roquefire.’
    Roquefire, eh? Pleased to meet you, Roquefire. ‘And my name is Pagan. But you’d better not stay down here, because if anyone comes in they’ll see you talking to me. And I’m not supposed to be talking.’
    Roquefire’s knees crack as he rises. I wish I had a better view of his face. I’m not sure that I’ll be able to recognise him again, if I have to do it from the toes of his boots.
    ‘I think I’ve heard about you,’ he declares suddenly. ‘You’re the one from Jerusalem.’
    ‘That’s right.’
    ‘And you killed Saladin’s uncle?’
    ‘No.’ (Where the hell did that come from?) ‘No, I was just a squire. A Templar squire.’
    ‘But they said you were in a monastery, too.’
    ‘Yes, when I was small. Then I ran away, and learned how to fight, and joined the local garrison.’ How long ago that seems! Like another lifetime. ‘I didn’t become a Templar until I was sixteen years old.’
    ‘You were smart.’ Roquefire’s voice is gruff but wistful. ‘You were smart, to run away. I don’t understand why you changed your mind. Why do you want to be a monk, when you could be a soldier?’
    Why? Because monks don’t kill people. They don’t kill people, and they don’t have to live with it afterwards. Finding the words to