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about raising what aid I can for my old order.’ He inhaled deeply, thrusting his chest out in pride. ‘Nicholas, you are looking at two of the finest knights of the venerable Order of St John. Knights Hospitaller. Crusaders.’
    The very words, so strange and antique, thrilled Nicholas to the bone.
    ‘This,’ he said, indicating the fairhead, ‘is Sir Edward Stanley, Knight Grand Cross. And this is Sir John Smith, likewise Knight Grand Cross. Knights of St John of Malta, warriors of Christ, and among the most courageous and chivalrous soldiers in all Europe.’
    Blackbeard – John Smith – remained expressionless. Stanley smiled faintly and looked at his boots.
    ‘I speak the truth,’ cried Sir Francis, clapping his hands on their shoulders like a proud father. ‘The Last Crusaders in Christendom!’
    They clasped hands, and without another word, the two rode away into the night.
    Nicholas was nearly bursting with questions. He had never known half the truth about his father’s long life before he was born.
    Ingoldsby saw his youthful eagerness and gave a great loud bark of a laugh.
    ‘Ha! So you never thought your rheumy, crabbed old sire was once a young gallant who fought like the Lionheart himself against the Saracens, eh? Eh? Ha!’ And he took up his sheathed sword and began to thwack Nicholas on the back and legs with it.
    ‘Ay!’ yelped Nicholas. ‘Ow!’ The thwacks were hefty.
    ‘Ha! Have at thee, thou swart infidel!’
    His father was moonstruck, an aged knight suddenly thinking he was on the battlefield once more.
    Nicholas ran upstairs.
    ‘Tomorrow, boy!’ his father roared after him, still swinging his sheathed sword dangerously around the narrow hallway. ‘I’ll tell thee more about the youthful battles and travails of your aged sire! There’s tales will make your lilywhite ears burn!’
    A door opened above and a female voice hissed angrily, ‘Ssshhh! You’ll wake the whole household with your noise and rumpus!’
    It was Mistress Copstick, the housekeeper.
    After that there was no more noise. Even old Ingoldsby himself, slayer of Saracens, was afraid of Mistress Copstick.

4
     
    It was Hodge who came running, red-faced, saying there were soldiers riding down the hill towards the village. Nicholas’s younger sister Susan, already something of a scold at thirteen, flicked him with her cleaning cloth and told him not to be such a clodpoll. What would soldiers want with a village like this?
    She stared at her brother.
    ‘Unless … it’s to do with those strangers last night.’
    Nicholas froze.
    His father was in his library.
    ‘It’s true I tell you!’ cried Hodge. ‘And that Gervase Crake riding at the head of ’em.’
    ‘Crake?’ said Nicholas sharply.
    Hodge nodded. ‘Lookin’ as proud as a peacock too, the lubbock.’
    Gervase Crake. Local landowner, sycophant and cheat. Tax gatherer, informer and liar. Of puritan tendencies, but careful not to let his private convictions get in the way of his ascent to wealth and power. With friends in high places, and correspondent even with Lord Cecil himself, down in London, it was whispered. Above all, he was Justice of the Peace and Lord of the Hundred, and thus responsible for upholding the law throughout the neighbourhood. And he held some ancient grudge against his father – as he did against so many.
    Nicholas suddenly felt very, very afraid.
    He ran up to the top field and peered over the hedge. In the grey October morning, there gleamed the breastplates of a dozenscruffy-looking mounted men. Not soldiers, surely, but armed hire-lings. At their head, lean and small, hunched and gimlet-eyed on his grey nag, Gervase Crake.
    Nicholas dashed back down the hill.
    ‘Hodge! You haven’t – talked, have you?’
    ‘I kept as mute as a mouse!’ said the startled Hodge, flushing with anger.
    He ordered Hodge inside with the other servants and was just knocking on his father’s library door, when the farmyard was filled with the