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only added to this amazing man’s force.
    The man next to him was unfamiliar, never before seen in my dreams or my visitations. He was robed in white, too, but in a simple style, in the white wool robe of the Cistercian order. His cowl was pulled forward.
    As I watched, a tall, slender figure gradually took shape on the other side of this monk. His face became visible and my heart nearly stopped. It was Francis, garbed as a Cistercian, standing silently with a look of wonder on his face.
    Suddenly the mysterious monk pushed back his cowl and revealed his face. It was long and fleshy with a chin that jutted out, as if to invite battle. His eyes glittered and the reflection of light off his brow threw into relief the ruddy tone of his face, a contrast to the deep tan of the man beside him and to my son. He had a focused, rapacious expression and I shuddered when he casually placed his hand on Francis’s shoulder.
    Then the bronze-faced man swung a bell up once, strongly, and at the sound and with one accord all of the scarlet-robed men pulled the tapers from their holders, turned them upside down and plunged them into the dust with a final and vicious gesture of annihilation. The vision darkened and I fell back into my pillows.
    I lay there with my eyes closed for some time, captive to the echoes of the bell sound that had triggered the final eclipse of light. That sound seemed to recur in concert with a pulsing inside my head. Eventually both the sound and the throb receded and I was left to such peace as I could muster. I slept again, dreamless this time.
    And so my servants found me some hours later. Mignonne, who alone knew of my visitations, made excuses to the others for my dazed state, and fed me watered wine, which revived me. After that, I was able to take some brown bread and fruit sweetened with honey. And I came more into myself.
    I spent the morning quietly in my chambers, declining to join the king for his noonday dinner when he sent a note to summon me. I made an excuse of illness, although the ache in my head had ceased after I partook of some nourishment. Instead, I sat at my table, now reading some of the poetry from the south that I loved, now working in a desultory fashion at my charcoal and vellum, trying to draw the form of the fabulous birds who had flown around the room of my dreams.
    After I had little success with that task I found myself drawing what I could remember of the scene where the red-robed men plunged their tapers into the sand. I was captivated by the memory of the man with the flowing white hair, and the other man beside him, the one with the fleshy, venal face. Yes, his face was easy to recall. I had it in a couple of strokes. I looked at what I had drawn and was both attracted and repulsed by it. It was a face interested in power, and earthly pleasures. It was the face of strength, and perhaps the face of a killer. But why had this face been sent to me? And what place had Francis in the company of such men? And who or what was to be extinguished? For that was the clear meaning of their ceremony.
    I rose and walked to the window for air, tossing the drawings under other scrolls so that Mignonne would not see them when she came in with my bath. My small black cat, Minuit, rubbed against my leg, but I was in no mood for play. I waited. Suddenly a strong urge rose, an inner voice commanding me to leave my chamber.
    What moved me I cannot say. These restless feelings sometimes came over me. I accepted these callings just as I accepted that my left hand had been withered from birth, and that I was specially marked in some way. Some said I had the gift of second sight. Not as a witch, as sometimes the Parisian court whispered, but still there were things about myself even I did not understand. Odd dreams, visions, inner movements that gave me direction, such as the one I felt now to go to the highest point of the castle. My feet flew along the hall to the towerat the end, and I climbed the