‘Whatever you believe, whatever you say, I think you are outnumbered,’ Lord Lucretili said in quiet triumph. ‘You can leave now safely, or you can face these madwomen. Just as you like. But I warn you, I think they are so crazed that they will tear you apart.’

The crowd of young women, more than two hundred of them, gathered closer to the coffin cart, one after the other, to see the icon that had been made of their innocent sister, and their sibilant whispers were like a thousand hissing snakes as they saw her lying there in her opened coffin, bathed in gold, and Freize standing above her like an abusing man – an emblem of all the wickedness of the world – with a crowbar in his hands.

‘This man is our enemy,’ the Lady Almoner told them, stepping away from him to put herself at the head of the women. ‘He is defending the false Lady Abbess, who killed our sister. He has broken into our sister’s consecrated coffin.’

The nuns’ faces turned towards her, their expressions blank, as if they were beyond words; and still the sibilant whispers went on.

‘They will do what is right,’ Luca gambled. He turned to the white-faced women, and tried to capture their attention. ‘Sisters, listen to me. Your Lady Abbess has been driven from her home and you have been driven half-mad by belladonna fed to you in bread from this woman’s table. Are you still so sick with the drug that you will be obedient to her? Or will you find your own way? Will you think for yourselves? Can you think for yourselves?’

There was a terrible silence. Luca could see the haunted faces of all the women staring blankly at him and for a moment he thought that they were indeed so sick from the drug that they would take him and Freize and Brother Peter and tear them to pieces. He took hold of the side of the cart with one hand, so that no-one could see it shaking, and he pointed his other hand at the Lady Almoner. ‘Get down from the cart,’ he said. ‘I am taking you to Rome to answer for your crimes against your sisters, against the Lady Abbess, and against God.’

She stayed where she was, high above him, and she looked at the nuns, whose faces turned obediently towards her. She said three short terrible words. ‘Sisters! Kill him!’

Luca whirled around, pulling his dagger from his boot, and Freize jumped down to stand alongside him. Brother Peter moved towards them, but in a second the three men were surrounded. The nuns, pale and dull-faced, formed themselves into an unbreakable circle, like a wall of coldness, took one step towards the three men, and then took another step closer.

‘St James the Greater protect me,’ Freize swore. He raised his crowbar, but the nuns neither flinched nor stopped their steady onward pace.

The first nun put her hand to her head, took hold of her wimple, and threw it down on the ground. Horridly, her shaven head made her look like neither man nor woman, but a strange being, some kind of hairless animal. Beside her the next nun did the same, then they all threw their wimples down showing their heads, some cropped, some shaven quite bald.

‘God help us!’ Luca whispered to his comrades on either side of him. ‘What are they doing?’

‘I think—’ Brother Peter began.

‘Traitor!’ the nuns whispered together, like a choir.

Luca looked desperately around, but there was no way to break out of the circle of women.

‘Traitor!’ they said again, more loudly. But now they were not looking at the men, they were looking over the men’s heads, upwards, to the Lady Almoner high on the hearse.

‘Traitor!’ they breathed again.

‘Not me!’ she said, her voice cracked with sudden fear. ‘These men are your enemies, and the witches who are fled.’

They shook their bald heads in one terrible movement, and now they closed on the cart and their grasping hands reached past the men, as if they were nothing, reached up to pull the Lady Almoner down. She looked from one sister to another, then at the locked gate and the porteress who stood before it, arms folded. ‘Traitor!’ they said and now they had hold of her robe, of her silk petticoats beneath her robe, and were pawing at her, shaking her gown, pulling at her, grasping hold of the fine leather belt of her rosary, gripping the gold chain of keys, bringing her to her knees.

She tore herself from their grip and jumped over the side of the cart to Luca, clinging to his arm. ‘Arrest me!’ she said with sudden urgency. ‘Arrest me and take me now. I confess. I am your prisoner. Protect me!’

‘I have this woman under arrest!’ Luca said clearly to the nuns. ‘She is my prisoner, in my charge. I will see that justice is done.’

‘Traitor!’ They were closing in steadily and fast; nothing could stop them.

‘Save me!’ she screamed in his ear.

Luca put his arm in front of her but the nuns were pressing forwards. ‘Freize! Get her out of here!’

Freize was pinned to the cart by a solid wall of women.

‘Giorgio!’ she called to Lord Lucretili. ‘Giorgio! Save me!’

He shook his head convulsively, like a man in a fit, flinching back from the mob of nuns.

‘I did it for you!’ she cried to him. ‘I did it all for you!’

He turned a hard face to Luca. ‘I don’t know what she’s saying, I don’t know what she means.’

The blank-faced women came closer, pressing against the men. Luca tried to gently push them away but it was like pushing against an avalanche of snow. They reached for the Lady Almoner with pinching hands.

‘No!’ Luca shouted. ‘I forbid it! She is under arrest. Let justice be done!’

The lord suddenly tore himself away from the scene, strode past them all to the stables, and came out at once on his red-leather caparisoned horse with his men-at-arms closed up around him. ‘Open the gate,’ he ordered the porteress. ‘Open the gate or I will ride you down.’

Mutely she swung it open. The nuns did not even turn their heads as his cavalcade flung themselves through the gate and away down the road to his castle.

Luca could feel the weight of the women pressing against him. ‘I command . . .’ he started again, but they were like a wall bearing down on him, and he was being suffocated by their robes, by their remorseless thrusting against him as if they would stifle him with their numbers. He tried to push himself away from the side of the cart; but then he lost his footing and went down. He kicked and rolled in a spasm of terror at the thought that they would trample him, unknowingly, that he would die beneath their sandalled feet. The Lady Almoner would have clung to him but they dragged her off him. Half a dozen women held Luca down as others forced the Lady Almoner to the pyre that she herself had ordered them to build. Freize was shouting now, thrashing about as a dozen women pinned him to the floor. Brother Peter was frozen in shock, white-robed nuns crushing him into silence, against the side of the cart.

She had ordered them to make two high pyres of dry wood, each built around a central pole, set strongly in the ground. They carried her to the nearest, though she kicked and struggled and screamed for help, and they lashed her to the pole, wrapping the ropes tight around her writhing body.

‘Save me!’ she screamed to Luca. ‘For the love of God, save me!’

He had a wimple over his face so he could not see, he was suffocating on the ground under the fabric, but he shouted to them to stop, even as they took the torch from the gatehouse porteress, who gave it silently to them, even as they held it to the tarred wood at the foot of the pile, even as she disappeared from view in a cloud of dark smoke, even as he heard her piercing scream of agony as her expensive silk petticoats and her fine woollen gown blazed up in a plume of yellow flames.

The three young men rode away from the abbey in silence, sickened by the violence, glad to escape without a lynching themselves. Every now and then Luca would shudder and violently brush smuts from the sleeves of his jacket, and Freize would pass his broad hand over his bewildered face and say, ‘Sweet saints . . .’