“Beg,” Nimue interrupted him, pushing the hood back from her face. “Beg, you dog.” She turned and spat on the crucifix, then on to the church floor, then a third time at Sansum. “Beg, you piece of dirt,” she snarled at him.
“Dear God!” Sansum blanched at the sight of his enemy. He reeled backward, making the sign of the cross on his thin chest. For a moment he seemed too terrified to even speak. He must have thought Nimue lost for ever on the Isle of the Dead, yet here she was, spitting in triumph. He crossed himself a third time, then wheeled on Arthur. “You dare bring a witch into God’s house!” he screamed. “This is sacrilege! Oh sweet Christ!” He dropped to his knees and gazed up at the rafters. “Cast fire from heaven! Cast it now!”
Arthur ignored him, plunging instead into the pelting rain that was bedraggling the pathetic votive ribbons draped on the Holy Thorn. “Call the other spearmen inside,” Arthur ordered Issa. My men had waited outside the shrine in case Sansum had attempted to hide his treasures beyond the encircling wall, but now the spearmen came into the enclosure to help drive the frantic monks away from the pile of rocks that hid their secret treasury. Some of the monks dropped to their knees as they saw Nimue. They knew who she was.
Sansum ran from the church and threw himself on to the rocks, dramatically decreeing that he would sacrifice his life to preserve God’s money. Arthur shook his head sadly. “Are you sure of this sacrifice, Lord Bishop?”
“Dear sweet God!” Sansum bellowed. “Thy servant comes, slaughtered by wicked men and their foul witch! All I did was obey Your word. Receive me, Lord! Receive Thy humble servant!” This was followed by a scream as he anticipated his death, but it was only Issa lifting him by the scruff of his neck and the seat of his robe and carrying him gently away from the stone pile to the pond where he dropped Sansum into the shallow, muddy water. “I’m drowning, Lord!” Sansum shouted. “Cast into mighty waters like Jonah into the ocean! A martyr for Christ! As Paul and Peter were martyred, Lord, so now I come!” He blew some urgent bubbles, but no one beside his God was taking any notice and so he slowly dragged himself out of the muddy duckweed to spit curses at my men who were eagerly dragging the stones aside.
Beneath the rock pile was a cover of wooden boards that lifted to reveal a stone cistern crammed with leather sacks, and in the sacks was gold. Thick gold coins, gold chains, gold statues, gold torques, gold brooches, gold bracelets, gold pins; the gold fetched here by hundreds of pilgrims seeking the blessing of the Thorn, that Arthur now insisted a monk count and weigh so that a proper receipt could be issued to the monastery. He left my men to supervise the tally while he led a damp and protesting Sansum across the compound to the Holy Thorn. “You must learn to grow thorn trees before you meddle in the affairs of kings, my Lord Bishop,” Arthur said. “You are not restored to the King’s chaplaincy, but will stay here and learn husbandry.”
“Mulch the next tree,” I advised him. “Let the roots stay damp while it settles in. And don’t transplant a tree in flower, Bishop, they don’t like it. That’s been the trouble with the last few thorns you planted here; you dug them out of the woods at the wrong time. Bring them across in winter and dig them a good hole with some dung and mulch and you might get a real miracle.”
“Forgive them, Lord!” Sansum said, dropping to his knees and gazing into the damp heavens.
Arthur wanted to visit the Tor, though first he stood beside Norwenna’s grave that had become a place of veneration for Christians. “She was an ill-used woman,” he told me.
“All women are,” Nimue said. She had followed us to the grave that stood close beside the Holy Thorn.
“No,” Arthur insisted. “Maybe most people are, but not all women any more than all men. But this woman was, and we still have to avenge her.”