Several things happened with all the outcry. First the sacristan, bleary eyed and none too steady on his feet, appeared through a side door with a branch of candles, demanding querulously to know what all the noise in the house of God was about. The second was that two of the knights finally spotted Katerina, before she could decide whether to slide under the pew or run for the door.
Moving much faster than she would have imagined an armored man could do, one of the knights grabbed her shoulders with rough steel hands. The same one who had complained about the weather. Then, even more roughly, dragged her out to face the abbot.
“Got another one, Abbot Sachs!”
“Hold her there!” commanded Sachs. Almost violently, he thrust the boy into the hands of a monk who had come to join him. Then, stalked back up the aisle to stand before Kat.
The abbot gripped her jaw and lifted her chin, examining her as he might a vial of poison. With his left hand, roughly, he pulled off her scarf.
“The witch mistress,” he pronounced solemnly. “Overseeing her children and their demonic work. We have made a fine haul tonight! Truly, the hand of God must have guided that storm.”
Panic surged through Kat. “I’m not a witch! I’m not! I just came to get out of the rai—”
The abbot slapped her, hard and with obvious satisfaction. “Silence, witch! You will be put to the question and you will answer when we tell you.”
Kat’s cheek burned. The blow had been savage enough to leave her dazed, for a moment. Her mouth tasted of blood, and her head was cloudy with fear and fury. The moment was so—insane—that she couldn’t seem to bring her mind into focus. The only clear thought she had was: Why hadn’t she stayed outside and gotten wet?
* * *
A new voice spoke. One of the knights, Kat dimly realized. A very cold voice.
“Abbot—”
The abbot turned on him. “Go and ready our boat, Erik. We must take these prisoners back and put them to the question.”
The knight shook his head. The gesture was abbreviated, quick; and very firm. “No, My Lord Abbot. We cannot do that.”
“Why?” demanded Sachs angrily. “The weather is not so bad! Not for pious men.”
The implied slur did no more than cause the knight to square his already very square shoulders. And harden a face that, to Kat, already looked as hard as an axe-blade. She was almost shocked to see that the knight was not much older than she was.
“Because we cannot remove these people from the sanctuary of the Church,” said the knight. Calmly, even though Kat could sense the effort the knight was making to keep his teeth from clenching. “It is my solemnly sworn oath,” he continued, almost grinding out the words, “as a Knight of the Holy Trinity, to defend the Sanctuary of the Holy Church. I will not break my oath.”
* * *
Sanctuary! For a moment, Kat simply gawped at the young knight. Of all the scary-looking armed and armored men who surrounded her, he was the scariest. The last one she would have expected to come to her assistance!
Thunder pealed, and she could hear a fresh squall of rain sheeting down outside in the sudden silence. Even the two terrified children seemed to realize their survival hung on this rigid man with the harshly Nordic appearance.
The young knight seemed made entirely of sharp angles and icy ridges—as if his body and face had been shaped by the same glaciers that created the Norse landscape from which he so obviously came. His hair, long enough to peek below the rim of his helmet, was so blond it was almost white. His eyes were a shade of blue so pale they were almost gray. His chin was a shield, his nose a sword—even his lips looked as if they had been shaped by a chisel. And . . .
Scariest of all: lurking beneath that superficial calm, she could sense an eruption building. Kat had been told once, by her tutor Marina, that Iceland had been forged in the earth’s furnace. Not knowing why, she was suddenly certain that this man was an Icelander himself—a land as famous for its clan feuds as its volcanoes. And that he possessed the full measure of the berserk fury that slept—fretfully—just beneath an outwardly still and chilly surface.