The Benedictine spent a couple of days on Thorney Island, sharing his own strokes and drinking warm ale in the gloaming, for the days were long and relatively humid. Now, on his journey back north, the air seemed suddenly sweeter despite horse and cattle shitfalls underfoot. He crossed the Knight’s Bridge in the early morning and the planks across the Cunebourne an hour or so later. Trees either side of him; no houses, a distant mill and the air still. Smoke from a fire beyond the fields wriggled into a white sky, sparrows sang and a crow cawed. A little ahead of him, a mare stood tethered to a tree, sweat clinging to her flanks, her tail flicking away horseflies. A hawk gripped the saddle and eyed him, suspiciously. The monk looked around. Who could be visiting the recluse? And why? Something felt wrong. Where now buses roar past a kebab shop and a Turkish barber’s close to the Overground station, he stepped off the road, concerned. Dry twigs crackled beneath his feet as he pushed through the undergrowth to the clearing by the river. A woman’s cry. His pace picking up. A man’s tone, the Benedictine running now, an impulse; two figures beneath the trees, one white the other darker, smaller, struggling. Closer now, a man intent, insistent, powerful; grabbing the wrists of the beautiful grace child who lay on the cold earth, robes hitched up to her haunches. A roar as the Benedictine hurled himself at her attacker. The man stunned and unprepared; his tunic half off, no weapon to hand, grabbed and thrown aside like a dog; his assailant kicking him like he would kill him; the brute stumbling away, swearing curses at them both, vowing to return with men, swords and dogs. He wiped blood from his mouth and, looking at the red on his hand, turned back to the road.