The chapter introduces Robert Anicot, Père Mathieu's younger brother, who serves as concubine to Cardinal Pierre Syriac in Avignon. Robert is a beautiful, dark-haired man of nearly thirty-five who lives in luxury but feels trapped and diminished by his position. He cares for the Cardinal's Arabian horses, particularly a small, spirited stallion named Geb, and finds solace in their stables. Robert is haunted by nightmares featuring his brother Mathieu, in which he appears as a martyr-like figure who accuses Robert of belonging to the devils.
Robert's relationship with the Cardinal is one of dependency and mild contempt. The elderly cleric keeps him essentially as a prisoner, forbidding him to leave the house alone due to plague fears, and values him purely for his beauty rather than his intelligence. Robert recalls his earlier, happier service to Pope Clement VI as a cubicular (personal attendant), before being "gifted" to the Cardinal. To escape his gilded cage, Robert occasionally sneaks out to visit lovers, including the Pope's second falconer.
The chapter's climax occurs at a grand feast in the Great Hall (Grands Tinels), where Pope Clement VI announces a new crusade to retake Jerusalem, claiming to have secured peace between England and France for this purpose. More ominously, the Pope declares his intention to revoke his previous protection of Jews, granting Christians the right to kill Jews and seize their property without sin, comparing them to stags in a hunt. This announcement disturbs Robert, who knows the Jews of Avignon as peaceful, skilled artisans.
During the feast, Robert notices a young nobleman identified as the Comte d'Evreux (future King of Navarre) seated near the Pope - this is actually Thomas wearing Chrétien's face through Delphine's miracle. The chapter sets up the infiltration of the papal court and reveals the corruption and anti-Semitic intentions brewing within the highest levels of the Church.
The papal feast continues with Thomas (disguised as the Comte d'Evreux) and Delphine (dressed as his page) seated among the high nobility. The feast features an elaborate display of food - swans, game birds, seafood, and exotic dishes - all tested for poison with coral trees hung with shark's teeth and narwhal horns that supposedly shiver in the presence of toxins. Delphine mysteriously warns Thomas against drinking the wine, though she can't explain why, eventually relenting when pressed.
During the meal, Thomas recognizes the viol player as the same musician from the demonic feast at the Norman castle earlier in their journey. This creates a moment of terror as Thomas fears recognition, but the musician only sees Chrétien's face and passes by without incident. The similarity between this papal feast and the supernatural feast reinforces the story's themes about corruption at the highest levels of the Church.
After the meal, the entertainment takes a disturbing turn as servants create an artificial golden forest and introduce twenty nude women wearing stag masks with golden antlers - a literal enactment of the Pope's earlier metaphor about hunting "stags" (referring to Jews). Knights and cardinals begin to engage with these women sexually, with Thomas becoming aroused despite Delphine's obvious distress. The scene represents the complete moral corruption of the Church, where sacred and profane are grotesquely intermingled.
Thomas restrains himself from participating fully, though he's tempted, and instead takes a decorative ivory comb from the artificial trees as his "prize." Pope Clement VI himself enters the grove and personally leads one of the masked women away, demonstrating that the corruption reaches the very head of the Church. The chapter ends ominously when Delphine notices a maggot moving on Thomas's thigh, suggesting that something sinister is beginning to affect him, possibly connected to his participation in or proximity to the corrupt feast.
Robert Anicot discovers Delphine hiding in the stables and is shocked when she reveals that his brother Mathieu died bringing her to him. Despite his reluctance and fear, she convinces him to saddle his horse Gep and ride with her to the papal lands near Chateauneuf. Her knowledge of his childhood nickname "Robert of the Bushes" and her cryptic warnings about danger compel him to trust her, even as she declares that "the Cardinal serves a devil."
In the vineyards of Chateauneuf, Delphine shows Robert a horrifying sight: the grape harvest is being conducted at night by the walking dead. The silent workers gathering grapes and treading wine are corpses with missing jaws and collapsed eyes, moving with unnatural purpose. When Robert accidentally encounters one of these undead vintners, they are forced to flee as the entire vineyard of corpses pursues them with harvest knives. They barely escape on horseback, with the dead showing both murderous intent and a strange sadness in their deteriorated faces.
During their escape, Delphine reveals her true mission: she needs Robert to arrange a private audience between the Pope and the Comte d'Evre, warning that the stench of corruption comes from the palace itself. Meanwhile, Thomas waits anxiously for Delphine's return to their lodgings. When she arrives, she confirms that tomorrow they will attempt to save the Pope, revealing that the man they saw earlier was not the true Pope but one of the devil's marshals who is raising the dead throughout the region.
Delphine shares the most disturbing revelation: at the papal feast, the serving girls were actually corpses that had been prepared with warm oil and honey and heated by the fire to disguise their death, allowing the knights and cardinals to unknowingly have intercourse with the dead. As Thomas prepares for their mission, he finds himself already gripping the sacred spear from Jerusalem, ready for the confrontation ahead.
In the papal gardens, Pope Clement VI meets privately with Robert Anicot, sharing the symbolic power of the tansy flower whose crushed petals release a bewildering fragrance that both strikes and confuses. The peaceful garden setting contrasts with the harsh winds of Avignon, where the plague has devastated the poorer quarters, leaving entire streets empty of the living. The Pope's zoo contains lions, including Misericourt, a good-natured male gift from the King of Bohemia, and a newer, more menacing black-maned lion that makes the original lion cower in fear.
Robert carefully confesses his "dream" about the dead working in the vineyards, omitting the fact that he awoke with his stockings wet from dew, revealing his actual presence there. The Pope immediately recognizes this as witchcraft and sorcery rather than a mere dream, explaining that such visions serve the devil's purpose to confound and blacken the Church's reputation. Clement VI reveals his grand enterprise: he is "turning mighty wheels" against Satan and plans to seize Jerusalem ("the City of Christ and David") while removing the Jews as the devil's agents from Christian lands.
When Robert reveals that the girl from his "dream" appears to be the page to Chrétien de Navarre, the Comte d'Evre, the Pope shows immediate interest and concern. Impressed by Robert's loyalty, perceptiveness, and bravery, Clement VI decides to elevate him to a higher position, instructing Cardinal Syriac to treat Robert as a father would and promising to return the Cardinal's kindness "tenfold." The Pope's favor toward Robert creates obvious tension with Cardinal Syriac, who fears losing his young lover.
As they leave the garden, Cardinal Syriac notices something impossible and disturbing: both lions are now somehow in the same cage together, despite the cages not communicating. The menacing black-maned lion sits regally while Misericourt cowers fearfully in the corner. Most unnervingly, when the Cardinal stares at the new lion, it stares back directly at him and deliberately runs its tongue over its teeth as if counting them, suggesting an intelligence far beyond that of a normal beast.
Thomas and Delphine hide in their lodgings at the Elysium House, avoiding a midday feast hosted by an English duke in the courtyard below. Thomas fears exposure as an impostor because while he bears the face and body of the dead Comte d'Evre, he lacks the man's memories and knowledge of the intimate world of European nobility. The revelers below mock their absence, with young William Montacute, Earl of Salisbury, calling for the "Comte" to come wrestle, while others joke about his supposed illness and romantic escapades. When pressured to show himself, Thomas manages a brief appearance at the window, claiming to be sick from overeating at the previous night's feast, which satisfies the crowd with laughter.
The announcement has been made that a new cardinal will be created the following night in an open celebration at the palace, accessible to all. As Thomas and Delphine wait anxiously for a papal invitation that may never come, both recognize the impossibility of their mission - Thomas dreads the thought of trying to assassinate the false pope either privately or in front of guards and nobles. Delphine traces figures on a wall tapestry with her mother's simple comb, trying to calm herself while searching for divine guidance that doesn't come.
The feared discovery arrives when armed soldiers of the papal guard come to arrest them. Through the window shutters, Delphine spots two men in chain mail bearing the palace's cross-key emblem and carrying pole axes in the courtyard below. When the guards demand entry and threaten to break down the door, Thomas claims plague symptoms, but the soldiers are unimpressed and begin battering the door with axes. In a moment of supernatural intervention, Delphine experiences a vision where the window transforms, showing the riverbank outside the city walls instead of the courtyard, with an easy drop to safety.
Guided by mysterious voices calling her "little moon" and speaking of another's protection stronger than her own, Delphine makes the difficult decision to abandon Thomas and escape through the transformed window. Thomas, left alone with his sword, chooses to fight the intruders but realizes too late that despite inhabiting the Comte's body, he lacks the man's strength and fighting ability. He is quickly overwhelmed, brutally beaten with axe handles until his teeth are broken, and then taken to the papal palace by cart. The chapter ends with the ominous note that after his capture, his legs were also broken.
Maitre Guy de Chauliac, the Pope's physician, is tormented by recurring nightmares that grow progressively worse. His devoted young assistant Tristan tends to him with concern, noting the doctor's kindness and wondering what devils could trouble such a good man. Tristan, who has an exceptional nose for detecting rot and was promoted from the kitchens after the doctor's previous assistants died of plague, notices something disturbing about the wine's smell - a hint of decay that troubles him. The doctor, learned in Arabic texts and medicine, maintains his health while those around him succumb to disease.
Unable to rest after his worst nightmare yet, the doctor undertakes a dangerous mission to rescue a prisoner from the papal dungeons. He skillfully forges a papal writ by surgically removing a seal from another document and reattaching it to his own orders, demonstrating both medical precision and desperate cunning. Despite Tristan's fearful recognition that they're entering a place for "thieves and sorcerers," the doctor explains they need "two pairs of eyes" to ensure the right thing is done.
In the dungeon, they encounter Saunois, a former blacksmith now serving as the chief torturer under the changed Pope Clement. Thomas hangs brutally tortured, suspended by his arms with broken legs, missing nipples and fingernails, and dislocated shoulders. The torturer believes him to be the Comte d'Evre and future King of Navarre, planning to keep him for the Pope's personal visit. Through his forged writ and intimidation, the doctor successfully convinces Saunois to release the dying prisoner into his care, claiming medical necessity.
As Thomas is wheeled away on a handcart, he experiences both relief and confusion, sensing he narrowly escaped something far worse than death - something involving "the man with the fly's head" who would have bitten him. The kind doctor removes his own robes to warm the shivering prisoner, and Thomas briefly experiences fragments of confused memories from different times and places. At the river, Delphine appears, causing both the doctor and Tristan to stare in amazement at something supernatural they perceive in her. In the story's most mystical moment, Thomas's true body emerges from the river - his original form as Thomas de Givra in rusty armor. Through a supernatural exchange of breath, his soul transfers from the Comte's tortured body back into his own strong, bearded form, while the false body is returned to the river's darkness.
Delphine returns to the Elysium House to retrieve Thomas's belongings with the help of Isna, the chamber boy who had befriended her when she posed as Diego, the page. Despite his fear of being hanged for horse theft, Isna agrees to help after Delphine promises him an ivory comb decorated with painted angels. She convinces him to create a distraction by falling down the stairs with something loud while she retrieves the knight's armor and horse. Isna, who speaks multiple languages and has proven valuable as a translator, finds the plan exciting despite the risk of a beating.
Thomas and Delphine ride through Avignon on their recovered horses - he on Gibrel and she on her small palfrey - past the tanners and parchment makers along the canal. Thomas reflects on his recent resurrection, knowing this may be his last time riding as he prepares for what he expects will be his final battle. The armor from his false identity as the Comte d'Evre fits imperfectly over his true body, with the chest too tight and belly too loose, but provides better protection than his original rusty chain mail. He rides bare-headed with his gleaming, dented breastplate visible, no longer attempting to maintain his disguise.
They seek sanctuary at a Franciscan monastery just outside the city walls, where only seven brothers remain of the original forty, the rest having died serving the community during the plague. Brother Albrecht, an aging Alsatian with developing cataracts, welcomes them with the order's traditional hospitality. Despite finding Thomas's request for a friar's habit unusual for someone attending the papal feast, the blind brother senses no evil in him but rather "a long-buried goodness." He provides them with a cell for rest, access to the altar for prayer, and gives Thomas the habit of Brother Agidius, who died of plague before he could wear it.
In the evening, Delphine performs a ritual that shocks Thomas: she deliberately cuts her hands on his sword blade and anoints it with her blood, working it into every notch and surface as if applying holy oil. Thomas recognizes this as the same power that killed the river monster - her blood had destroyed the creature when his sword alone could not. Despite his protest and concern for her self-harm, he understands the necessity and kisses the bloodied blade before sheathing it. She also gives him the sacred spear, which he irreverently wedges into his belt sheath, amused to carry a relic "worth the whole of Avignon" in greasy leather near his backside. As they prepare for their final mission, Delphine cryptically tells Thomas that she is "two things" but will soon be "just one," and warns him they will not be facing men in the coming battle.
Robert Anicot spends his final night before elevation in a state of bliss, trying to suppress memories of the horrors he witnessed in the vineyard. He forces himself to enjoy the feast's game fowl and sausages, even drinking the sweet late-harvest wine despite detecting something unsettling in its taste - a hint that he associates with "red feet corpses feet" but deliberately ignores. He rationalizes this mental suppression as necessary for daily life, comparing it to how one must ignore the suffering of kitchen workers to enjoy fine food, or cut away the rat-gnawed portion of sausage to serve the rest.
Despite his impending promotion, Robert struggles with profound self-doubt about his fitness for high ecclesiastical office. Though he was briefly a priest and served as the Pope's cubicular due to his good looks and pleasant manner shaped by his tyrannical father, years have passed since his theological studies. He fears drafting letters or giving Latin discourses, finding comfort only in the example of Pierre Roger de Beaufort, the Pope's dull-eyed, eighteen-year-old nephew who became cardinal despite needing constant reminders to breathe through his nose. After arguing with Cardinal Syriac about ending their physical relationship to maintain dignity in his new office, Robert sleeps alone on a pallet in the study.
Unable to rest, Robert wanders into the garden where he observes the disturbing red-edged moon that has become a topic of fearful discussion throughout the city. When young Vincent, the serving boy, reports intruders in the house, Robert discovers that the guard Guillain is too drunk to wake. The stable boy, normally sound asleep at this hour, sits wide-eyed gripping a pitchfork and refuses Robert's commands to help, declaring he would rather tell "the devil" than approach the house and knowing exactly where to find him.
Robert ventures into the house alone, initially taking up a sword but abandoning it for a carving knife. In Cardinal Syriac's bedroom, he witnesses a horrific supernatural possession: a creature with dirty teeth and luminous black eyes has its arm inserted down the cardinal's throat to the elbow. As Robert watches in terror, the creature's skin transforms from sickly white to pink, rapidly aging and reshaping to perfectly mimic the cardinal's appearance. Speaking in the cardinal's voice, it commands Robert to return to bed and not leave the house, promising him his cardinal's hat if he remains obedient. The real cardinal's eyes stare lifelessly at the ceiling while his mouth stretches impossibly wide, bleeding at the corners. By morning, Robert has convinced himself it was all a nightmare, and when the possessed cardinal approaches him at dawn, he allows himself to be drawn into the bedroom and submits to whatever the creature desires, noting only that Cardinal Syriac now sleeps on his back instead of his stomach.
Thomas, disguised as a large hooded friar, and Delphine blend into the crowd of Avignon's poor flowing toward the papal palace for the public feast celebrating Robert Anicot's elevation to cardinal. The hungry masses, many wearing clothes of wealthy plague victims, are drawn by the smell of roasted meat after subsisting on vegetables and insufficient bread from the papal charity kitchen. As the ceremony begins with Latin words and ceremonial incense, two Jewish men in required yellow identifying circles burst forward, their heads bloodied and covered in plaster dust, pleading for help against a monster made of men that is destroying their ghetto.
The crowd responds with sympathy, shouting for the Pope to help the Jews, while distant screams confirm the ongoing horror in the Jewish Quarter. Pope Clement dispatches a small group of soldiers while Cardinal Syriac coldly suggests the Jews are either facing divine judgment or suffering from hysteria. The Pope uses the crisis to suggest that perhaps this demonic attack will finally convince the Jews to recognize Christ as their Messiah and abandon their service to the devil. Musicians with drums and cornemuse cover any further sounds of destruction from beyond the walls as the feast begins and the crowd surges forward to the tables.
While Thomas waits patiently with the crowd, Delphine slips away into the papal gardens and uses supernatural power to open a locked door leading to the Pope's wine cellar. Guided by mysterious voices calling her "Little Moon," she searches among the massive wine barrels until she finds the right one, crawling on top of each like a kitten until she senses the presence she seeks. Despite her apparent physical weakness, supernatural strength flows through her as she uses a prying bar to break open an August barrel filled with black, sour-sweet wine.
The chapter reveals the true Pope Clement VI's death in a horrific flashback to August. While trying to escape the suffocating heat of his plague-prevention fires, Clement retreated to his study known as "the room of the stag" where he conducted his affair with his niece-by-marriage, Celeste. After she left, he fell into a nightmare involving four demonic children—painted bathers from his wall fresco who came to life. These cherubic creatures, neither fully boy nor girl, emerged from the painted water to kiss him with mouths that tasted of spearwater and fennel but stole his breath. Unable to breathe, cross himself, or escape, he was pulled down by the creatures who asked "Can God make something he can't lift?" before one thrust its arm down his throat, killing him as he was unable to breathe again.
Delphine successfully resurrects the real Pope from the wine barrel where his body had been preserved. The pope emerges like a wax figure that had been held too close to fire, his features sagged and melted, expelling thick dark wine from his nose and mouth. As his eyes and features restore themselves, he recognizes Delphine with terror—not fear of her, but of what he had experienced before. When he asks if she is an angel, she replies that she is not, but that there is one present and more are coming, ominously adding that the war is coming with them.