Despite the statement of his best intentions, the Trappist and his four companions were taken to Prague Central Headquarters of Police, where they spent an uncomfortable night in separate cells. The following day they were bundled into a van with darkened windows and thereby delivered to the Central Court, for a speedy trial and verdict (to clear the backlog of cases before Christmas Day and the judicial holiday season).

So the pentavirate were taken up to Court 5, the gloomiest of the courtroom buildings, at the centre of the courts, in a complex designed when the Art Nouveau style of the 19th century was at its most ornate, and some would say, grotesque. They were seated in a row on a hard wooden bench, facing the austerely carved judicial box and judicial chair which arose from a platform at one end of the room. Behind the five were seats (now empty), arranged in steep tiers in a gallery for members of the public. Benches, chairs and tables for court officials were set out in front of the judicial platform. Two secretary stenogaphers prepared to record the proceedings with long goose quill pens. Two stern officers of the law stood beside the five. The judge entered, the court rose, and sat - as instructed by the clerk of the session, in deference to the berobed luminary who was to form the centrepiece of the proceedings.

Legal practice and court proceedings in Prague, as in the rest of Bohemia, had been strangely preserved unchanged since the 19th century, unnoticed by the more enlightened intentions of the European Union. They reflected the practices of the long deceased Austro-Hungarian Empire, and were the product of the ‘reforming’ zeal of Klemens Wenzel Lothar Metternich, Prince von Metternich, whose intentions had been to create a police state in which the purpose of the judicial system was not to dispense justice, but to identify and dispatch as speedily as possible any person deemed to pose a threat to the stability and continuity of the Empire under its dual monarchy. The judge was also the public prosecutor and inquisitor. There was no party for the defence, and no right of appeal. Verdicts were instantaneous, and tending to be reached more speedily as lunchtime approached. Justice, and its executions, were summary.

The five sat gloomily on the bench - the Trappist in more than usually contemplative mode; the Antipodean muttering biblical curses to himself under his breath; the Eastern Monk regretting his elevation to pentaviracy; the Sage pondering his fate; the Westerner having lost his air of confidence and flamboyance, the ostrich feather in his hat drooping forlornly.

The people’s prosecutor glared angrily over the top of his box at the five. The wall clock behind him ticked sternly as the minute hand moved inexorably and dangerously towards the noontide hour.

“Aufstehen!” he shouted at the Young Man, whom he took to be the ringleader of the group. The Westerner rose, somewhat nervously, to his feet. The judge glared at him, his face reddening as the apoplectic rage within him built up its head of steam; his lips quivering. He shuffled through the papers which the clerk of the court had handed to him.

“Sir! he declared. “You will hang! First, because you have a hanging look about you. Secondly, because it is nearly lunchtime. Your colleagues will also hang with you. Or be burned, if sufficient green wood can be gathered for a public burning in the town square. Thus perish all heretics! Take them down!” He banged his gavel on the desk.

The judge rose, and the clerk jumped to his feet and commanded the court also to rise. The judge shook his voluminous cloaks, as if to shake the contamination of proximate criminality out of them, turned, and stalked out of the courtroom. The five were speechless. The guardians of the law bustled them to their feet, and conducted them through the door opening onto the staircase which led down to the deepest and darkest dungeons of the Holy Roman Empire - the condemned cells. Things were not looking good for our heroes, the famous five, and Timmy the dog.