Alys Clare - Girl In A Red Tunic

Returning into the room, he found de Gifford answering some question of the Abbess’s about the Bell brothers: ‘… live in a hovel out on a track leading off the coast road,’ he was saying, ‘and neither had a wife, although for a time there was apparently some — er, a woman who lived with Teb and kept house for them both, although I understand that they’ve always lived in such squalor that her efforts can’t have amounted to much.’

‘They live by theft?’ she asked.

De Gifford shrugged. ‘So it appears, although nothing has been proved against them.’

‘And you told me yourself that one of them is a murderer,’ she murmured.

‘Yes.’ He lowered his eyes. ‘Walter is a dangerous man.’

There was a brief silence. We are all waiting for Saul, Josse thought, hoping against reason that he will come in with a big smile to tell us that Walter Bell has seen the error of his ways and has come to Hawkenlye to be shriven of his sins and is even now down in the Vale selflessly helping the monks tend the pilgrims …

There was a gentle tap on the door and, in answer to the Abbess’s ‘Come in’, Saul entered.

He bowed to the Abbess and to de Gifford. He was looking anxious and so, having glanced at the Abbess and received her nod of encouragement, Josse hastened to reassure him. ‘Saul, please excuse this abrupt summons but we need to ask you if anything came of the search for Walter Bell,’ he explained quickly.

Saul was already shaking his head. ‘No, Sir Josse. We have asked everyone presently within the Abbey whether they know of him or have seen him here and all yesterday afternoon me and Gussie and four of the other brothers hunted through the nearer stretches of the forest. We found no sign that anyone had been camping out there, no sign at all.’ He gave a reminiscent shiver. ‘It’s too cold for skulking out of doors,’ he remarked, ‘leastways, not without a very good reason.’

‘Aye,’ Josse said. But Walter Bell, he thought, may have a very good reason for skulking if he’s hunting for his brother’s killer and does not want anyone to know it.

De Gifford must have been thinking the same. ‘You are sure, Brother Saul?’ he asked. ‘You really do not think that anyone could have been hiding up there in the forest and spying on the comings and goings in the Abbey?’

Saul paused as if giving the question careful consideration. Then he said, ‘I can’t say as that we’d necessarily have spotted a man who was intent on hiding , sir, because that would be the purpose of his hiding, wouldn’t it? To make sure anyone who came looking didn’t find him?’

‘Yes, Saul.’ De Gifford smiled faintly.

‘But I’m as certain as I can be that there weren’t anybody about, nor had been since the heavy frosts began,’ Saul continued, sounding more confident now, ‘because the ground’s set hard up there under the trees and we didn’t find any sign in the frozen grass that anyone had been by. Animal tracks aplenty — boar and fox and maybe a wolf — but you’d expect to find them.’

‘Thank you, Brother Saul.’ The Abbess gave him a warm smile, to which he responded. ‘That will be all.’

Saul bowed to them and backed out of the door, closing it carefully behind him.

‘Walter Bell isn’t here,’ Josse said neutrally. ‘Nobody can find him.’

‘It appears that you are right on both counts,’ de Gifford agreed. He looked at the Abbess, then, as if he did not want to continue watching her, turned to Josse. ‘In which case it seems I have no option but to reveal to you both what else Arthur Fitzurse said.’

‘What?’ Josse and the Abbess spoke together and he wondered if she too felt the sudden frisson of alarm.

De Gifford’s eyes were still on Josse. ‘He claims that there was trouble between the Bell brothers and a third party. The brothers were in dispute with this man, although Fitzurse says he does not know the details of the disagreement. He says that Walter Bell went to visit the man to gain some resolution that the Bells would find satisfactory, and he maintains that Walter has not been seen since. Teb Bell believed that the man whom his brother went to see came to Hawkenlye Abbey. Fitzurse says that Teb followed the man here and would have challenged him, only someone strung Teb up before he could do so.’

‘Do you believe him?’ Alarm had grown swiftly in him and Josse found as he spoke that his throat was dry.

De Gifford sighed. ‘I do not know what I believe,’ he admitted. ‘Somebody murdered Teb Bell, that is certain, and Walter is still missing. Fitzurse is positive that Walter too is dead, killed by the same hand that slayed his brother.’ He paused, then added softly, ‘The hand of the man with whom the brothers were in dispute.’

‘And you are sure that man is here?’ To Josse’s admiration, the Abbess sounded quite calm.

Now de Gifford faced her, making himself meet her eyes. ‘Yes, my lady. The man is your son.’

She thought for a moment that she was going to faint.

Her imagination escaped from her control and she saw them hunting him down, capturing him, taking him and imprisoning him in some dark dungeon; putting him on trial, finding him guilty and leading him out to be hanged.

She saw his face.

Stop ! she commanded herself. Stop this now!

She took a breath, then another. Fighting for calm, to replace the panicked images with logic and good sense, one thing refused to be banished from her mind: she knew, deep in the intuitive part of herself, that Leofgar was guilty.

Not of murder! Oh, no, not of cold-blooded, vicious murder! Please God that her instincts were right over that, for she just could not see her son as capable of such an act. But he had done something very serious and all this that had happened afterwards was because of it.

But she must not speak any of that to Gervase de Gifford …

Raising her eyes, she met his interested gaze; out of the corner of her eye she saw Josse make a move to come to her side and, with an almost imperceptible shake of her head, she stopped him.

‘My son is no longer here,’ she said quietly. ‘He left us two nights ago. He is not at home either; Sir Josse and I went to look for him. It is from there — the house is called the Old Manor and is situated beneath the North Downs — that we have just returned.’

De Gifford watched her closely. ‘Forgive me for asking, my lady, but was his nocturnal departure anticipated?’

‘Of course not,’ she said briskly. ‘Something must have happened to make him flee without telling anyone.’

‘And this flight occurred the night following the discovery of Teb Bell’s body?’

‘Yes.’

There was a pause. Then de Gifford said, ‘There is no need for me to draw the obvious conclusion that suggests itself.’

‘But surely we should mistrust it purely because it is the obvious conclusion?’ Josse burst out. ‘If someone wanted to throw suspicion on Leofgar, what better way than to commit a murder and then come along afterwards and say, oh, Leofgar Warin had an argument with that man and I bet you a barrel of ale that it was Leofgar’s hand that killed him!’ To make quite sure that neither de Gifford nor Helewise had missed the point, he added, ‘We have only this Arthur Fitzurse’s word for all this!’

Looking at him, fighting so valiantly for her and her son, Helewise felt a rush of love for him. But de Gifford was speaking; she made herself listen.

‘That is true, Josse,’ he said, ‘and I have told Fitzurse that he must either support his accusations or else withdraw them. He says he will find evidence to support his theory and he promises to discover what it was that the Bell brothers argued with Leofgar about. He also claims that he can prove that Walter Bell went to the Old Manor.’ De Gifford glanced quickly at Helewise and then, turning back to Josse, said, ‘He wants me to go there with him.’