Alys Clare - Girl In A Red Tunic

De Gifford sighed. ‘I hope not, although I confess that I fear the worst.’

Aye, Josse thought, and that was why you were at such pains to discount any incriminating discovery that Fitzurse might make even before he has made it.

Listening to the rustling of the straw palliasse as de Gifford turned over and lay down, Josse reflected that, like the Abbess, the sheriff too seemed almost to be expecting trouble …

It was not a comfortable thought on which to try to get to sleep.

Josse reported to the Abbess early the next day. She was clearly very relieved when he told her that nothing had turned up at the Old Manor to prove that Walter Bell had visited Leofgar there. Josse did not think it either kind or necessary to add that there had been no sign of a body either, although he was quite sure she had been dreading that there might have been.

‘What will Gervase de Gifford do now?’ she asked. Her appearance of serenity, Josse decided, was costing her considerable effort. Her face was pale and he noticed that her strong hands were clenched so tightly that the knuckles showed white. As if aware of his sympathetic eyes on them, she tucked her hands away in the opposite sleeves of her habit.

‘He has returned to Tonbridge,’ Josse replied. ‘He intends to carry on the search for Walter Bell as he suggests that finding the wretched man would be the best way of answering Fitzurse’s accusations.’

‘But even if Walter Bell should be found alive,’ she said slowly, ‘his brother Teb has been murdered.’

‘By an unknown hand,’ Josse countered swiftly. ‘De Gifford has no suggestions to make on the matter, my lady; at present he has no idea what the motive can have been and therefore he hesitates to speculate who might have killed the man.’

‘That is wise,’ she murmured. ‘I wish that I-’ But whatever she wished was to remain known to herself alone, for she folded her lips on the rest of the remark. Then after a moment she said, ‘And you, Sir Josse? What will you do?’

He had been thinking about this and had made up his mind; it was partly in order to tell her what he had decided to do that he had come to see her. ‘I shall go out into the forest,’ he announced. ‘Aye, I know that Saul and the brothers carried out a thorough search, but I want to see for myself.’ He smiled grimly. ‘They are capable and I do not doubt their diligence, my lady. But the forest has secrets, as you and I well know, and it may be that I can find my way into hidden places that other eyes, no matter how well intentioned, would not see.’

She watched him. Then she said softly, ‘Be careful.’

‘I am always careful.’ He tried to smile at her but he did not think he made much of a job of it.

He bowed to her and turned to go. He thought he heard her say ‘Thank you, my friend’, but he could not be sure.

He decided to walk up to the forest. Horace was a big horse and not renowned for moving silently and, besides, the trees grew low above the lesser paths and tracks and Josse would pass along beneath the bare winter branches more easily on his own two feet than high up astride his horse. He went to collect his sword and dagger and then strode quickly out through the Abbey gates and crossed the track, hurrying across the grass and increasing his pace as he drew nearer to the fringe of trees that circled the main forest. As always, he began to feel the unique atmosphere of the Great Forest reach out to embrace him and he hoped — prayed — that its touch was not hostile.

You could never be sure …

He followed the main track through the trees for some time. Memories sprang up to haunt him. Over there, down that smaller path, was the old charcoal burners’ camp, long disused by the charcoal burners but a refuge for others in times of crisis. Up along that path the ways branched and one led to a clearing where a woman had hanged herself. And dead ahead, deep in the forest’s heart, was the mysterious place that he and the Abbess had stumbled across and where they had witnessed something that he was still inclined to believe had really been nothing more than a disturbing vision.

And then there was Joanna.

He dreamed about her often. But he had not consciously thought about her for some time other than the fleeting images that he always tried to suppress whenever he saw the Abbess riding that beautiful golden mare. For Honey had been Joanna’s horse and she had left the mare in the Abbey’s keeping when she went away. Josse sometimes had the impression that people knew about Joanna but refrained from telling him; there had been one or two hints to that effect and Sister Tiphaine had once muttered that he wasn’t to worry about the lass, she was doing all right, whatever that meant. Sister Tiphaine, it was widely rumoured, had dealings with the strange and elusive Forest Folk, that self-contained band who appeared like the sunrise and vanished like the morning mist. Did that mean that the Forest Folk had taken Joanna in? Or merely that they knew where she was — how she was — and somehow contrived to pass word on to the Hawkenlye herbalist? Josse had no way of finding out; Sister Tiphaine had never said anything further and Josse wondered if perhaps the duty of obedience that she owed to her Abbess made her keep any knowledge she might have had strictly to herself. Sister Tiphaine might, as they often said, have one foot in the pagan past but her loyalty to the Abbess was, Josse guessed, born out of respect and quite possibly love and therefore unbreakable. The Church — and so it followed, went the reasoning, also the woman who ordered the comings and goings of Hawkenlye Abbey — would seriously disapprove of a nun even thinking about pagan forest dwellers, never mind having clandestine dealings with them, and so if indeed it were true that Sister Tiphaine had mysterious ways of contacting them, she was not going to boast about the fact and she would probably do her utmost to make sure her superior did not know.

Now as he tramped along the forest tracks he wondered if he could find his way to wherever it was that Joanna lived. If, that was, she were still there …

Then he decided simultaneously that there was no possibility of his finding her hiding place and that he wasn’t really sure he wanted to anyway. Squaring his shoulders, he reminded himself what he was doing out there and turned his full concentration to the search for Walter Bell.

It was hard to judge the time when deep inside the forest, for the thickly growing branches and endless network of almost leafless twigs above made it difficult to get a proper idea of the sun’s position. But, judging from the way in which the light was starting to fade, it must have been quite late in the day when Josse finally turned for home.

He was coming to the conclusion that Brother Saul was right: only the animals were at present living in that corner of the Great Forest. He found many traces of the brothers’ passage and he noted, impressed, just how carefully they had searched. My day has been a waste of time, he thought; I should have taken Saul’s word for it and done something more fruitful than obeying my own proud voice telling me to go and check because I know the forest better than the lay brothers. Well, I’ll just have to-

He heard something.

He stopped stock-still, hardly breathing, ears straining.

Nothing.

He began to walk cautiously on. The path just there circled a shallow dell bordered on its steeper slopes by thick brambles and overshadowed by a large beech tree whose roots curled out from the dell’s banked side. There were a few coppery leaves still adhering to the beech’s branches and the ground in the dell was thick with beech mast.

I have disturbed some small creature picking through the beech mast, Josse told himself. Even so small a noise sounds loud in this uncanny silence.