Alys Clare - Girl In A Red Tunic

He paused, staring eagerly at Josse as if in confident expectation of the right response. Which, after a moment, Josse made. ‘You think someone sent him to the Old Manor?’ he said, trying to sound as if he had only just thought of this possibility. ‘Someone said, go and break in while the master and the servants are out and steal the silver?’ He made it into a question.

‘Yes,’ de Gifford said. ‘And I’ll tell you who it was: Arthur Fitzurse.’

Rapidly thinking it through to see if he would be giving away anything that he should keep to himself, Josse said cautiously, ‘Yet the Warin family treasures remain at the Old Manor. Either Walter Bell was prevented from taking them …’ Deliberately he stopped.

‘Or family treasures were not what Bell was after!’ de Gifford finished for him. Smacking his first into his open palm, he said, ‘We must find out what it was that Fitzurse really sent him to find, Josse, for therein lies the secret that lies so well hidden at the heart of all this!’

And Josse, triumph singing silently through him, said wonderingly, ‘Great God, Gervase, I believe you are right!’

He reflected, as the sheriff began to pace to and fro, muttering to himself as he laid his plans for the next move, on his promise to Leofgar. ‘Find out what Walter Bell was after,’ the young man had begged, and Josse had said he would do his best. Well, now finding the solution to the mystery — and thereby fulfilling the promise — all of a sudden seemed a very great deal more likely; Gervase de Gifford was hunting for the same thing. Watching him, Josse could detect de Gifford’s impatience to be moving; it was evident in his brisk step. Closing his eyes for an instant, Josse sent up a prayer of thanks for the gift of such a capable man by his side.

Two things pressed on Josse’s mind. First, he must get back to Hawkenlye and tell the Abbess what had happened; he would be able to reassure her that, although Arthur Fitzurse had brought what he claimed was evidence to prove that Walter Bell lay dead in the woods above the Old Manor, not only had Gervase de Gifford rightly dismissed this evidence out of hand, he also seemed more than ready to believe that even if Walter Bell had indeed died there, then it was as a result of Rohaise exercising her legal right to defend herself against a violent attack.

The second thing he must do — or at least try to do — was to speak again to Leofgar. Something kept niggling at him, one small detail of the story that Leofgar had told him, and he could not quite bring it into focus. It was something that Walter Bell had done, something that Josse knew was important and that he must remember, but he was damned if he could think what it was … Reasoning that Leofgar must want to speak to Josse almost as urgently as Josse wanted to consult him — wouldn’t he be desperate to know what was happening? — and that when the two of them had previously met, it was in that dell in the forest where Leofgar had been lying in wait for him, Josse decided to ride back to the Abbey via the woodland paths.

Soon after he entered in under the trees he dismounted and, leading Horace, made his tortuous way to the place where the beech tree hung over the dell. It was too much to expect Leofgar to be there waiting for him but after a short while the young man appeared, as silently and unexpectedly as before.

‘I have been watching for you,’ he said, grasping Josse’s hand and holding it tightly. He looked drawn and his words fell out in a rush. ‘I thought you would come back. Have there been developments? Have you discovered anything?’

‘Steady there,’ Josse said, trying to calm him. ‘One good thing has happened: Gervase de Gifford believes in your innocence.’ Leofgar made to speak — Josse guessed he was about to demand if Josse had repeated his story to the sheriff — but Josse held up his hand. ‘I have not told him the full tale that you told me,’ he said gently, ‘for in truth it is not my secret to tell. But de Gifford is an intelligent man and, knowing the foul reputation of the Bell brothers as well as he does, he has worked out for himself a possible course of events that is as near the truth as makes no difference.’ Wanting to make certain that Leofgar realised what he was being told, Josse added, ‘De Gifford does not see any crime in a woman defending herself from an attacker wielding a knife who bursts into her house with the aim of stealing her goods and raping her.’

As Leofgar sagged with relief, Josse suddenly remembered what it was he needed to ask. Giving the young man a few moments to recover, he then said, ‘Leofgar, when we talked before about that terrible day, we concluded that whatever Walter Bell was sent to find — and de Gifford also suggests that Arthur Fitzurse was the man who sent him — it was not your family valuables.’

‘Yes, I remember,’ Leofgar said. Then, impatiently, ‘That’s what we have to find out! What it is he’s really after!’

‘Aye, I know,’ Josse said soothingly. ‘What I’m asking you is with that end in mind. You told me, Leofgar, that when Rohaise was watching Walter Bell — before he knew she was there — she saw him searching somewhere within the hall. Where was it?’

Leofgar frowned as he tried to recall exactly what his wife had said. ‘She was hiding behind the hangings, clutching Timus to her and trying to keep him quiet …’ Then, as if the remembered scene had suddenly clarified, he said de cisively, ‘Walter Bell went straight over to the table. That was where he searched first.’

‘The table.’ Josse was nodding. ‘Aye, it always did sound an unlikely place for a thief to begin, unless, that is, someone had told him to look there first.’ A smile spreading across his face, he thumped Leofgar on the shoulder and said, ‘Thank you. Now I know what to do next.’

Grinning back at him, Leofgar said, ‘Go and search my table?’

‘Exactly that, because Rohaise did not report that Walter Bell succeeded in finding anything in, on or under that table.’ And, he thought, I saw with my own eyes that Arthur Fitzurse met with no more success when he looked. But he did not voice the thought; there seemed no need yet to add to Leofgar’s worries by revealing that Arthur Fitzurse had also searched the Old Manor. ‘So,’ he concluded, ‘whatever Bell came hunting for-’

‘-is still there!’ Leofgar gave a whoop of joy. ‘Go, Josse, be on your way, I beg you, and God’s speed,’ he said more quietly. ‘May you meet with success.’

‘I have a feeling that I will,’ Josse said. ‘Tell that to your pretty wife, Leofgar, and make sure she keeps her hopes up and her heart high.’

‘I will,’ Leofgar assured him. ‘Come back soon. I will watch for you.’

With a grunt of assent, Josse clicked to Horace and, leading the horse down the narrow track, set off in the direction of the Abbey.

He was so eager to tell the Abbess what had happened and about this thrilling and promising new prospect of searching for the precious thing that Walter Bell was sent to find that, as soon as he could, he mounted and kicked Horace to a canter. Arriving at the Abbey gates in a thunder of hooves, he drew to a halt, slid off Horace’s back and, after the most perfunctory of greetings to Sister Martha and Sister Ursel at the gate, he ran off to find the Abbess.

‘She’s not there!’ Sister Martha’s voice called after him.

He stopped dead. ‘Where is she?’ he asked, turning to look at the two nuns.

They looked at each other and then back at him. Then, in a voice that reflected her puzzlement and the very beginnings of anxiety, Sister Ursel said, ‘Isn’t she with you?’

He got the tale from them in time. Plunged almost into panic by their dread, they both kept trying to talk at once and for a while he could make no sense of what they said. Some man had come up from Tonbridge and told Sister Ursel that he had been sent by the sheriff and would the Abbess Helewise please go down with him to join Gervase de Gifford and Sir Josse d’Acquin there as something had happened and they wanted her to know of it and to give her opinion. Sister Ursel had thought it a little odd, but then hadn’t another of the sheriff’s men come up to the Abbey earlier with a similar message for Josse, and hadn’t he set off without a qualm in answer to that summons? Anyway, odd or not, the Abbess, bless her, hadn’t hesitated but had ordered Sister Martha to prepare the golden mare so that she could be on her way. ‘And it wasn’t for either of us to question her actions, was it, Sir Josse?’ Sister Ursel asked tearfully. ‘She’s our Abbess and we must do as we’re told!’