Alys Clare - The Paths of the Air

Presently he saw the sheriff coming running towards him. When he drew level, Josse said, ‘In there,’ and led the way back along the path through the bracken.

They came to a patch of open ground where short turf grew in a space between birch and hazel. There were the ashes of a small fire on which some lengths of rope had been burned; their charred ends were still visible at the edges of the burned circle. Stuck in the ground beside the fire was a bow made of layers of horn and sinew. It was strangely shaped and instead of taking the form of a single shallow arc, it curved back on itself.

It was broken.

The ground in front of the fire was drenched in blood. It had congealed and in places had dried to a crust. This was the place of torment and death they had been searching for.

Gervase had paled and Josse felt sure his own face must be just as white. He stared down at the blood. Had the ropes been used to tether the man? It seemed likely. Had whoever killed him tried to burn them to destroy the evidence of their brutality? But why do that, when the dead body spoke so eloquently?

There was something about the clearing. Something to do with the fire, and that broken bow stuck in the earth…

Gervase had stepped back from the blood and was standing beside the bow, staring hard at it as if trying to distract his mind from the horror behind him. ‘Josse, what is this?’ he asked, his voice a hoarse whisper. ‘I don’t know-’

The first arrow flew so close to Josse’s cheek that he felt the breeze. With a heavy clunk it struck an ash tree behind him, burying its head in the trunk; he reached up and wrested it free and quickly looked at it. The second arrow was for Gervase, who gave a cry of fear as it brushed his sleeve and flew on to lose itself in the underbrush. There came the faint creak of a large bow being drawn as the unseen archer prepared for another shot.

‘Come on!’ Josse grabbed Gervase’s arm and raced back through the bracken to the track, so conscious of the presence of that unseen archer that instinctively he weaved to and fro as he ran, pulling Gervase with him. For some terrible moments it seemed that, as hard as they were running, the track came no nearer, but then the spell broke and they burst out from beneath the trees. Without even a pause, Josse turned to the right and pelted on down the path towards Hawkenlye. Only when the Abbey buildings were in sight did he slacken the pace and, eventually, draw to a standstill.

His lungs were burning, his chest heaving with exertion and the aftermath of danger. Gervase, bending over with his hands on his knees, was gasping for breath. When he could speak, he raised his scarlet, sweating face and said, ‘He tried to kill us! Why, Josse? Why?’

Josse felt his racing heartbeat gradually returning to its normal rhythm. ‘I’m not sure,’ he said. ‘Possibly we were about to stumble upon something that would have given away the killer’s identity. Perhaps he watches over that place purely for that reason: to scare off anyone who gets too close. Or…’ His voice trailed off.

Perhaps he watches over that place.

He saw again the fire with the partially burned ropes. The broken bow, sticking up out of the earth like a marker.

He turned calmly to Gervase, for now he knew. ‘It’s a shrine,’ he said. ‘The dead man’s body may have been removed to a place out of the reach of his companions, but they have honoured him as best they can. They purified the tools of his torture — the ropes — by burning them, then they put his broken weapon in the earth as a memorial to his courage.’

‘They, Josse?’ Gervase looked doubtful. ‘You refer to them, but how can you sound so certain? How can you know he had more than one companion? How do you know he had a companion at all?’

‘Because the arrows came from different directions.’

‘They almost killed us!’ Gervase’s face was suffused with anger. ‘That arrow came so close that I-’

‘No, Gervase. If they had wanted to kill us we would now be lying in that bloodstained clearing, as dead as the corpse at Hawkenlye. No — they merely wanted us to go away, for we were contaminating the sacred spot where they lost their companion.’

‘But-’

‘It is what fighting men do, Gervase,’ Josse said patiently. ‘In an earlier age, a man’s broken weapon would have been buried with him as a mark of respect. These men are skilled fighters and, although I cannot speak for the others, the dead man at least was a Turk; one of the elite troops who use the recurved bow to such devastating effect.’

‘That thing stuck in the earth of the clearing?’

‘Aye. To use it well takes long training and the development of specific muscles. It’s a cavalry weapon and both its penetration and range exceed the longbow.’

‘You mean they fire these things from horseback?’

‘Aye.’

‘Then they are skilled fighters indeed,’ Gervase whispered. Meeting Josse’s eyes, he said, ‘I would not be in the boots of whoever killed that Turk. If his companions ever find him, his fate does not bear thinking about.’

Josse straightened up. ‘Then, my friend, we had better make sure we find him before they do.’

Helewise was awake early the next morning. Very quietly she dressed and left her bed in the long dormitory, treading softly so as not to disturb her sleeping sisters. In the silent church she knelt before the altar and prayed for help in unravelling the many strands of the trouble that had fallen into the community’s lap.

A man tortured and killed; a fire started deliberately in an attempt to disguise the murder of a Knight Hospitaller. Josse and Gervase had stayed in her room for a long time the previous evening and she was aghast to learn of the manner of Brother Jeremiah’s death. When they told her about their discovery in the forest and of the warning shots that had sent them running for safety, she was horrified at the peril in which they had placed themselves.

The three of them talked for hours but they came nowhere near any sort of conclusion. The dead Turk had known something, or perhaps possessed something, that his killers had tried to extract from him. A man named John Damianos was on the run and had taken shelter with Josse. Three Knights Hospitaller had come all the way from Outremer after a runaway English monk. One of the trio was now dead and the others badly hurt; I knew that Thibault of Margat would return here to Hawkenlye, she thought now, but I did not anticipate the dreadful circumstances under which it would happen. Two Saracen warriors, searching for a man who answered the description of John Damianos, had followed him all the way to New Winnowlands; they had known without having seen the body that the dead man at Hawkenlye was not the one they sought. Their quarry had been involved in some fatal incident in Outremer. Josse proposed that the runaway monk and the Saracen sought by the warriors Kathnir and Akhbir — whether or not this man was John Damianos, although they all felt it most likely that he was — must surely be connected. Perhaps they had travelled together on the long road from Outremer? Perhaps they had in some way both been involved in that mysterious incident?

Helewise frowned in concentration, all but oblivious to the ache in her knees on the cold, hard stone. If Josse is right, then perhaps one or other of the surviving Hospitallers — Thibault probably, for he is the senior — will know something of whatever it was that happened. Oh, but I do hope that Thibault She arrested the thought. She had been about to pray for Thibault of Margat not for the poor man’s own sake but because of her own desperate need to find answers. Humbly she bowed her head over her clasped hands and asked to be forgiven. Only then did she compose the suitable words that prayed for Thibault and Brother Otto’s swift recovery and release from their pain.