Girl In A Red Tunic

Chapter 16

Down in the Vale, Josse had an early morning visit from Gervase de Gifford’s man, Matt. He brought the sheriff’s greetings and the request that Josse come with him down to Tonbridge as soon as he could manage it because de Gifford urgently wished to speak to him.

Josse knew better than to ask what it was about; Matt was a taciturn sort of a man and in any case it did not seem wise to discuss the sheriff’s business in an open-sided shelter with all manner of strangers wandering around outside. In fact there were only four pilgrims in the Vale at present and one of those was a baby, but the monks themselves were not above accidentally overhearing muttered discussions and then speculating wildly afterwards on what they thought they had heard and what it was likely to mean.

He told Matt to wait for him while he sought out the Abbess to inform her where he was going and Matt gave a wordless nod of acknowledgement. Then he raced up the path to the Abbey and, pausing to ask Sister Martha if she would kindly get his horse ready, set about trying to find the Abbess. She was not in her room but one of the novices pointed him in the direction of the retirement home which the Abbey ran for aged nuns and monks and that was where he found her.

Sister Emanuel, who was in charge of the retirement home, greeted him calmly and pointed into one of the two long and narrow rooms where the elderly folk lived out the last of their days, nuns to the right, monks to the left. The Abbess was kneeling in prayer by the narrow cot of a very old nun who, Sister Emanuel whispered, had died in the night. Josse waited. After a short time the Abbess rose to her feet and, bending to bestow a last kiss on the wizened forehead of the tiny nun lying so still on the cot, turned and came towards him.

‘Good morning, Sir Josse,’ she said. He thought there was a suggestion of tears in her eyes. ‘Mother Mabilia was our oldest resident; she said she was almost eighty years old.’

‘I am sorry for her passing,’ he said formally.

The Abbess managed a smile. ‘Do not be,’ she murmured, ‘for dear Mabilia was more than ready to leave us and go to meet her Lord. I have just been giving thanks that her death was easy and painless. She slipped away in her sleep.’

‘May the good God above grant us all such an end,’ Josse said in the same low voice.

‘Amen.’ There was a brief silence and then, taking his arm and steering him out of the retirement home, the Abbess said, ‘What can I do for you?’

Swiftly he told her about de Gifford’s messenger. She watched him, the anxiety flooding her face, then said, ‘What does this mean, Sir Josse?’

‘I do not know,’ he admitted, adding, for he well knew what she was thinking, ‘but, my lady, we must not instantly fear the worst!’

‘But what if-’ she began, then, with an obvious effort, stopped herself.

Josse put out his hand and briefly touched her sleeve. ‘My lady, this may have nothing to do with — er, with the matter that preoccupies us.’

She smiled thinly. ‘Now that, Sir Josse, I find hard to believe.’ Then, leaning closer to him and lowering her voice, she said, ‘What will you do if he has — if there is evidence that appears to incriminate my son? Oh, Josse, will you tell him what Leofgar told you?’

He looked at her, in pain himself at watching her anguish. ‘Only if I am quite certain that I can persuade him that it’s the truth.’

‘How could you know that he would be persuaded of that before you had told him?’

It was a reasonable question and he found that he had no answer. ‘My lady,’ he said firmly, ‘I know that Leofgar is innocent of murder. I will do all that is in my power, should it become necessary, to convince Gervase de Gifford that the story your son told me is what really happened that day at the Old Manor.’

He felt that he had sounded less than reassuring but there must have been something in his words — or possibly the way he spoke them — that comforted her. She said softly, ‘God bless you, Sir Josse. I will wait to hear your tidings as soon as you are able to return.’

Feeling oddly uneasy — he was touched but also weighed down by her faith in him — he bowed briefly and hurried away.

Josse and Matt rode down to Tonbridge together without speaking a word. When they reached the town Matt said, ‘This way,’ and led Josse down a turning off the main track that led at first through mean hovels packed closely together but then opened out on to fields that sloped gently down to the river. Some fifty paces past the last of the town’s dwellings, standing by itself beside a semicircle of willows, was a stone-built house of modest size with a stout wooden door studded with iron. There was a courtyard in front of the house with rings for tethering horses — and possibly prisoners — and a small stable block. Between the stables and the house was a single-storey building with a door as strong as that of the house and four tiny windows set high up. It did not need much intelligence to surmise that this was the gaol.

Matt dismounted and Josse did the same. Then Matt took Horace’s reins and said, nodding towards the house, ‘You’ll find the sheriff within.’

Straightening his tunic and throwing back his cloak, Josse strode over to the house and banged on the door, which was almost immediately opened by de Gifford. He greeted Josse and ushered him inside to where there was a fire blazing in the hearth. Looking about him while trying not to make his curiosity apparent, Josse noted that the room was well furnished and spotlessly clean; he had not heard that de Gifford had a wife — in fact he was sure that he hadn’t — and so guessed that the woman’s touch evident in everything from the highly polished surface of the long table against one wall to the clean rushes on the stone floor must be the handiwork of some efficient and hard-working housekeeper.

De Gifford said, ‘Josse, I have asked you here because Arthur Fitzurse has been to see me again. He says he has found something and wants us both to see it. He is coming here later this morning.’

His heart dropping, Josse said, ‘What has he found?’

‘Bones.’

Oh, God! ‘Where?’

‘In the forest above the Old Manor.’

Casting round frantically for some sort of counterattack, some factor that would remove the power of this ominous new development, Josse said, ‘But you said yourself that anything he came up with would not be proof that-’ That Walter Bell went to the Old Manor and died there? Was killed there? No, no, he must not say that! Must not put that thought into de Gifford’s mind!

But it was there already, for the sheriff said calmly, ‘I know what I said, Josse, and I stand by it.’ With a reassuring smile, he added, ‘Let us wait and see what Fitzurse brings us.’

They did not have long to wait; in fact Arthur Fitzurse followed so closely on Josse’s heels that Josse wondered if the man might have been in hiding somewhere watching for Josse’s arrival. He came striding confidently into de Gifford’s hall, giving the two men the most cursory of greetings, then he brought out from under his cloak a parcel wrapped in sacking and flung it down on the glossy surface of the table. Unwrapping it to reveal a short length of curved bone and another, stouter bone, he said, ‘There! I found these half-buried in Leofgar Warin’s woods. Tell me now that you don’t believe Walter Bell went there, because I’m telling you that these are the remains of Walter’s murdered body and that Leofgar killed him!’

Josse and de Gifford moved closer and stood in silence gazing down at the bones. They were yellow with age and any flesh or marrow adhering to them was long gone.

Josse felt relief coursing through him, as potent as if he had just drained a mug of some strong drink. After what he felt to be a reasonable amount of time for consideration, he said, ‘Walter Bell went missing at the beginning of November, I believe?’

‘Yes. Just before Martinmas,’ Fitzurse replied. Josse turned to look at him; there was a gleam in his dark eyes like that of a starving man bidden to a feast.

‘Then these bones do not belong to him.’ Josse made sure to remove any hint of I do not believe that or in my opinion from his bald statement of fact; he wanted both de Gifford and Fitzurse to realise that he was absolutely sure.

‘How do you know?’ Fitzurse demanded furiously. ‘This is his leg bone’ — he held up the larger bone, pointing to a small bump about halfway along — ‘and there’s a notch where he had a break when he was a lad!’

‘It may well be somebody’s once-broken leg,’ Josse allowed, ‘but it’s not Walter Bell’s.’ He took it from Fitzurse and put it back on the table. ‘It’s been in the ground for years.’

Fitzurse’s expression went from shock to a devastating disappointment, then swiftly to fury. ‘How can you be so sure? I say it hasn’t!’ he shouted. ‘It was in a shallow hollow under a scatter of earth and some dead leaves!’

‘No doubt a fox left it there to return to later.’ In the face of Fitzurse’s rising anger, Josse kept his voice level. ‘But I do assure you that it takes a long time in the ground to turn bone to a shade as dark as that.’

De Gifford was picking up the smaller, curved bone. ‘I would have to check with someone such as a butcher, who is more experienced with animal bones than I am,’ he said, adopting the same reasonable tone, ‘but I would say that this is the rib bone of a pig, or possibly a boar. Josse?’

Josse took the bone from de Gifford. ‘Aye.’ He looked at it carefully then, lifting his tunic, held it over his shirt at the level of his own rib cage. ‘Too small to belong to a grown man,’ he said, ‘and the curve is wrong.’

He put the smaller bone back on the table beside the leg bone and wiped his hands on the piece of sacking.

There was silence in the hall. Josse was aware of Fitzurse just beside him and he could feel the man’s rage emanating from him like body heat after exertion. De Gifford began to make some remark to conclude the visit but before he had uttered it Fitzurse spun on his heel and strode out through the door. He turned on the top step and said, ‘Walter Bell was killed by Leofgar Warin and his body is at the Old Manor. I will find it and take you there and you will believe me!’ Narrowed eyes on Josse, he said in a hiss, ‘Your precious Abbess Helewise will not be able to help her son then. He’ll hang, and I shall be there to watch!’ He paused. With unbelievable venom, he added, ‘Then we shall see!’

With that he flung himself away and they heard his rapid footsteps striding across the courtyard.

De Gifford placed the bones on the sacking and wrapped them up, his movements economical and tidy. Then he said, ‘I have found no trace of Walter Bell, Josse. My men have searched all his known haunts and nobody has seen him since the day that Fitzurse claims he went off to seek out Leofgar at the Old Manor.’ The parcel of bones tied up to his satisfaction, he turned to Josse and, greenish eyes catching the firelight from the hearth, said, ‘Where do you think he is? What has happened here?’

It seemed to Josse that the moment ached with tension. With no idea how he was going to reply, he hedged and merely said, ‘It’s a mystery all right.’

De Gifford smiled quickly, almost as if to himself, then said, ‘Perhaps we shall aid our attempts at explanation if we make one or two guesses. Let me start by suggesting one possible set of circumstances.’ He moved away from the table and went to stand over the hearth, eyes watching the dance of the flames. Then he said, ‘Let us pretend that Walter Bell really did go to the Old Manor but we’ll say that it was not for the reason that Fitzurse claims, for we know that there was in truth no quarrel between Leofgar and the Bell brothers; he did not even know them. Oh, and we must add that this visit was made when the servants of the Warin household were away from home because neither the man, his woman nor their boy recalls a man answering Walter Bell’s description coming to the Old Manor.’

He paused, frowning slightly. A log collapsed in the hearth and one end of it fell outside the hearth stones; de Gifford kicked it back with his booted foot. Then he went on, ‘Leofgar too is out and his wife and child are alone in the house. Supposing Walter Bell’s real reason for sneaking into the Old Manor when everybody but a woman and a little boy are away is something far less honest and open than an attempt to resolve a quarrel. Let us suppose that he has come with theft in mind or, perhaps, a worse crime.’ Bright eyes suddenly on Josse, he added quietly, ‘The Bell brothers have a bad name, as I have told you. Nobody would think it out of character for Walter to have spotted a house where he might steal some silver and, in addition, rape a lovely and defenceless young woman before making his escape. I am right in surmising that Leofgar’s wife is lovely?’

‘Aye, she is,’ Josse confirmed, ‘and she’s of slim build and has been unwell, so obviously he didn’t expect her to put up such a fight.’ Realising even as he spoke the words what he had said, he hurried to correct them: ‘That is, he wouldn’t have expected it, had this imaginary scene really taken place.’

Some flash of understanding shone in de Gifford’s eyes, there and gone in a blink. Then, nodding slowly, he said, ‘Quite. Very well, let me continue with my description of this possible course of events.’ The emphasis was impossible to miss, as was the brief urgency in his voice, as if he were compelling Josse to be more careful what he said. ‘We’ll say that Walter Bell spies his chance and goes into the Old Manor. He finds Leofgar’s wife playing with her child in the hall and, although at first she is just an obstacle that he must get rid of before he can steal the candlesticks, or the platter, or the wine jug, it suddenly occurs to him that she is comely. So he pulls his knife and perhaps threatens to hurt the child, forcing Leofgar’s wife — what is her name, Josse?’

‘Rohaise.’

‘Thank you. He forces Rohaise to bundle up the silver candle holders while he holds a knife to-?’

‘Timus.’

‘To Timus. Then he throws aside the child and attacks the mother, pulling up her skirts, tearing her bodice, but somehow she finds a desperate strength and pushes him off. Swooping down and catching up the knife that he has dropped, she thrusts it at him, blind in her panic, and it goes into his neck. He falls limp to the floor and is still. After a while, when he does not move, she approaches him and realises that he is dead. Leofgar comes home and finds her hysterically weeping and he does what he can to comfort her and his shocked and terrified little boy. Later he disposes of the body, perhaps burying it out in the forest. In an area of the forest,’ he adds, enunciating every word clearly, ‘that is open and that in early November is used by everybody in the immediate vicinity for the fattening of their swine.’ Just to make quite sure Josse has not missed the point, he says, ‘So that, were bones — or indeed any other evidence — to be found that could be linked to Walter Bell, then there would, as I have said before, be no proof that Leofgar buried them there.’ Green eyes fierce, he demanded, ‘Would there?’

Josse did not answer immediately. He was going through this fictitious scenario of de Gifford’s, trying to work out how he should respond. God’s boots, but the sheriff had very nearly got it right! Rohaise had not stabbed Walter Bell in self-defence; she had escaped from his grasp and managed to trip him up. Then, when he had tricked her into creeping up to him, he had attacked her again and one of Leofgar’s hounds had bitten his throat out. But did not all that mean that in fact Rohaise was even less quilty of murder than she was in de Gifford’s version?

Dare he risk telling de Gifford the truth? His instincts born of many years’ experience of men told him that he could. But then it was not his own freedom — perhaps his own life — that was at stake. It was Rohaise’s and, by reason of his involvement and the fact of his having concealed a death, Leofgar’s. And what would the Abbess do if her daughter-in-law were hanged for a murder that was no murder and her beloved son strung up beside her because he had helped her?

I cannot tell him, Josse decided. He is a man of the law and an honest and moral one; despite what I feel is a friendship between us, he may consider it his duty to act on what I reveal to him. I dare not do it!

De Gifford was still watching him, waiting for a reply.

Josse had made up his mind. Taking a deep breath, praying he was doing the right thing, eventually he said, ‘Let us go on with our pretence a while.’

‘Very well.’ De Gifford sounded cautious. ‘But this is still just a story, Josse. Be in no doubt whatsoever about that, and also remember that whatever is said here is just for our ears.’ He grinned briefly. ‘We are two men puzzled by a mystery and we pass a chilly morning in idle conjecture.’ He paused. ‘It is on that basis and that basis only that I will hear you out.’

‘Aye, of course.’ Josse spoke with false cheerfulness. ‘Then let me make one or two suggestions of my own. I find your version of events plausible and I’m going to suggest what might have happened next. We know that Leofgar took his wife off to Hawkenlye Abbey because he was worried about her state of mind — this is fact, not conjecture. But let’s pretend that he had an ulterior motive; not only did he want the nuns to help him make Rohaise better, he also wanted to distance himself from the body he had just — er, he’d just buried in the woods. Then while he’s there with the nuns and the monks watching Rohaise slowly begin to improve, the inconceivable happens and a man who looks just like Walter Bell is found hanging in the forest not two miles from the Abbey. Somebody announces that the dead man is Walter’s brother Teb and Leofgar instantly fears that Teb had somehow found out that Walter lies dead close to the Old Manor. Leofgar leaps to the conclusion that Teb was on his way to kill him in revenge because Teb thinks Leofgar murdered Walter.’

‘But if that’s so then who killed Teb?’ de Gifford exclaimed. ‘In this story of ours, that is,’ he added quickly. ‘I accept that it makes sense for events to have developed as you suggest, Josse, but there is something else: how would a rat such as Walter Bell have known of the situation at the Old Manor? He might, I suppose, have happened upon the place whilst out riding and remarked to himself that it was the sort of household that looked as if it would contain valuables to steal and a pretty woman to assault. But it is extremely unlikely because for one thing Walter Bell does not own a horse and it’s quite a walk from Tonbridge to the Old Manor. Also both the Bells habitually restricted their villainy to their immediate neighbourhood, only venturing further afield at another’s behest.’ With a grim smile he added, ‘And probably riding that someone else’s horse.’

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.