‘And afterwards?’
‘I left the cemetery and rode back to our house but I did so slowly. I wondered what Father and I should do for the future. By the time I reached Ashdown, isn’t it strange, master clerk, the future had been decided for me. Lord Henry was dead and my father was in flight.’
‘And do you often take a bow and a quiver of arrows to your mother’s grave?’
Alicia’s face suffused with rage.
‘Yes!’ she hissed through clenched teeth. ‘And I tell you this, clerk, if I had met Lord Henry on the way, I would have put an arrow in his heart!’ Her eyes glittered with hatred. ‘But God disposes and someone else did that!’
Chapter 10
Corbett rose from his stool. ‘Brother Cosmas, I thank you for your help. Sir William’s soldiers will be arriving soon. .’
‘Master!’
Corbett felt Ranulf touch his sleeve. If Alicia’s face was red with anger, Ranulf’s was white. He was gnawing the corner of his lips, his fingers tapping the dagger in his belt.
‘Master, a word with you?’
Corbett bowed coolly to the rest and followed Ranulf out of the sanctuary to a small side chapel dominated by a large statue of the Virgin and Child. Ranulf thrust his face close to Corbett.
‘Why didn’t you tell me about this?’ He tapped the side of his head. ‘Your brain clatters and turns like a wheel of a busy mill. I may be your servant but I am also a Clerk of the Green Wax: the King’s commission bears my name.’
Corbett went round him and, taking a taper, lit one of the small night-lights on the iron rail which ran beneath the statue of the Virgin.
‘One for Maeve,’ he murmured. He took another. ‘One for baby Eleanor! One for my unborn child.’ He took a fourth and put a coin in the box which, he noticed with some amusement, was cemented into the floor near the statue. ‘And one for my lovelorn Ranulf!’
‘I do not think it’s amusing, Sir Hugh!’
‘Murder never is, Ranulf. I didn’t tell you because I knew.’ He came back to his clerk. ‘I knew,’ he continued, lowering his voice, ‘what you would do. But, yes, I sat in the taproom this morning. I thought about Verlian, the hunt, his later flight. It’s a matter of logic, Ranulf. Sometimes, God forgive me, love and logic clash. I am no threat to you or to Alicia. But murder is murder. The King’s law is the King’s law. Justice must be done: that’s why you are a Clerk of the Green Wax, to enforce that. Otherwise we are no better than the animals in the forest where only the swiftest and most powerful survive.’
‘Lord Henry was powerful.’
‘And, Ranulf, Lord Henry was vulnerable. Think about it. If a great lord can be cut down with impunity, no matter what he was, or what he did, then no one is safe. You know that, be he a lord in his manor or a clerk on the streets of Oxford.’
Ranulf smiled ruefully.
‘But you do not think Alicia is the assassin?’
‘I’ll be honest, Ranulf, I don’t know.’ Corbett ticked the points off on his fingers. ‘She hated the Lord Henry. She was in the forest when he died. She was riding a horse. She carried a bow and quiver in the use of which she is skilled. Finally, there are no witnesses to where she was or what she did. So, like it or not, at this stage of the hunt, Mistress Alice is much suspected but nothing is proved.’
He looked over his shoulder; Brother Cosmas was now standing over the verderer and his daughter. Corbett gently pushed Ranulf deeper into the shadows of the side chapel.
‘There’s more to this forest and its people than meets the eye.’
‘Such as?’ Ranulf asked.
‘Use your logic, Ranulf. You’ve been through Ashdown Forest and what did you see? I know,’ Corbett held a hand up. ‘Miles and miles of trees and dark lanes, swamps and marshes. You could hide an army there and no one would know. Really the forest is like a deserted street, long and dark, houses on either side. Despite the dark tunnel which runs between them, the inhabitants of those houses know when someone goes along that street, particularly if it’s time and again.’
‘And?’ Ranulf asked.
‘The same is true of the forest. There may be trees as far as the eye can see but remember, Ranulf, what it was like? The dark, tangled undergrowth; those light green patches which may be marshes or swamp. Now, when you walk through a forest you are forced, whether you like it or not, to stumble through the undergrowth, crashing about like a wounded boar and blundering into God knows what danger, as well as being seen and heard by anyone who may be passing.’
‘Or,’ Ranulf intervened quickly, ‘you will seek certain paths and trackways where, again, you are likely to be seen or heard.’
‘Now there speaks a good and studious observer. So, let’s return to the questioning and, if you can, my noble Galahad, my knight of the moonlight, curb your passion and use your mind.’
Corbett left the side chapel and walked back into the sanctuary. Ranulf sighed, fished a coin from his purse which he put in the box, and lit a candle.
‘And that’s for Master Long Face,’ he muttered. ‘And his damnable logic!’
He followed Corbett into the sanctuary, where the clerk had already taken his stool.
‘Master Verlian?’
‘I did not like the way you questioned my daughter, Sir Hugh, or what you implied.’
‘If your daughter is innocent she has nothing to fear. And neither have you. True, my questions may bite.’ He half-smiled at Alicia who was now sitting on the floor, her back resting against a pillar. ‘But your answers are logical and you do not have the eyes of a murderer.’
Now Ranulf smiled to hide his anxiety. If they had been alone, he would have asked his master what the eyes of an assassin looked like, bearing in mind some of the sweet-faced villains they had crossed swords with over the years. When he caught the pleading look in the young woman’s eyes he glanced away. Did she have anything to hide?
Corbett, however, was now rubbing the side of his face, a sure sign that his sharp brain was hunting an idea.
‘You have questions for me, clerk?’ Verlian asked.
‘Yes, it’s not about Lord Henry’s murder. It’s about the forest. You know it well?’
‘As well as my child’s face.’
‘You are a skilled huntsman?’
Verlian shrugged. ‘Lord Henry said as much.’
‘You can track a deer?’
‘I can track anything which walks the face of God’s earth,’ Verlian replied proudly. ‘Be it man or beast.’
‘And your companions, the huntsmen and verderers, are people who live in and use the forest?’
‘Some are very good. Others have got a great deal to learn.’
‘So, what about the outlaws?’ Corbett asked abruptly.
Verlian looked guardedly at him.
‘The wolfs-heads, the outlaws?’ Corbett insisted.
‘Many of them don’t survive. They flee from the towns and villages. They do not last long in the forest. I have discovered many a corpse frozen in a snowdrift or the edge of some swamp. I’ve even found those who’ve hanged themselves, their wits disturbed. If they have any sense they do not stay long but travel on to another town.’
‘And the rest? Those who do stay? The peasants who kill the deer? Or who’ve fled a cruel lord?’
‘We leave them alone and they leave us. And we turn a blind eye to the little things they take.’
‘So, you do see them?’
Verlian nodded. ‘If they don’t interfere with us, as I have said, we don’t interfere with them.’
‘I can say the same,’ Brother Cosmas interrupted.
‘Ah yes, I was going to ask you that.’ Corbett smiled at the Franciscan. ‘You live here, Brother. You describe Ashdown as your parish. You must know all the forest people, as well as those poor unfortunates who have to flee?’
‘That’s true,’ the Franciscan replied proudly. ‘I am a friar, not one of the King’s officers. If a man snares a hare to put in his family pot, why should I object?’
‘And Mistress Alicia here? You who ride through the forest armed with bow and arrow?’