The False Virgin (46 page)

So, in all likelihood, Edward was planning to hide the reliquary in the disused mill – a good hiding place – but plainly he never got that far. Realising that Richard was about to
overtake him, he turned aside to the Hutt. But where was Beornwyn’s statue now?

As Grey walked back down the street towards the inn, the last of the goodwives were clustered around the stalls, bargaining for bread, fish and meat, and anything else they
thought the shopkeepers might be persuaded to sell cheaply on the grounds that it would not keep over Christmas Day. Apart from at the baker’s they were having a hard time convincing the
shopkeepers to bargain, for in this cold weather even meat and fish would stay fresh for several days.

Dusk was settling down over the village and icy mist, heavy with wood smoke, curled itself around the houses. Grey was anxious to get back to the inn’s fireside. He was so hunched up
against the cold that he found himself walking past the butcher’s yard without even realising it, and would have carried on but for the bellow of anger that caught his attention. He paused
and glanced through the open gateway.

The journeyman was nowhere to be seen, but the slovenly woman he’d spoken to earlier had trapped someone in the corner and was giving him a good drubbing with her tongue, punctuated by
several smart raps to the head. Grey couldn’t see much of the figure cowering under her blows, but he guessed it was probably the errant apprentice. He strode in and pulling the woman away
from Alan, seized the lad firmly by his jerkin and marched him out of the yard.

Momentarily stunned by having her victim snatched from her, the woman recovered herself and ran after them down the road.

‘Here, where do you think you’re taking him? The little bugger’s been gone half the day. I need him here to clear the meat and fetch water from the well to sluice down the
slabs.’

Grey ignored her and hurried the boy on.

They heard her voice rising to a shriek behind them. ‘Bring him back here! You’re not leaving me to do it all myself again!’

As soon as they had turned the corner safely out of sight, the boy tried to wriggle free, but Grey pushed him up against the wall of a cottage.

‘Alan, isn’t it? You’re not in trouble. I just want to talk to you.’

The boy looked plainly terrified.

Grey tried again, softening his voice. ‘I don’t think you want to face that woman tonight, do you? Why don’t you come along with me and I’ll buy you a good hot supper? We
can sit by the fire and I’ll ask you a few questions. That’s all, just a few questions, then you can leave or stay as you please.’

He saw the look of temptation on the boy’s face and guessed it had been some while since he’d eaten and probably only scraps when he had.

‘What if I don’t know the answers to your questions?’ Alan said warily.

‘As long as you speak the truth I’ll be content with that, and you’ll still have your supper . . . I believe there is meat pie tonight and green codling pudding. I saw a man
delivering woodcock too.’

The boy hesitated, but Grey could see from the excitement in his eyes that he needed no more persuasion.

As soon as he ushered the boy into the inn, Grey asked for food to be sent up to the small chamber where he slept. There was a good fire burning in the hearth in there and he thought Alan might
be more inclined to talk if they were well away from the curious eyes of the villagers who’d come to sup their ale. He saw the innkeeper and serving maid exchange knowing glances, and guessed
he was not the first guest to take a village lad up to his bedchamber, but he was too weary to bother explaining. Besides, he’d learned long ago that men and women always preferred their own
imaginings over the truth.

He let the boy eat his fill in silence, though that took quite some time. The boy was still stuffing himself long after Grey was replete, having devoured a woodcock basking in a rich wine sauce,
a wedge of meat pie and several slices of cold pork and bread. Alan was eating at such an alarming speed he was certain to give himself a belly ache, but Grey had known hunger himself at that age
and knew that no word of caution would stop the boy taking another slice. When have warnings of future pain ever prevented the young from succumbing to temptation?

When Alan finally pushed his wooden platter from him and refilled his beaker from the jug of cider, Grey finally permitted himself to speak. He didn’t look at the boy, but leaned forward,
spreading his hands over the blaze in the hearth as if addressing himself to the flames.

‘The churchwarden tells me that you often visited the statue of Beornwyn. You must have been upset when it was removed.’ He heard only a noncommittal grunt. ‘Do you know who
took it from the church?’

Silence.

‘It was your master and your priest who removed it. Did you know that, Alan?’ He risked a sideways glance at the boy and caught a brief nod.

‘Did you know Master Richard had the statue of Beornwyn in his house?’

‘He shouldn’t have taken her,’ the boy said savagely. ‘She didn’t belong to him.’

‘No, he shouldn’t,’ Grey agreed, ‘but later someone else stole the statue from Master Richard’s house.’

‘I didn’t do it! I swear it.’ The boy was half-way out of his seat.

‘I know you didn’t,’ Grey said soothingly. ‘Master Richard believes it was another butcher who took the statue, Master Edward Thornton, and that night he was murdered at
the Royal Hutt in the forest. You’ve probably heard people say it was Master Richard who killed him, but that is not yet proved. Someone else might well have slain Master Edward.’

‘It wasn’t me,’ Alan said sullenly. ‘I was in the church all night.’

‘All night? Are you sure?’

The lad grunted. ‘Thomas said he’d tell the master I’d refused to cut a sheep’s throat and I’d run off again. He said the master’d kill me this time for sure.
I was too afeared to go back to the master’s house, so I ran to the church and hid behind the altar. Yarrow never checks there. I knew old Yarrow’d come and lock the door soon as it
were growing dark. Then even if Master came to the church looking for me, he’d not be able to get in.’

Grey frowned, puzzled. ‘Are you sure it was the night Master Edward died? You’re not confusing it with the evening before? Because on the night Master Edward was murdered, Master
Yarrow said he drove you out before he locked up.’

The boy took a swig of cider and burped loudly, rubbing his belly. ‘Nah, he didn’t lock up at all. I lay awake half the night, ready to creep out in the dark if the master came
looking for me, but he didn’t come neither. Church was still open next morning when I left, and that afternoon Master Richard was brought into the village in the wagon. I saw them pushing him
into the gaol.’ He bit his lip. ‘St Beornwyn prayed for those who slew her, I suppose I should pray for him.’ He didn’t sound as if he was eager to do it, whatever the
example the saint had set.

To console himself the lad reached for the remains of the leg of pork, but realising that not even he could manage any more meat, he sliced off the sweet honey crackling, which was evidently his
favourite part, and chewed happily on the crispy wedge.

Grey idly watched the blade of Alan’s knife as he sliced off yet another piece of golden-red crackling. Then as if the wisp of mist at the back of his head had frozen into a solid and
tangible form, he suddenly realised what had been troubling him all this time. The meat that lay on the platter was sliced with a straight, smooth edge.

He pictured in his head the woman slicing through the lump of tongue and Thomas running his great blade down the spine of the young goat. They were all clean straight cuts. Butchers’
knives, or the kind of knife any man would carry in his belt to cut his food or defend himself, all had smooth blades. That’s what you needed to slice flesh and meat swiftly. But the wound on
Edward’s neck was not a clean cut. The edges of the flesh were jagged and torn as if his throat had been slashed with a serrated blade, and there was only one profession he could think of
where serrated knives were used.

Grey pushed back the chair and rose swiftly. ‘I have to go out. It may be very late before I return.’

He saw a look of alarm flash across the boy’s face. ‘You’re welcome to stay here, lad, if you wish. No one will bother you.’

He crossed to his bed and kneeling, pulled out a low, narrow truckle bed from beneath his own and dragged it to the far corner. The truckle bed was intended for servants travelling with their
masters, but he guessed it might be warmer and more comfortable than any sleeping place Richard had assigned the boy.

‘You can sleep on this.’

He’d no wish to find the lad curled up in his own bed when he returned and he knew the boy would be tempted.

Grey did not trouble to rouse his two sergeants-at-arms from their warm seats in the ale room. He was not intending to make an arrest – not yet, anyway. Once the murderer was under lock
and key there would be little hope of getting him to divulge the whereabouts of the missing reliquary. He would know that even surrendering such a valuable object would not save him from the
gallows.

Grey had the stable boy saddle his horse. The lad was sulky at being dragged out into the cold from his supper, for he plainly hoped all of the guests would be settling down for the night in the
inn and would not be venturing out again until morning.

The streets were quiet. The horse’s iron shoes rang on the stones. A couple of men lumbered wearily past, returning from their workshops, their breath hanging about them like a cloud of
white smoke in the cold night air. They scarcely bothered to lift their heads to stare at the rider.

Grey slowed his horse to an amble along the street, which just a couple of hours ago had been bustling with housewives and shopkeepers. Now the stone benches in front of the houses were empty of
goods, and candles flickered through the holes in the shutters of upper storeys, where the shopkeepers and their families were eating their suppers. Grey looked up at the crudely painted signs
above the shops, which indicated what each traded in. A pig’s head for the butcher, thread and scissors for the cloth merchant, and a camel that looked more like a cow with a hump for the
spice-seller. He found the sign he sought, and counted the houses down to the end of the row, then he turned his horse, and made for the street behind. He counted the houses back along the row.

Dismounting, he tethered the horse a little further down the road in the shelter of the trees and crept back again, until he had the courtyard at the back of the house within his sights. He
could hear a horse stirring in the ramshackle stable in the yard, though it was too dark to make out much beyond dark smudges which might have been a cart and stacks of kegs.

Slivers of flickering yellow light crept out around the edges of the shutters on the upper storey, but they were too feeble even to reach the ground, never mind illuminate the spot where Grey
stood. At least, Grey thought, it proved the man he sought must be at home. No one would go out and leave candles burning. The question was – would he leave? If the murderer realised the
reliquary was still being sought, he might be panicked into moving it. In the meantime, there was nothing Grey could do but wait, watch and hope.

But by the time the lights were finally extinguished in the upper storey, Grey was so numb with cold and fatigue that he didn’t even notice. In fact, it wasn’t until he saw the light
of the lantern coming across the yard and heard the whinnying of the horse in the stable that he realised the man was on the move. Grey’s legs were so cold that it took quite a time for him
to move himself and it took several attempts before he could heave his stiff body onto his own mount. He had only just settled himself in the saddle when he saw the horse and its rider trot out of
the yard.

He dug his heels into his horse’s flanks, urging her to follow, while trying to keep as much distance as he could between himself and the rider ahead without losing sight of him. He
quickly realised they were leaving the village and heading straight down the road that led to the Hutt. Grey felt his stomach tighten in excitement. The thief was doing exactly what Grey had hoped
he would do: leading him to the reliquary.

On such a still night, the hoofbeats of the horse he was following rang out as clear as a church bell and as the iron struck the stones on the track it sent up a shower of blue sparks in the
darkness. It occurred to Grey that if he could so clearly hear the other horse, its rider would also hear him following. He turned off the path and forced his beast to walk on the grass, but Grey
was anxious to keep as close behind as he dared. If the murderer had hidden the reliquary in the forest then he could turn off the track without warning and Grey might lose him, just as Richard had
done.

Low wisps of white mist wrapped themselves around the roots of the trees, snaking over the track. Grey prayed it would not rise any higher. As the road wound deeper into the forest, the bushes
crept closer to the track and the grass verge disappeared, so that several times Grey was forced to leave the line of the road and weave his way through the trees. But that was no bad thing, he
told himself. If the rider ahead did happen to glance round, the forest would hide him.

Then, as Grey emerged from the trees, he saw to his consternation the track ahead was empty. Only a swirl of mist hung between the trees, glowing like a spectre under the starlight. Grey reined
in his horse and listened. Then he heard the sound of breaking twigs away to his right and a little ahead. He coaxed the horse forward and suddenly saw that they had reached the narrow path that
wound away to the Hutt. Even as he stared along it he glimpsed a figure on foot moving towards the door and, moments later, slip inside.

Grey quickly dismounted and, tethering his horse in the cover of some trees close to the track, he edged along the path, keeping his eyes fixed on the door, ready to dart into the undergrowth
should the man re-emerge. Several times, he heard the sharp retort of a twig snapping beneath his feet and cursed himself for his own clumsiness. But the door didn’t open and he guessed that
the Hutt’s stone walls were thick enough to prevent such sounds being heard inside.