way back to the spot where the body had lain and, staring at the short, frosty grass at the edge of the track, he made out the large area where it had been flattened, first by the corpse and then by the booted feet of those who had come to bear it down to the Abbey. There were still a few smears of blood.
Smears of blood…
Josse straightened up. ‘Gervase, he wasn’t killed here!’
Gervase hurried over. ‘There’s not enough blood,’ Josse said. ‘With those wounds — and assuming he was still alive when they cut his throat — he would have bled copiously. So where is it? Where’s the blood?’
Gervase was now staring down as intently as Josse had done. ‘There’s some there.’ He pointed. ‘And there.’
‘Aye, but those patches are nothing but seepage from the dead body,’ Josse said. ‘When you cut into a man’s wrist — and the dead man’s hand was all but severed — the blood spurts out like a fountain.’
Gervase was looking at him respectfully. ‘There, Josse, I must bow before your greater experience, for I have never seen a man’s hand cut off. Nor a throat being slit,’ he added, ‘and I pray I never shall.’ Then, as if deliberately steering his thoughts away from such horrors, he said, ‘So, if he wasn’t killed here, where? Is it worth our while looking around?’
Josse was thinking. ‘If you are going to torture a man, you want to do so in an out-of-the-way spot.’
‘In the forest?’ Gervase suggested.
‘Aye, perhaps, although-’ Although the forest would not like it and would soon rid itself of your presence, he was going to say. Deciding it would sound impossibly whimsical to someone like Gervase, who had had very little experience of the Great Forest and all that went on within it, he said instead, ‘Although if the slaying was done deep within the trees, why did they not leave him there? No — I think they probably jumped him on the track, took him a short distance into the undergrowth and afterwards dragged his body back to this spot.’
‘Why would they do that?’ Gervase persisted. ‘If he was hidden in the bracken, why not leave him there?’
It was a good question. Josse was considering it when, as if out of nowhere, the answer was in his head: We did not want the residue of such brutality within the forest. It was we who brought him out to the track.
And then he knew.
Would he be able to make Gervase believe him?
He could but try.
‘The forest people put him here,’ he said simply. ‘They knew he would be found sooner or later, for the track is quite well used. They also knew he would end up at Hawkenlye Abbey.’
Gervase was looking at him wonderingly. ‘You know that?’ Josse shrugged. Gervase took it as an affirmation. ‘Because of Joanna?’
But Josse did not want to talk about Joanna. He shrugged again and then said, ‘I suggest we go along the track for a mile or so in each direction, looking for any spot where flattened grass or disturbed undergrowth points to a body having been dragged out of the forest. You go back towards the Abbey; I’ll go on that way.’
Gervase, Josse noticed, had the puzzled frown of a man who wants to ask further questions but does not want to risk offence. With a private smile, he set off along the track and presently heard the sound of Gervase’s footfalls as he strode off the other way.
It was Josse who found the place. Had he not been actively searching for it, he would probably have missed it, for the signs were faint: a heel print on the edge of a muddy puddle right off to the side of the track; a slim hazel branch that had been partially broken; and, when he hastened off the track and in under the trees, the shadow of a line through the dying bracken that might have been made by a boar or a deer but that, under the circumstances, Josse was absolutely sure was the work of human beings.
He had gone perhaps a hundred paces. Hoping Gervase was still in earshot, he loped back to the track and yelled, ‘Gervase! Gervase! Here, to me!’
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?’
