Sir Hugh Corbett 11 - The Demon Archer

had gone wrong? Why he took so long to return? Why he didn’t flee back to your house?’
    ‘And what else did you think?’
    ‘I will tell you that, mistress, when you tell me where you were.’
    ‘There’s a cemetery behind this church. My mother lies buried there. It’s the one place in this forest I felt safe from Lord Henry and his henchmen. I took a horse, a small palfrey, and I rode there. I collected some wild flowers, left the horse at the lych-gate and put the flowers on my mother’s grave. I sat and talked to her for a while.’ Alicia ignored her father’s muted sobs.
    ‘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,