Song of a Dark Angel

and described how he had found the girl. Next came Giles Selditch, who graphically described the girl's wounds. Corbett glimpsed the ugliness in the faces of the jurors and the rest of the villagers.
    'When do you think the girl was killed?' Gurney asked.
    The doctor, standing at the far corner of the table, shrugged.
    'Her flesh was cold, covered in frost, she must have been slain last night.'
    'What was she doing out on the moorland?' one of the jurors asked.
    Gurney told the man to shut up.
    Master Joseph was called next. 'Marina was a member of our community,' he began. 'No one forced her to join us.' He stared around, nodding at the murmur of assent that greeted his words. 'No one forced her to stay.' He held one hand up. 'Indeed, the very fact that she was out on the moorland proves she had the freedom to move as she wished.'
    'Why did she leave?' Gurney asked harshly.
    Master Joseph stared back, waiting as Father Augustine's squeaky quill recorded the question.
    'She said,' he finally answered, 'that she wished to see her father. I was reluctant to let her go but had no right or cause to prevent her. However, I got then the impression that she was lying to me – that it was really someone else she was meeting.' He looked over his shoulder at Fulke the tanner, who was squatting at the base of one of the pillars, his arm around his sobbing wife. 'I don't know who. Marina was due to leave us soon. Her purification was complete and, at the end of the month, we hoped to secure her passage to Outremer. She could have been in Bethlehem for Christmas.'
    Corbett whispered to Gurney, who said quickly, 'Sir Hugh Corbett would like to ask a few questions.'
    Corbett got to his feet. 'Master Joseph, while Marina was at the Hermitage, did anyone from outside attempt to speak to her?'
    'Yes, Gilbert, the old witch's son.'
    'And did Marina go to the gates to speak to him?'
    'She did on two occasions. But the last time she refused to see him.'
    'And how did Gilbert receive that?'
    'Angrily, a little hurt, but he left peacefully enough.'
    'Master Joseph,' Corbett smiled faintly. He was aware that the villagers were looking at him intently, nudging each other to draw attention to this important man, the king's representative, whom they regarded with a mixture of admiration and awe tinged with a deep suspicion of any outsider.
    'Master Joseph,' Corbett repeated. 'I must ask you this. Last night, did anyone else leave the Hermitage?'
    'No. Master Nettler can swear to my presence there as I can to his, and all the other members of the community can vouch for each other.' Master Joseph looked directly at Gurney. 'Sir Simon, we have been on your lands for over a year and, as you know, when spring comes we may move on.' His words provoked a deep sigh of disappointment from the watching villagers. 'Never once have we abused either your hospitality or that of this village; never once told a lie or been involved in any fraudulent trickery. I make this assertion now so it can be challenged.' He paused and stared around the now quiet church. 'Good!' he said, and added quietly, 'And I tell no lie now, on my oath!'
    Corbett nodded and sat down. Master Joseph was dismissed and quietly slipped out of the church. Fulke the tanner was called next. He identified his daughter's corpse. He said that Marina had been happy at the Hermitage. Then he told the court that a small amber-bead necklace, a gift from him and his wife, was missing from the girl's body.
    'She always wore it,' he said flatly. 'And now, like her soul, they have gone.'
    The villagers clapped when he returned to his place. Others were called to give evidence. They named Gilbert time and again, telling how, in the village tavern, he had bitterly attacked the Pastoureaux for taking Marina from him, how he had missed her and how, on one memorable occasion, he had boldly asserted that she would never leave Hunstanton.
    Corbett could see Gurney's unease deepen as other witnesses began to hint that Gunhilda, Gilbert's mother, now described as a well-known witch, had tried to help her son. Perhaps she was also the perpetrator, the blasphemer who had been pillaging graves in the village churchyard?
    'The use of dead men's skulls and bones,' one reedy-voiced villager intoned, 'is well known to the Masters of the Gibbet and to the night hags!'
    Father Augustine was then called. 'I cannot say,' he replied to a question from Gurney, 'whether Gunhilda or her son were responsible for robbing the