Girl In A Red Tunic by Alys Clare

relief Leofgar responded. As the young man stepped around the corpse and approached the nun, his features seemed to unfreeze and he gave her a comradely smile. ‘Come, Sister,’ he said, holding out his hand for hers, ‘Sir Josse is right, there’s no need for more than one to stay on guard here. Let’s help each other back to the sanctuary of the Abbey walls.’
         She took his hand and Josse watched as the two of them strode off down the path, quickly catching up and overtaking Brother Saul and Sister Anne; Leofgar called out something, perhaps an assurance that he would alert the community to what had happened, and then he and Sister Phillipa, still rather touchingly holding hands, broke into a trot and hastened away. Leofgar might well have reacted like a green young lad on seeing the body, Josse mused, and I can’t really blame him for it was not a pleasant sight. But he’s pulled himself together, no doubt of that, and I am sure he will not falter again.
         Josse put the matter out of his mind. There would be only a brief time before the hurdle bearers arrived to take the body away and he had work to do. First he inspected the ground beneath the branch from which the body had been suspended, but it was hard with the dry cold and, in any case, any informative footprints there might have been had been obscured by the lightly shod feet of the two nuns, by Saul’s sandals and by the boots of Leofgar and Josse. No help there, he decided. Then he went to look around the trunk of the tree. There were the prints of Saul’s feet; he had broken the thin ice on the edge of an all but dried out puddle and the marks of the hobnails on the thick soles of the lay brother’s sandals had made a sliding pattern in the mud.
         There was another footprint too.
         Josse hurried back to the dead man and studied his feet. He wore filthy boots of poor quality leather and the uppers had pulled away from the soles in one or two places. The backs of the boots were trodden down, as if the man had been in the habit of pushing his feet carelessly into them. Grimacing at the task, both because it took some force and because the man stank, Josse pulled the right boot off the dead foot. Then he carried it over to the base of the oak tree and compared it with the footprint there.
         Interesting.
         He laid the boot down beside the corpse – putting it back on the pale, naked and filthy foot would take time that he did not have and, besides, the infirmarer and her nurses would in any case soon be stripping the corpse in preparation for burial – and then he spat on his hands and shinned up the tree. He edged gingerly along the branch and, at the point where the knot was still tied to it, settled himself securely, winding his legs firmly together beneath the branch and, holding on with one hand, bending down to inspect the knot.
         He traced the way in which the rope had been tied. That was interesting, too. Then he spotted something else. Leaning down, he teased out the small but revealing thing that was caught up in a strand of the knotted rope and carefully tucked it inside his tunic. He pushed himself back along the branch – funny how it seemed to be even further from the ground now that he was up there – and as he slid back down the oak tree’s trunk, he heard the hurdle bearers coming along the track.
     
    Later, he and the Abbess waited together in the infirmary, outside the recess where Sister Euphemia had ordered the lay brothers to put the corpse. She would strip the dead man, she had said, have a preliminary look at him and invite the Abbess and Josse to join her when she was ready. She had just sent Sister Beata to fetch them and, as they waited there, the curtains parted and the infirmarer stood back to let them approach the cot where the body lay.
         There was a strong smell of rosemary, combining refreshingly with some other flowery scent that Josse thought was geranium.