The Leper's Return by Michael Jecks Page B

John you saw out in the yard?” Tanner asked again, dubiously.
    “Why don’t you ask him! John was found in the back by the master some while ago; John was carrying on with Martha Coffyn; John needs money. If you’re right and the plate has gone, you can be sure it’s John has got it! And now, if you don’t mind, I need to get some rest. My head feels as if it’s going to fall off my shoulders!”
    “It’s too late to see the girl now,” Baldwin said as they left the bottler. Tanner, could you go to her and ask if she will talk to us in the morning? Then go next door and tell the neighbor—Coffyn you said his name was, didn’t you?—well, say the same to him. And put a man on guard in the room with the body. I’ll want to study it again in daylight, in case I missed something. For now, I need to think.“ He went back along the screens and out through the door to the yard. Tanner and Edgar exchanged a glance before following him.
    “What is it, sir?” Edgar asked as he joined his master.
    “Hmm? Oh, it’s just that I was thinking if someone had killed Godfrey and run away immediately, he would not have gone straight through the front door. There are always too many people out there on the main street. No, I was wondering whether that someone might have come out here, through the back. And the more I stare out this way, the more I feel certain that the killer made off through the garden.”
    “Ah,” said Tanner. “But he’s not the sort, Sir Baldwin.”
    “You think so? He was willing to defraud the people of the town about losing his sight, wasn’t he?”
    “Oh, that’s very different.”
    “And what if he was trying to steal the plate and got interrupted? He might have knocked Godfrey down without meaning to kill him.”
    “Do you want me to arrange for someone to keep an eye on him?”
    Baldwin grimaced doubtfully, then shook his head. “No. If he was to run away, we’d soon catch him.”
    “He’s no murderer, I’m sure, and I don’t think he’d break into a house either.”
    “Neither do I, but that’s not what other people will think, Tanner,” Baldwin said softly, still staring out toward the little shack that lay only a few hundred yards up the hill. “Let’s just hope no fools take it into their heads to assume the worst of him, eh?”
    As the trio turned away, Baldwin and his servant retrieving their horses and making their way home, John sat on his bed rubbing his sprained ankle.
    The palliasse was thin now, and the rope mattress beneath was painful through the straw filling, but the little Irishman hardly noticed. In his mind’s eye he could still see that room, the two men on the floor, the girl lying near the window.
    His heart was still beating furiously. The effort of stealthily making his way home had exhausted him. Especially since all the way he could hear the cries of the men searching for him; the men who would hold him to be hanged because of the sack on his back.
    He was very scared; he had to make sure he wasn’t searched—not until he had managed to remove the sack of pewter concealed beneath the hay in his little barn and had placed it in a safer cache.
    Edgar rose before the dawn, as was his habit. He was a little light-headed from lack of sleep, but he ducked his head in the bucket by the well, puffing and blowing with the cold as he towelled himself dry. Pulling on his tunic, he stood awhile watching the eastern sky as it lightened.
    Ever since his time with the Knights Templar, he had enjoyed this early part of the day. It gave him a sense of serenity, as if he was alone in the world, and to enjoy it all the more, he sat on the old oak stump on which the logs were split. From here, by gazing along the length of the house, he could see the sky changing its color, tingeing the clouds with silver and purple, before suffusing them in peach. Almost before he realized, the darkness of the night sky was gone, and in its place was the clear, fresh paleness of the