Belaset's Daughter - By Feona J Hamilton Page 0,106

trailed away.

". . . or perhaps it was just an echo?" he ended.

"No doubt," said de Warenne, the brilliant smile flashing again.

"My lord," ventured Jervis. "There is something more that I must tell you."

De Warenne looked at him and sighed.

"Well?" he said.

"Just now, my lord," said Jervis. "When I met Robert and Philip, they were with a group of others. There was one with them who I did not know, but he was not popular.

He suggested that I might have had something to do with this matter myself. When Philip attacked him, no-one came to his aid. Indeed, there was some pleasure taken by the others at his discomfiture."

De Warenne was no longer looking askance.

"Do you say so?" he said musingly.

Humphrey de Bohun leant forward so that he could look directly at Jervis across de Warenne.

"Describe this unpopular young man!" he said, crisply.

"He was short and thin and had dark hair, my lord," said Jervis.

"And a sour expression?" asked de Bohun.

"Exactly so, " said Jervis.

De Bohun turned to de Warenne.

"This man was with Sir Roger in Normandy," he said. "He vanished while we were there with the King. Sir Roger claimed that he had sent him back to England and perhaps he had, with a message for de Montfort and his followers!"

"Well, he will carry no more messages for Sir Roger now!" said de Warenne, grimly.

"And we must deal with him at once. We will stand idly chatting here, until the group with this young man in passes us. Jervis you will nod as he goes by."

"I will, my lord," said Jervis.

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Belaset’s Daughter

The four of them stopped their horses to one side of the track, where they sat, idly looking about them at the others of the party passing by them. Jervis saw the group among whom Robert and Philip had been riding coming towards them. He waited, searching for the face of the thin, dark man, as the group rode past, bowing to their lordships as they did so. There was no sign of him.

"My lord," said Jervis. "He was with these young men, I am sure, yet he is with them no longer."

De Warenne swore softly, under his breath.

"He has escaped us, then!" he said. "He must have been afraid for his own safety, since his lord and protector is dead, and fled."

"Then he has confirmed his guilt," said de Lusignan. "Should we not send a search party after him?"

"I will go, my lord!" said Jervis, quickly. "I know what he looks like and he cannot have got far yet."

"Go, then!" said de Warenne, laughing at Jervis’ keenness. "Catch this man who dared to doubt your honour and you will be rewarded."

Jervis wrenched his horse’s head around and started back up the path. He would return to the place where he had first seen the group and the man and been taunted by him. The memory of that sly face and the sneer in his voice made Jervis’s cheeks burn with anger.

Yes, he would find him, bring him back, and expose him and his master for the traitors that they were. He charged back along the track, looking for the spot, but, to his chagrin he could not recognise it. Slowing the horse to a walk, he cast about, searching more carefully. Surely it had not been this far back, he thought, and turned back along the path.

Suddenly, he saw the broken branches and trampled grass that he had seen when he found Sir Roger lying on the path, but the body had already been removed and there was no sign that anything had ever happened here. He sat on his horse, puzzling over what his eyes could see, but his brain could not believe. Who had been here and made such a good job of hiding all the evidence, and where was the body now?

There must be something here that would give him a clue, thought Jervis. This must have been the work of Sir Roger’s man although surely it would have taken more than one man to make such a thorough job of cleaning up in such a short space of time. He went back over the events of the morning, from the moment he had seen the archer in the tree. Not more than an hour, from the time he saw the fatal arrow loosed to now, he decided. An hour during which the dark man must have found at least one other helper, found this place, removed Sir Roger’s body to another place,