towards the edge of the deep ditch. Only a few dead leaves still clung to the branches, which hardly afforded them cover, but at least they were out of earshot.
'What are you doing here?' Raffe demanded. Why didn't you send a message to meet you after dark?'
'No time to wait,' Talbot muttered. 'So he's left for Norwich?'
'Osborn? Yes, he means to find his brother's killer.' Raffe's eyes narrowed. 'Do you know something about it?'
'More than something. It was Holly, your girl . . . Elena. She did it... she killed Hugh,' he added, seeing Raffe's look of incomprehension.
'Elena? No! Why are you saying this?' Raffe yelled. 'It was madness even to think she might have killed Raoul, but Hugh, never!'
'Keep your voice down.' Talbot cast an anxious look towards the manor gate, but the servants were too busy celebrating Osborn's departure to be hanging round it.
You know fine rightly she did kill Raoul. She'll tell you herself she remembers throttling him. And if she could murder him, why not Hugh 'n' all? Hugh recognized her. That's why she did it. Ma's got her hidden in her own chambers. The other women think she's run off. Thing is,' Talbot continued, 'Hugh came to Ma's Michaelmas feast. Everyone saw him there and saw him go to one of the chambers with Holly. Our girls'll say nothing, they know better than that, but there were dozens of men and lads from the town there that night. It'll not be long before one of 'em comes forward and tells Osborn where his brother was a few hours afore he died.'
Raffe was so stunned he could hardly breathe. There was no question that Hugh deserved to die. He would have willingly killed Hugh himself if he could, but to think of Elena committing cold-blooded murder, not once but twice, maybe even three times ... In his mind he could still see her standing there on the manor steps looking up at him, her eyes wide with innocence. He felt himself torn between the horror of what she had become and the desperate need to protect her even now.
He grasped Talbot's sleeve, panic rising in his voice. 'We need to get her away, now, before Osborn starts searching.'
'Like I say, Ma's got her well hidden and all the girls will be able to put their hands on the Holy Cross and swear that she's gone for good, for that's what they believe. Safest thing is for you to leave her where she is. You try moving her while Osborn's turning the town arse over tit and you'll both be caught. Anyway, it's not the girl I've come about. No sense fretting over a fox among the lambs, when there's a wolf on the prowl. And this wolf is a savage one.'
Talbot fiddled inside his clothes and pulled out a leather pouch. He clumsily tried to get his great hand inside and after much scrabbling and grunting, he finally pulled out an object on a broken leather thong and held it up. It gleamed in the watery sunshine. He thrust it towards Raffe. 'Recognize this?'
Raffe, distracted by thoughts of Elena, barely glanced at it.
'Look at it, Bullock!'
Raffe stared down. There was no mistaking it. There were not two like it in the world. It was the gold ring set with the pearl. The same ring he'd given the sailor who had delivered the French spy.
Talbot was watching his face. 'I'm right, aren't I, that it's yours?'
Raffe nodded. He'd have known every twist of that gold knot even in the dark.
'How did you come by it?'
'The alewife you spent the night with in Yarmouth. She recognized it.'
'The sailor came back?' Raffe asked.
That was not surprising. Probably he tried to trade the ring in her alehouse. It was the kind of place where such clandestine deals were done, but the alewife didn't seem wealthy enough to buy it, and even if she had, why would she return it to Raffe?
Talbot dropped the ring into Raffe's palm. 'The night after the storm they found a corpse.'
'I was there,' Raffe told him. 'The poor woman was sure it was her dead husband, but it was too far decayed for anyone to be certain who it was.'
He shuddered. That voice pleading and begging outside the door to be let in still rang in his head. Was it really the ghost of her husband or his revenant corpse?
Talbot grunted. 'That corpse wasn't her husband. When they laid him out they found he'd a