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field.
    Tanner was surprised that the old man made no effort to drop down with the others. Staring dumbly ahead, he stayed fixed to the wooden seat, reins held ready in his hands, as if daring them to ask him to join them, not even acknowledging his dog as it jumped up onto the wagon and rested its forepaws beside him to peer around. The others were out of earshot, so the constable ambled his horse alongside the older man’s, and said quietly, “What’s the matter, Sam?”
    When the farmer’s face turned toward him, he could see the terror. “It’s her, Stephen. Her! Why did it have to be me as found her?”
    Looking at him, Tanner was about to ask what he meant when Simon called him from the hedge. Nodding at the bailiff, he said, “Wait here, Sam. You’ll have to explain all this to us later.” Swinging off his horse, the constable walked to the hedge, clambered up the steep bank and followed the other two into the field.
    The snow was falling more freely now, thick clumps dropping and settling gently, making the whole area seem calm and peaceful, but the constable was not fooled, he knew only too well how dangerous the apparently soft white feathers could be to the unwary. Itwas not this, though, that made him frown. He had known the Cottey family for many years—Samuel, his brother, their children—and knew them to be sturdy, stolid folk. He had never known any of them to display such fear, not even back in the past when they were all younger, when Sam and he had fought as men-at-arms together. Why should he be so upset at the death of an old woman?
    Simon and Baldwin were a few yards away, walking toward a tall youth dressed in a russet tunic and woollen hose, with a thick red blanket over his shoulders, pinned like a short cloak. A heavy-looking, wooden handled knife was at his waist. Tanner recognized him immediately: Harold Greencliff.
    The knight had not met him before. Greencliff was a tall, fair-haired, good-looking youth in his early twenties, broad in the shoulder with a friendly and open face browned by the wind. Wide-set blue eyes glowed with health from either side of the long, straight nose. But today they were nervous and almost shifty, not meeting the knight’s gaze. From his clothes he was not poor, but neither was he wealthy. He had bright eyes, and looked quite sharp, but the knight did not judge him by that alone. He knew too many fools, who at first sight looked intelligent, to trust to his first impression.
    In his hands the boy held a shepherd’s crook, and his fingers moved along the stave as he watched them approach with a trepidation that Baldwin could not understand. It seemed odd that a corpse should create so much fear—first with old Sam Cottey, now with this boy. He shrugged. There must be a reason, and he was sure to hear of it before long.
    â€œYou’re Greencliff?” he asked.
    â€œYes,” he said, peering over Baldwin’s shoulder at the bailiff and constable.
    â€œWake up, lad!” said the knight irritably. “You’re looking after the body of this old woman for Cottey, is that right? Where is she, then?”
    Silently Greencliff turned and pointed to the hedge that led at right angles to the road to keep his sheep from going into the woods beyond. There, in the darkness under the plants, they could make out a small bundle. To Simon it looked like a bundle of dirty rags lying in the space made by a fox or badger path, in the gap between two stems of the hedge itself, lying half under the plants, half in the field. He and the knight walked toward it, leaving Greencliff standing, nervously fiddling with his crook, Tanner imperturbable beside him. The two walked to the body, pausing three or four yards from it.
    â€œDid you touch her?” Simon called back to him, frowning concentration on his face.
    â€œNo, sir, no. Soon as old Sam told me she was here, I came and stood where you saw me. I