Free Ellis Peters - George Felse 06 - Black Is The Colour Of My True Love's Heart by Ellis Peters Page A

movement to pick it up, and then took out his handkerchief, and handled his find delicately through the linen. A small silver medal, worn almost smooth, some human figure, maybe a saint, on one side, and on the other what seemed to be a lion rampant. From the ring that pierced it above the saint’s head a thin silver chain slid away like a snake and slipped through his fingers; he caught it in his other hand, and saw that it had not been unclasped, but broken.
    He had seen it before, or at least something so like it that in his heart he knew it was the same; round, worn, plain, of this very size, why should there be two such in Follymead at the same time?
    This morning, at Professor Penrose’s lecture, Lucien Galt had worn an open-necked sweater-shirt, and several times he had leaned forward to attend to the professor’s record player for him. He had then been wearing this medal round his neck. Dominic had noticed it because it had seemed at first out of character; and then, and more acutely, because it was entirely in character, after all, that he should wear it as he did, without a thought for either display or concealment, as naturally as he wore his eyelashes. And the thing itself had an austerity that made it singularly personal and valid, like a silver identity bracelet round a sailor’s wrist in wartime. Not for show, but not to be hidden, either; something with a right to be where it was.
    He stared at it in the fading light, and he knew it was the same. He looked at the sky, which was ragged with broken clouds, and then went and found some large leaves of wild rhubarb from the waterside, and laid them over the drops that were possibly blood, and the trampled ground, in case of rain. He found a sharp stone and drove it into the turf where he had picked up the medal. That was all he could do.
    Then he went to find Henry Marshall.
     
    “I’m not sure about the blood,” said Dominic for the fourth time. “I am sure about the struggle. Two people – or more than two, but it looks like two – were fighting there. And
this
was in the grass, and Liri says it was his, and I say so, too. And that’s all we’ve got, between the five of us.”
    They were in the warden’s office, with the door tightly shut. Dinner was over, without them; they had sandwiches and coffee in here, but no one had done more than play with them. Liri sat bolt upright, pale and calm, her mouth tight and her eyes sombre. Felicity, mercifully, had been manoeuvred out of the council by Tossa, and driven in to the evening session, where she would have to mingle and be social and keep her mouth shut. She didn’t even know exactly what Dominic had found, though maybe she guessed more than was comfortable. Someone would have to keep an eye on her, and it looked as if the someone would have to be Tossa. But Felicity had resources of her own, and whatever she couldn’t do yet, she could keep secrets. At fifteen it’s an essential quality; one’s life depends on it. She wouldn’t give anything away.
    “We can’t leave it at that,” said Dominic reasonably.
    “No, I realise that, of course.” Henry Marshall was barely thirty, none too sure of himself after four months under Edward Arundale’s formidable shadow, and at this moment in an agony of indecision. “But we have no proof at all that anything disastrous has happened, no proof of a crime, certainly. And you must understand that this establishment is in a curiously vulnerable position. If a scandal threatened our reputation it might cut off funds from several sources, as well as frightening away our actual student potential.” He dug his fingers agitatedly into his straw-coloured hair, and his black-rimmed spectacles slid down his long young nose. “A bad period of some weeks could close us down. It would be cataclysmic. As long as we run steadily on a moderate backing we’re perfectly safe. But any interruption of any long duration would finish us. And that would be a real national