Free The Red Velvet Turnshoe by Cassandra Clark

are clear.’
    She knew she was taking a great leap of faith. He could murder her in the night as she slept.
    He was staring at her with a blank expression and it was difficult to tell what he was thinking. He dashed the back of one hand over his eyes and asked gruffly, ‘How did they do it?’
    ‘They cut his throat.’

    He turned away and, with a small, strained laugh, said, ‘Tonight will be a first for Pierrekyn Haverel, sharing a sleeping chamber with a nun.
    Then he bedded down on the blanket she threw to him. As soon as she saw him burrow down she blew out the stub of candle the guest-mistress had allowed, stretched out on the pallet and pulled her cloak over her head.
     
    When Hildegard woke up around four to the sounds of the kitchener and his staff three floors below, she poked her head from under her cloak and was relieved to see Pierrekyn, one arm outflung, lying in the tangled heap of blanket. His eyes were wide open. It was clear he had not slept. The rustle as she stretched her limbs on the straw mattress made him sit up. There were prints of dark shadow under his eyes.
    ‘So that was no nightmare. He really is dead?’
    ‘You’d better lie low. I’m going to find out what’s happening. When I come back we’ll determine what’s best.’
    ‘I don’t know what you want from this,’ he said when she had retied her coif and pulled on her cloak. He was sitting cross-legged on the folded blanket.
    ‘Why should I want anything?’
    ‘Everybody wants something.’
    ‘There is another view.’
    ‘I’ve never observed it.’
    She pulled up her hood and opened the door. ‘Put the chair back. Don’t answer if anyone knocks to come in.’
     
    She knew Ulf was lodged in the general quarters with his men. As she approached there was a deal of activity going on, his men, fully armed, milling back and forth with an air of busyness.
    ‘No sign of him,’ Ulf announced in greeting. ‘He’s vanished into thin air. Nothing could be a surer sign of guilt. But why the devil did he kill the clerk?’
    Hildegard took him by the arm. ‘Ulf, come with me. You need to break your fast. You look like—’ She had been about to say ‘death’ but thought better of it.

    ‘I really haven’t time—’ he began but when he saw the expression on her face he checked himself. Snarling some order over his shoulder to the men, he allowed her to propel him towards the stairs.
    ‘What the devil’s going on?’ he demanded as they rushed down them, two at a time, and marched along the passage to the refectory.
    ‘Eat,’ she said. They were sitting in a quiet corner, with hardly anybody else about just yet, and no chance of being overheard. Even so she spoke in a low voice.
    ‘I know where Pierrekyn is but before you send your men to fetch him in, let me explain.’
    She told him exactly what had happened during the night, detailing the minstrel’s reaction to news of Reynard’s murder. ‘To my mind that’s not the response of a guilty man,’ she concluded.
    He looked unconvinced. ‘Is this just you seeing the best in the lad?’
    ‘At least let’s give him the benefit of the doubt before the town gets hold of him. The mob was terrifying last night. If they’d found him they’d have torn him apart.’
    ‘That’s what it’s like these days. Folk are hardened to cruelty after what they’ve suffered at the hands of the Count of Male and the Duke of bloody Burgundy. Their own blood has been drawn. Innocent blood. Now they want to make the guilty shed theirs.’
    ‘But we don’t know that Pierrekyn is guilty, do we? And an armed mob isn’t going to listen to the evidence. In fact, we don’t have any evidence against Pierrekyn.’
    She gave him a searching glance and he reluctantly admitted that they had nothing beyond the known connection between the two of them and Pierrekyn’s presence near the wool-sheds along with everybody else.
    ‘What I want to know is, Ulf, do you agree to give him a breathing