Death of a Squire by Maureen Ash Page B

Marins! What are you doing here? Did you sight the stag? Are the dogs still on its trail or have we lost him?”
    Suddenly he saw the shaft of the arrow protruding from beneath the fold of Bascot’s cloak. “My God, you’ve been pricked. How badly are you hurt?”
    William slid off his horse in one motion and ran towards Bascot, bow still in hand. As he did so the two squires, Alain and Renault, came crashing with their horses through the woods a little distance from where the main body of the hunt had come. Seeing their lord dismounted and running towards Bascot, they came to a standstill. Behind them, from the woods to the south, straggled a few men on foot: a couple of huntsmen and the two foresters, Tostig and Eadric.
    “I am not badly wounded,” Bascot assured William. “A scratch, nothing more.”
    “Thanks be to God for that,” William replied. “Someone must have loosed at the stag and found you for a mark instead.” He shook his head. “You should know better, de Marins. A hunt is a dangerous place not only for the quarry, but also for the hunter. Even kings have been brought down by a stray arrow, unwisely loosed.”
    “I do not think this one was short of its target,” Bascot said, pulling the shaft free of the cloth in which it was imbedded. “Had I not turned when I did, it would have taken me full in the chest.”
    “Even so, de Marins, it does not mean that it was intentional. The stag passed this way just moments ago, did it not? No doubt one of the others misjudged the distance and let loose beforetimes.”
    “I think not, my lord,” Bascot insisted.
    William looked intently at the Templar. “Do you have some reason for believing so? Did you see who aimed the shaft?”
    Bascot shook his head.
    “Then…?”
    “It is the direction from which it came, my lord. Your hunting party approached from the south, did it not?”
    “Yes.” William’s face was beginning to show annoyance that the Templar was not making himself clear. “My brother was after boar. We had no beaters with us for deer, but a stag came across our path. Myself and a few others went after it while Gerard stayed with the pig. But I do not see…”
    “My lord Camville,” Bascot said, “I was on the other side of the wall when the arrow was loosed. Unless that shaft can miraculously change direction or penetrate solid wood it could not have been loosed at the deer.”
    “You mean…” William’s face drew down in consternation as he realised the import of what Bascot had said.
    “Exactly, my lord. It was fired from the north, not the south. I was at the edge of the wall and the arrow came from behind its protection. The deer could not have been seen from there. I was the quarry, not the stag.”

Ten
    L ATER THAT AFTERNOON B ASCOT ATTENDED THE Camville brothers in the sheriff’s private chamber. It was a larger room than the one his wife used as her own, filled with spare boots, tunics, assorted bits of tack and a sleeping bench fitted with a well-padded mattress and bolster. Nicolaa was also there, seated on a stool near the fire that blazed in the hearth. The two brothers were on their feet, William leaning negligently against the window embrasure while Gerard paced the room in his restless fashion. The excitement generated in him by the hunt was still evident, seeming to roll off him in waves as he trod from one side of the chamber to the other. It had been he who had slain the boar, driving his spear deep into the animal’s throat after it had killed two lymer hounds and sliced open the leg of one of the huntsmen. Now the beast was being skinned and prepared for the evening meal.
    The stag that had inadvertently strayed into the path of the boar-hunting party had also been brought down, finally taken when its strength had given out and the dogs, attacking in a pack, brought it to its knees. The sheriff had good reason to be pleased with the day’s work, but the news of the arrow shot at Bascot had tempered his