The Falconer's Knot by Mary Hoffman

to time, Bertuccio brought them something to eat or drink. The daily timetable was ignored and they didn’t know if they had eaten their midday meal or not. In spite of advice to pray and meditate, there was an air almost of holiday.
    Not since he arrived in Giardinetto had Silvano seen all the brothers gathered together for so long with no task to do. There were several of them that he still didn’t know by name and he wasn’t at all sure what they all did. Since he spent all his waking hours when he was not praying or eating or sleeping, working in the colour room, he had made little contact with Fazio the Illuminator or Monaldo the Librarian or Valentino the Herbalist.
    But they were all there now. And there was only one possible subject of conversation.
    ‘Why is Brother Anselmo so long with the Abbot?’ whispered Matteo, one of the other novices who worked with the Colour Master.
    ‘Perhaps he is helping him to solve the mystery,’ suggested Silvano, also in a whisper. And such was the veneration Brother Anselmo was held in by all who worked alongside him, that it seemed only natural to them that he would be using his great intellect to discover the murderer of the merchant.
    Silvano had not seen the body; no one in the friary had but Brother Rufino and the Abbot – and the killer, of course. But Silvano did not need to see it. He knew exactly what a man looked like when his life had bled out through his ribs. This new death, so far from Perugia, haunted and unsettled him. But whoever had killed Tommaso had surely not followed Ubaldo to Giardinetto from Assisi?
    Yet perhaps the merchant had some business connection with the larger city? Try as he might, Silvano could see no link between the two killings except himself. He thanked the Lord that it wasn’t he who had discovered this latest body, but he wondered how long it would be before others made the connection. He wasn’t even sure that the Abbot believed in his innocence any more.
    ‘Whose dagger was it?’ Brother Valentino asked of no one in particular.
    ‘His own, I think,’ said Rufino, who had just entered the room, holding the weapon before him. It was cleaned of all bloodstains but still held a horrid fascination for every man in the refectory. ‘See, there is the letter “U” engraved on the hilt and Father Bonsignore thinks he saw such a dagger at his belt when he arrived.’
    ‘To kill a man with his own dagger!’ said Brother Taddeo.
    ‘The Abbot says you may disperse to your own occupations,’ said Brother Rufino. ‘We shall assemble in the chapel for Sext at noon and then come back here to eat. The bell will summon you in about an hour.’
    Silvano was one of the first to leave and the first thing he saw was Father Bonsignore and Brother Anselmo escorting three grey sisters across the courtyard. He recognised pretty Sister Orsola straightaway. What on earth was she doing in the friary? The other two were unknown to him. She turned at the gate and looked at him, as if aware that he was there. And into that look she put such compassion and understanding that his heart began to race.

    It was Brother Landolfo, the Guest Master himself, who had insisted on riding to Gubbio to break the news to the merchant’s wife. Although he was no longer young and certainly no longer slim, he had been a great horseman before he felt called to the way of Saint Francis. And he felt such guilt that a guest had died under his protection that only a fast ride on one of the friary’s surprised horses could relieve his feelings.
    When Isabella had seen him in her home pacing the carpet, she knew that the news was bad but she prayed that it would be bad enough. A husband wounded, mutilated, incapacitated, she could have borne if she had loved him but not Ubaldo. He was hard enough to endure in his health; in sickness he would be insupportable.
    But she need not have worried. Her husband was dead.
    She drank deep of the wine she had ordered for the friar and