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over someone lying on the ground, and Bartholomew and Michael approached, the monk stifling a cry of horror as he saw the blood-splattered figure. Bartholomew knelt next to Isobel’s body and gently eased her onto her back. Her throat was a mess of congealed blood, dark and sticky where it had flooded down her chest.
    Michael squatted down next to him, his eyes tightly closed so he would not have to look. He began to mutter prayers for the dead, while Bartholomew wrapped her in her cloak. Cynric disappeared to report the news to the Sheriff and to locate the dead woman’s family.
    When Michael had finished, Bartholomew picked up the body and carried it into the church. A friar, who had been in the crowd outside, helped put her into the parish coffin and cover her with a sheet. While the friar went to clear the churchyard of ghoulish onlookers and to await Isobel’s family, Bartholomew looked again at the body, while Michael peered over his shoulder.
    The sheet was not long enough to cover the dead girl’s feet and Bartholomew saw that someone had taken her shoes. Her feet were relatively clean, so she had not been walking barefoot. He looked a little more closely and caught his breath as he saw the small red circle painted in blood on her foot.
    ‘What is wrong?’ asked Michael, his face white in the dark church.
    Bartholomew pointed to the dead girl’s foot. ‘That mark,’ he said. “I saw a circle like that on the foot of the last dead girl, Fritha. I thought it was just chance - there was so much blood - but Isobel has a mark that is identical.’
    ‘Do you think it is the killer’s personal signature?’ asked Michael, with a shudder. “I assume all three women were killed by the same person.’
    Bartholomew frowned. ‘Perhaps, yes, if there were a similar mark on the foot of the first victim. I did not see her body.’
    ‘God’s teeth, Matt,’ said Michael, his voice unsteady.
    ‘What monster would do this?’ He clutched at one of the pillars, unable to tear his eyes away from the body in the coffin. He began to reel, and Bartholomew, fearing that the monk might faint, took him firmly by the arm and led him outside.
    They sat together on one of the ancient tombstones in the shade of a yew tree. A woman’s anguished
    cries suggested that Cynric had already found Isobel’s family and that they were nearing the church. Next to Bartholomew, Michael was still shaking.
    ‘Why, Matt?’ he asked, looking to where a man led his wailing wife into the church, escorted solicitously by the friar.
    Bartholomew stared across the churchyard at a row of young oak trees, their slender branches waving in the breeze. ‘That is the third girl to be killed,’ he said.
    ‘Hilde, Fritha, and Isobel, and all of them murdered in churchyards.’
    The Fair had resulted in a temporary increase in prostitution. The town burgesses had called for the Sheriff to rid the town of the women, but Bartholomew believed the prostitutes were providing a greater service to the town than the burgesses appreciated: as long as they were available, scholars and itinerant traders from the Fair did not pester the townsmen’s wives and daughters. Bartholomew suspected Michael felt much the same, although such a position was hardly tenable publicly for a Benedictine Master of Theology.
    They sat for a while until Michael regained some of his colour, and watched the crowd in the churchyard. When the Sheriffs men arrived, it became ominously silent.
    Bartholomew frowned. ‘What is all that about?’
    They watched as the soldiers tried to disperse the crowd. ‘There are rumours in the town that the Sheriff is not doing all he might to investigate the murders of Hilde and Fritha,’ said Michael. ‘As Sheriff, his duty is to try to prevent prostitution, and it is said that he considers the murderer to be doing him a favour by killing these women.’
    ‘Oh, surely not, Brother!’ said Bartholomew in disbelief.
    ‘What Sheriff would want a