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bridge was located there.
    Faucon sighed. Hopefully, the boy had enough of a head start to send Odger back empty-handed. The sooner the bailiff returned, the sooner his Crowner could be off to Alcester for the night. Faucon wanted to reach the safety of town and abbey before darkness fell.
    Arms folded in the manner of monks, hands at his elbows and hidden inside his sleeves, Edmund came to stand beside his employer. "Why do you not aid in the chase this time, the way you did last week in Stanrudde?" his clerk asked, retreating into their mother tongue.
    Faucon laughed. Beneath his undecorated and mud-spattered linen surcoat he wore not only his chain mail tunic and leggings but the usual padded gambeson and woolen chausses of a knight. All in all, these garments added nigh on three stone to his weight.
    "What? Run that race in my armor? I'd be moving even more slowly than they." He waved in the direction of what passed for the hue and cry in Wike. Across the bailey, Gawne's brothers were managing a snail's pace. The strange youth had given up the chase altogether and was making his way back toward the well at that same odd gait.
    "Moreover," Faucon continued, "I'd be far more likely to get lost in yon wild wood than to find the boy."
    Then, having made his jest, he offered Edmund the more serious reply the monk deserved. "Last week, I needed to introduce myself to as many of the townsfolk as I could. The hue and cry made that an easy task. But why expend such effort here? All those in Wike have already seen my face and accept, or are at least resigned to, the fact that I serve king and court in this matter."
    "Ah, I hadn't considered that," his clerk said, then rocked back on his heels. "It seems I was wrong to worry over how long it will take to note the particulars of this death. While they chase the boy, I'll scribble the details of what he's done onto our roll. When the bailiff returns with the lad, we can call the jury and be finished with this. I think me that we'll yet sleep within our own walls this night."
    Faucon shot a smile at his clerk. "Is that so? What say you to a wager? I'll put coin on the possibility that the only walls we see tonight will be those surrounding Alcester, if there are any. Aye, and I also say that the morrow will find us back here at dawn, ready to spend our day sniffing out the trail that leads to the one who actually ended the girl's life."
    His clerk shot him a startled look, then blinked rapidly. An instant later, Edmund's arms opened. His eyes widened.
    "What do you know that I do not?" he demanded. "You showed me that she was throttled, not drowned in the well. Thus, it must have been the lad who killed her. He's the one who called the others to find her. Like the old woman said, who else could have put her in the well?"
    "That is the wrong question, Brother. Her placement in the well is but a curiosity," Faucon replied with a quick lift of his dark brows. This time, when a huntsman's excitement overtook him, he gave way to it in pleased anticipation. He couldn't wait to uncover the spoor that would lead him to the girl's killer.
    His response teased another frustrated sound from Edmund. "Why can I not see what you see?" he cried, only to dismiss his own question with the wave of his ink-stained hand. "Ack! What does it matter how you do it? At least one of us sees it. I'll fetch my basket, then enter what little I do know. Which, it seems, is only the dead girl's name, the manner of her death and that she was put into the well after she passed," he added irritably.
    With that, the monk turned and stalked away from the well, following the arrow-straight pathway that led away from the manor toward the tiny settlement. Just beyond the farthest cottage was a rich greensward. It was in that small, grassy meadow that Faucon's big white courser and the monk's donkey grazed, waiting for their masters. The basket containing Edmund's writing implements yet hung from his donkey's saddle.
    As the