From Gideon Redoak by Anne Fraser
“Stand back!” I said, and the crowd gave me room to dismount. I approached the prostrate husband and commanded him to rise and speak.
“Justice, my lord Baron!” He wept, clinging to my doublet. “My wife has been slain!”
I steeled myself not to pull away from his rank breath. He had nearly twice my years, an advanced age for a peasant. Half his teeth were gone and the rest rotting. I doubted that his deceased wife had been any more attractive, but his grief was piteous to see.
“Where is your lady?” I hoped my voice didn’t betray my apprehension. I had no idea what I faced.
Jamie struggled to my side and soon had the crowd dispersed back to their usual tasks, save the new widower. My steward repeated my question.
“She is still in the field where she was found,” the Goodman finally said. “None thought it meet to move her until you had seen her, my lord.”
More likely, I thought, they had left the corpse to lie where found out of superstitious fear. “Show me,” I said. Jamie at my side, I followed the man to the field where the woman’s body lay. Her drab-clothed form lay like some weird fungal growth among the glistening wheat. An overturned basket, its contents ransacked by animals, lay nearby. After making my way along the already trampled path to her body, I knelt beside her. I had been expecting something gruesome, and was surprised at how peaceful she looked. Her eyes were closed and her arms were folded across her chest. My nose detected the usual unpleasant aftermath of death, but I saw no signs of violence.
“You said she was slain, Goodman. What caused you to call it thus? She appears to have gone peacefully to God.”
“Look at her neck, my lord,” the Goodman whispered, crossing himself.
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