The bier was draped with a red cloth. Dyed with cochineal from his own dyeing works, thought Reynevan nonsensically, feeling tears pricking his eyes.

“How…” He stuttered with a lump in his throat. “How… could it… have happened?”

Gryzelda née Der, Peterlin’s wife, looked at him. Her face was flushed and swollen from weeping. Her two children, Tomasz and Sybilla, were clinging to her skirts, snivelling. But her gaze was unfriendly—downright malicious, in fact. Peterlin’s father-in-law and brother-in-law, old Walpot of Der and his ungainly son Krystian, were also looking at him in a none-too-friendly way.

No one deigned to answer his question. But Reynevan had no intention of giving up.

“What happened? Will somebody just tell me?”

“Some characters killed him,” mumbled Peterlin’s neighbour, Gunter of Bischofsheim.

“God will punish them for it,” added the parish priest from Wąwolnica, whose name Reynevan couldn’t recall.

“He was stabbed with a sword,” said Matjas Wirt, a local landowner. “His horse came home riderless. At high noon.”

“At high noon,” repeated the parish priest, putting his hands together in prayer. “Ab incursu et daemone meridiano libera nos, domine…”

“His horse came home,” repeated Wirt, slightly disorientated by the priestly interjection, “with a bloodied saddle and shabrack. We began to search and found Master Piotr in the forest, at the roadside just outside Balbinów… He must have been riding from Powojowice. The ground was churned up by hooves, evidently a band fell on him—”

“Who?”

“No one knows,” said Matjas Wirt, shrugging. “Brigands, no doubt—”

“Would brigands have left his horse?” said Reynevan. “That’s impossible.”

“Who knows what’s possible and what’s not?” said Gunter of Bischofsheim. “Master Der and my men are scouring the forest, perhaps they’ll catch somebody. We also sent word to the starosta. His men will come and investigate, find out who had reason to murder him and who would benefit from it.”

“Perhaps it was a usurer, disgruntled about an unpaid loan?” said Walpot of Der. “Perhaps a rival dyer, wishing to rid himself of a competitor? Perhaps a client, cheated out of three broken groschen? That’s how things turn out when you betray your birthright and mingle with the hoi polloi. Play at being a merchant. Judge a man by the company he keeps. Urgh! I gave you in marriage to a knight, daughter, and now you’re the widow of a—”

He suddenly fell silent and Reynevan realised Der had seen his expression. Despair and fury were wrestling fiercely inside him. Reynevan fought to control himself, but his hands were trembling, as was his voice when he spoke.

“Were four horsemen seen, perchance?” he said with difficulty. “Four armed men? One tall, moustachioed, in a studded jacket… One short, with a pimply face—”