The Falconer's Knot by Mary Hoffman

to his cloak. Saint Martin was turned round looking backwards over his right shoulder at a poor shivering man, just as his horse had his neck turned round too.
    The Saint’s horse reminded Silvano of Moonbeam. It too was a grey horse with a proud neck and flared nostrils. The cloak concealed its hindquarters but Silvano was sure it was a hunting stallion too. It made a contrast with the Saint, whose mild face was framed by curled golden hair and a decorated halo.
    The whole picture was a mass of pinks and greens and golds, offset by the dark blue sky behind. Silvano’s gaze travelled upwards and he gasped. Peeping out from behind the scaffolding was Ser Simone’s own face, with what Silvano thought of as his ‘sucking lemons’ expression. He was wearing a fashionable green and blue berettone on his head, quite different from the working clothes the painter was in now.
    Simone caught his eye and laughed. ‘You must read the pictures in sequence,’ he said. ‘Not up from that one but along to your right. You are not to look at my ugly face yet.’
    He indicated a picture of the Saint lying in a bed having a dream. It was startlingly realistic and Silvano, who knew nothing about painting, could not believe that he was seeing a flat wall. There was the Saint in a nightcap, lying in his bed, his body making the chequered bedspread rise and fall round its contours. He had elegant and expensive embroidered white pillows and sheets, and a gold halo surrounded his nightcap.
    Saint Martin’s eyes were closed but there in his room was Christ the Lord, surrounded by angels and wearing the very half of the blue cloak that Martin had given to the beggar in the other picture. Silvano was entranced. ‘So the beggar was really Jesus?’ he said to the painter. ‘And Saint Martin had a dream of him?’
    Simone looked pleased. ‘You didn’t know the story before? That’s good. It means I’ve told it properly.’
    ‘I’ve heard it but I couldn’t remember all of it,’ admitted Silvano. ‘But it’s very clear. Martin was kind to a poor man and then it turned out to be the Lord.’
    ‘It is as we read in the Evangelist,’ said Brother Anselmo, smiling. ‘Our Lord said, “Whenever you have done something for one of my least important brothers, you have done it for me.” So Saint Matthew tells us.’
    Silvano suddenly felt safe between these two men, as safe as he felt in the friary. They were wise and good and could tell him of wonders. It was a world far away from blood and murder.
    A shrill voice interrupted his thoughts. ‘Ser Simone, we are here with the colours.’ He turned and saw a grey-clad nun. By her side was another and he suddenly found himself staring straight into the eyes of the pretty novice from the convent next door.

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    CHAPTER FIVE
    A Stab in the Dark
    C hiara was as astonished to see the novice friar as he was to see her. She didn’t take in a word of the rather awkward introductions, except to notice that the painter, Ser Simone, was embarrassed and amused that both his suppliers of pigments had turned up at the same time.
    Sister Veronica obviously knew Brother Anselmo and they were stiffly polite to each other, each a little wary of treading on the other’s area of expertise.
    Then Sister Veronica had gone off to supervise the unloading of her cart, with the painter and the young novice, leaving Chiara with the older friar in the chapel. It felt as if she were standing inside a jewellery box. Colours cascaded from the walls, sparkling with stamped gold and rich with azurite, cinnabar, red lake and malachite.
    Chiara was suddenly flooded with sadness for the absence of colour in her present life and the future that stretched before her. For weeks now, apart from when she was in the colour room, she had been living in a sea of grey, the only brighter hues the occasional blue-eyed sister or glimpse of an illumination in the convent’s psalter. She felt the tears spring to her eyes.
    Fortunately,