Blood Runs Thicker

by Sarah Hawkswood

  ‘What reason had anyone to kill her, though? None we can see, and yet there she lies.’ Walkelin pointed at the corpse and sounded almost angry, affronted. In truth, he found the murder of this woman who did nothing but good far more of an outrage than the killing of her lord. Lying on her back made her look less at one with the earth, more dishonoured by death. The cheek that had been to the ground had little fragments of leaf and soil dirtying it, and stuck where blood had, dried them to the skin.

  ‘Look you here, my lord. The wound that killed was swift, but she was threatened first, I would say. There is a small mark here, a knife’s tip, no more.’ Catchpoll had moved the sodden coif to reveal the throat, and touched a mark that scarcely deserved the name of a wound, being just a nick in her neck, under the chin, and a thin line of blood that could easily be overlooked when there was so much more soaked about it. ‘He placed the point there, and either she did not give him what he wanted, or he’s just a callous bastard and did for her anyways.’

  ‘So it was one of the two lords,’ murmured Walkelin, ‘since we can discount the steward, we—’

  ‘Why do we discount him?’ Bradecote’s question was asked of himself as much as his companions.

  ‘He’s no soldier neither, my lord.’ Walkelin shook his head.

  ‘Not now, not perhaps for many years, but he is a strong-looking man, and who is to say he was always the steward. Even if he followed his father, well, as a young man he might have taken years as one of his lord’s men-at-arms. We have not looked at them in a different way to any other, because everyone at this season is a farmer, getting in the harvest, and I can say for sure that my men-at-arms turn their hands to what is needed, not just practice with sword or bow. Who is to say Fulk was not more soldier than steward in his young manhood?’

  ‘A fair point, my lord,’ conceded Catchpoll, ‘and we have not seen him since we went to the church with the lord of Flavel, though why would he bring a horse this short step of a way?’

  ‘To be swifter than any would think otherwise? He might have come bareback and with the animal merely haltered.’ Bradecote shrugged. ‘All I say is he is not cast out of our net.’

  ‘It would have been a risk, someone seeing him with a horse and wondering why he needed it. But if we say it could be so, then that means all four of ’em, the men we have as even possible killers of the lord Osbern de Lench, had the chance to kill this good woman, and if other than the lord Raoul, you would have to ask why now? The others saw her every day of their lives, near enough.’

  ‘Then it has to be something done, or said, this morning, and I doubt collecting mushrooms and plants for her potions would drive a man to killing. So let us think what she said.’ Bradecote’s brow furrowed.

  ‘We cannot know if she met the lord of Flavel though, my lord, or what she said if she did.’ Walkelin frowned.

  ‘No, but of the others … can we be sure that anything that passed her lips was not heard by one of the three?’ Bradecote ticked them off on his long fingers. ‘Baldwin de Lench was in the hall, and when he left might have stood in the cross passage and listened, rather than go up the hill as he said. Young Hamo went hawking, but might have only gone shortly before it was reported to us, though if so he was not keen on his sport today. Fulk came with that news, but might have been listening before he came in. So what could they have heard?’

  Walkelin sat upon the ground and waited silently. He had not been present, so could be of no use in this.

  ‘I cannot see why the lord Baldwin would kill her for her desire to make him a potion,’ grunted Catchpoll.

  ‘No, nor I, but think on it, she did give quite a broad hint that the lady of Lench has suffered physical harm from her lord in the past.’

  ‘But what of it if she did, my lord? The man is dead, and Baldwin would not see a heavy hand as something shameful.’

  ‘I know, Catchpoll, but if there was more she could say, or he feared she might say … the lady could be persuaded to say nothing through threats to her beloved son, but the healing woman …’ Bradecote sighed, and ran his fingers through his hair. ‘No, I agree, it is seeking what is not there. Nor is there anything that might have concerned Hamo, and I do not think he killed his father or this poor woman unless in red-mist anger as we saw. Coming across her foraging would not anger him. He would scarcely notice her. That leaves us with Fulk the Steward, and he might just have had more cause. When we asked her about him she said he was not in the field, and that alone is not damning since everyone saw it, but the way she said “I doubt he was idle” was full of meaning, even if you could not see her expression. Even if she did not reveal more to us, it is possible Fulk feared she might do so to the lord Baldwin, and what would you give for his life then?’

  ‘Not as much as a grain from the threshing, and it would not be an easy death, neither.’

  ‘But are you saying he also killed the lord Osbern?’ enquired Walkelin.

  ‘I would like to say yes, Walkelin, because two different killers in so few days seems beyond thought, but we have not discovered more than that it is likely he was betraying his lord, so he did have motive.’

  ‘We might also press the lady on the argument that the messire heard and which sent him off hawking the day of his father’s death. She lied, and lied scared, my lord. She wanted time to make up some yarn for us, and did not want her son blurting out truths.’

  ‘Very true, Catchpoll. We will see Winflaed the Healer carried home, speak with her girl to know a little better when she left, and then we speak, at last, with the perhaps none-so-loyal steward.’

  ‘He might be loyal, my lord, but not to his lord.’

  ‘Which we will discover shortly.’

  ‘My lord.’ Walkelin had been staring towards the mushrooms, thinking, but was now looking. ‘I think I may also have a reason for the Healer’s death. Look here.’ He got up and went to kneel a foot or so from the fungi. There was a tangling of undergrowth bowing down to the ground, but Walkelin moved it. ‘Someone has dug, and dug straight, and then tried to hide it with the branches. I saw the edge of the mark.’ There was a line of fresh earth less than a foot and a half long, and although it had been stamped flat it was a little darker.

  ‘Now that,’ commended Catchpoll, ‘is using your eyes.’

  ‘Osbern de Lench had a dagger, and it was not abandoned with the clothes,’ murmured Bradecote. ‘We just assumed it was worth the taking, and kept, but if easily recognised …’

  ‘We cannot be sure that this was not the place that Alnoth the Handless did not step aside and then find the cap and cloak, my lord.’

  ‘Scrabbling about to bury it would have taken longer, as I see it,’ said Bradecote, thoughtfully. ‘Whoever killed her would have removed it, yes? There would be bound to be a hunt for her when she did not return.’

  Walkelin clawed at the earth where it was loose, and shook his head.

  ‘Nothing remains, my lord.’

  ‘Yet something narrow was there, and if whoever buried it even heard this poor soul so close, then she was doomed.’

  ‘But there’s the thing, my lord.’ Catchpoll got up, slowly. ‘It would have to be the greatest of mischances for him to be close enough just when she was here, unless he followed her. So we have the slim possibility that it was the lord of Flavel as that mischance, or we have one of the other three who already had a reason to follow her to silence her, and then found even her death would point to him the more. If that be so, you would have to think he is now wondering if he is destined for the noose whatever he does.’

  ‘If we succeed, Catchpoll, he is.’ Bradecote looked grim.

  The final return of the healing woman was met with much genuine grief, and no small degree of concern in some minds, as they wondered if the girl Hild knew enough of her craft to keep any from pain, let alone death. She had less than three years as the healer’s aide, and, as was noted in sob-laden whisper by the heavily pregnant Gytha, was not even woman enough to bear a child as yet,
let alone deliver one. The healer’s body was taken to the church, where it was tended by priest for the soul, and Hild’s oldmother, who was Winflaed the Healer’s sister, for the body. Catchpoll was confident that he did not need to look upon the body further. The girl was kept from the washing and shrouding, and so Hugh Bradecote took her to one side and gently asked what had happened when she had gone to prepare the sick man’s warmed ale and herbs.

  ‘I did what Mother Winflaed told me, my lord. I bound the herbs and had them in the pot warming up gradual, and then she came in and said as she might add more sage, and that a pottage with a little of the healer’s mushrooms in it might be good for the poor man. I can recognise them, every time, and offered to go, but she said it was a fair day and she had thoughts to think, and … and … and that was the last I saw of her.’ The girl wiped her eyes and sniffed, dolorously. Bradecote was about to dismiss her when he thought of something.

  ‘Tell me, when you have gone in Mother Winflaed’s place to Father Matthias, to cook and such, have you ever seen a box, a small box?’

  The girl shook her head and denied the presence of any box that she knew about. Bradecote sent her to minister to the injured man in the hall, thinking it neither too difficult and yet something for her to do other than worry about her own competence.

  ‘So those that knew of the box leaves Baldwin, young Hamo and the priest, who is much used to keeping secrets,’ Bradecote declared to his subordinates.

  ‘No wait, my lord. Fulk knew, for it was him as told me about the box with vellum writings in it.’ Walkelin spoke up, urgently.

  Bradecote swore at his own forgetfulness, low but long, and Serjeant Catchpoll sucked his teeth in a hiss of self-disgust.

  ‘Trouble is, my lord, this has new things tumbling upon us like rocks in a defile, and we is so busy dealing with the current one we loses sight of what lies behind. We was all set to speak with the steward Fulk when the girl came and called us to the injured man of Flavel, and we no sooner tried to have words with him than we had the messire going off hawking, the lord of Flavel turning up, then the fight between the brothers and the death. All in all, it is not a surprise we forgot Fulk, and forgot he knew of the box.’

  ‘Perhaps not a surprise, but Heaven help us, Catchpoll, we need to keep everything in mind, and it is not as though we have a large number of people who could be the killer. There are four men, and that is all.’

  ‘Aye, my lord, but the answer is not leaping out at us because of time.’

  ‘We are short of it?’ Bradecote frowned.

  ‘No, my lord, because there is no sense to either death being now, at this time, unless something we do not know has set it all going. If we had that we would have our man quicker than you could say a Pater Noster.’

  ‘As it stands, my lord, surely now the steward must look most likely our man?’ Walkelin preferred optimism. ‘We know he was not in the field with the harvesters, so he could have killed the lord Osbern. If he was angered by the lord’s treatment of the lady, then he had a reason to do it, or she asked him to do it. He also knew about the box of writing so could have placed the badge in it, and he could have overheard the healing woman, and been afeard of what she might say to you or the lord Baldwin. Makes it seem good sense it was him.’

  ‘Yes, and yet …’ The undersheriff rubbed his chin. ‘Something is there, something we cannot yet see, and I am not sure it lies with Fulk the Steward.’

  ‘Best we goes and speaks with him, nice and firm like,’ muttered Catchpoll. ‘Things may be clearer then.’

  ‘And I still want to speak with the lady and hear just what Edgar of Flavel has to say also,’ added Bradecote. ‘He might have a clearer head after taking the brew that was prescribed for him.’

  Fulk the Steward was a flustered man. The lord Baldwin wanted everyone back to their work and much as if nothing had happened, and every other man, woman and child in Lench could think and speak of nothing else but the killing. If the death of their lord had been unexpected and shocking, it was as nothing to the grief and a blossoming sense of fear that now showed upon every visage. Osbern of Lench had been killed, but it had not made the villagers feel particularly threatened. If someone had killed Mother Winflaed, who had never harmed a soul, who was next? Baldwin reviled them for looking like bleating sheep afraid of a wolf, but Fulk had heard a mumbled male voice saying that sheep had every right to be afraid of wolves. So the villagers wanted reassurance he could not give and the lord wanted industrious labour they were in no state to provide. Life was not being kind to Fulk the Steward.

  ‘Ah, there you are, Master Steward.’ Catchpoll’s voice was jarringly cheery, as though he were seeking Fulk to sit and have a beaker of ale with him in the shade. Fulk tensed, and turned to see the three sheriff’s men walking towards him. He muttered under his breath, and it was not a prayer of thanksgiving.

  ‘I am here, but am set about with tasks.’ It was the nearest he dare come to telling them to go away.

  ‘Well, while you are talking with us you can not be set about with ’em but set ’em aside.’ Catchpoll was now, if possible, even more cheery. His death’s head grin slashed across his grizzled jaw, and Fulk the Steward found it extremely unnerving, just as the serjeant intended it should.

  ‘You have need of me?’ The steward managed to sound as if he desired to be of service to the sheriff’s men, but only just.

  ‘We do, and would prefer to speak with you in private.’ Bradecote felt Serjeant Catchpoll had achieved a lot with few words but sought to keep the steward aware that it was shrieval power from higher up the scale that was in command of the situation.

  ‘You can be sure as I will help all I can, my lord, but … well, this last terrible thing has set all in uproar and no mistake. I cannot find it in me to blame them, the folk here, for their fears. Who would do such a thing to a woman as never did aught but good all her life?’

  ‘It is indeed a mystery, and one we intend to solve. But we have other questions for you first. The church is still being used by priest and kin, so I think we will speak by your own hearth. It will be quiet enough.’

  ‘Quiet enough for what, my lord?’ Fulk was still caught off balance, and that was not a situation he was used to in any way. It was bad enough having to get used to a new lord, as likely to be wrathful as the last one, but with the added eagerness of one upon whose shoulders the mantle of lordship lay new and just a little heavily withal. Baldwin de Lench clearly wanted to make his mark, and that might yet be upon the body of the manor steward.

  ‘To discuss your absence from the harvest at the time of the death of your lord, for a start.’

  ‘I was in the barn, preparing for a cartload to come in.’

  ‘The hall is not, as far as I can see, a barn.’ Bradecote noted, eyebrows raised, and not in the tone of one merely making an observation. He did not usually sound supercilious, but he was not going to be played for a fool. He began to walk towards the steward’s cott, and let Catchpoll and Walkelin herd, more than push, the steward in his wake.

  ‘Ah, that was just afore everyone came to see the lord Osbern’s horse had come back empty. I wanted to see there was wine set ready for his return,’ Fulk admitted, reluctantly.

  ‘So you went from the barn to the hall just a short time before?’ Bradecote did not look back but asked his questions commandingly.

  ‘Yes, my lord.’

  ‘Yet you did not see the grey without its rider in the bailey. How … strange.’

  Catchpoll grinned. This was going to be entertaining. He felt that the lord Bradecote could keep Fulk off balance with words very cunningly, letting the man trip over his own mistakes. The tall undersheriff opened the door and ducked into the dark chamber, letting his eyes adjust to the gloom. Then he turned and faced the steward, his arms folded and awaiting the response.

  ‘When I said it was just afore I meant not a long time, my lord, but the horse was not there when I entered the hall, or indeed I would have seen it and
raised the alarm.’

  ‘There was time for a woman so heavily with child she could not work in the field to see the horse, tie it, get to the field, and then the rest of the Lench folk to return. I do not call that short. Shall we try again? What were you doing in the village when the lord Osbern went up the hill?’

  ‘I …’ Fulk’s denial crumbled. ‘I went to the hall, to see how my lady did. Kenelm said as how there had been loud words and the lord Osbern was in a foul temper, not that such a thing was rare. He was not a gentle man.’ Fulk sighed. ‘He would raise his hand to her, for little reason or none. I feared one day he would leave her as dead as his first wife.’

  ‘But she died in an accident.’ Catchpoll spoke up.

  ‘Aye, so it was said.’

  ‘But you knew different, did you?’ The serjeant pressed.

  ‘Not knew, but … the lady Judith, I remember she rode so well. The lord Osbern brought her home across his horse, before him, her body I mean, and he wept, but … I always asked myself how he came to find her as they did not ride out together and it was not that her horse returned as his did, riderless. He asked Mother Winflaed to try and save her, but a broken neck is beyond any healer, as we all told her. There was nothing she could do.’

  ‘So you thought he might harm his lady, to her death?’ Bradecote took over once more.

  ‘I did, my lord.’

  ‘And so you have spent time alone with her as often as you could when the lord Osbern was upon his daily ride up the hill. That seems devotion of a very high degree.’

  ‘I …’

  ‘You see that it might look as though you were not simply finding out that she had not been hurt. It occurred to me, and I am not a suspicious man, am I, Serjeant Catchpoll?’

  ‘Many a time I have thought you was not nearly suspicious enough, my lord, not nearly enough.’

  ‘So you see, steward, I do not think it unreasonable to ask – were you betraying him, with her?’

  ‘No. No, my lord, I was not.’ Fulk looked affronted, and blustered, which might have accounted for his reddened face.