Colestrete was very quiet when Catchpoll wandered past the premises that Walkelin had described to him. Unusually, there were no children playing, no gossiping women outside their homes, no eager purchasers haggling with vendors. Catchpoll sighed. Such times made a serjeant’s job more difficult. He did not want to confront Robert the Coppersmith before he had all the background information he could muster.
As if in answer to a serjeant’s prayer, a woman emerged from the adjacent dwelling with a blanket, followed by an adolescent girl with a beater. Catchpoll instantly adopted his ‘helpful passer-by’ mode, and offered to hold one corner of the blanket so that the whole could be held taut in one go. The woman thanked him. She seemed too weary to question the charitable act. Strands of greying hair had escaped from beneath her coif, and her shoulders stooped.
‘Extra hands make an easier task, Mistress, eh?’ Catchpoll was exuberantly cheerful.
‘Indeed, and we thank you.’ The woman’s voice was thin, like her cheeks.
‘Would you rather I did the beating, and let your girl hold the corner? A man has stronger muscles.’
The girl looked slightly sceptical, obviously regarding Serjeant Catchpoll as some aged greybeard. Well, perhaps he looked thus to youth, but the mother thought differently.
‘Aye, would be best if you would, friend.’ She gave a small, grateful smile. ‘I miss a man’s strength about the place these days.’
Catchpoll smiled inwardly. He had been right, for he had assessed her as a widow.
‘But you must have neighbours who would help in heavy tasks, out of good Christian charity.’ Catchpoll sounded every inch the pious good Samaritan.
The girl sniffed dismissively as she exchanged places with him.
‘Christian charity is thin round here. You should hear the excuses of the man next door.’
‘Quiet, girl. You forget he is our landlord also.’
‘He never lets us forget it.’ There was a bitterness to the girl’s voice, and a tinge of colour to her cheek. Catchpoll put two and two together. Robert the Coppersmith, who was able to attract beautiful women, also liked to feel the power of control. Whatever the rent in silver, Catchpoll would lay odds there was a toll in flesh, even if the girl withheld that knowledge from her careworn mother. He suddenly disliked Robert the Coppersmith. When he was simply a lecherous man it was a matter for his own conscience, but putting pressure upon a girl of perhaps fifteen, that rated as contemptible in Catchpoll’s mind.
‘Perhaps he is not as fit as I am,’ declared Catchpoll, sounding the man still proud of his stamina, whatever years he counted.
‘Fit?’ the girl snorted. ‘Fit enough to beat copper for his trade, and use his cot for more than sleeping every night.’
‘Daughter!’ The woman sounded shocked, but the girl shrugged.
‘Why should we pretend when he flaunts it, Mother? All Evesham knows about our landlord.’
‘Should one pity his wife or think her lucky?’ grinned Catchpoll, feigning ignorance of his circumstances.
‘Oh, he wore his wife out and laid her in earth two years back, not that he kept himself to himself even then.’ The girl sneered. ‘If any asked, he always said he had a “good appetite” and it was a gift of God. Sacrilege, that is.’
‘Ssssssh!’ The mother looked agitated, and glanced nervously at the coppersmith’s door.
Catchpoll thought he would get good information from the girl if her mother were not present, and began to cough, hoping that the mother would fetch him a beaker to ease his throat of the dust. She might as easily send the girl, but today providence was on the side of the law, and she gave her corner to the girl, bustling indoors to fetch a small beer.
‘I take it your mother don’t know, then?’ Catchpoll had no time to skirt the realities.
‘What do you mean?’ The girl blushed.
‘I have eyes, wench, and years too. Fair enough that you keep it from your mother, but do not tell me you have not seen the inside of your neighbour’s chamber when she has not known, and not from your choice.’
The girl narrowed her eyes, seeing Catchpoll in a new light. She was suspicious.
‘And of what matter is that to you?’
‘I’ll not tell your mother, but I need to know about Robert the Coppersmith, and swiftly too.’ He had no qualms about revealing the name.
‘He’s an animal. All he wants is women, those he attracts because of his reputation, and in between times …’ She shuddered. ‘The horse trader’s wife is his latest and she won’t be his last, whatever she may think.’
Serjeant Catchpoll looked grim, and the girl, thinking his thin-lipped snarl was aimed at her, took a step back.
‘Nasty piece of work, then, is Master Coppersmith.’ Catchpoll meant it. He had no concern over men who took what opportunities were offered, but coercion was a different matter. The man could not even claim it was the only way he could subjugate a wayward body. No, this put Robert the Coppersmith beyond the merely lecherous and into the group Catchpoll mentally lumped together as those he would like to have in a small room to ‘question’ rather more actively than the undersheriff would think reasonable. In fairness to Bradecote, Catchpoll thought that in a case such as this he might turn a blind eye to a little rough handling. Men who bullied young women, were not even prepared to buy their pleasures, were due a lesson in what it felt like to be powerless and frightened.
‘Did the horse trader’s wife come here yesterday?’ He knew the answer, but it was interesting to see if the girl kept an eye open for what the man was about.
‘She did, and agitated she was too.’
‘And was he about his trade as usual a week since?’
The girl thought, her sandy brows beetling. ‘Not sure. I know one day about then he went out early and did not return until the abbey bell tolled None.’
It was not evidence, but it gave a possibility of being so. It certainly gave Catchpoll enough reason to think that Robert the Coppersmith would be receiving a visit from the sheriff’s men in an official capacity. He thanked the girl with a nod, resumed his paroxysm for the benefit of the returning widow, and headed back to the abbey enclave as soon as he had downed his beaker of refreshment.
Hugh Bradecote awaited the return of Walkelin and Catchpoll with the porter by the abbey gate. Brother Porter was Evesham born and bred, and though his abbot would have considered it worthy of confession, he was not above good town gossip. He heard much as the townsfolk passed his gate on the way to church. He shook his head over Walter Horsweard.
‘His father, Edbald, was a good, simple man. He had a few ponies for the hiring, and some people paid him for stabling if they had no stables of their own, but aspired to be among the horse-owning folk. Never gave himself airs, did Edbald, but his wife, now there was a woman with ambition. Always wanted a bigger messuage, more servants. You know the sort, my lord. Very worldly, she was, but Edbald just laughed and let her have her way. Now Walter took after his father with his attitude to position, by and large, though he would not take to being treated badly, and was warm enough with his horse trading. Nobody ever sold him a horse older than they claimed, nor one prone to lameness.
‘It is his brother, Limping Will, who takes after the distaff, and wants to be a noted burgess in Evesham. Perhaps he sees it as making up in some way for his infirmity. While his mother was alive, they chivvied Walter, did they ever. It was the pair of them who managed to get the daughter of the family, Walter and Will’s sister, married off to a man of standing in the shire, all on the weight of her looks and dower, of course. Why else would a lordly man with two manors to his name take a wife of her sort?’
He looked at Bradecote, for a moment, fearing that his unchecked tongue had betrayed him into giving offence, but the undersheriff looked unconcerned. Brother Porter gave a silent prayer of thanks. You never knew how the grander folk stood when it came to their rank.
‘Yet it has availed them nothing, the position. Old Mistress Horsweard di
ed the year after Edith wed, and she, poor lady, has followed but under a month since.’ He shook his head.
At this point Walkelin strode in, looking pensive.
‘Now what has given you cause for a furrowed brow, Walkelin? Something of interest to us?’ Bradecote tried to sound more positive than he felt.
‘I have information, yes, my lord, but I admit my thoughts were also astray, remembering.’
‘Well do not let Serjeant Catchpoll catch you remembering anything that is not relevant to the crime in hand, that is all I will say.’
‘Aye, my lord.’ Walkelin smiled. ‘I shall be most careful.’
Bradecote was conscious of a slight tension. Walkelin was too far removed from him to engage in natural conversation without the presence of Catchpoll as a buffer. Then his words might be taken as to the serjeant and not directly to the undersheriff. Bradecote knew that no such barrier existed now between Catchpoll and himself. In part, the grizzled serjeant had age and experience to set against rank, but it was much more than that now. They understood each other as men, and, he realised with surprise, had a bond of friendship. It had been forged silently over the best part of a year, but in a furnace of hard work and the camaraderie that one found in warriors. Perhaps they were fighting, fighting unlawfulness. It made him shake his head, smiling. Walkelin, watching, wondered what had amused his superior.
‘Do we wait until Serjeant Catchpoll arrives before—’
‘Before what?’ Catchpoll ambled round the corner. ‘You were not even thinking of starting without me, were you, young Walkelin?’
‘No, Serjeant.’
‘Good.’ Catchpoll seemed in cheery mood. ‘So, what have we discovered this morning, then?’
Bradecote half-expected him to rub his hands together in anticipation of a treat, as if he had been offered apple dumplings in honey.
‘You sound as if you have something worth the sharing, Catchpoll.’
‘More round-and-about things, my lord, rather than facts or important discoveries.’ He sniffed. ‘Shall we find somewhere to mull over them?’
Brother Porter, within earshot, tentatively offered the little gatehouse, which was accepted. In the small chamber, undersheriff and serjeant took the small bench, leaving Walkelin to lean against the wall, on the grounds, declared Catchpoll, of youth and rank.
‘Right. Let us hear these round-and-about things.’ Bradecote saw no point in wasting time.
‘I wondered if Mistress Horsweard might be carrying a child, and that fear that her husband might object had set off the idea of murder. To my mind this was not a killing likely to have been long in the planning, so there was a thing that lit the tinder, so to speak.’
‘A fair thought, I agree.’ Bradecote nodded.
‘Aye, but hard to prove. I spoke to women who live hard by the Horsweard messuage. That Mistress Horsweard was viewing the coppersmith’s roof beams on a regular basis was, as Walkelin found yesterday, common knowledge, and for at least two years past. The problem, in a sense, is that however lusty, he never got his wife with child in ten years of wedlock, and he was not faithful even then, but no rumour is there of any bastard of his getting. So it makes it very unlikely that she announced that she is going to have to explain a swelling belly to a seedless husband.’
‘Unless she carries a child of Master Pinvin’s,’ commented Walkelin.
‘Who?’ His superiors looked at him, puzzled.
‘That is the man she visited by the abbey wall. He is a bridle-maker, which accounts for how they met. She visits him regular enough for a neighbour woman to think her unchaste. And yet the little I heard of the man was not what you would expect of a man giving another’s wife the benefit of his loins.’ Walkelin paused.
‘Go on, we’re listening,’ encouraged Catchpoll.
‘I was speaking to a lad, son of the neighbour. He used to visit Master Pinvin and watch him work. He described him as a man of great stillness, and for a child to latch upon that as his description of him, it must be marked.’
‘That is a fair observation, and counts for much, but even a “still” sort of man can be knocked from that stillness by a beautiful woman offering her body.’ The serjeant gave Walkelin his due.
‘But why offer it to him? The man I saw was not so handsome a man, quite ordinary in fact, his hair even a little thin on top.’
Catchpoll scratched his nose, thoughtfully.
‘There are occasions when looks are less important, even to a woman who uses her eyes most. And that one does, for I saw the way she looked at you, my lord, the first time we met her.’
Bradecote blushed slightly, and made a choking noise.
‘Sometimes a man has more to him than …’
‘… Robert the Coppersmith?’ Walkelin grinned. ‘That would be difficult.’
Catchpoll regarded him repressively.
‘I fear you are thinking overmuch about er, size, over quality. Think on it. Her husband cannot satisfy her. The coppersmith can, but not if she actually sets store on a babe at her breast. And if your eyes glaze like that at the image in your head, I’ll tell that Welsh wench of yours,’ he admonished. ‘Perhaps the bridle-maker has a quality that appeals to her brooding instinct. She sees him as a man who could get her with child, aye, and be a good father to it thereafter. Women can get such feelings.’
‘Which brings us back to whether he has got her pregnant.’ Bradecote sighed. ‘And might explain matters if it is believed Walter Horsweard would have turned a blind eye to a son of another man’s getting. She tells the bridle-maker, who is keen to raise the child himself. Walter is in the way. Remove Walter, and wed the widow, even if it means pretending to “adopt” the babe.’
‘I am sorry, my lord. It doesn’t settle with me.’ Walkelin was unsure of putting forward so strong an opinion, but felt it had to be said. ‘I have not spoken direct to him, but it sits ill. And,’ he added as a clincher, ‘the lad could not remember when he as much as left his workshop for a morning.’
‘He might have slipped out a while without the boy seeing, and after all, it would not take long to the bridge.’ Catchpoll tried to sound more positive, but failed.
‘Ah, and that is where I have to add that it seems very unlikely that Walter Horsweard was thrown into the Avon from the bridge.’ Bradecote pulled a face, almost worthy of Catchpoll. ‘The castle guards are not ideal witnesses, especially after a week, but none recalled seeing a man in a green jerkin either cross the bridge or tumble in. I honestly doubt Walter left Evesham that way.’
‘So was he lying to his wife?’ Walkelin wondered. ‘She said he was going to Gloucestershire.’
‘There is a new slant to things.’ Catchpoll frowned. ‘We have worked solely on someone killing him to get him out of the way to have his widow, but what if he was finding solace elsewhere, and her husband found out.’
‘Come on, Catchpoll. You are asking us to believe such a tangled web, and she is,’ Bradecote sounded reluctant, ‘a beautiful woman.’
‘No, my lord. He knows she is unfaithful − accepts it, even − but just as we wondered at her taking the plain bridle-maker as a lover, perhaps Walter sought comfort in a more homely bosom.’
‘I think we are lost, in “perhaps”.’ Bradecote rested his head in his hands, his long fingers combing through his dark hair. ‘We need to go back to the facts as known.’
‘Walter Horsweard left Evesham about a week ago, on his way to Gloucestershire to buy horses,’ Walkelin offered.
‘And we fall at the first hurdle, for the only proof of that is that it is what Mistress Horsweard told us.’ Catchpoll frowned. ‘So that leaves us with Walter Horsweard’s body floated past Hampton five days ago, and—’
‘But we are pretty sure he did not fall from the Bengeworth bridge, and,’ declared Bradecote, ‘if he had, then the body is likely to have passed Hampton more than five days ago, assuming he left when we were told.’
‘That gets us into assuming again. We do know he was not ki
lled to be robbed. Therefore, that leaves us with several options.’ Catchpoll ticked off his fingers. ‘He knew something that someone wanted kept quiet. He had roused someone’s anger to killing pitch. He was engaged in shady dealings and a rival had him killed. Someone wanted to take his place. Or there is a madman about who dislikes men in green jerkins. The last is unlikely.’
‘I am not convinced any are likely, so far,’ grumbled Bradecote. ‘However, we have not interviewed Mistress Horsweard’s lovers, not put any pressure upon her or his brother. I think we interview all four this afternoon, and if we get to the nub of the matter, I shall offer coin for prayers of thanksgiving in this abbey.’
Chapter Six
Catchpoll told the other two sheriff’s men all he had discovered about Robert the Coppersmith. Although he seemed an unlikely suspect for murder in the light of these things, they all agreed it was a good idea to speak with him, and not be gentle either.
‘I knows your views well enough, my lord, but this man needs to feel frightened, cocky bastard.’
‘Literally,’ sniggered Walkelin, and received a playful cuff about the ear from Catchpoll.
‘Act your age, and remember you are not a man-at-arms with his brains in his codds, but a serjeanting apprentice with a position to keep up before the general public.’
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