‘He frightened her, frightened her so bad she says no word since.’ The wheelwright’s chest seemed full of a deep rumble of wrath. ‘Wanted to kill him myself I did, when I saw her, but …’
‘Why didn’t you?’ Catchpoll asked, reasonably.
Tovi looked at him blankly.
‘It is a good question, Master Wheelwright. If this man … harmed your daughter so, what father would not feel as you did, nor act upon that feeling?’
‘He was my lord’s guest, a guest in this manor. Guest right is—’
‘Guest right? You did not want to break guest right? But the man broke it himself by his act, so there was nothing to prevent you taking action, nothing at all.’ Bradecote was amazed. Tovi looked at the ground, sullen, and peculiarly defeated.
‘I did not kill him.’ There was genuine regret in the voice.
‘Do you say this for fear of the penalty? Tovi?’ The wheelwright did not look up.
‘Answer the lord Undersheriff,’ commanded Catchpoll, feeling that he needed reminding of the rank of the man addressing him.
‘I did not kill him,’ repeated the big man, with great emphasis. ‘My Milburga is but a girl still, a little girl, not a woman. She had no strength to fend him off, no more than a lamb before a wolf. You think it does not torment me, seeing her as she is, broken in spirit, timid even with me and her brother? She flinches at sudden movement, stares at me with big, empty eyes, and makes little sounds in her dreams, whimpering wordless sounds. I would have killed him, broken him with my bare hands, and broken him slow, but it was not for me to do.’ The man’s face was a conflicting mask of pain and anger.
‘You stood back? I cannot see how you did that.’ Walkelin looked wonderingly at the wheelwright.
‘It was not for me to do,’ repeated the man slowly, regretfully, and Bradecote had the feeling they were words he said as often as did Father Dunstan the offices of the day.
‘Then who did? Whose right was greater than yours, Tovi?’ Catchpoll was trying to comprehend, and failing.
The wheelwright just stared at him, and the serjeant thought he might as well be asking questions of one of the great oaks. Bradecote was as confused. This man was ravaged by what he faced every time he looked at his daughter, guilty that at one vital moment he had not been there to protect her, and had not thereafter taken action on her behalf, gutted by the way it had taken her from him and left a trembling wraith. The first might have been beyond his power, but the second … Only something very important could have prevented a father taking rightful retribution for such an act upon a child.
‘Tovi, in the end we must know, must know all that happened. If you did not kill him, then you must know who did, and that name we will have, now or later.’ Inevitability seemed better than threat, for how could one threaten a man to whom the worst must have already seemed to have happened?
He stood immobile, not even blinking, and there was a limit to how long they could stand staring back.
‘This is not the end of it,’ said Bradecote, heavily, and turned to leave. Catchpoll and Walkelin followed, and for several minutes none of them spoke.
‘He knows and will not tell, and he did want to kill Hywel ap Rhodri, wanted it bad.’ Walkelin shook his head.
‘Cannot have been easy to stop him, either,’ mused Bradecote, ‘which must mean more than physical strength involved, unless you had four strong men, and kept the wheelwright chained for the rest of the Welshman’s stay.’
‘Which means power, my lord, and that means the FitzRogers. If they promised—’
‘If they promised, Serjeant, why did they do nothing for another whole day and then kill him?’ Walkelin asked, with calm reason. ‘They did not even imprison him, for he was at liberty that second morning to be with the lady Avelina and attack the maid Winfraeth. It is madness.’
‘We are missing something, something important.’ Bradecote shook his head. ‘And we have nothing in proof but victims who tell us little or nothing.’
‘We really need that horse,’ sighed Walkelin, ‘then we can face them with being involved, all of them. One will break rank in this shield wall of silence.’
‘Then that is your duty for the morrow, Walkelin. Follow Corbin, since it was more likely him than some man-at-arms that moved the beast, so he knows where it is concealed. Find the horse, and Serjeant Catchpoll and I will try and untangle the FitzRogers.’
‘I knows which task I would prefer,’ growled Catchpoll, as they entered the courtyard.
The sheriff’s men ate in the manor, but scarcely ‘with’ it. In the hall, Bradecote felt as welcome as a chilblain, and conversation between the family veered between stilted and unnatural and wildly insulting, all conducted in angry whispers. The altercation between the two ladies had become a mixture of haughty silences and barbed comments, and Thorold FitzRoger siding with his mother had won him surprisingly little support from that dame.
‘Oh, do not grovel at my feet, Thorold. It is your fault she is here, in this hall, in my place,’ the lady Matilda glanced venomously at Bradecote, as if he too were to blame for this. ‘I warned you, but would you listen? There was nothing wrong with the widow of Payn of Martley.’
The lady Avelina nearly choked, which would have pleased her mother-in-law.
‘Golde! She is three of you, my lord, and that just in size. Had you taken her to the marriage bed she would have squashed you like a grain of wheat in the quern.’
‘At least she was fertile,’ snapped the lady Matilda.
‘And as big as a field. Ploughing her would have taken a man like an ox team, not my loving Thorold.’ Wife curled lip at husband, and Hugh Bradecote wished he could have eaten among the servants and men-at-arms, who looked as though eating were the most strenuous exercise they undertook from one month’s end to the next.
‘Are you wed?’ asked FitzRoger, with obvious desperation.
‘Yes.’ Bradecote was not going to help the man. It left FitzRoger stuck, since he could scarcely ask after the lady Bradecote’s looks, demeanour or, in view of what had just passed, whether she was the mother of a hopeful brood. Bradecote let him flounder, and found himself under the scrutiny of the lady Matilda, whose expression showed that she knew exactly what he was doing. She smiled, wryly.
‘Clever fools are dangerous,’ she murmured, ‘but foolish “clever” men are worse. Give me a man of sense and I would be content.’
‘Just give me a man,’ purred the lady Avelina, in a voice so deep it nearly rumbled, and won a look of revulsion from the senior lady and enraged embarrassment from her husband. However, since she accompanied the comment with a lengthy gaze under her lashes at Bradecote that made it quite clear that she counted him in that category, he could not be said to enjoy the exchange.
‘Do you think that my lord Bradecote is not enjoying his dinner?’ whispered Walkelin to Serjeant Catchpoll, with a suppressed grin.
‘I don’t get ideas, not about them as sits up that end, not unless I want to see ’em before the Justices,’ responded Catchpoll, repressively. ‘And you ought to hope as he does enjoy his dinner, since an undersheriff with an underfilled belly is likely to take it out upon lowly things like serjeants’ apprentices, and you are the only one hereabouts.’
‘Sorry, Serjeant.’ Walkelin looked suitably chastened, and Catchpoll relented. In truth he was wishing himself in his own home, with a beaker of ale, and an evening of ease. He was, he hated to admit it, getting too long in the tooth for riding day after day without a decent rest, and his back ached and his knees ached, and several muscles he had long ago forgotten he possessed ached. As a result he was jealous of Walkelin’s youth and ability to just keep going without a sign of fatigue. It was not the lad’s fault, though.
‘Never you mind, young Walkelin. If you learns, and keeps yourself from getting killed, one day you won’t be an apprentice any longer, and then you can be not getting ideas, just like me.’ Catchpoll gave his death’s head smile, and a man-at-arms opposite dr
opped his spoon of hot pottage into his lap and his eyes watered.
Aldith was serving, and still looked as approachable as a hedge-pig, rolled up. Her eyes sparkled with a dislike of anything male, and it was clear that the men-at-arms had long ago learnt that Aldith was not a maid to try and flirt with, at least when not in the mood for it. She was not in the mood.
‘They never look happy,’ observed a man-at-arms with a double chin, ‘even though they gets meat more often than I could ever imagine.’
‘But you imagine it every day, anyway,’ sneered Aldith, as she passed behind him.
‘They had pigeon last week, that the lord Durand got with my lord Thorold’s falcon. Four of them there were.’
Catchpoll pricked up his ears.
‘So he was up and about was he, back then?’ It was a casually put question.
‘Well, he was out but for an hour or two, and I doubt he rode far. I heard him say he would go mad if cooped up indoors much longer, but two days later he was back in his bed, and groaning, so I hear, same as the week before. He ought to have taken things steady, I say.’
‘And there speaks the physician.’ Aldith banged him on the head with her ladle. ‘The only thing you do not take steady is your food, and that you take like a swine among beechmast.’
The man-at-arms reddened, and opened his mouth, but then closed it, as Brictmer glared along the table at him. The men-at-arms were not all manor born, and not ‘family’. Aldith was, and Brictmer, who, like the priest, rather thought that one day she and Corbin would be plighted, was not going to let a fat man-at-arms insult her. She was prickly, and at present he understood why, but she also had a head on her shoulders, and good common sense. He liked the girl, though she had been orphaned young and had no dower.
‘But they should be happy. They sleeps in comfort, eats well and fear not empty plates, and they do nothing,’ whined the man-at-arms.
‘Much like you, then.’ Aldith would have the last word, every time.
There was laughter about the table, of the nervous sort. Aldith had a sharp tongue and wit, but the man-at-arms was big, and if he did bestir himself in anger among his fellows, could hurt.
‘You are a needle-wench, Aldith, needle-witted and needle-worded, and I pity the fool—’
‘Enough.’ Brictmer spoke sharply and banged the flat of his hand upon the table. ‘Aldith, the platters are full. Go to the kitchen,’ he commanded, but without anger, more a weariness, like a mother who parts squabbling children.
She gave him a glare, but did not defy him, and stalked out as proud as the ladies at the high table.
‘Mark him,’ muttered Catchpoll to Walkelin, without looking up from his plate. His lips barely moved. ‘Find out.’
Walkelin said nothing, but his hand tapped the table twice, as if without meaning, and the serjeant knew his apprentice understood.
Chapter Ten
Hugh Bradecote slept badly, and it was not just pondering upon the puzzle before them. Like it or not, and he liked it not at all, this murder was entwined with rape, which he abhorred. He had always done so, but, having married a woman who had suffered the unwanted attentions of a husband who wanted nothing more or less, he was filled with such an anger in his chest it almost burst out of him. It was so alien, to want to hurt a woman like that, that it set such men in his mind apart from the human. He was no innocent to think no man in drink ever went too far, or that some maids in their foolishness did not know that goading a swain too much made it difficult for him to contain himself. Such things were wrong, and the penalties existed, though in most cases the girl’s father would sort the matter with a fist and then a betrothal. He did not condone the act in overexcited hot blood, but that a man should take a woman by force from premeditated choice … It made him angry, and these days it made him sick to the stomach. He had seen what it did to a woman, not in her body but her heart and soul. Perhaps Winfraeth would be able to place that one deed in a casket of memory to bury, and wed Ketel, and, in time, forget enough that it would not cloud her life. He prayed it would be so, and then his thoughts went to his own Christina, lying now in their bed at Bradecote. He thought her life ‘unclouded’ now, and knew her to be happy and content, though of late she had sometimes seemed a little thoughtful and distant. She was not dwelling on the past, though, he was sure of that, but rather anxious, hoping that her prayers to the Blessed Edith at Polesworth would be answered, and they had been married six months. He smiled to himself. Six months of marriage felt as though but a week in so many ways. He settled his hands behind his head and let his thoughts stray, and the smile lengthened into a satisfied grin. After a while he shook his head. Such thoughts were not conducive to sleep, and there would be time enough for the thought and the act when all this was over, not before. The trouble was that the problem before them was a knot, and the more he picked at it, the more the strands bit into each other. He sighed, and tried to empty his head. The hall was silent, but for Catchpoll’s blessedly moderated snores, and the scrabbling of rat or mouse in the corner. They were background sounds, insufficient to disturb the blanket of quiet. Voices were not.
They came, unexpectedly, from within the solar, and were ‘shouting in whispers’, agitated, insistent. Bradecote rose from his bed and blanket and trod softly to set his ear to the door, wishing the planks were thinner. One voice was deeper, the cadences those of command, instruction. The other was pleading, or rather insisting without expecting to persuade. He thought for a moment it was a woman’s voice, but then realised it was merely young, and must be Corbin. Corbin had gone into the solar before everyone bedded down, no doubt as a strong arm if needed for the sick man in the night. The ladies may even have decided that he could stay awake and on watch and only rouse them if Durand worsened. Playing the ministering angel sounded good and noble, but was exhausting over a long period, and the man had been ill, off and on, for the best part of a month.
Corbin was in quite heated conversation with a man, which meant Thorold or Durand FitzRoger. Damn the door. Bradecote pressed his ear so hard to the wood that the grain left red marks upon his flesh. The only words that he thought he made out were ‘I swear it, my lord’, in a desperate undertone. There were five people in the chamber, or at least in that room and up the steep wooden stair to the chamber above. Bradecote visualised the chamber. He had not taken much notice of its arrangements, but there was another cot upon the far side, curtained off. It made sense that the lady Matilda slept there, since the son would not care to be bedding, or not bedding, his wife within feet of his mother, and the stair was steep enough to deter a woman of her age and size from ascending it nightly. The truckle upon which Durand had lain must normally be for any guest and could have been set up in the hall at need, if the guest merited it.
Were the others soundly asleep? Might they also hear, and why risk that they might do so? Whatever was being said was very private, and very important. Durand seemed the more likely other man, if Corbin was there to care for him. So what had Corbin need to swear to, and why was Durand so agitated?
The voices ceased. Bradecote moved quietly back to his own rough bed, and all thoughts of wife and comfort were thrust firmly aside. He wanted to sleep, because there was nothing he could do in the middle of the night, his suspects could not leave without him knowing, and a bleary eye and befuddled brain would do him no good when daylight came. It did not mean sleep came the quicker.
He awoke without enthusiasm, feeling jaded, and rubbed his eyes to clear them of sleep, then yawned, and shook himself, stretching muscle and sinew. It was a moment before he recalled what he had heard in the hours of darkness. He pulled on his boots and stood up, then nudged Catchpoll with one foot. The serjeant awoke with a muttered grumble.
‘Can’t sleep on floors like I used to,’ he mumbled.
‘Really? I thought you did a very good impression of a man who sleeps well anywhere.’ Bradecote gave a lopsided smile. ‘We need to speak,’ he jerked his head to the far end of the hall, a
way from the solar, ‘and you can wake our “slumbering infant”.’ He looked down at Walkelin, curled into a near foetal position. Catchpoll’s boot was not as gentle as Bradecote’s, and Walkelin woke with an ‘ow’.
A few minutes later the trio had their heads together.
‘Could it be something else, something not connected to Hywel ap Rhodri’s death? I think we need to consider that, just in case the man is really ailing and perhaps agitated without cause. We look, or rather I look, very heavy-handed if that is the case.’ Bradecote wanted to be sure, and there was just a grain of doubt in his mind.
‘If he was rambling, my lord, it might be anything, from whether Corbin was swearing he had not left the bedside to swearing he was not …’ Walkelin tried to conjure up a most unlikely image, ‘a bear about to eat him.’
‘Nasty dreams you must get, young Walkelin,’ murmured Catchpoll, with mock sympathy.
‘What I heard was four words among many, and somehow I do not think it was swearing for such a reason.’
‘Then go with gut instinct, my lord, that is what I says.’ Catchpoll thought the undersheriff could still overthink things. ‘If we speaks with Corbin first and he says, straight off, something along those lines, I am thinking that might be the truth, because he is not a lad used to lying to his elders and betters beyond denying it was him as pushed another lad into the pond. Boy’s lies, my lord, we would see through easy.’
‘Agreed, Catchpoll. So we look to Corbin first and then approach our ailing Durand FitzRoger, if needful.’
‘And should I speak with Aldith’s feeble opponent of last night, my lord, who talked about when the lord Durand was feeling better?’
‘Yes, and then, when we have finished with Corbin, you watch him, because he is our most obvious mover of Hywel ap Rhodri’s horse, and we have to hope that is the beast, and not some animal borrowed for an odd reason from elsewhere.’
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