Wolf at the Door

by Sarah Hawkswood

As they rode into Wich, Bradecote reminded Catchpoll that in two days’ time William Swicol had promised to be at the sign of The Sheaf.

  ‘Well, he will not be there, my lord. By now he knows too many things have happened that fit to him, and even if we could not bring him to the lord Sheriff, we would be following him like hounds from now on. No, he wants to have melted into the forest and be hidden from us, and that’s a fact.’

  ‘Is it worth us asking the keeper of The Sheaf if he has come across William Swicol before? It might be a place where he would do well, since men are sent from other shires to collect the salt as much as salt is taken out by the men of Wich.’

  ‘That is true, my lord. As well to ask at both alehouses, though.’

  ‘You mean he tries one when the other throws him out.’

  ‘I do, but also I remembers the sign of The Sheaf sold ale not worth the effort of drinkin’ it, but we had a decent welcome at The Star, and it is a mighty cold day. The lord Sheriff wants us back in Worcester, but he did not say as we had to half kill our horses to be quick about it, nor that we comes to him too cold and tired to think.’

  ‘You are never too cold or tired for that, you crafty old bastard, but I agree with you that warmed ale would be a good thing. So do we visit the miserable Sheaf first, or the welcoming Star?’

  ‘The sign of The Star, my lord, for my feet are losin’ feelin’ in my boots.’

  The keeper of The Star recognised the sheriff’s men and moved the occupants of the bench that was nearest to the hearth in the centre of the chamber, giving them the warmest place, and making much of having ‘the lord Undersheriff’ come to taste his fine ale rather than ‘the weak sheep’s piss’ at Wich’s other alehouse. He presented his poker-warmed ale with what was nearly a flourish, and the smile was only wiped from his face when Bradecote asked if he had come across a man called William Swicol.

  ‘Him! I doubts any alehouse in the shire has not had the bad luck to have him cross their threshold. He is trouble and he brings trouble. I have thrown him out of here several times, and within a twelvemonth he tries again, hidin’ his face and hoping as I won’t notice him. Well, the longer he plays his swicollic games, the more folk are wise to him and will not play.’

  ‘I saw him, on a horse too, out by Hanbury, but yesterday,’ offered a packman, who had been listening to the conversation quite openly.

  ‘You sure?’ Catchpoll’s eyes narrowed.

  ‘Oath sure. I wondered who he cheated to get the horse, and how big a fool they must have been. Or else he cheated many and bought the animal. He looked very content with life.’

  ‘He will not look very content when I gets my hands on him,’ growled Catchpoll, aggrieved that William Swicol clearly felt he had the upper hand in all things.

  ‘Which way was he heading?’ Bradecote wondered whether this meant that their suspect had not himself been at Tutnall.

  ‘Why, towards Wich, my lord. I was on my way back from Alcester with Azor and an unladen train. He would tell you I speak true.’

  ‘I have no cause to doubt you. Was he alone?’

  ‘No, that he was not. But neither of us had seen the other two men afore. Big, they was, and one had hair the colour of pork drippin’.’

  ‘The other?’

  ‘Horse-faced, though it would be a brave man as told him so.’

  ‘Well, he did not try and creep in here,’ averred the alehouse keeper. ‘You might find he went to The Sheaf, where they are not so careful about who they serves, nor what they serves, neither.’

  At this sally, the well-provisioned drinkers in the sign of The Star all cheered and laughed. Robert, sat quietly with his hands around his beaker, looked at Walkelin.

  ‘Who is this man you ask about?’

  ‘He is a man who, at the very least, knows a man with a wolf.’ Walkelin looked as sombre.

  Their reception at the sign of The Sheaf was less welcoming, and Catchpoll had a strong sense that here were the men in Wich who would be least keen for him to nose about their activities. The keeper of the establishment, who had an apron of greasy cloth about his waist and smelt as strongly of ale as his customers, eyed them with dislike tempered by wisdom, for it would be foolish to speak rudely to a lord, and he had met Catchpoll before.

  ‘How can I help you, my lord?’ He did not sound like a man who wanted to be helpful.

  ‘I want to know what William Swicol did here yesterday.’ Bradecote did not ask a question.

  ‘Who-ooo?’ The man’s voice rose an octave as Catchpoll grabbed him by the gonads.

  ‘William Swicol. We know he comes here.’ Bradecote only actually knew that he could name The Sheaf, but he was pretty sure that since The Star would not admit him, this was where the man plied his trade when in Wich.

  ‘He was just passing through – did not stop more than to drink a beaker.’

  ‘Going where?’ Catchpoll took over the questioning, since he felt he had more control of the situation, or at least a full handful.

  ‘To Wychbold.’

  ‘That makes no sense. It would have been far quicker to cut north-west from Hanbury and avoid being seen at all.’ Walkelin piped up.

  ‘Unless he wanted to be seen, as when he was in Worcester.’ Bradecote did not dismiss the idea. ‘And being seen going north yesterday makes it less likely he had come from there. What we cannot know is whether it was all trotting in circles to confuse, or so that he could prove he was not with the wolf in Tutnall.’

  ‘Wolf?’ The alehouse keeper picked up on the word, and his eyes widened without Catchpoll moving so much as a muscle. He was ignored.

  ‘If it was not him, then who was in my father’s house?’ Robert, son of Hereward, was a little confused.

  ‘That we will discover, Robert, I swear.’ Bradecote was thinking ahead. ‘Catchpoll, if you were William Swicol, would you expect us to hunt you down, or just think you are too clever to be caught?’

  ‘Somewhere between the two, my lord. He knows we will hunt him down, but he trusts to himself to evade us.’

  ‘Then being seen heading westward has to have been to lead us away from where they are hiding.’

  ‘That might be true, my lord, but then again, it might not.’ Catchpoll, in part, did not want to think William Swicol too clever.

  ‘Then we are finished here, Catchpoll. Let go of his beallucas. We will report to the lord Sheriff.’ Bradecote’s air of command was natural, but he wanted the men in The Sheaf to remember him and that he really was higher up the chain of power than the much-feared Serjeant Catchpoll.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Crocc the Hunter did not like Worcester, but then he did not like anywhere with more than about sixty people in it, and even then they had to be spread out. However, his lord had commanded that he return and so return he did, with the lymer and its handler, who moaned all the way from Elmley Castle that they had only just got back from Worcester, and the hound was not happy. Crocc said nothing, but he thought the hound always had that unhappy look anyway.

  William de Beauchamp would himself rather have been at Elmley, but the ‘wolf problem’ was destabilising at a time when stability was needed most. At a political level England was a knot of intrigue and changing allegiances, but de Beauchamp knew that if he wanted to keep his lucrative shrievalty, he needed to show he had control over Worcestershire, from minor lord to merchant and miller. This meant that they needed to feel that their lives were much the same as ever. Thus, murders and serious breaches of the King’s Peace were bound to occur as they had always done, and be dealt with, but the springing up of lawless bands was an indicator of shrieval weakness, upon which rivals and enemies would pounce. ‘Weak’ was never going to be a word associated with William de Beauchamp, though ‘greedy’, ‘unyielding’ and ‘heartless’ were frequently applied, always well out of earshot. In truth, he would have been quite happy with all three. He was also not a patient man, but he was a realist, so he did not pace about the solar of the castle railing at
the tardiness of his undersheriff and men as the forenoon passed and the bell of the priory rang for Sext. There was no action that could be taken this day. His messenger to Elmley Castle would have arrived the previous evening, but the hound would take some time to cover the distance and still be fit for long days to follow, so would not arrive until perhaps None. That Bradecote had not arrived must mean that he and Catchpoll had found scraps of interest in Tutnall, which might assist in the hunting to come. He had told them to return today, and the only thing that gave rise to a kernel of concern was that if they did not come back to Worcester it would be because of some new killing linked to a wolf and William Swicol, a man whose life was now worthless in the eyes of the sheriff, who was as convinced as Catchpoll that he was at the hub of all the thievery and killing, and even mocking the King’s Justice. In Worcestershire that meant mocking William de Beauchamp, and that was even worse.

  The hunter and the hound arrived, and the men reported and were sent to their quarters with instructions to be ready to leave at first light. Simon Furnaux spent a fruitless interview with de Beauchamp ‘insisting’ that his castle guards were just that and not to be dragged off round the shire chasing wild animals, and being told in the language of the elite but the vocabulary of a sheriff’s serjeant, just what he could do with his demands and the weaponry of his men-at-arms. De Beauchamp even suggested that he ought to join the hunt, which made Furnaux turn pale. It was this pale visage that Bradecote and Catchpoll saw as they trotted under the castle gate.

  ‘The lord Castellan looks fearful to me, and him in his own bailey. You know, my lord, some says as cowards are often those who at birth emerge earsling, and having been afraid to face the world head on as they enter it, are likely to be afraid to do so all their lives. What say you to the lord Castellan being one such?’

  ‘Oh yes!’ Bradecote had not heard the idea before, but it made him laugh. ‘And I am sure his lady mother was delivered swiftly, being glad to get rid of him. I only wish we could.’

  Furnaux, hearing the laugh and recognising it, looked across and ground his teeth. He stood still and folded his arms, like a parent about to chastise a child.

  ‘Wolves and brigands all over the shire and you laugh? You are meant to be the undersheriff.’

  ‘Oh, I am the undersheriff, I promise you, and I was not laughing at the situation, only at you, my lord Castellan.’ Bradecote, leaning forward in his saddle and looking down upon Simon Furnaux, gave his broadest smile, one that lit his eyes with mirth as well as dislike.

  Furnaux, incensed, flung a stream of invective in Foreign at him, which grieved Catchpoll, as he only caught about a third of it, and stalked away, shouting at a stable lad who had been caught on his way to take the lord Undersheriff’s horse and had halted, a nervous and unwilling spectator, in the middle of the bailey.

  ‘I do not think,’ remarked Catchpoll, pensively, as he dismounted, grimaced, and then gave his own horse to be taken to the stables, ‘that the lord Castellan is very good at swearin’, from what I could understand.’

  ‘He is not good at anything except bleating. Let us find the lord Sheriff, and we will bring Robert along with us.’

  William de Beauchamp did not present an image that would incline a man who was meeting him for the first time to await the second encounter with eagerness. He was glowering, but then as Walkelin whispered to Robert in an attempt to be encouraging, he looked like that a lot. Robert, whatever he felt inside, maintained an air of stolidity, respectful but not overawed. After all, he told himself, he was Robert, son of Hereward, and the King’s man, if the lord Sheriff did not disallow his inheritance of his father’s post. Bradecote presented him, with a little formality.

  ‘This is Robert, son of Hereward. He is come, my lord, to aid us in our search, for he would be the northern wuduweard now. He is little short of a score years, and brought up to it, and will know the forest signs.’ Bradecote wanted to support this young man, who clearly wanted this path, and deserved good fortune.

  Unbidden, Robert snatched his woollen cap from his head took several steps forward to kneel before de Beauchamp.

  ‘I will not seek rest until the killer of my father is taken, my lord. I may not know every clearing, assart and tree in the southern part, but I know when the forest has changed and is different. I am as my father, the King’s man, and as you are the lord King Stephen’s reeve of the shire, I serve as you say in his absence. I will obey anything except to return home and not be part of this, for it touches my honour as a son and as a man.’

  Catchpoll blinked at such sudden eloquence, and the young man’s daring also. Telling William de Beauchamp that you would not obey an instruction was bold, to say the least. The sheriff, actually as surprised as Catchpoll, studied the serious young face. No, he would not seek rest, and if he was not a huge help, he would at the least be no detriment to the enterprise.

  ‘Then I will not order you north, Robert, son of Hereward. I will expect the service of the son to be as good as that of the father, and am confident that I will not be disappointed. You will find lodging with the men-at-arms.’ This was Robert’s confirmation as wuduweard and dismissal from the chamber.

  ‘Thank you, my lord.’ Robert rose, and stepped backwards several steps, rather as if he had been before King Stephen himself. Once he had left, de Beauchamp looked at Bradecote, Catchpoll and Walkelin.

  ‘Now, I want to know what you discovered in Tutnall.’

  ‘More, but not enough, my lord, though there is one less of the bastards for us to take. The one that looked like Dodda, son of Edbald, and it was not him, fell to Hereward’s knife before the wolf did its work.’ Catchpoll looked grim.

  ‘Was it like the other death?’

  ‘Yes, and yet no, my lord. Easier to see how it happened but it has made me change my mind a little on Durand’s death.’ Catchpoll was not a man whose mind changed easily, and de Beauchamp leant forward, interested. Catchpoll explained about the differences.

  ‘If we are content that it is William Swicol who leads, or at the least makes the decisions, then that says he hated his father’s guts.’ De Beauchamp sounded just a little doubtful.

  ‘My lord, I have no more doubt than Catchpoll that William Swicol is in this up to the neck we would see in a noose, but there is something surely more urgent. We have done our duty by Hereward and Tutnall, and will complete it by taking those that committed the deed, but there is something yet to happen, and it has to be big.’ Bradecote was worried.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because William Swicol got at the very least three men to join him in Worcester. We know the raid upon Bradleigh involved four, if not more, and that does not include the man who is the wolf-keeper. We are most likely looking at six or seven men in total, and why would William Swicol recruit so many? He revealed to the whore Mald the great aim of all this is riches so great he can head to London as a wealthy man. What is it he plans to steal that needs so many, and men who need paying? We have followed behind his deeds, and the risk now is that he is about to fulfil his plan and be gone way beyond our shire boundaries before we know which way to turn.’ Bradecote ran a hand through his dark hair. ‘Part of me sees all thus far as just distractions. If we look only at what has been we will miss what is to come. William Swicol has built his life upon making men look at one hand while he is cheating them with the other, and I think that is what he has been doing all along.’

  ‘All well and good, Bradecote,’ de Beauchamp sounded huffy, since he saw Bradecote’s point but not how to act upon it, ‘but what do you suggest we do? Pray for a sign?’

  ‘Not quite, my lord. But we have to ask ourselves what sort of thing in Worcestershire would need a group of men to steal it.’

  ‘They stole the horses from the lord of Bradleigh, my lords, so could that be a trial and also to give them mounts? Is there anyone with many horses that could be stolen and taken to London to sell. None there would know where they came from?’ Walkelin offered.

&n
bsp; ‘It is an idea, Walkelin, but if they want to steal horses it will have to be in small numbers each time, and where, if they are in the forest, can they conceal and feed what would become a herd after three or four raids.’

  ‘What if the aim was to steal from a great lord in Warwickshire, on the way, and sell in Oxford?’ Walkelin would not abandon his idea in an instant.

  ‘Another “what if” aids us not at all.’ De Beauchamp waved his hand dismissively, and Walkelin looked a little crestfallen.

  ‘I understands, my lord, that William Swicol has cheatin’ deep in his soul and it comes natural,’ Catchpoll pulled a ‘thinking face’, ‘but if he had a prize in his view, one so large it would give him a whole new and wealthier life, why would he not see that the safest and easiest way would be to simply snatch it? That way lies no risk of being caught before the great prize is attempted, and would we even imagine William Swicol, who dupes the drunks of three shires in stale alehouses, as the man who did it?’

  ‘It must be that he cannot resist the challenge,’ suggested Bradecote, without great commitment.

  ‘We chase our tails here,’ grumbled de Beauchamp. ‘The best thing we can do is be off tomorrow and commence our hunt so that we catch them before they do whatever they have planned. That way we do not have to look into the future and guess, we just use our advantages of two men who know forests, and a very keen nose.’

  With which de Beauchamp sent them to make their individual preparations. Hugh Bradecote went to the priory and offered silver for three Masses to be said for the soul of Corbin fitzPayne. It had occurred to him in the last few weeks that little over a year ago Corbin had just been a decent man excited at the thought of fatherhood, of a possible heir being carried by Christina, his wife, and then his life had been ended in a moment, and the child-to-be lost. Now here was he, Hugh Bradecote, married to Christina and within a few short months of a child of his getting coming into the world. He hoped that Corbin would not have begrudged either Christina or himself the happiness and good fortune, even though his own was overshadowed by a fear for Christina’s life in time of travail. He went into the nave of the cathedral church and said prayers of his own, including one for the soul of Hereward the wuduweard, whose death he had done all he could to avoid, but who had met a bad end anyway. Catchpoll, Bradecote knew, would simply say that he had died because his time had come, and there was an end to it, but Bradecote could not be as sanguine.