Blood Runs Thicker by Sarah Hawkswood (best electronic book reader txt) 📗

… my son … is not interested in the flesh, or in friendships. Even from a babe his question was always “why?”. Most of the time he is very quiet, and calm. Osbern found that unsettling, I admit. He disliked his lack of interest in fighting, even wenching, but most of all his lack of interest in the land, this land. He felt that was a failing. He saw that the cloister might be best but was adamant that Hamo could not go to the Benedictines until Baldwin was wed, had an heir.’ She laughed, suddenly. ‘The next morning Hamo came before him and spouted a list of all the lords he could think of in the hundred with daughters unwed, with comments such as “she is fat” or “she has lank hair”. I thought Osbern would be angered, but he laughed and said that Hamo was like an arrow, his flight was straight. It was the laughing that upset Hamo, threw him into temper. He did not see it as funny, just sense.’ She paused, this time for so long the silence felt teased out. ‘Frustrated anger he has at times, but Hamo cannot hate. He does not feel enough to hate. It makes him hard to understand, but also for him to understand others. He did not love his sire but knew that the Commandment said he should honour him, so he did what he was expected to do. Father Matthias says he likes to write out the Commandments. They please him in their simplicity. He says they are not hard to follow. He would make a bad priest but a good monk, I am sure, though he would miss his hawks.’

There was not much to say to that, and undersheriff and serjeant exchanged the briefest of glances. There were no more questions, or rather there was the feeling that there were no more answers to be had.

‘Thank you, my lady. The lord Osbern will be buried today, I take it.’ This was not really a question. The weather was warm, even though the church good and cool.

‘No.’ She sounded very displeased. ‘Baldwin has said the whole village must be present, and that he will lie where he is until the harvest is in. He said that Osbern would appreciate that. I think it wrong.’

Bradecote, reluctantly, sided with the son over the widow. Baldwin had been quite passionate about his sire’s love of the land, the manor as a thing. Bradecote could see that in burying his father with honour at the point when the manor’s bounty was gathered in safely, there would be a finality but continuity to it the man would have liked. He therefore made a non-committal sound and said that they would now speak with Hamo, alone.

‘He is your child, lady, would be so were he thirty and with sons of his own, but he is not a child whose hand must be held, nor whose words interpreted. Were he a village lad he would be in a tithing by now, and his oath accountable. Green he may be, but no child. You remain here.’

She nodded, accepting. She was used to being commanded. Bradecote turned on his heel, and Catchpoll followed. ‘I gets the feeling having words with the lordling Hamo will be like trapping moonbeams,’ muttered Catchpoll, as they crossed the hall.

‘And if the moonbeams fail us, we look closer at the lordly enemies,’ said Bradecote, ‘and why their enmity was above mere dislike. At least we have two names.’

Chapter Five

Hamo de Lench was pacing up and down in the confines of Fulk the Steward’s dark, low-eaved home, and looking stormy. For a youth who was not meant to have emotions, it was impressive. Walkelin looked as if he had been put in a pit with a bear, however skinny and undersized, and greeted his superiors’ arrival with a look of patent relief.

‘I am Hugh Bradecote, Undersheriff of Worcestershire,’ announced Bradecote. If the lad liked order and simplicity a plain start was best.

‘You wanted me to sleep with fowls.’ Hamo, who was nearly as fair as his mother but had the thick brows of Baldwin, clearly from his sire, glowered at the undersheriff. ‘I do not wish to be here, but your man,’ he pointed at Walkelin, ‘refuses to let me leave.’

‘At my command. I wish to speak to you about the death of your father.’

‘We could speak outside. It is dark in here, and I am bored.’ The words could have sounded petulant, but they were stated as facts.

‘We may speak outside then, if it will ease you, but you cannot try and leave.’

‘Run away? I would run away if I had killed my father, but I did not do that, so I have no need to run away.’ He looked at Bradecote as if he were an idiot not to have understood this.

‘Then we speak in the open air. Come.’ Bradecote turned, and led the way out into the sunshine. He stood so that Hamo advanced no more than two paces from the doorway, and had the daub and wattle to his rear, and the sheriff’s men covering all other directions. ‘You were out hawking yesterday forenoon. Were you out long?’

‘I saddled my horse after the hour of Matins, as I would think. Father Matthias went to the field to labour and would have said the Office as he worked. There was no groom here then for he would only have returned from the harvest when the sun was high and the hour of my father’s trot up the hill was nigh. He liked to be there about noontide.’ There was no regret in the voice, no sense of something or someone now lost. ‘I took Superba, my best hawk, and we went out towards the northern boundary of the manor, and she took wood pigeon. Two I brought for the pot, and the third I let her devour as her due when I wanted to hunt no more.’

‘Did anyone see