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

‘I do not think so, and I spoke to none but Superba.’

‘She listens?’ Bradecote gave a wry smile.

‘Not to the words. She is a bird.’ There was that tone of dealing with someone of slow wits again. ‘She listens to the voice, the way I speak. I could recite the Pater Noster or tell her she is the Holy Roman Emperor and it would not matter.’

‘Do you grieve, messire, for your father?’ It was a straight question.

‘He is out of this world now. He built the new church. God will like that, and smile upon him. Why should I grieve?’

‘Because your brother is now lord?’

‘Baldwin.’ He shrugged. ‘He is lord because he is the firstborn. He will let me go to Evesham. I think he will want me to go soon. I will be with the monks. I can write, and I will work in the scriptorium. I have wanted to go for a long time.’

‘And your sire forbad you?’ Catchpoll spoke up. Hamo gave him a quizzical frown but addressed his answer to Bradecote.

‘He wanted Baldwin to father a son first. I asked Baldwin to choose a maid and beget one soon, but he laughed. And my father laughed when I gave him the names of all the maids hereabouts. I did not like them laughing. They are the fools, not me.’

‘Messire, I do not want you to leave Lench.’

‘I must stay to see my father buried. It is my duty, I know. It is right.’

‘Even after. Until the killer is taken.’

‘Why? It is not me. I did not lay a hand upon him.’

‘But you could have paid others to do it, in your stead.’

‘Why? I must honour my father and my mother. It is the Commandment of God. Sending men to kill him would be no honour.’ He paused. ‘Baldwin will not have me in the hall. Must I stay in the steward’s hovel? I do not like it. I will sleep in God’s house. That does not smell of chickens.’

‘The burial is not today. It will be when the harvest is in.’

‘God is my father. I will sleep in my father’s house, since my other father’s house is closed to me. What law forbids it, my lord Undersheriff?’

‘It would be seen as strange. It would upset people.’

‘But not upset me. I do not care what people think. They sleep with the stench of chickens.’ He shrugged again. It sounded arrogant, and yet it was not that. Bradecote could not see any signs that Hamo lied, and his religious belief seemed very strong, stronger even than his dislike of chickens. That his manner would drive Baldwin to fury was pretty plain, and so Osbern must have found him as incomprehensible, but there was no anger lingering in the son towards the father. There was actually nothing at all. The void itself was peculiar. Undersheriff looked to serjeant, who raised his eyes Heavenward.

‘There is no law, messire. I tell you only how it will seem. Keep away from your brother if you value your skin.’ There was nothing more that Bradecote could think of to say. With a jerk of his head he drew Catchpoll and Walkelin to follow him. ‘We will walk to the hilltop and see the world as the lord Osbern saw it.’

Ascending the hill, even on foot, did not take very long, although the heat made them sweat and Catchpoll grumble. At the top Bradecote gazed down, and understood Osbern de Lench, at least in this. Bradecote was not a man with habit ingrained, but he had sometimes ridden to the top of the little scarp that looked down upon Bradecote, manor and fields, and felt that mutual bond. The land was his, but he also belonged to the land, as his sire before him. Osbern had held other manors, as Bradecote did, but the caput of them, that was special, inviolable. It was, though he would not say such a thing out loud, a love.

A skylark rose into the air, its song hanging above them in the breezeless blue, and then the notes dropping like dewfall. Far to the west, looming behind the bold outline of the Malvern Hills, there was dark cloud building, but here there was time still for sickle and bent back, the gathering of sheaves. A poor harvest meant empty bellies next summer, and a bad one starvation among the villeins. Bradecote crossed himself, and prayed that his barn would be full and the field all stubble.

Catchpoll watched his superior and guessed the better part of his feeling. Catchpoll did not own land, had no desire to do so, but he knew that when he looked over Worcester from the battlements of the castle he felt it was where he belonged. It struck him, quite forcibly, that Bradecote was as good as English. He spoke Foreign at need, but from day to day he worked in good English, he had never been across the water to Normandy and had no reason to ever see it. Before the Normans came, there were still lords and ordinary folk, warrior thegns and farmers and traders. There was thegnlic blood in the lord Bradecote from the distaff, no doubt more so than in the lord sheriff. In the end, the man standing looking down to Lench spread below him was an Englishman like Catchpoll himself. Bradecote took a deep breath. The contemplation was at an end.

‘Now what, my lord?’ the serjeant asked.

‘I don’t think Hamo killed his father, by his own hand or by silver.’ Bradecote shook his head. ‘With him there is day and night, but no gloaming, if you see what I mean.’

‘Aye, I do. But there was one moment, speaking with him, when he changed. When he said his brother and father had laughed at him, but that they were the fools, then there was a rage in him. I wonder if, when that rage bursts, like a boil, he might not even think of it afterwards.