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

son and heir to Osbern de Lench. He frowned at there being nobody coming out to take his horse, and then shook his head at his own stupidity. He had been thinking of other things, of the future, and completely forgotten that he had passed communities all bringing in their harvest as he had returned from his sire’s manor in Warwickshire. There the harvest had been finished three days past, but it was a small manor, and the steward had been so panicked that the weather would break that he had begged Baldwin to let him commence the harvesting even before their neighbours. Baldwin liked the harvest time, seeing the culmination of the farming year, assessing the yield, the possible surplus to sell, even the act of cutting the grain stalks, which had such purpose. He had even been known to join in during his adolescence, just to show off his strong arms, though his back thereafter ached from the bending. He had not done more than survey the labours this season. He turned his horse about and headed towards the Great Field, a half-smile on his face.

The pale grey mare, almost white with age, trotted into the empty bailey and ambled towards the stables, where it halted before the shut door. The main gate was open to receive the cartloads of gathered sheaves to be threshed in the barn, which stood within a dozen yards of its grander replacement as the lord’s dwelling, but the bailey was otherwise deserted. A woman, very heavily pregnant, emerged from one of the simple cotts with a midden pail. She glanced into the bailey at the sound of the horse stamping its hoof upon the compacted earth. She looked puzzled, and then waddled slowly into the enclosure. Her hand went to her mouth, for a horse to return riderless meant something bad. She dithered. With everyone bringing in the harvest there was no man to alert, and it did not occur to her to enter the hall and call for the lady. She had only ever entered it upon great feast days when the lord broached kegs of ale and had a hog roasted to celebrate the nativity or Easter. She tied the reins of the bridle to a ring driven into the wall, and set off with a slow gait, frowning in determination and concern, towards the fields. It was some time before men came running back, the harvest forgotten, following as fast as they could after a grim-faced Baldwin de Lench. They came to a halt, chests heaving, staring at the now-unsettled grey mare being calmed by the lord’s heir, whose own mount stood abandoned in the bailey yard.

‘Did he go up the hill?’ cried Baldwin, and nobody needed to ask who ‘he’ was.

‘Aye, messire Baldwin.’ The groom came forward and took the horse, soothing it where the agitation of Baldwin de Lench had failed. ‘He went up as usual.’

‘And I saw him, just as always, up there.’ A lad of about twelve pointed up the hill.

‘So he must have fallen on his way back, and not long since.’ Baldwin paused, and then yelled for the steward. ‘Fulk, where in Jesu’s name are you?’

A few moments later and the door into the hall opened. Fulk, who was not only tall but broad-shouldered, seemed to fill the doorway. He was wiping his hand across his mouth. In normal circumstances Baldwin would have made a guess that he had been imbibing his lord’s wine illicitly, but these were not normal circumstances, so it was ignored. The hand dropped before the action was complete.

‘Messire Baldwin.’ He sounded surprised, and not overjoyed. Then he saw the horse. ‘Sweet Lady Mary!’

‘Take two men and fetch a hurdle. If the lord Osbern has fallen and not yet come home, swearing at his horse, he must be hurt and either on the Evesham road or the trackway up the hill. I will ride ahead, and you come on as fast as you can.’

Fulk nodded, tight-lipped, and jerked his head towards two strapping young men. As he strode towards an outbuilding a woman emerged from the hall. She looked wary, and if Fulk had not been best pleased to see Baldwin de Lench, her look was more of loathing.

‘I thought I heard …’ She stopped and stared at the horse, then crossed herself. ‘A fall?’

‘If he took a tumble then the horse did not come down, I would swear oath to that, my lady,’ piped up the groom, who had been feeling the grey’s legs. ‘Not a mark upon her, nor added dust upon the flanks or saddle.’

‘Praise be for that,’ came a mild voice. Father Matthias stepped forward. ‘Best you wait within, my lady, and direct preparations of the lord’s bed. Mother Winflaed, you will be needed.’ He looked to an older woman, the village healer, who pursed her lips and went swiftly for her medicaments. ‘We can pray also.’

The lady de Lench let herself be guided back into the cool dark of the hall.

‘If salves are all he needs then prayers have indeed been answered,’ muttered Baldwin, remounting his horse and heading for the gateway. ‘Run, you bastards!’ he cried over his shoulder at the two men now grappling a hurdle and wondering how best to carry it at speed. They looked to Fulk the Steward.

‘He said run, so best we run, lads. Come on.’

The rescue party departed, and the villagers, caught between the desire to get back to the harvest and a feeling that they ought to remain, milled about rather aimlessly, talking in hushed tones.

Baldwin de Lench rode back into the village slowly, since his horse bore both himself and his father’s body slung across its back. What use was a hurdle for a corpse? He was pale, and when he called out for the priest, his voice shook a little. For a moment he was angry beyond belief that everyone simply stared at him and stood stock-still. He swore. He wanted to dismount, but