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

in chains, and reverted when he was released and the chances of the Empress actually sitting upon the throne had receded. Oaths were not what they once were, or perhaps they had never been as inviolable as was pretended. What it left the sheriff’s men with was a lord who had disappeared just before the killing and had not returned home.

‘You have no idea why your husband left or where he has gone? None at all?’

She shook her head, and Bradecote glanced at Catchpoll, who looked grim. Leaving Walkelin, or even Catchpoll, to see if the man came home might prove pointless, and if he did, would he attend to them? Not attending to Serjeant Catchpoll was unwise, but … Bradecote made the decision.

‘My lady Parler, when your husband returns it is most important that I speak with him. Send him to Lench where my men and I are discovering the killer of Osbern de Lench. If that person is taken before he comes, I will send to stand him down. It will go very ill with him if he ignores this command, which comes from me but with the authority of William de Beauchamp, and ultimately, the lord King. You understand?’

‘Yes, my lord.’

‘Good.’ The sound of squabbling was getting more heated, and an infant’s cry was added to it.

‘How many children do you have?’ He smiled, stepping back from the official.

‘I …’ She hesitated a moment, and Bradecote wondered if she was thinking of children shrouded and buried. ‘There are five at home and this one to come.’ She stroked her swollen figure. She sounded resigned more than proud. ‘My daughter was wed year before last, the eldest boy is thirteen years and now with the lord Hugh de Lacy, but the younger ones are here.’

‘Then we will not keep you from them, lady. Good day to you.’ He made her a polite obeisance, and requested blind Siward to follow them out and close the bailey gate behind them.

‘Which is worse, Catchpoll, not being able to discount the lord of Flavel, or not being able to ask him the questions we need answering?’ Bradecote gave a heavy sigh.

‘Not sure, my lord. Having nobody we see as the killer is bad, but so are “if” and “but” as all we have to go on.’

‘Then one way or the other, let us pray that we discover more at Bishampton.’ Bradecote urged his grey into an easy canter, and Walkelin kicked his lazy beast into a shambling gait that just about kept pace.

Chapter Six

The track south to Bishampton was good and the manor was less than three miles away, so they arrived some time before the sun was at its zenith. It beat down, but there was a change in the air, something oppressive looming. Bradecote could not help watching the sky to the west, where the clouds seemed to be massing like grey, mail-coated cavalry, gathering together and awaiting the charge. When they swept down to the Severn and eastward, the rain would be heavy. Catchpoll followed his gaze.

‘Aye, my lord, it’s coming right enough. You have no need to be a weather-feeler, just have eyes in your head. It just depends on whether it plods like an ox or gallops like a horse.’ Catchpoll sounded fatalistic. Everyone knew a good harvest was important, and in hard years town dwellers felt it in the price of bread, but he had not the direct connection to the land. As long as the majority of manors had a surplus to sell, Worcester bellies would not be empty. His superior worried about a few small manors, and most of all Bradecote itself. It was his home, and he could name every soul within it.

‘I pray for the ox, Catchpoll.’

‘As will all who look to the Hills today, my lord, for sure.’

Bishampton was held as two manors, and as they passed the first men piling sheaves onto a cart, they asked which was that held by Walter Pipard. The men, sun-browned and sweating, said that he was their lord, and pointed them towards a modest hall with a fence about it that could not be said to count as any defensive structure. The building was thatched and with low eaves, stone to the height of a man’s thigh, and thereafter wattle and daub as any villein’s dwelling. Within the enclosure a barn stood, doors wide open, and a man, better dressed and clearly in control, stood with folded arms, watching a cart being unloaded. He turned at the sound of approaching horses.

‘Walter Pipard?’ Bradecote halted his big grey and looked down at the man.

‘That is me.’ The man was thinning a little on top, broad of chest and increasingly of girth. He assessed the men before him, and recognised authority.

‘I am Hugh Bradecote, Undersheriff of Worcestershire. We are come to ask you about Osbern de Lench.’

‘Have you indeed … my lord?’ The courtesy was not given grudgingly, but with a hint that Pipard saw no need to abase himself in any way. He held this manor of the de Lacys, who held in turn from the Church, but he was not clinging to the edges of lordship. ‘You should have been asking about him long ago, may he rot in Hell.’

‘I don’t know about Hell, but he’ll be rotting in the earth soon enough. He’s dead.’ Bradecote was assuredly not the bringer of bad news.

‘Then what is there to ask about him now?’

‘Who killed him,’ growled Catchpoll.

Walter Pipard’s eyes darted to the serjeant and then back to Bradecote, and his look became wary.

‘I would shake the hand of the man that did it, but I do not know whose hand to shake, God’s truth.’

‘It is said you told him that if he set foot upon your land you would strike him down.’ Bradecote kept his voice very even.

‘As good as, but words like that are as much warning to keep away as threat. He did not die on my land, did he? I have heard