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

‘No, upon his own, on the path up the hill.’

‘Makes sense. He wore its track deep almost on his own.’

‘You knew he went up daily?’ Bradecote never doubted the affirmative.

‘Everyone for miles about knows that.’ Pipard’s lip curled.

‘So where were you yesterday noontide?’

‘In my hall. I had a clawing pain in my guts. I get it sometimes.’

‘Had you servants attending you?’ asked Catchpoll.

‘With the harvest coming in and the weather closing? No. Every hand that can work has been in the field.’

‘You are recovered today though.’ Bradecote looked at the man closely.

‘I am. I never know when it will come, nor go, but a day, at worst a couple, and it passes, though I will not eat today.’

‘So tell us why you and Osbern de Lench were in enmity.’

There was a silence, a silence that was not a void, but something darker and more threatening than the approaching rain clouds. Eventually, Pipard shrugged.

‘God will judge him, so what I say matters not at all now.’

‘And what do you say?’

‘He killed her. I am sure of it. They said she fell from her horse when riding, and broke her neck, but he killed her.’

‘Who?’

‘His wife. His first wife. Judith, sister to Geoffrey Corbizun of Exhall. Young Geoffrey has never had the fire in his belly of his sire, or his dam, but she did. By the Rood, she was magnificent.’ Pipard’s eyes lost focus as the image in his mind claimed him. ‘All raven hair and flashing eyes she was. She had a temper, but then so did Osbern. She rode as if the Devil were after her when she was not contained to play the dutiful lady, and I saw her once, her coif quite slipped back from her hair, and she cared not. Her eyes dared me to look.’ He sighed. ‘Submission was not even a good act with her, and he must have found her wilful once too often. I heard she threw a piss-pot at his head once, in her fury. Magnificent.’

‘But how do you know it was not the misfortune that was declared?’ Catchpoll did not assume every turbulent marriage ended in a killing. ‘And why did you not bring it to the lord Sheriff at the time?’

‘Why? Because her brother swallowed the lie, and declared it was her boldness killed her.’ He snorted. ‘Perhaps he had felt her tongue and her claws as a boy, before she wed. If he said nothing, how would I be believed?’

‘If you had proofs …’ Catchpoll persisted.

‘They would have been laughed at.’

‘Then tell us now, and we will not laugh.’ Bradecote looked squarely at Pipard, whose gaze then dropped.

‘I … she was not happy.’

‘You could read her mind?’ Catchpoll sounded sceptical, and Bradecote silenced him with a small movement of his hand.

‘Did not need to. She had a look about her, in the month before she died, a sort of fear. Her, afraid! It made no sense. She would defy, she would scream and scratch, I doubt not, but there was something …’

Catchpoll ground his teeth, very audibly, but kept his mouth shut. Feelings were all very well when bolstered by good honest facts, but here was a man who had clearly been smitten by the lady’s fire and beauty, and he could not accept her death as a thing that happened without great cause. He was a fool then, because death needed no reason, no motive. It just took. Sometimes it dragged slowly from life, sometimes it snatched, and it did not need servants. It was when it had them that the sheriff’s men became involved, but by far the majority were just simple wyrd, what was fated to be, and that could not be avoided.

‘That is not a proof of itself, Pipard.’ Bradecote hoped against hope for something more.

‘A woman from this manor was returning from Evesham market. She saw the lady de Lench upon the road, and her horse on a slack rein. It had a loose shoe. The next day I heard she had broken her neck in a fall. Do you break your neck falling from a horse at walking pace?’

‘Mayhap the smith made good the shoe, and she rode later.’ Catchpoll sniffed, interested but not willing to show it.

‘If she did, then I wonder how it was that her lord was the one to find her. Did he ride out also, by chance?’

‘Likely he went out to find her if she had not returned home.’

‘He killed her.’ Pipard would not be dissuaded. ‘I would not share words with him thereafter.’

‘But you did not seek revenge. That showed wisdom, my lord.’ Walkelin had kept silent. He sounded deferential, and yet …

‘With the law as doubtful as you are now, I would have hanged. I had responsibilities, a wife, a small son. I owed my name more than I owed her memory, may God be merciful to her. And may Osbern de Lench burn in the eternal fires of Hell.’ He spat into the dusty earth.

The cart that the sheriff’s men had seen being loaded lumbered into the courtyard, with those to unload it trailing behind. The oxen stood, chewing vacantly, and waited, whilst Walter Pipard encouraged and harangued those within to finish the emptying of the earlier cartload. He turned back to Bradecote.

‘I have another cartload to bring in, my lord, before the weather breaks. There is nothing more I can tell you. Find Osbern de Lench’s killer if you must, but it is not me, and they did the world a service.’

‘We will leave you to the harvest, and with luck you will have all safe before the rain, but if needs be, we will return and ask of you again.’ Bradecote nodded a dismissal, although it was he who turned his horse about and trotted from the manor, with Catchpoll at his knee and Walkelin urging his slug of a horse to keep up by means of heels and imprecations.

‘I do not think Walter Pipard killed the lord of Lench, hate him