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

has happened?’ she stared at the wreck of a man laid now upon a trestle table. ‘Is he dead? Who is he?’

Bradecote ignored her, reaching to feel if there was a heartbeat still in the chest, for there was little breath in the man.

‘There is life, but no senses. Does anyone in the village have a knowledge of physick? Not that it will do much good.’

‘Mother Winflaed is our herb woman, our healer.’

‘Then get her, and anything she has for bone and bruise, and bleeding flesh.’ Bradecote looked grim. ‘He is three parts dead.’

‘Why did you stop me?’ wheezed Baldwin, holding his midriff.

‘Because we gets answers to questions without killing a man, and we needs to know what he knows,’ Catchpoll growled, and got a look of loathing, but no more.

‘How came you by him?’ asked Bradecote, without taking his eyes from the broken body.

‘As we came from the field with the last wagon. He walked right past me and commended our luck. He had my sire’s hat upon his head, though it lacked the copper badge with the amber boss upon it. My father’s hat, taken from his corpse.’ There was outrage in the voice, and he pulled from within his belt a dark red cloth hat. ‘For one moment …’

Yes, thought Bradecote, the hat must be so distinctive it was as though the real owner wore it. Baldwin de Lench had seen a ghost, in his own imagining, just for a moment, and that was enough. Anger and bowel-loosening fear had driven him to a fury of violence.

‘So you beat him nigh unto death.’ Bradecote had no sympathy.

‘I grabbed him, shook him, ordered him to tell me how he came by it, and he whimpered like a cur and said he got it from a beggar. How likely is that? Either he killed my father or he traded with the one that did.’

‘And you have nothing from him but denial and his blood upon your earth. Had you not wit enough to bind him and hold him for our return, de Lench?’ Bradecote snarled at the man, angry at his short-sightedness, and at the fact that he might have near killed a man guilty of nothing more than giving a silver penny or two to a man who needed bread in his belly not a hat on his head.

A great flash illuminated the chamber even through the narrow horn-paned windows and was followed immediately by a crash that sounded as if an oak was falling. The combination made the lady de Lench scream, drop the candles and cover both her ears. Walkelin stamped out the lick of flames among the rushes with his foot and picked up the candles, though one was now rather flat. Catchpoll sighed and took a rush light to the one that would not collapse.

A woman with a piece of sacking held over her head entered the hall, bobbing to lady and lords as one. She was followed by a girl of about thirteen bearing a plank with pots all covered with an oilcloth to keep out the rain. Without a word the woman, a round, comfortable-looking woman nearer her later years than youth, went to the body on the trestle table. She crossed herself, said a swift Ave Maria, touched the bruised and battered head and torso, and asked Walkelin, being the one male in the chamber she felt she could command, to turn the man onto his side. She went round the table to see his back and tutted, and then looked at the undersheriff as the one in control.

‘His ears do not bleed, nor can I see any place where his skull is caved in, my lord, but I have nothing to waken a man as is jangled of brain. If he wakes, he wakes, but he may not, may never. As for the rest, there is ribs broken, doubtless, but he breathes as one with lungs that work, and his belly is soft so nothing seems burst inside, which would surely mean he dies. I can clean and salve the wounds to his back, anoint his bruises and give a draught that if he does wake will ease his pains a little, but the rest is prayer, my lord, the rest is prayer.’

‘Thank you. Do what you can for him.’ He gave her a smile, and the elderly dame blushed in the candle glow. She bade the girl assist her, and worked with whispered instructions, except when she needed Walkelin’s strength. Bradecote and Catchpoll glared at Baldwin de Lench.

‘So, if he never wakens there is a death to be answered for,’ said Catchpoll, soberly.

‘But he—’ began Baldwin, before being interrupted by Bradecote.

‘He might have a connection, or he might not. What he said might be true. You never even considered that, did you.’ It was not a question. ‘We do not even know where he was going.’

‘Flavel. That is where he was going, my lord,’ piped up the healing woman’s youthful aide, and dipped in obeisance.

‘You heard him?’

‘Aye, my lord. He was in good humour and hoped all was safely got in back in Flavel, he said, so I am thinking that is where he was going, for the direction was right.’

‘He was not on a horse?’ For one terrible moment Bradecote feared this might be Raoul Parler. He had no recall of the look of the man although he and Parler both held of William de Beauchamp.

‘Oh no, my lord, but he was striding fast, knowing the storm was coming in swift.’

‘Did you ask him his name, de Lench?’ Bradecote looked back at the now-silent Baldwin.

‘No.’ He sounded sulky.

‘Well, at least if he dies we can take the corpse to Flavel and see who mourns him, and get his name,’ sighed Bradecote. ‘Tell me exactly what he told you.’

‘He just said he got the hat from a beggar upon the road, and commented upon it, for the hat was good and the beggar crippled and ragged. The beggar said