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

by, and stopped me. He was full of questions, not like yours though. He wanted to know how I did this and that, whether I felt hands that were not there, how did it feel to be “of no use”. It was like he was interested but not seeing me. Fair made the hair stand up on the back of my neck it did, and I vowed never to go through Lench again, lest I see him and he see me. So I went around the place, west side, and rejoined the Evesham road a ways beyond, as it rises and where the horse path leads off the road and up the little hill. Then I saw something, lying at the edge of the horse path, just before it bends to follow the hill slope proper-like, and it was a boot. For a moment I surely felt as I would see a body. I went to look, cautious though, and the other boot was in a bush, and the tunic, but there was no body. It made me wonder, for if there had been a man killed, who would take the body and leave the good clothes? Makes no sense. I did not go further up the hill, for I heard a horse’s hooves on the path. That would be the lord of Lench, for everyone for half the hundred knows it is his hill and he sits upon it every day when the sun is high. I had no wish to meet with him and be accused of wrong, so I gathered the clothes and ran, and it was a warm day to run. I spent the night at an assart on the Evesham road where an old man gives me a fair pottage in exchange for company at his board, and then came here to Evesham yesterday mid morning. There was no need for speed. It was just after I had set off that I met a man heading north. He admired the hat, and in truth it was so hot upon my head in that heat afore the storm, I said, in jest, I would sell it to him for tuppence. He offered me a penny ha’penny and I agreed, right there. That was it. Then I carried on to Evesham.’

The sheriff’s man was silent, thinking, then he asked a sober question. Alnoth’s cheeriness diminished in the face of it.

‘When did you discover the clothing had blood upon it and was cut?’

‘Not until I was with the old man. I had bundled everything together and not looked close.’

‘And it was not odd that almost all that might clothe a man was found together? You must have thought the reason unlawful.’

‘I have to live as best I can, Master Walkelin, and as I said before, there was none to whom I could give aid, nor report upon neither. What good would come of reporting not finding a body? Who would look for something that was not there?’

In Walkelin’s mind the answer was instantly ‘Serjeant Catchpoll’, but he did not voice it.

‘You saw no body, but body there was, and up the path to the hill. The lord Osbern of Lench was taken by a knife and stripped.’

‘Sweet Jesu, but … I heard his horse.’

‘You heard a horse, aye, but he was not upon its back. Now, let me see the marks upon the tunic.’

The tunic was of soft leather, open down the front, designed to be held together with a belt and a clasp at the neck. Alnoth said he had seen no belt, but that such a thing might easily have been cast further and lost to view in the undergrowth. The jerkin was dark brown, and the stain where the knife had entered under the ribs was not as large as he expected, nor the slit wide. Walkelin measured it with his finger. There were no other cuts in the leather, so he surmised that either the lord of Lench had ridden with the tunic loose, because of the heat of the day, or it had been removed before the other wounds were made after death. He grunted.

‘The boots and tunic can stay with me?’ Alnoth was now being practical.

‘They are of no use to him. Both Abbot Reginald and the lady of Lench say the man was pious in his way, though of an evil temper. Best to think he would see such charity, even unintended, as aiding the passing of his soul, yes?’

‘That be a good thought, master, and I shall be sure to say a prayer for his soul every night right until …’ Alnoth thought of a distant date, ‘the Feast of St Luke.’

‘That seems fair. You do that, and safe travels.’

‘I would say none steals from a man with nothing, but,’ the man laughed again, ‘I am now the proud owner of good boots. I take your good wishes, master. And may you find him as took the lord Osbern’s life.’

‘We shall.’ Walkelin spoke confidently, as he thought Serjeant Catchpoll would answer, and then left Alnoth the Handless to his guarding duties.

Chapter Eight

Bradecote had no wish to speak with the villagers of Lench under the eye of the new lord, since they would undoubtedly be casting a wary eye to him and be more concerned about upsetting the lord of their manor than the lord Undersheriff of Worcestershire, who would be among them but briefly. Fortunately, it would be impractical to speak quietly with anyone with the threshing going on about them. Baldwin de Lench might not like it, but he decided to call the workers out in twos and threes, and send back swiftly all who looked blankly at him or shook their heads. This turned out to be the majority, though Catchpoll was watching them to see if any were overawed by rank and keeping their mouths shut on the principle that saying anything was dangerous. The boy who had espied his lord, and said as much to Baldwin,