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

did nothing but good far more of an outrage than the killing of her lord. Lying on her back made her look less at one with the earth, more dishonoured by death. The cheek that had been to the ground had little fragments of leaf and soil dirtying it, and stuck where blood had, dried them to the skin.

‘Look you here, my lord. The wound that killed was swift, but she was threatened first, I would say. There is a small mark here, a knife’s tip, no more.’ Catchpoll had moved the sodden coif to reveal the throat, and touched a mark that scarcely deserved the name of a wound, being just a nick in her neck, under the chin, and a thin line of blood that could easily be overlooked when there was so much more soaked about it. ‘He placed the point there, and either she did not give him what he wanted, or he’s just a callous bastard and did for her anyways.’

‘So it was one of the two lords,’ murmured Walkelin, ‘since we can discount the steward, we—’

‘Why do we discount him?’ Bradecote’s question was asked of himself as much as his companions.

‘He’s no soldier neither, my lord.’ Walkelin shook his head.

‘Not now, not perhaps for many years, but he is a strong-looking man, and who is to say he was always the steward. Even if he followed his father, well, as a young man he might have taken years as one of his lord’s men-at-arms. We have not looked at them in a different way to any other, because everyone at this season is a farmer, getting in the harvest, and I can say for sure that my men-at-arms turn their hands to what is needed, not just practice with sword or bow. Who is to say Fulk was not more soldier than steward in his young manhood?’

‘A fair point, my lord,’ conceded Catchpoll, ‘and we have not seen him since we went to the church with the lord of Flavel, though why would he bring a horse this short step of a way?’

‘To be swifter than any would think otherwise? He might have come bareback and with the animal merely haltered.’ Bradecote shrugged. ‘All I say is he is not cast out of our net.’

‘It would have been a risk, someone seeing him with a horse and wondering why he needed it. But if we say it could be so, then that means all four of ’em, the men we have as even possible killers of the lord Osbern de Lench, had the chance to kill this good woman, and if other than the lord Raoul, you would have to ask why now? The others saw her every day of their lives, near enough.’

‘Then it has to be something done, or said, this morning, and I doubt collecting mushrooms and plants for her potions would drive a man to killing. So let us think what she said.’ Bradecote’s brow furrowed.

‘We cannot know if she met the lord of Flavel though, my lord, or what she said if she did.’ Walkelin frowned.

‘No, but of the others … can we be sure that anything that passed her lips was not heard by one of the three?’ Bradecote ticked them off on his long fingers. ‘Baldwin de Lench was in the hall, and when he left might have stood in the cross passage and listened, rather than go up the hill as he said. Young Hamo went hawking, but might have only gone shortly before it was reported to us, though if so he was not keen on his sport today. Fulk came with that news, but might have been listening before he came in. So what could they have heard?’

Walkelin sat upon the ground and waited silently. He had not been present, so could be of no use in this.

‘I cannot see why the lord Baldwin would kill her for her desire to make him a potion,’ grunted Catchpoll.

‘No, nor I, but think on it, she did give quite a broad hint that the lady of Lench has suffered physical harm from her lord in the past.’

‘But what of it if she did, my lord? The man is dead, and Baldwin would not see a heavy hand as something shameful.’

‘I know, Catchpoll, but if there was more she could say, or he feared she might say … the lady could be persuaded to say nothing through threats to her beloved son, but the healing woman …’ Bradecote sighed, and ran his fingers through his hair. ‘No, I agree, it is seeking what is not there. Nor is there anything that might have concerned Hamo, and I do not think he killed his father or this poor woman unless in red-mist anger as we saw. Coming across her foraging would not anger him. He would scarcely notice her. That leaves us with Fulk the Steward, and he might just have had more cause. When we asked her about him she said he was not in the field, and that alone is not damning since everyone saw it, but the way she said “I doubt he was idle” was full of meaning, even if you could not see her expression. Even if she did not reveal more to us, it is possible Fulk feared she might do so to the lord Baldwin, and what would you give for his life then?’

‘Not as much as a grain from the threshing, and it would not be an easy death, neither.’

‘But are you saying he also killed the lord Osbern?’ enquired Walkelin.

‘I would like to say yes, Walkelin, because two different killers in so few days seems beyond thought, but we have not discovered more than that it is likely he was betraying his lord, so he did have motive.’

‘We might also press the lady on the argument that the messire heard and which sent him off hawking the day of his father’s death. She lied, and lied scared, my lord.