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

head against wall or floor. If the woman did not die, little was done by the law, especially if the woman had children about her skirts, for a breadwinner was a breadwinner, however rough. If he learnt about it, however, the serjeant had a way of ‘having words’ which made men think twice, at least when sober. As Catchpoll said, a breathing, beaten woman might be a corpse another month, and he would rather it was not so. He had added that at least, if it came to pass, it was a lot easier if all the sheriff’s men need do was bring in a guilty husband.

‘I am Walkelin, Sheriff’s Man, sent by the lord Undersheriff of the Shire, to ask you if the lord Raoul Parler was with you three days past.’ He spoke firmly, but not loudly. If the other women did not know the widow’s trade then he would not add to her dishonour.

‘He …’ She licked lips that had been split, and sniffed, for her nose was running. ‘He came as you say, but he left the morning after.’ Her diction was impeded, and her voice barely a whisper, but clear enough to be understood.

‘He left next morning. Was that late or early?’

‘Early.’

‘Do you know where he went?’

She nodded but said nothing.

‘He did this.’ It was not a question, and Walkelin looked grim. She just looked at him, and then shrugged, wincing a little.

‘What’s done is done.’ She sounded utterly defeated.

‘Does not make it right.’

‘Right? Does that exist? Not in my world, not now.’

‘I am sorry,’ Walkelin apologised, but even as he said the words he realised how foolish and pointless that was. ‘Did he, the lord Parler, seek out a man with a red hat? The lord Osbern de Lench?’

‘Yes.’ She nodded, and sniffed again, wiping her forefinger beneath her runny nose.

‘The lord Osbern is dead, but by whose hand is not yet known.’

‘If it was him as did it, he may return and …’

‘If it was him, mistress, he will not return, except bound, and if not, well, the lord Undersheriff will not permit him to harm you again.’

It was small comfort to the woman, he thought, for now both her providers were lost to her, and washing alone would not keep her in bread and the payment of her rent come quarter day. If her injuries healed but left her disfigured, there would be small hope of another man to keep her and she would exist from one encounter to the next. Walkelin thanked her and returned to the castle in a far less exultant mood than the new information should have led him to enjoy.

Serjeant Catchpoll was idly rubbing the remnants of a broken wheat ear between his fingers and watching his superior, who was leaning back against the outer wall of the hall, and now rubbed his hand across his furrowed brow.

The lord Bradecote had become quite good at the acting of being an undersheriff, playing up to what was expected of the role, just as Catchpoll had honed his ‘sheriff’s serjeant’ to perfection over the years. Yet the man had eyes that could give glimpses within, if you looked, and his weakness, if you could call it that, was his wife. He feared for her future and was impotently outraged at her past, the suffering that could not be undone. Well, that was foolish, in Catchpoll’s eyes, because he could not alter what had been, and what would be, would be. He might be better, of course, once she had safely presented him with the babe she carried. Catchpoll tried to recall if he himself had lived with dread when his wife had been carrying, and he thought not, but then, he had never lost a wife to childbed.

‘Well, we are still at the point where, in spite of our working out that everything fitted if the steward killed his lord, it looks very unlikely that he did it, and if he did not kill Osbern de Lench he did not kill Winflaed the Healer.’ Bradecote sighed. ‘The two deaths have to be linked.’

‘They do that, my lord, especially since there is that burying of the dagger, and it could be nothing else in that little grave, empty as it now is. And as for the steward I don’t see he did it and the lordling looks about as unlikely, for all that pointed to him is just possibility. That leaves us with the lord of Flavel and our new lord of Lench, unpleasant bastards both, but if only unpleasant bastards did murder our lives would be the much easier. So far we have nothing known about the first one, barring he did not tell us a full tale, which makes us suspicious, and no cause for the second.’

‘Raoul Parler will remain an unknown at least until we hear from Walkelin, so we look yet again at Baldwin de Lench. We see no reason, nothing that gave him cause now, rather than in general, so perhaps we should limit ourselves to whether it was possible – could he have done it from the facts we know. Firstly, he had been in Tredington, which lies by Shipston. Unless he came in haste, and nobody said his horse looked sweated up when he reached the field, he must have taken three or four hours, whether he came the northern way through Stratford or the southern through Evesham.’

‘My penny would be on Evesham, my lord, and him leaving the manor the day before. That would give him a night’s fumble with his woman there, and he would take what opportunity he could. I doubt he sought to leave early either. Now, it might be that he left her late to be upon the track to meet his father as he came from his daily stand upon the hill, which means he planned it cold, and the trouble there is he is a man who acts, not thinks first. Also, you would wonder how