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

‘Even if he did not, Catchpoll, Parler needs to know he is marked. If ever anything untoward happens to the Widow Brook, or we hear of a lordly man in connection with a Worcester woman’s death, I will be upon his threshold, and he will have to do much to prove his innocence.’ Bradecote was beyond shouting anger, and spoke slowly and deliberately. ‘Let us go to Flavel and hear what he has to say about his actions and his lies.’

Chapter Fourteen

It was an unsmiling trio that rode into the manor of Flavel, and a scene in marked contrast to their last visit, when it had been near deserted. It was a hive of activity, and a man who was directing other men beginning a rick of straw, turned at their arrival. He was short and stocky of build, but had authority. Bradecote guessed him to be the steward.

‘I am the lord Undersheriff of Worcestershire, come to speak with your lord. He is within his hall?’ Bradecote’s voice was cold.

‘Aye, my lord, he is.’ The steward sounded guarded. ‘I will take you to him.’

‘No need. Your duties are many at this season. Just see that our horses are tethered.’

The man looked almost relieved, and gave a nod that was both agreement and obeisance in one. He called to a youth to follow the lord undersheriff and his men into the bailey and see to their mounts. Bradecote trotted the grey into the enclosure and dismounted, Catchpoll and Walkelin right behind him. The lad ran to keep up.

Bradecote nodded to Catchpoll, and the serjeant opened the hall door, stepping inside and holding it open for his superior. It lacked a cross passage and Bradecote could see Raoul Parler, leaning back in the lord’s seat, his booted feet upon a bench, and a pitcher and beaker resting there also. He did not move as the sheriff’s men approached.

‘Forgive me if I do not offer you hospitality,’ muttered Parler, with just the merest hint of a slur to his speech. ‘This,’ he kicked the pitcher so that it fell upon the floor and cracked into three pieces, ‘is empty.’

Bradecote said nothing, but crossed the floor in a few long strides and kicked the bench from beneath Parler’s feet so that it landed with a heavy crash, and the man had to hold hard onto the arms of his chair to prevent himself sliding onto the floor in a heap. The noise brought an opening of the solar door, and the lady Parler stood in the doorway, hand to breast, and wide-eyed.

‘No need to fear, my lady. There is no threat to you or your children. Just shut the door.’ The undersheriff spoke with calm deliberation and did not take his gaze from Parler. She did shut it, but behind her, and leant back against it, breathing a little fast, and at that he did spare her a swift glance before returning his cold gaze to her husband.

‘So be it.’ He paused for a moment, and then gave a sharp command. ‘Stand up!’ It was so unexpected that Walkelin actually jumped.

‘You do not yell at me in mine own hall,’ growled Parler. ‘I am the lord of Flavel and—’

‘You have seisin of it, yes, but lord? You shame the title, and you shame the name of a man also. What sort of lord, what sort of man, beats a woman half to death?’ Bradecote regretted saying it before the man’s wife, but realistically, if the lady Parler did not know of her husband’s tendency to violence by now it would be as well she heard and was warned.

‘I do not share whores,’ Parler sneered. ‘Do you? What is mine is mine alone. I do not share, and I will not be betrayed.’ His lip curled. ‘You would cry shame upon me for a woman like her?’

‘Women like her exist because of men like you, Parler; lechers, bullies, and liars.’ He spat the insult, goading the man to stand, which was just what Bradecote wanted him to do, for it meant the undersheriff could simply lean a little forward and grab him by the throat so that the man choked and flailed ineffectually at him. ‘None so pleasant, being on the receiving end, is it? And be thankful there is not a wall so close I could bang your head into it as you did, no doubt, with hers.’

Catchpoll watched, his face seemingly impassive, but his eyes held a smile. The lord undersheriff was not a man who approved of heavy-handedness in the pursuit of justice, but just occasionally he stepped across that line himself. The serjeant did not think he was changing his view, which would have been better, but he would he hard-pushed to repeat his original instruction that violence was never to be used. In fairness also, this was more a show of control and power than harming the man, but the threat was there, and a believable one at that.

‘So,’ Bradecote let Parler struggle for another moment, then thrust him back down into the seat, ‘having lied to us once about where you were when Osbern de Lench was killed, you had better not try it a second time.’ His voice was measured again. ‘You left the woman in Worcester, beaten and bloodied, and departed in the early morning of the day de Lench died. You were not yet here when we came the next day. Where were you all that time?’

There was silence. Raoul Parler stared at the undersheriff with a mixture of insolence and wariness.

‘He was here.’ The lady spoke up, suddenly, and all three sheriff’s men stared at her.

‘He was not when we came, lady. Your servant said so and—’

‘Siward is blind. He does not know all, and if I had asked, he would have lied anyway. He is loyal. No, my lord was here, in the solar.’

‘But you fainted when I asked after him.’ Bradecote was certain that her