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

had an infant in their arms who resented not being the centre of parental interest. Giving up, Christina took the baby from him, smiled ruefully and complained about ‘jealous men’. She watched in silence as Hugh packed a few things into a rolled blanket. He looked at her as he finished.

‘I will take care.’ It was his promise.

‘Yes.’

‘And you will take care also.’

‘Yes, my lord. I will take care also. Now, be gone, so that you may return the sooner.’

‘So, Catchpoll, what do we know, and why does one of Osbern de Lench’s sons want to hang his brother? Other than brotherly dislike,’ Bradecote asked, as he urged his big grey into a loping canter.

‘It is a half-brother, my lord,’ interjected Walkelin, before Serjeant Catchpoll could reply.

‘Well, the less likelihood of love betwixt them but …’ Bradecote still looked to Catchpoll.

‘We got a tale that was as twisted as a maid’s plait, and no, young Walkelin, that is not something to grin at. The steward of the manor came, on a horse sweated up and nigh on dropping, and him little better. He had gone first to the lord Bishop, as if that would be of use, and had been sent straight on to the lord Sheriff, and with some priest at the man’s elbow, forever butting in to be helpful and thus muddying things further. All we know for sure is that the lord Osbern de Lench was alive this dawning and dead by a little after noon, his body found by his heir, Baldwin de Lench, after his horse came home riderless. The body was pretty nigh stripped. The lord Osbern was keen to ride to the top of the hill above his manor each noontide, so the son thinks whoever killed him, or had him killed, knew this. He also thinks it was his little brother, er, half-brother, though the steward cannot think why, and has threatened to hang him before we reach Lench unless we are swift. The lord Sheriff sent the steward back upon a fresh horse, not a very good one, mind you, and with a strict command that Baldwin do nothing until our arrival, on pain of the displeasure of the lord Sheriff of Worcestershire. The depth of this displeasure was … made very clear.’

‘Then if Baldwin ignores the advice he is a fool beyond belief. Nevertheless, I think we do not make the journey at an easy pace, Catchpoll.’

‘I feared you was going to say that,’ sighed Walkelin, resigned to sore heels from kicking his reluctant mount.

‘Well, I can at least entertain you upon the ride, for this is a family where they have killed each other before,’ the serjeant declared.

‘Go on.’ Bradecote was not going to let his jaw drop like Walkelin’s.

‘It was when I was as Walkelin is now, my lord.’

‘Still making mistakes and riding a beast that is barely a horse?’ Bradecote’s lips twitched.

‘Perhaps a few less-than-sound decisions,’ conceded Catchpoll, ‘but the horse was better.’

‘And I haven’t made a mistake in … a long time, my lord. Not a big one.’ Walkelin was not totally sure that the undersheriff was in jest.

‘That depends on your idea of big, young Walkelin.’ Serjeant Catchpoll was secretly very pleased with his protégé’s progress but would not want him to know its extent. ‘Now, back then, Lench was held by a man called William Herce, a widower who had married a very comely young woman. He was quite envied, right up until she did for him. He was a jealous husband, and rightly so, for she grew tired of her balding lord and turned for her pleasure to another man, though she never revealed who he was, indeed cried her innocence throughout. When the husband came too close to knowing the truth she poisoned him.’

‘How was it proved her blame, and how was it known she had a lover?’ Bradecote frowned. He could not but think of his Christina and her mistreatment by her first husband. A woman that abused might seek escape if not through taking her own life, then that of her abuser, whatever the risk to her immortal soul. ‘I would have thought if she were the lady of the manor and he died, it would be accepted as an accident.’

‘A man don’t die blue-lipped, after thrashing about and screaming of many-headed beasts just because he ate too many herb dumplings, and at a meal he shared with his lady and sons. It was poison, right enough, and most like slipped in his wine. She tried to claim it was some mischief from the wise woman in the village who had been treating him for the scarlet toe, which gave him great pain.’ Catchpoll saw the undersheriff’s frown deepen. ‘I heard off an apothecary that the Foreign is something like goot.’ The frown eased, and Bradecote nodded in understanding. ‘She used nightshade in the poultice for that, and that alone, she gave her oath. The wise woman was sworn for by all the village as one who had done nothing but good her whole life, aye, and had a softening of the heart for the man since she was but a young wench and he had more hair and a roving eye. There was no cause for it to be her, and just to take any doubt from it all, the wife had been asking about the poultice and what was in it.’

‘Then that does give how, but not why, Catchpoll.’ Bradecote was being as dogged as Walkelin.

‘The lover was real, though he had neither face nor name to the end. She had taken to slipping away of a forenoon, if her lord slept late after much wine, and always came back in good spirits and smiling. The swine boy said as he had heard her in the woods, laughing and talking to a man, for he heard a man’s voice and Foreign speech. He never saw, for he thought seeing might mean being seen and his life cut short