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

mother’s sister, who was Healer then, I saw a man die horrible from the arching spasms, his back all bowed so only his heels and head touched the ground. Nothing could be done o’ course, but it gave me such dreams I knew the laececraeft was not for me, and Winflaed began the learning of it instead. Could have been her here, and me lying in the church, but for wyrd.’ She shook her head. ‘Now I will go and speak with Father Matthias, and if he says all is ready, I will gather all from the barn.’

Bradecote nodded. A belief in fate gave reassurance that nothing could have been done to alter what had happened. Yet he felt that to accept it too much would mean that whatever he, Catchpoll and Walkelin might do, those who met a violent end were doomed, and by the same token, however inept they might be, they would save those who were destined to live longer. If he believed in wyrd too much he might as well not bother being undersheriff at all. He pulled a face at his own twisting thoughts. It came of having nothing to do but wait.

He went to the church.

Bradecote wondered if Baldwin de Lench was thick-skinned enough not to notice the almost palpable difference between the obsequies for Winflaed the Healer and his sire. This time there were sniffing women and sighing men, and a genuine sense of deep regret and sorrow. As the manor lord, Baldwin stood to the front, with Walkelin to one side and Bradecote on the other, and with the villagers at his back, but if Bradecote could feel it, how could he not do so? At least it meant he was not looking at the steward, or the lady de Lench, who had chosen to stand next to Hild and Winflaed’s sister. Hamo stood upon Bradecote’s other side, and Bradecote thought he was thinking about Evesham, not the healing woman.

The lord of Lench looked morose, but then he often looked that way. He mumbled about hoping it would not take long as he wanted everyone back to work, and got no answer from the undersheriff. When all was at an end, the villagers filed out and gathered about the second new grave in Lench, though Winflaed’s was outside and Osbern had been laid beneath the earth in front of the altar, having been the man who had just paid for the church’s rebuilding, and no tiles having yet been laid upon the chancel floor. Hugh Bradecote thought that Winflaed would have thought herself the more fortunate, with the sound of birdsong above her remains and the seasons passing overhead.

He sent Walkelin, with a nod, to dog the steps of Baldwin de Lench, who was still looking ill-tempered. Hild’s oldmother, who felt that her previous conversation with such an elevated person as the lord undersheriff would raise her standing in the eyes of her neighbours, could not resist passing by close enough to comment.

‘We will just have to make the best of things, I s’pose. We always knew, o’ course, what with him being the lord Osbern’s son and his mother as she was, and the lord Osbern was not a lord to be liked, just avoided as much as possible.’

‘How was the mother?’ Bradecote thought about what Raoul Parler and Walter Pipard had said of her.

‘Ah, there was a beautiful lady, but with a fire, and that foolish way of seeing but one thing, true or not. Made for some fine arguments in the hall in those days, and ’twas sad how she paid so dear for it too.’

‘What do you mean, oldmother?’ Bradecote’s brows drew together in curiosity, and he stood still.

‘It don’t matter now, them all bein’ dead and buried,’ murmured the old woman, half to herself, and then looked Bradecote in the eye. ‘Winflaed knew, but the lord Osbern knew she would not tell, and nor did she, not for years, but … I am kin, and old, and what secrets she told me were not like to spread. I would keep ’em still if it mattered.’

‘What secrets?’

‘Tragic ones, my lord, and all such a twisting and turning. The lord Osbern and the lady Judith loved one another, howsoever many pots were thrown and hot words shouted. There was a heat to them. She was unafraid, leastways not afraid of any man, but then when fear came, it ate her like a wolf devouring a lamb.’ The woman shook her head. ‘She began to have a loss of feeling in her fingers, two of her right hand. Winflaed told her not to worry but she was convinced it was the signs of leprosy. She had once seen a man cast from her home village, dead to the world and all those he loved, yet in it still. Now Winflaed had not seen the cruel disease, not up close, since a hreófla must keep at a distance with their clapper, but she had seen a lad who had the same tingles in his two fingers after he broke an arm. Her reasonin’ was that it was somethin’ in the arm, not a foulness like leprosy, but would the lady listen? No, not to Winflaed nor to the priest neither, so she fretted, and kept herself from her lord with excuses till he could scarce bear it more, and then she died. Well, it was a fall as was said. Years later Winflaed told me it could have been by her own intent, but that she had seen the poor lady’s body when the lord Osbern brought her home. He begged her to find life, but what hope when it has already gone? What Winflaed saw, and swore to me as true years later, was marks upon her neck as told it never snapped in no fall. It was him what killed her, but she could not think why.’ The old woman permitted herself a small smile, mostly because she could