Blood Runs Thicker

by Sarah Hawkswood

  Blood Runs Thicker

  A Medieval Mystery

  SARAH HAWKSWOOD

  For H. J. B.

  Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  About the Author

  By Sarah Hawkswood

  Copyright

  Chapter One

  Harvest time 1144

  ‘Cease your whining, woman.’ Osbern de Lench snarled at his wife, pushed her roughly from him and strode out into the sunshine, which was at such odds with his mood. It had been a bad morning and his temper had long since frayed. Nobody did what he told them; everyone failed him. He yelled for his horse, and berated the man who brought it in a hurry for not having it ready. The groom cringed, expecting a blow, which he promptly received. It was one of those days. The man knew that he would have been chastised just the same had he been walking the lord Osbern’s horse up and down, since he would have been accused of daring to assume his lord would ride, even though he did so every day at the same hour before noon. He held the stirrup, studiously looking down at the dusty toe of the leather boot, which enabled him to step back smartly and avoid the half-hearted kick aimed at him. Osbern pulled his horse’s head to the right, and cantered away with imprecations upon his lips and the dry earth rising in little clouds behind him.

  ‘There are days, too many of ’em, when you would wish the lord Bishop of Worcester or the lord Sheriff held this manor themselves,’ grumbled a tall man, wiping a scrap of sacking across his heated brow as he came round the corner of the barn. He nodded towards the receding horse and rider. ‘What cause had he for ire today?’

  ‘Who knows, other than our lady?’ The groom shrugged.

  The tall man glanced towards the hall and frowned.

  ‘Get you out to the Great Field. Since I will still be here, I will attend to his horse upon his return. We need every man we can with sickle in hand if we are to get the harvest in before the weather changes, and Old Athelstan swears it will within two days.’

  The groom was about to ask why Fulk the Steward had himself returned, but thought better of it. The steward might not strike him as the lord Osbern would, but he had a sharp tongue in his head if aggravated, and he already looked less than delighted. Perhaps it was simply an inauspicious day. The groom hoped Fulk would be wary of the lord’s horse upon his return, lest it lash out. The old grey mare might have mellowed in temper a little with age, just as her coat had paled to the colour of snow, but horses might be as prone to ill-temper as men.

  The steady rhythm of his horse’s hooves calmed Osbern, as did the very routine nature of his ride. Every day, unless the weather was so foggy as to make it ridiculous, or so inclement as to make it foolish, he rode up the hill that overlooked his manor and sat for a half hour, contented, surveying it. People could be difficult, and often were, but the land changed only by the seasons, and this was his land. ‘Lord of the Hill’ his villeins called him, always behind his back, but he knew of it and rather liked the appellation. It might be held of William de Beauchamp, the lord sheriff of the shire, who in turn held of the lord Bishop of Worcester, but Osbern’s sire and grandsire had lived here, been buried here, and this was his. He knew each ridge and furrow, every tree, and had taught Baldwin, his heir, to value it as he did. At noon the sun was on his back and the hill’s soft shadow cast upon the green-wooded slope to the fields below. His grandsire had cleared the very top when he first took seisin, thinking to create a motte and bailey to show how he was above the old ways and the old lord, the English Alfred. As the story had been handed down, however, he had got no further than felling the trees. His lady had so berated him for foolishness in wanting a breezy hilltop when he could keep a far better eye on his villagers down where the cluster of dwellings were focused about a little church and the stream, that he had changed his mind. Instead he had turned the Saxon hall into a barn, just to prove his Norman superiority, and built a grander hall. The barn still stood, and the new hall also, but the old church was nothing more than the footprint upon which Osbern had now overseen the erection of a new place of worship, adorned with fine carving from masons who had worked on far grander ecclesiastical buildings than a manor church. The building was roofed again, and within the week it would be fully decorated, the walls fresh and white, the arch above the chancel step chevroned in red and yellow ochre. It declared to all who entered that Osbern de Lench was a lord of means, and pious also. It would help his soul when the time came, just a little, he thought, for God alone knew how much there was for which to atone. He crossed himself and was thinking of the next world rather than this and was thus caught off balance when his horse jibbed and came up short as he was confronted.

  ‘How come you are here?’ he enquired, his brows drawn together. He was surprised, and a little annoyed, but not in any way frightened, which was not a bad state in which to die, all things considered.

  The rider was in his middle twenties, well dressed, and with a serviceable sword at his side. He entered the village as though he owned it, and he might as well have, for this was Baldwin, son and heir to Osbern de Lench. He frowned at there being nobody coming out to take his horse, and then shook his head at his own stupidity. He had been thinking of other things, of the future, and completely forgotten that he had passed communities all bringing in their harvest as he had returned from his sire’s manor in Warwickshire. There the harvest had been finished three days past, but it was a small manor, and the steward had been so panicked that the weather would break that he had begged Baldwin to let him commence the harvesting even before their neighbours. Baldwin liked the harvest time, seeing the culmination of the farming year, assessing the yield, the possible surplus to sell, even the act of cutting the grain stalks, which had such purpose. He had even been known to join in during his adolescence, just to show off his strong arms, though his back thereafter ached from the bending. He had not done more than survey the labours this season. He turned his horse about and headed towards the Great Field, a half-smile on his face.

  The pale grey mare, almost white with age, trotted into the empty bailey and ambled towards the stables, where it halted before the shut door. The main gate was open to receive the cartloads of gathered sheaves to be threshed in the barn, which stood within a dozen yards of its grander replacement as the lord’s dwelling, but the bailey was otherwise deserted. A woman, very heavily pregnant, emerged from one of the simple cotts with a midden pail. She glanced into the bailey at the sound of the horse stamping its hoof upon the compacted earth. She looked puzzled, and then waddled slowly into the enclosure. Her hand went to her mouth, for a horse to return riderless meant something bad. She dithered. With everyone bringing in the harvest there was no man to alert, and it did not occur to her to enter the hall and call for the lady. She had only ever entered it upon great feast days when the lord broached kegs of ale and had a hog roasted to celebrate the nativity or Easter. She tied the reins of the bridle to a ring driven into the wall, and set off with a slow gait, frowning in determination and concern, towards the fields. It was some time before men came running back, the harvest forgotten, following as fast as they could after a grim-faced Baldwin de Lench. They came to a halt, chests heaving, staring a
t the now-unsettled grey mare being calmed by the lord’s heir, whose own mount stood abandoned in the bailey yard.

  ‘Did he go up the hill?’ cried Baldwin, and nobody needed to ask who ‘he’ was.

  ‘Aye, messire Baldwin.’ The groom came forward and took the horse, soothing it where the agitation of Baldwin de Lench had failed. ‘He went up as usual.’

  ‘And I saw him, just as always, up there.’ A lad of about twelve pointed up the hill.

  ‘So he must have fallen on his way back, and not long since.’ Baldwin paused, and then yelled for the steward. ‘Fulk, where in Jesu’s name are you?’

  A few moments later and the door into the hall opened. Fulk, who was not only tall but broad-shouldered, seemed to fill the doorway. He was wiping his hand across his mouth. In normal circumstances Baldwin would have made a guess that he had been imbibing his lord’s wine illicitly, but these were not normal circumstances, so it was ignored. The hand dropped before the action was complete.

  ‘Messire Baldwin.’ He sounded surprised, and not overjoyed. Then he saw the horse. ‘Sweet Lady Mary!’

  ‘Take two men and fetch a hurdle. If the lord Osbern has fallen and not yet come home, swearing at his horse, he must be hurt and either on the Evesham road or the trackway up the hill. I will ride ahead, and you come on as fast as you can.’

  Fulk nodded, tight-lipped, and jerked his head towards two strapping young men. As he strode towards an outbuilding a woman emerged from the hall. She looked wary, and if Fulk had not been best pleased to see Baldwin de Lench, her look was more of loathing.

  ‘I thought I heard …’ She stopped and stared at the horse, then crossed herself. ‘A fall?’

  ‘If he took a tumble then the horse did not come down, I would swear oath to that, my lady,’ piped up the groom, who had been feeling the grey’s legs. ‘Not a mark upon her, nor added dust upon the flanks or saddle.’

  ‘Praise be for that,’ came a mild voice. Father Matthias stepped forward. ‘Best you wait within, my lady, and direct preparations of the lord’s bed. Mother Winflaed, you will be needed.’ He looked to an older woman, the village healer, who pursed her lips and went swiftly for her medicaments. ‘We can pray also.’

  The lady de Lench let herself be guided back into the cool dark of the hall.

  ‘If salves are all he needs then prayers have indeed been answered,’ muttered Baldwin, remounting his horse and heading for the gateway. ‘Run, you bastards!’ he cried over his shoulder at the two men now grappling a hurdle and wondering how best to carry it at speed. They looked to Fulk the Steward.

  ‘He said run, so best we run, lads. Come on.’

  The rescue party departed, and the villagers, caught between the desire to get back to the harvest and a feeling that they ought to remain, milled about rather aimlessly, talking in hushed tones.

  Baldwin de Lench rode back into the village slowly, since his horse bore both himself and his father’s body slung across its back. What use was a hurdle for a corpse? He was pale, and when he called out for the priest, his voice shook a little. For a moment he was angry beyond belief that everyone simply stared at him and stood stock-still. He swore. He wanted to dismount, but he was not actually sure that his knees would not buckle. He called again, even more hoarsely, and Father Matthias emerged from the hall, without haste. He stared at the body, crossed himself, and was almost pushed aside by the lady de Lench.

  ‘It cannot be true,’ she cried, running in a flurry of skirts to the body of her husband. She lifted the cloak that covered it and took the head in her hands, gazing at the face as if she expected him to speak. ‘Osbern. Osbern!’ Her voice rose, she let go of the cloth and stepped back very suddenly, crossing herself, and began to weep. Baldwin looked down upon her bent head.

  ‘Tears of grief, or of guilt, lady Mother?’ he asked softly, but she raised her head as quickly as if he had shouted at her. He always gave her the title with sarcasm, for she was perhaps no more than five years his senior.

  ‘What do you mean?’ Her hands, which had been clasped tightly together before her mouth, went to her breast. ‘What do you mean, Baldwin?’

  ‘I mean he wed you for your looks and to give him more children, and all you bore him was that whelp you dote upon. What sort of a wife does that make you? And where is Hamo himself?’

  ‘He is not here. He … he went out with his hawk this morning.’

  ‘Did he, indeed?’ Baldwin’s lip curled, and his face regained some of its colour. ‘And did he by chance go alone?’ Her face gave him all the answer he needed. ‘He did. How … interesting.’

  ‘You cannot imagine he would harm his father, mes … my lord,’ interjected Fulk the Steward, watching both of them.

  ‘No, not with his own hand. Too weak and watery for that, my little brother Hamo, but his hand might have given silver to others, yes?’ Baldwin dismounted now, taking his leg over his horse’s withers and jumping to the ground. His knees held firm. He drew back his cloak with what was almost a flourish, revealing Osbern de Lench bootless, swordless, and in only his undershirt and braies.

  ‘He was robbed? So close to home?’ The priest sounded amazed. ‘He was but going up the hill as always.’

  ‘Yes, “as always”. Everyone here knows he does … did so. No stranger would. So perhaps it was a great mischance and lawless men set upon him, having by some strange coincidence turned off the Evesham road to go up the hill, but I doubt it, I doubt it very much.’

  The lady de Lench, apparently speechless, cast the steward an imploring look, and he shook his head.

  ‘But why? Why would any of Lench seek the death of the lord Osbern?’ Fulk, frowning in perplexity, voiced the question. The nods from the other villagers were designed to associate themselves with that question, but many were dwelling upon incidents when their lord had been far from popular. The lord Osbern in his ire had been free with boot or hand, even the flat of his sword, and his tongue scathing, even if half his swearing was in Foreign and its niceties lost upon them. There were also memories among some of the women of the man, in his youthful years especially, when handing out violence was not all he did; sometimes he took. Old resentments rose, old fears too, for although Osbern de Lench could hurt nobody now, his heir was in the same mould; moody, intolerant and physical. Perhaps it was not so much ‘why?’ as ‘why now?’. All the things that had caused mutterings and whispered oaths had gone on for ever, and there was nothing new or special. Besides, had not all been in the Great Field with the harvest? It could not be a villager, and of those who knew the lord Osbern’s habit of riding each day at the same hour to survey his land, there only remained the stripling, the younger son.

  Baldwin de Lench said nothing. He glowered at them, daring them to think other than as he thought. He could not himself think why his half-brother would see their father dead, since it would profit him nothing, but there must be some cause, hidden like a snake in the long grass, that he could discover.

  ‘My lord,’ Father Matthias’s voice was soft, supplicating, ‘would you have the lord Osbern laid now in his hall or in the church?’

  ‘In the church.’ It was the lady who spoke, and she sounded surprisingly determined. ‘Its rebuilding meant so much to him, so very much. Take him there. I will come and do what is needed,’ she shuddered, ‘though it is a terrible thing to have to face.’

  ‘God will give you strength in this hour, my lady,’ assured the priest, ‘as he does to us all.’ He crossed himself yet again and, seeing that the lord Baldwin looked not so much grief-stricken as angry enough to commit murder himself, commenced an Ave Maria, which he hoped would give time for him to calm himself.

  The villagers took up the familiar cadence, heads bowed, the lady de Lench began to weep again, and Baldwin muttered the prayer through gritted teeth. What Father Matthias dreaded was the swift return of Hamo de Lench from hawking. However godly a man, his added prayer was not heeded, for even as Fulk the Steward and the taller of the two hurdle bearers li
fted the corpse from across Baldwin’s horse there came hoofbeats, and a dun pony was pulled up short in the bailey. The rider was small, still boy more than man, though he was beginning to broaden a little at the shoulder. His voice had broken but sounded as if he were as yet surprised at its depth, and there were odd notes to it. Hamo would have flung himself from his pony, had he not had his hawk upon his wrist. He was a solitary lad, who loved his hours with his bird of prey, and would as often go out alone as with a servant to carry it. As it was, he dismounted in an odd mix of scramble and care. He was frowning.

  ‘What has happened? Mother, how comes my father is dead?’ He looked to the lady de Lench, now wringing her hands again, but before she could give answer, his half-brother took two strides to him and hit him across the face. He staggered back, and the hawk flapped in alarm and to regain its balance.

  ‘You know what happened. Sweet Jesu, there is even blood upon your sleeve. Did you actually watch? Did you get so close you could be sure he was dead?’

  The youth blinked, and when he spoke his voice had risen an octave in fear.

  ‘The … the blood must be from a pigeon that Superba took. I let her enjoy one and kept a brace for the pot. If I had seen our sire in danger I would have come to his aid. It is my duty.’

  ‘Aid? What aid could you be?’ spat Baldwin, derisively. ‘You can barely wield a sword without whining that it makes your wrists ache. Would you spout Latin at an attacker, or plead with them to be gentle? You could use a dagger, though, if only you could bear the sight of wounds, or mayhap this shows you are not so blood-shy as you have pretended. Was the blow that killed him yours?’

  ‘He could not do so. He loved his father, and his father loved him’ The lady de Lench rose in defence of her son.

  ‘Giving in to your pleadings for generosity and gifts was not love.’ Baldwin leant forward, his eyes narrowing. ‘You will not get away with it, stripling. You hear me?’