Wolf at the Door

by Sarah Hawkswood

  ‘Cease yellin’,’ he called, and went to unbar the reverberating oak. ‘What is it? I hopes as it is at least a single murder to drag me from my hearth.’

  ‘No murder, Serjeant Catchpoll, but my father, Ketel of The Gate alehouse, begs you to come and take in a man before someone does take the life from him.’

  ‘Take in a victim?’ Catchpoll looked suspicious.

  ‘Afore he is killed, yes. ’Twas his own fault, mind, for he was playing with dice that did not run true, and then mocked Sweyn Oxa for a fool.’

  ‘Cheatin’, was he?’ Catchpoll’s eyes narrowed. ‘And you know his name?’

  ‘Aye. It is William Swicol. Must have come in when Father had his back turned, and found a corner, or he would have been thrown out. Father says as he does not mind the man being beaten, but there cannot be a death and – you know Sweyn Oxa. Most would not throw dice with William Swicol, but Sweyn Oxa is not quick-witted.’

  ‘No, Sweyn has scarce any wits at all. I will come.’ Catchpoll was wondering not so much why Sweyn Oxa, known throughout Worcester as a man with the strength of an ox, but the brain of a goose, had taken up a dice cup with William Swicol, but rather why William Swicol, nobody’s fool, had put himself at risk of being smeared all over the walls of The Gate. He murmured a word to Mistress Catchpoll, who grumbled over men and ale, and followed the alehouse keeper’s son.

  Four men were attempting to pin down Sweyn Oxa, and calling urgently for reinforcements. William Swicol was curled up on the floor, groaning, but not being assisted in any way. Most men present felt he had got just what he deserved, but were in reluctant agreement with Ketel that a killing in the alehouse would not be good, not least since they would all be sent back to their homes.

  Serjeant Catchpoll was greeted with relief, and rather more welcome than usual. A couple of the drinkers secretly wished that Sweyn would take a swing at the serjeant, and thereby give them the pleasure of seeing him floored, but most just hung back, leaving Sweyn’s restrainers visible, and Big Sweyn audible. The man was roaring like a maddened bull.

  ‘Get off him,’ commanded Catchpoll, without any sign of concern.

  ‘But he’ll—’ one of those restraining him began.

  ‘Off him,’ Catchpoll repeated. They did so. For a moment Sweyn just lay there, looking blankly up at Catchpoll. ‘You just lie there, Sweyn, and do nothin’. I doesn’t want to have to take you in for a murder and see you hanged, and for a man not worth spit.’ Catchpoll did not sound aggressive or demanding, but his calm voice was somehow not one that could be disobeyed. Sweyn blinked, and, to the relief of those in his vicinity, nodded slowly. ‘Good. Now I am taking this swicollic heap to the castle cells, and will have interesting words with him in the morning.’

  The thought of Serjeant Catchpoll ‘having interesting words’ made several men shudder, and the man he instructed to help him get William Swicol off the floor and out of the alehouse, obeyed without a word.

  William Swicol was not able to walk unaided, though how much was the result of ale and how much the result of being assaulted by a man with the strength of two was open to discussion. There was a smell of ale to him, and his groans were interspersed with mumblings of disjointed words. The reluctant assistant, supporting him at one shoulder, volunteered what had happened.

  ‘You would have to be stupid to play dice with this weasel, but then Sweyn is as stupid as they come, and nobody wanted to tell him not to more than once. He lost two pennies, and then someone called out they saw a die changed, and everyone sort of encouraged Sweyn. Not sure we should have but … He pulled this wyrm by the shoulders, off his bench and over the table and lifted him like a feather, feet dangling a good hand’s span off the floor. Then he dropped him, reached down and picked him back up and hit him so hard in the guts I thought his fist would come clear out the other side. Kept punching him like hitting a sack of flour, and when he went a bit limp, we all cried for him to stop, but Sweyn was seeing red. There’ll be bruises aplenty come morn on those who kept him from killin’.’

  Catchpoll just grunted. It was useful to know all this without having to even ask questions, but his mind was puzzling why William Swicol was in Worcester at all.

  The dawn was barely noticeable even by a lightening of the sky. The wind had come up overnight, and the sky was heavy with looming clouds. There was a very large storm brewing. By the time the priory bell tolled for Prime there was sleet falling. William de Beauchamp sat in a warm chamber, well wrapped, and made it very clear that nothing short of a command from the Archangel Gabriel was going to get him hunting for a wolf that was not there among the trees of Feckenham Forest the next day, if the weather did not improve, even if his hounds arrived on time.

  ‘And I have William Swicol in a cell, my lord, so we have good cause not to go to Feckenham until tomorrow.’

  ‘Here? But I thought you expected him to try and take his father’s place?’

  ‘Aye, my lord, I did, yet he was in Worcester last evening, and causing trouble. Part of me wonders why.’ Catchpoll looked thoughtful.

  ‘What could he be seeking to prove, though, by being here?’ Hugh Bradecote stood a pace further from the brazier than de Beauchamp, and his long nose had a slightly pinched look.

  ‘I just do not know, my lord. But a reason there must be, I will say that for sure. He is as slippery as an eel, but eels can be trapped. Let us go and see what we can find out.’

  Walkelin joined his two superiors in the bailey, having been sent out early beyond the Foregate upon the report of a missing oldfather, only to report that the man was now back home, ale-sore of head and cold from a night in a stable, but safe from all but the ire of his family. The trio went to the cells, where William Swicol sat upon the floor, elbows on knees and face in hands. He did not look delighted to see them, and more ale-sore than the old man.

  ‘Good morning.’ Catchpoll sounded extremely pleased with life.

  ‘Hmm.’ It was more a groan than a word. William looked at Catchpoll with loathing, and then moved his gaze to Bradecote.

  ‘Ah, this is the lord Bradecote, Undersheriff of Worcestershire. Very honoured you are, that he should come and visit you in this peaceful abode. You owe him an obeisance, though, so stand up.’ Catchpoll nudged him with his foot, and William stood, slowly and with groaning, shoulders hunched, and bent his head. He did not look prepossessing after his encounter with Sweyn Oxa. His cheeks were pallid, with one eye blackened, and Catchpoll noted that injury had not been reported by the witness. He looked rough.

  ‘Why am I here?’

  ‘Well, it stopped Sweyn Oxa beating you to death, for a start.’ Catchpoll still sounded cheery. ‘Pity I could not let him do that, but the law protects even the likes of you.’

  ‘’Tis he who should be here, not me.’

  ‘Ah, now that is a matter of opinion, and yours and mine differ. Also, only mine counts.’ Catchpoll grinned as only Catchpoll could. Walkelin, who had attempted it in front of Eluned, his girl, had only made her laugh a lot. Nobody laughed at Catchpoll’s grin when it made his eyes glitter like that. ‘What I really wants to know is why you, a man who lives by his cheating wits, does something as plain foolish as throw dice with a man who could break him in two without even trying?’

  ‘He was the one who agreed to play.’ William shrugged, and winced.

  ‘And why are you not still in Feckenham, waiting to see your father buried?’ Bradecote did not want the prisoner to have time to think up answers.

  ‘Because the sod is like stone and the gravedigger will not set mattock to earth; because it is not fair to eat each day with the village reeve, when he has a family to feed; because my father’s house is not a place I will enter again, and there is no food there. Will that suffice as reasons, my lord?’ William’s voice turned from weary to vaguely irritated.

  ‘Did your father’s neighbours rob him?’ Walkelin had kept back, leaning against the wall in a manner he hoped looked like that of William de Beauchamp, c
asual but antagonistic.

  ‘No!’ The response was instant and vehement.

  ‘I just wondered why there was no food in the house that could be used. Here we are into November, and store jars are full, provisions hang from beams, but Durand Wuduweard has no food. Odd, that.’ Walkelin sounded slightly curious. His question earned an approving look from his serjeant. William Swicol looked momentarily at a loss, and his answer was tentative.

  ‘I-I do not know. Perhaps whoever killed him stole his food?’

  ‘Would that be the wolf, or that there werwulf, thinking ahead for when he turned back into a man and liked the idea of a tasty pottage?’ Catchpoll pounced on the response like a cat on a mouse.

  ‘I-I do not know. I am just guessing.’ William was flustered, though Catchpoll could not quite decide if that was real or an act.

  ‘I want to know how it was that you just happened to be the one who found your father’s corpse, not being a man who lived in the village, and in a cott he appears to have only used from time to time? Such a coincidence.’ Bradecote’s question held an undertone of threat. ‘How did you know he would be there?’

  ‘I just guessed. It was his home. If he was not there I would have looked elsewhere.’

  ‘There is an awful lot of guessing going on in your head.’ The undersheriff did not sound impressed. ‘Where “elsewhere”? Did Durand Wuduweard have some hiding place in the forest where he sat to eat with the brocks and foxes?’

  It was in that moment that Catchpoll saw William Swicol truly nervous for the first time. There was a flicker in his eyes, and a tensing of his fingers. That question was one he did not want to answer, which made Catchpoll think very hard.

  ‘I remember clearings he would set up a camp in, from when I was a boy, my lord.’

  ‘But what man with a hearth and good thick walls would choose to sleep in the open in the tail end of October, and one so unseasonably cold the ground is “like stone”?’ Bradecote did not let up.

  ‘My father. He liked his own company. He loved the forest.’

  ‘He liked being so cold he risked not waking in the dawn?’ Bradecote was sceptical.

  ‘Perhaps. He was more solitary of late.’

  ‘And what was it that you came to say to him? You told me there had been words between you and you came to tell him he was right. About what? Oh, and if you got there at first light, where were you overnight to be close enough?’ Catchpoll rejoined the questioning.

  ‘He had told me he was going to make it known that he would not have me to be the wuduweard after him, because he had found another better suited. It angered me at first, but I thought about it and he was right. I am not the man to keep the lord King’s hunting grounds. I am happy in a town, not the middle of nowhere.’

  ‘Who was it he had picked?’ Catchpoll was not convinced.

  ‘Not a Feckenham man. I did not recognise the name, but it was Algar or Edgar Attwud, so he must be from a forest family somewhere.” William sounded more assured in his answer once more.

  ‘And where were you before you went to see him and make peace?’ Catchpoll felt the man wanted them to be interested in this Attwud as a distraction.

  There was another pause.

  ‘I was thoughtless when I set out, thinking not of the hour but of what I would say. When darkness came, I begged lodging in a cott set off the Salt Way, and paid the wife a penny for it, but I could not show it to you again in daylight, nor give you a name to the man.’

  Catchpoll did not believe him, but it would be nigh on impossible to prove it a lie.

  ‘Anyone you actually gave money to, rather than took it from, must be a rarity.’

  ‘Just because you dislikes me, Serjeant Catchpoll, does not mean I am guilty of any crime.’

  ‘No, but it makes it very much more likely.’

  ‘My lord,’ William Swicol looked at Bradecote, ‘you are the power here. I am the victim of a crime. By rights I should be calling Sweyn Oxa to pay for it. As it is, I but want to leave Worcester and go south to Gloucester or to the port at Bristow. I am not held upon a charge. I would ask you to let me go.’

  Catchpoll growled. He did not want his suspect to have leave to disappear for ever.

  ‘You are not upon a charge, but the King’s Law would not wish you to go out of the shire as yet. You may leave, but tell us where you will be a week from hence. If all has proven you innocent by then, you may go.’ Bradecote was pretty sure that he had no legal right to limit the man’s movements, but he was hardly likely to know that, and Catchpoll was clearly very against his prime suspect disappearing like smoke in the eaves. ‘If you are not to be found, then I will send to the sheriffs of all neighbouring shires, warning them of your untrustworthiness, and that you cause trouble. I can have four shires aware of what you do, and warning their alehouse keepers of it. Understand?’

  ‘Yes, yes. Thank you, my lord. I will be in Wich, at the sign of The Sheaf, one week from now, upon oath,’ William Swicol sounded the epitome of honest innocence, ‘or you can declare me outlaw.’

  Catchpoll spat into the earth floor.

  ‘Goes against the grain, that does,’ grumbled Catchpoll, as the three sheriff’s men watched William Swicol cross the bailey to the castle gateway, his cotte pulled up to half cover his head from the rain, since the sleet had gone. ‘And he knows full well that unless we can arraign him, he cannot be outlawed.’

  ‘Not much else to be done, though, Catchpoll.’ Bradecote was firm, though not unsympathetic. ‘We cannot hold a man upon the grounds that Serjeant Catchpoll thinks them a guilty bastard. Otherwise Robert Mercet would have lived in these cells for years past.’

  ‘And a good thing that would have been.’ Catchpoll gave a crack of laughter, but it was tinged with a mite of regret. Then he shook his head. ‘I still wants to know why he got into a fight with Sweyn Oxa. That makes least sense of all.’

  A short while later, one explanation for that arrived at the castle gate.

  The man was wet and cold, but firm in his request to speak with the lord Sheriff straight away. He was still dripping from the oiled cloth about his shoulders as he made obeisance to William de Beauchamp.

  ‘My lord, I bring news from my lord, Hubert de Bradleigh. Last eventide a wolf was heard howling beyond the manor gate, and this was heard not just within, but among those in their homes. He sends you this news and begs that you do what a small manor cannot, and send out a hunt for this beast before a child or even man is taken.’

  ‘Dogs howl.’ De Beauchamp was not going to look pressured.

  ‘Indeed, my lord, but not like this and – this morning a roebuck’s leg, mostly eaten, was found next to the trackway that passes close by. We have had no reports of any dogs gone wild and masterless in the area. A wolf took the buck, my lord is certain of it.’

  William de Beauchamp groaned inwardly. He was going to face a winter of wolf reports and whining manorial lords and village reeves. ‘Tell your lord that I will be leading a hunt in the forest, as soon as it is drier, for even hounds would find it hard to track a wolf in weather this wet, and the wind has not helped. There is no point to us wasting a hunt. I will myself come and speak with Hubert de Bradleigh, and tell him all that is known about this sudden “appearance” of a wolf in the south of the forest.’

  With which the sodden messenger had to be satisfied, and was sent back to his lord.

  William de Beauchamp called for Bradecote, Catchpoll and Walkelin, and revealed the news of the howling wolf and the dead deer. Catchpoll wrinkled his nose, and then rubbed the side of it, ruminatively.

  ‘Now, my lord, if I wanted to prove that I had nothing to do with a wolfish creature with big teeth, I would make sure I was somewhere very obvious when the beast was heard elsewhere – somewhere obvious like a group of men supping ale, or secure in a cell.’

  ‘Of course, it might also be that the two are not connected at all, Catchpoll.’ De Beauchamp wished this would all go away.

  ‘Might
be so, my lord, but I doubts it, I doubts it very much.’

  ‘But it does prove that if William Swicol is involved in the death of his father, he is not acting alone.’ Bradecote noted. ‘The “wolf” cannot be obeying commands from a distance, and the beast’s master cannot be Swicol himself.’

  ‘That is very true, my lord.’ Catchpoll nodded.

  ‘And it means at least two men wanted Durand Wuduweard dead.’ Walkelin added his thoughts. ‘Was it for something he had, something he was, or something he had done?’

  ‘Or even not done? We have to consider that as well.’ Bradecote rubbed his chin.

  ‘You consider. I will prepare a hunting party and pray the weather improves.’ William de Beauchamp drummed his fingers on the arm of his throne-like chair. ‘What happens if my hounds discover a wolf, Catchpoll?’

  ‘You get a wolf pelt for a fine cloak trimming, and the folk about Feckenham sleep easy. We still look for who killed Durand Wuduweard, because no wolf planned that death, my lord.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘We ask everyone in Feckenham about Durand Wuduweard and who was seen with him, and just how much his neighbours disliked him, because it is possible that someone joined William Swicol for their own reasons. If we never gets the why, I am not sure we will find the who for sure, and that lies hard with me.’ Catchpoll looked very serious.

  ‘With us all, Catchpoll.’ Bradecote secretly felt that William de Beauchamp had a greater dislike of not getting what he wanted, but knew that he himself had become set apart like Catchpoll, on the side of law and justice, even if they did not always coincide. Less than two years ago he would have shrugged and made vague indications that the law should be obeyed, but now it was important to him. He guessed the same thing was happening to Walkelin as well.