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- Herausgeber: Allison & Busby
- Kategorie: Krimi
- Serie: Bradecote & Catchpoll
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017
A master archer is Bradecote and Catchpoll's target October 1143. His task dispatched, a mysterious archer melts back into the forest, leaving the gang to steal the salt and hide the arrow-pierced corpses. The lord Sheriff of Worcestershire cannot ignore such a brazen attack on the salt road from Wich, nor the death of a nobleman in the wrong place at the wrong time. And so Hugh Bradecote and Serjeant Catchpoll are sent to hunt an elusive killer and the salt thieves, and put a stop to the mounting attacks. But it is not easy to get the culprits in their sights with a reeve keen to keep his position at all costs, a lord with his own ends to serve and a distrusting and vengeful widow to whom Bradecote is increasingly attracted.
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Marked to Die
A Bradecote and Catchpoll Mystery
SARAH HAWKSWOOD
For H. J. B.
Contents
Chapter One
The man leading the short train of heavily laden ponies wondered, idly, why it was that his bunions always ached more around the time of St Luke’s. It was an interesting thought. It was also his last.
The arrow struck true, and the packman died with no more than a grunting exhalation of breath. As deaths went, it was quick and easy, though unnecessary. In such troubled and violent times there were many such unnecessary deaths. Small comfort it would be to the widow, but it sat well with the Archer. Whilst technically a moving target, the pace was so slow that a lad of nine or ten, in the wavering stage of training at the butts, could have hit the man. Of course, it would have depended upon him being able to handle the draw weight of the bow, and he would not. Nor would it have been so clean a shot. The Archer would have been aggrieved at anything less. It was not so much a matter of pride as his own moral code, which he had learnt at the knee of his father, a hunter. The hunter stressed that killing was doing his job, and it was not wrong, but it had to be done right. An idle shot that wounded a beast was cruel, and also dangerous. The wounded animal was far more of a threat to the hunter. The Archer, plying his skill in the Holy Land for his lord, and after that man’s death, for any with the money to pay for his services, held that if it was true of dumb beasts then all the more so for humankind. He had no compunction about killing, no thought for the victim, nor qualms about gender or age, excepting infants, and, for a reason unknown to any but himself, the blind. But he made sure it was quick and accurate.
The second arrow took the man at the end of the train even as he ran forward, striking where neck met torso. He fell with barely more than a gurgle. Then the three heftily built accomplices came lumbering out of the bushes to lead the ponies away and conceal the bodies in the undergrowth. The ponies were jibbing and sidling, and one bucked and lashed out at the first thief, who swore as hoof contacted thigh. The Archer was not interested; he was not a thief. He would even have refuted the idea, had anyone thought to put it to him, that he stole lives. Man’s time was finite, and not guided by how he lived. Men died when their time was up. He was no more than an instrument of Fate.
He was turning away, about to unstring his bow, when he heard the hoof-beats and the angry cry. A man, a man wielding a very serviceable sword in the manner of one trained in its use since youth, was bearing down upon the two men dragging away the corpse of the train leader. His blade sliced with an audible sound through the air, and one man crumpled with a curtailed scream. Without thinking, the Archer nocked an arrow and sent it to its mark. The mounted avenger toppled from his horse with a grunt, and the Archer turned away, unstrung his bow and disappeared among the foliage. He did not need to check whether the man was dead.
The lady in the solar was not initially concerned at the sound of a visitor, until a servant announced the Prior of Bordesley. Her lord was not due home before the morrow, for he had business in Wich and had then been due to visit the abbey of the White Monks, so she felt no stirring of alarm until one of that House was ushered before her. She rose, setting aside needle and linen with a polite, if watchful, smile of greeting that froze as she saw the man’s face. Only a bearer of bad news would wear a look like that. It was then an invisible hand grasped her viscera, clutching where the first inklings of life lay quiet.
‘Your visit is unexpected, Brother Prior.’ Her voice was low, unnaturally calm. ‘May I offer you hospitality?’
The Cistercian shook his head, and Christina FitzPayne noted the hands clenched together beneath the scapular of his habit.
‘I have news, my lady, unwelcome news, I am afraid. My lord FitzPayne did not arrive at Bordesley as he had sent word to Father Abbot he would, and … there was an incident upon the Salt Road from Wich to Feckenham the day before yesterday.’
‘An incident?’
Part of her wondered why this strange word dance was being performed. She already knew, with the inevitability of falling into an abyss, the end of it.
‘My daughter, there is no easy path for this. He was found dead about a mile from Wich, and two other men also, each with a fatal wound. The men were taking a train of salt towards Alcester. It is thought your lord came across the theft of the salt in progress and …’
‘My lord was cudgelled by some peasant thief? It is unbelievable.’
The denial was almost angry, as if she were trying to convince herself of it, and failing.
‘No, all three had fallen to arrows. The bodies were discovered yesterday and taken to Wich, where one of our brothers had been sent upon business of our House. He recognised the body of course, such a benefactor as the lord Corbin FitzPayne has been, and with the lord’s brother one of our fraternity. He requested that the body return with him to Bordesley, thinking he would be buried in our church, but, forgive him, he forgot you might wish him interred here.’
Christina’s head was spinning with so many jumbled thoughts. How would she contact Robert, Corbin’s other brother? Was he even still alive? All she knew was in whose train he rode towards the Holy Land to take service with the Templars. What must she do? She already carried Corbin’s child, perhaps his heir. Was it right to call the brother home? How would she see her lord received justice? Her own feelings did not exist beyond this freezing numbness within her.
‘My lady? Should you sit? You are most pale. It must be a shock indeed, but …’
‘I am sorry. No, no I need not sit.’ She tried to be logical. ‘Yes, he would be glad to lie within the confines of Bordesley and arrangements shall be made to provide for Masses for his soul, of course. Might I return with you to be present for the funeral? I would see him again, once, if that is possible.’ She paused. ‘Your journey has taken some hours; you should take a little food before we depart. Please, whilst I make preparations.’
She went to the door, calling for a servant, issuing instructions, working at practical things, avoiding the bottomless pit of darkness that threatened her. And then a thought occurred to her. She turned back to the brother.
‘What of my lord’s horse?’
‘Horse, and sword also, were gone.’
The monk did not think it fair to mention that the body had been found half stripped. He saw the frown upon the young woman’s face, the dark brows almost meeting.
‘The horse is distinctive, a dark grey, dark as dulled mail, but with a white star and two white stockings. My lord is … was … very proud of him. Where the horse is found, and the sword too, will lie the trail to the man whose life is now forfeit.’
She spoke softly, more to herself than to the monk, but the tone was icy cold and hard as iron, and the prior crossed himself.
A little over an hour later, garbed for travel, she led the way down the steps from the upper chamber, and it was then, as the cold October air hit her, that her body let her down and she swayed, tried to steady herself and tumbled the last half-dozen steps. When she awoke, it was in pain and to the knowledge that there would be no posthumous heir to Corbin FitzPayne.
The Archer waited. He preferred to be in position early, and his honed senses told him of the arrival well before the man was in vision.
‘Stand still, and throw the money into the bushes before you.’
The man did so, with great care.
‘Now turn away.’
‘There is further work for you.’ The man spoke as he obeyed. ‘Half of the sum is in the scrip, half to be delivered afterwards.’
‘Fair enough. When and where?’
‘Two days hence, on the road through the Lickey Hills, just where the King’s land begins. There will be carts this time, two in number. Same plan as last time. Should be there a little after noontide for they are heading for Bordesley.’
‘And I do not have a particular man as my mark? You want no survivors,’ the Archer was matter of fact, ‘just as before?’
‘No survivors.’
‘I will be there, and the payment two days later, by the dead oak on the track to Inkberrow, just off the Salt Road.’
‘Yes, agreed.’
‘And you will be there?’ The Archer wanted that confirmed.
‘Oh yes, be assured I will.’
‘Then good day to you.’
The man would have echoed the farewell, but was suddenly aware that he was alone.
‘I am sorry, my lord. I am merely delivering the message.’
The messenger shuffled his feet, and wished himself elsewhere. William de Beauchamp, Sheriff of Worcestershire, growled like a bear, and looked apoplectic.
‘Upon the King’s highway, and against the Brothers of Bordesley, you say?’
‘And before that, my lord,’ the messenger delivered the additional bad news in a rush to get it over with, ‘there was the attack upon the pack train to the monks at Alcester, in which the lord Corbin FitzPayne of Cookhill was also struck down.’
‘What?’ If it were possible for the lord sheriff to turn an even darker hue, he did so now. ‘You should have told me this first.’
‘I … er …’ The messenger quailed.
Watching on the sidelines, Serjeant Catchpoll grimaced. He did not waste any sympathy. William de Beauchamp was not a man to appreciate dithering, and more fool the man who could not see it.
The sheriff glanced to the right and caught Catchpoll’s expression. The serjeant nodded. He knew where he would be heading.
‘You say “and before that”, worm.’ De Beauchamp fixed the messenger with a steely eye. ‘When was Corbin FitzPayne killed?’
‘It would be,’ the messenger shifted uncomfortably from one foot to the other, ‘six days ago, my lord, though there was no news of the second attack until late yesterday afternoon.’
‘You could come on foot from Wich to Worcester in under three hours, even if the place was suddenly lacking in horses!’ bellowed de Beauchamp. ‘Why was I not informed of FitzPayne’s death immediately?’
‘Earl Waleran’s reeve did send a message to the earl’s man, in his lord’s absence abroad. Perhaps the reeve thought he might …’ The messenger’s voice trailed off.
William de Beauchamp ground his teeth, audibly. Robert de Bernay was away from Worcester, but would no doubt find out soon enough and be demanding to know what the sheriff had done about it all.
‘And did not FitzPayne’s lady think I might be interested?’
‘I believe the lady was stricken, when she heard the news, and was unable to even attend the burial at Bordesley.’
‘Heaven protect me from die-away women!’ The sheriff halted, struck by a question. ‘Why Bordesley?’
‘His brother is a monk there, my lord, and he is … was, a benefactor. Indeed, I was told he was on his way to visit the abbot when he was murdered.’
It had a logic to it. The sheriff moved on.
‘Are there indications as to the culprits?’
‘None, my lord Sheriff.’
‘Well, I shall straightaway …’ de Beauchamp faltered as a clerk whispered nervously in his ear. The sheriff’s frown became a black scowl. There was a perceptible pause, ‘… send for my deputy to investigate this, since I am called away upon the Empress’s business. Catchpoll, go to Bradecote directly and take my undersheriff with you to Wich. And you can take that flame top with you.’
Catchpoll narrowly avoided grinning at the sheriff’s description of young Walkelin, his protégé. He also wondered at the warmth of reception he might receive from Hugh Bradecote, the undersheriff. Not that it mattered much.
Hugh Bradecote had a measure of peace, though when his son’s infant wailing seemed to fill his hall it was not of the auditory variety. At times, the crying was jarring upon the nerves, and yet he savoured it, giving thanks for the lusty cries that demanded attention. The womenfolk all greeted it with approbation so he knew he should not worry, and after the first heart-stopping panics, he learnt to smile at it. That was his son, Gilbert Bradecote. With a twinge he remembered the babe was Ela’s son too, all that remained of her. It was odd, he thought, how fast she had faded from his thoughts, not his memory, but his everyday life. Even alone in their bed he did not think of her. He felt a mixture of relief and guilt, and, in the little church, prayed for her soul most devoutly.
The manor had settled remarkably quickly back into a rhythm, perhaps an easier one without a lady who tended to remember everything at the last minute and in a wild rush. Hugh Bradecote had returned from Worcester for the Michaelmas feast, if not happy, then at least not in the grey nothingness that had at first flooded him and left him barely functioning. He threw himself into the busy autumn tasks upon a manor in preparation for the winter to come, and wanted to achieve as much as possible before he had to return to Worcester upon his feudal duty at All Souls. The arrival in his bailey of Sergeant Catchpoll, with Walkelin at his side upon possibly the most moth-eaten horse he had ever beheld, more than a fortnight before he should depart, tossed that hope into the fire of lost aspirations. And yet he felt glad to see the pair of them.
Catchpoll’s mount, as if able to mimic its rider’s take-it-or-leave-it attitude, ambled in with head low and on a loose rein. Walkelin’s horse arrived at a pace as mixed as its coat, which was in the midst of an early-winter growth, and in shaggy patches. Catchpoll nodded to the undersheriff, and dismounted, swinging his leg over the horse’s neck with an ease at odds with his years, unless you heard the muttered oath beneath his breath. Hugh Bradecote did, and pretended not to notice the slight giving of the knees as the serjeant reached the ground.
‘I take it you are not being social, Serjeant Catchpoll.’ Bradecote smiled wryly and nodded an acknowledgement to Walkelin.
‘Not as such, my lord. I leaves social calls to mendicant friars and gossipy women. Think of this as more a shrieval request you just can’t refuse.’
The smile was met by the death’s head grin that Bradecote had come to know well.
‘That is how I think of all requests from my overlord.’
‘Wise, my lord, very wise.’
Walkelin, understanding now that this must be by way of a near ritual re-establishment of the relationship, silently dismounted and gave his moth-eaten horse a look of loathing. It stared back at him, and he was convinced the feeling was mutual. He made a glancing assessment as he looked round the bailey. Serjeant Catchpoll had been training him to do this over the last weeks, and might well ask him where the pitchfork was leaning, or what he could deduce about the manor from the general environment. He would say, even if he did not know the undersheriff, that this was a manor run by an attentive steward whose lord liked everything orderly and no doubt had every barrel of apples and bushel of grain accounted for in the stores. The pitchfork was beside the small door to the right of the stable.
The heavens, which had been threatening to open for the full five miles of their journey, now gave up any attempt at restraint, and large, heavy drops spattered on the ground and seemed to go straight through the man-at-arms’ cloak. Bradecote ushered his visitors up the steps and into his hall. The warm woodsmoke assailed the nostrils from the central hearth, and Catchpoll went to spread cold, and slightly stiff, hands before the heat, even though the smoke tendrils caught in his throat and made him cough.
From the solar came the sounds of an infant making its presence known.
‘My son does not ask politely, he demands,’ Hugh Bradecote grinned, and could not keep the pride out of his voice. Catchpoll would not begrudge it to him.
‘I hope you intend to teach him to demand in good plain English, my lord.’ Catchpoll’s tone was respectful but with a teasing edge. ‘He’ll get further in life if he has the English too, like yourself.’
‘Oh you can be sure he will, since wet nurse and nursemaid understand no other. Most likely it will be a trial teaching him anything else.’
The yelling reached a new pitch of intensity.
‘He certainly sounds as if he is thriving, anyhow, and has learnt not to take no for an answer, in any tongue.’ Catchpoll sounded approving.
‘The nurse keeps telling me how big he is, and I am trusting her judgement.’ Bradecote shook his head in mild wonderment. ‘I never really studied infants before.’
‘It’s suddenly different when the mite’s your own, my lord. I speak as one who had five and now,’ Catchpoll paused for mental calculation, ‘I have eight grandchildren dotted about. At least it was eight last time I looked.’
He omitted to say that the numbers did not always increase. Why rub in what every man knew: the early years of life were precarious. He had been fortunate to only lose one son in infancy and one daughter was gone now in childbed, but Catchpoll knew he was a blessed man, and gave heartfelt thanks for it.
Bradecote focussed his mind upon the matter to hand.
‘So, what has the lord Sheriff of Worcestershire sent his law hounds trailing after this time, Catchpoll, just when I was settling back into my own life?’ He wished the call had not come at this juncture.
Bradecote indicated a bench and Catchpoll sat upon it, leaning forward with his now warm hands between his knees. Walkelin was not sure the invitation extended to himself, and so tried to stand in an ‘interested but not at attention’ manner.
‘Word came to my lord this morning from Wich. There have been two attacks on salt being taken from the town, in each case the packmen or drivers were killed by a single arrow. In the first case there was another death: Corbin FitzPayne, who owed fealty to de Beauchamp for at least one of his manors.’
‘Corbin FitzPayne,’ Bradecote frowned. ‘Yes, I met him on several occasions, though I would not say I knew him well. He was a big man, not young but not in his dotage, as I recall.’
‘Well, he won’t reach his dotage now, for certain.’
‘Would de Beauchamp not go himself for such a crime?’ Bradecote frowned. The murder of a vassal lord was an important matter.
‘He would but for a summons from Robert of Gloucester upon the Empress’s business. It irks him not to go, I can tell you, and of course he wants justice for his vassal, as well as security for those upon the King’s highway. This is one where we have to have someone to dance at the end of a rope, my lord, make no mistake.’
Bradecote did not voice his vague disquiet lest the ‘dancer’ turned out to be some ne’er-do-well who was guilty of some other crime but not this one. He had learnt that Catchpoll did have a deep-rooted sense of justice, but he also knew he was the ultimate pragmatist, and if a man was needed for the gallows to keep the sheriff from making their lives a misery, well, if the killer was long gone, it was just possible Catchpoll’s gaze might alight on a miscreant thus far too slippery for the law to apprehend. The wily old bastard would not see the innocent hang, but might happily send a man ‘guilty’, by his judgement, of another capital offence. Bradecote’s own conscience would not go to that extreme, but then, Catchpoll had been ‘serjeanting’ from the time when his lordly superior had still been too small to use his grandsire’s sword. It warped a man’s view of society in the end. He wondered idly if it would come to warp his own.
‘He’ll want us up to Wich as soon as may be, but that will mean tomorrow now the light has gone. You are welcome in my hall to eat and take your rest, though you might have interruptions if you are light sleepers.’
‘I reckon as we can cope with that, my lord, and thank you for your hospitality.’ Catchpoll nodded his head in thanks. ‘As I reckon it, we will reach Wich before Mass if we set off betimes, and work from there, though the trail will be colder than I’d be wishing for. The reeve of Wich, pox on him, instead of sending to the lord Sheriff, sent to Robert de Bernay, as Earl Waleran’s man, and my lord de Bernay is out of the shire. FitzPayne and the other victims are shrouded and buried, and the first attack the better part of a week past. We are digging in cold, hard ground,’ the serjeant sighed, ‘but we gets what we is given.’
Chapter Two
They set off in the first light of an October morning, with a lethargic sun crawling reluctantly between wispy veils of grey cloud. There was little wind to rustle the remaining leaves, brown and gold, crisp and curled of edge, clinging doggedly to grey-barked twigs. The hoof-beats were muffled by the damp leaf carpet beneath them, and the horses’ breath appeared as dragon smoke from their nostrils.
It was not far to Wich, especially since they cut across country to meet the north road from Worcester, and they arrived as many of the businesses were opening their shutters in the main thoroughfare. They asked after Earl Waleran’s reeve, and an old woman pointed a bony finger in the direction of the reeve’s house. Walter Reeve, a man of thinning pate and stocky build inclining to the corpulent, was keen to be of service, and gave details of the finding of the five bodies and their bringing before him.
‘Two of the men were simple packmen, employed to take salt from the salt houses belonging to the Black Monks at Alcester, and two were carters taking salt to the House of the Cistercians at Bordesley. There are fatherless children and weeping widows, but the men themselves would not have attracted such a prompt response. The death of my lord FitzPayne is another matter entirely. I take it that is what has brought you so swiftly.’
‘You see the death of Corbin FitzPayne as important and yet you did not send immediately to the lord Sheriff.’ Bradecote’s voice had an edge to it. The reeve looked uncomfortable.
‘I sent straightaway to my lord the Earl’s man in Worcester, my lord, knowing the Earl Waleran himself is away in his foreign holdings.’
‘But this is law business, and the law should be informed,’ declared the undersheriff, with an official tone which Catchpoll could not have bettered, ‘at once. I would also say the murder of three men, of whatever rank, required swift action. Had we been told straightaway, perhaps the second attack could have been prevented and there would be fewer widows and orphans in Wich.’ He did say it was only a possibility.
‘My lord, I am sorry, but in the aftermath, what with the bereaved and every salt worker in the place demanding answers to questions I had not even thought of, and the general air of panic, well I sent to Earl Waleran’s man, expecting him to set the law upon it.’
‘For your information, Robert de Bernay has not been about Worcester for over a week. He does not spend his entire existence loitering in Worcester awaiting messages.’
‘I did not think.’ The reeve hung his head, showing the pink skull shining through the steel-grey hair. ‘There was so much going on trying to placate the townsfolk. But when the second attack was reported, I did send straight to the sheriff.’
‘Better late than never, eh,’ grumbled Catchpoll, with an ostentatious sniff that showed his opinion.
‘I can only say I am sorry, and that there was no intention of keeping the sheriff from—’
‘Do you know who found the bodies?’ Catchpoll set himself on the scent and was no longer interested in the reeve making long expressions of dutiful regret. ‘We need to speak to him, or them.’
‘Oh yes, they are local men. William Tanner and his son, Edric.’
Bradecote groaned inwardly. His last visit to a tanner’s had left him with the stench in his nose far too long.
‘I saw Edric but a few minutes ago. Here,’ Walter Reeve grabbed a passing youth, ‘find me Edric, son of Willam Tanner, and bring him to me straightaway.’
The lad went immediately upon the command, thus showing the reeve’s importance to his visitors. He returned some five minutes later, breathless, and with an anxious-looking young man at his heels. The tannery stench clung as a memory of something revolting, although Edric had been at pains to conceal it, for he was trying, as the reeve had explained, to woo a glover’s daughter in the town. Bradecote wondered if the courtship were advanced enough for her to be already no longer aware of its odour.
‘You had need of me, Master Walter?’
‘Edric, this is the lord Bradecote, the undersheriff, and Serjeant Catchpoll.’ The reeve ignored Walkelin in the background. ‘They need to know as much as possible about the finding of the bodies on the Feckenham road.’
The young man’s pleasant, open face clouded, and he shook his head, crossing himself devoutly.
‘A foul thing, my lord, foul indeed. I knew Thorold quite well, and him with a second on the way.’
‘Could you show us exactly where you found them if we took you out upon the road, and describe to us everything you saw?’ Bradecote thought they did not need details of the personalities and circumstances of the dead at this stage.
‘Aye, my lord, for I am not like to forget such if I lives to be fifty years.’
‘Walkelin, take him up behind you. Master Reeve, we will return when we have looked at the scene and will wish to speak again. Where can we find you by noon?’
Hugh Bradecote was showing that ‘The Law’ had arrived, and was active.
The tanner’s son gave them directions, and they set off, with Walkelin’s horse looking even less pleased than normal. The site of the attack turned out to be less than two miles from the town. Edric dismounted and led them to the north side of the road and into bushes. Catchpoll frowned.
‘How come you found the bodies if they were concealed, Edric?’
Edric grimaced and said but one word. ‘Crows.’
‘Ah. And when you found the bodies, other than the crows, what state were they in?’
‘They looked like sacks, all lumpen, except of course they were flesh – cold, stiff, greying flesh.’ Edric crossed himself again.
‘Had the bodies been stripped, then?’ Bradecote had a feeling more flesh than mere hands and faces had been visible. ‘Stripped bare?’
‘Not quite bare, my lord, shoes and cottes and cloaks were gone, and the lord of Cookhill had no boots, nor outer raiment at all, indeed not even a linen undershirt, just his chausses.’
‘Was there any sign of violence beyond the arrow wounds?’
‘Oh no. No cudgel or stick marks, if that is what you mean.’
‘What sort of men were they, in size?’ Walkelin had been chewing his lip, ruminatively. ‘Could you have moved them easily on your own?’
Edric suddenly panicked, fearing he was being implicated.
‘I only moved them to our cart, and father helped with that. You can’t say as I killed them, poor souls, you can’t.’
Catchpoll gave Walkelin a look that both showed approval of his thought process and disbelief at his technique.
‘Now then, nobody was accusing you, young Edric.’ His voice was calming. ‘We just wants to get some idea as to whether they were put out the way by a man on his own or several.’
Edric breathed an audible sigh of relief.
‘I would have said it would have been much easier with two or more, unless he was very big. The lord, and Master Reeve knew who he was, was a big, strong man, for a start. I could not even have dragged him on my own, and the way they was all lying looked more as if they was tossed, I reckon, for Thorold was on his front underneath the others and the arrow shaft had snapped off.’
Bradecote and Catchpoll exchanged glances.
‘Did you take up the broken shaft, Edric?’
‘No, my lord. What use was it?’
Without being asked, Walkelin was already ferreting about in the undergrowth like a pig rooting for beechmast. A few oaths indicated that the bushes contained a fair number of briars.
‘Oh aye, there’s brambles that cut about something wicked.’
‘Oh dear.’ Catchpoll smiled wryly. ‘Oh dear.’
This was followed by a cry, not of pain but of victory, and Walkelin emerged from the foliage with the broken end of an arrow, the flights bedraggled but still in place.
‘Good lad. Did the other bodies have arrows in them with similar flights, Edric?’
Edric nodded.
‘A man who is good with a bow would not hand his arrows around. Makes me think one man did the killing. And if he was good at his craft he might well make his own.’ Catchpoll slid a finger and thumb along a barred feather, easing it back into shape. ‘Can you tell us where the arrows had struck?’
‘In the body.’ Edric blinked at them.
‘Yes, but where, Edric?’ asked Bradecote, patiently.
‘I … well, I do not remember exactly except for Thorold, because I knew him so well. I suppose I noticed more, and there was no shaft. The arrow stuck out of the base of his throat about an inch before it was broken off. The other two, well the lord was hit in the middle of his body and Edwin Pack over the heart.’
‘Lucky shots,’ murmured Bradecote, frowning.
‘Not for them, my lord.’ Edric sounded rather shocked.
‘Or “good” ones,’ Catchpoll muttered, and did one of his ‘thinking faces’, at which Edric stared quite openly. ‘I would dearly like to know where the other victims were struck.’
‘You mean there could be similar wound patterns from the second attack also.’ Walkelin nodded, his mind, now set upon a course, ploughing a straight furrow.
The undersheriff was thinking on a different tack, wanting confirmation for this one.
‘Your father, would he have seen anything more than you did, Edric?’
‘I doubt it, my lord, for sure, since it was I who pulled the bodies out, but perhaps …’ He faltered under the undersheriff’s gaze. ‘I do not know.’
‘Then I will have Walkelin ride back with you to Wich and he will ask these questions of your father, just to be certain.’ He looked to Walkelin. ‘You are to go thereafter to the reeve’s house, and meet us there or carry on to wherever the reeve may tell you we have gone.’
‘As you wish, my lord.’ His face betrayed just a twinge of regret in case he missed out upon some excitement. He was like a child sent to bed before the bear had danced. ‘Immediately?’
‘I think so. We will follow on and see the reeve.’
Catchpoll watched the retreating figures and smiled knowingly at his superior.
‘Stomach couldn’t take a tannery again, eh, my lord?’
‘No, it could not, unless it was vital, and it is unlikely that the father will have seen much more than the son. Consider it part of Walkelin’s training, Catchpoll.’
The death’s head grin broadened.
‘I will, indeed. And what are we going to do here, if anything other than give young Walkelin a head start?’
‘At the risk of being snagged on the thorns, I think we also make a survey of the surrounding area. Pity that the weather has been damp. I do not suppose we will find clear marks of anything untoward.’
They tethered their mounts and tried to be thorough in their assessment. They had little or no hope of finding any tangible evidence, although Catchpoll did find where boot heels had scraped a slight furrow at the edge of the track.
‘Just confirms what we, and indeed Edric, thought. This would have been FitzPayne’s body being dragged to the undergrowth. So it looks like stealing his boots was almost an afterthought.’
‘Or they stripped the corpses off the road in case anyone came along.’
‘True, my lord, that is a possibility.’
‘I suppose we might get confirmation about the other wounds from the reeve.’ Bradecote did not sound particularly hopeful. ‘He seemed efficient enough, but then Earl Waleran would not tolerate inefficiency. At the same time he did not look the sort to remember details.’
‘Children are best for that, my lord. They look at the world differently from adults, and I do not just mean literally. You get a child of eight or nine, old enough to speak true, and they can “see” things we miss. I once investigated a killing where the only information I had on the man who did it was that he was of average height and dark-haired. That was from a woman who saw him briefly. The child at her skirts then piped up and said he was a bear, which nearly earned him a clip round the ear, but he was so adamant. When I got him to open up a bit it turned out he meant the man was very hairy. He had black hair quite thick upon the backs of his hands and tufts sticking out of his ears. Made the hunt a lot easier.’
‘Then I suppose we hope a wide-eyed child saw the bodies. Let us go and see Walter the Reeve again.’
They returned to Wich at a gentle pace. The reeve had termed it a town, and it certainly deserved the title, but it was odd, being largely based upon a single product, the salt made from the brine in the earth. The eight salt pits, the salt springs, gave up the salinae, the shares of brine, which were reduced to salt in the many salt houses, damp places where shallow lead vats of brine were heated over stone wood-fired furnaces. The steam evaporating from the bubbling liquid condensed upon cold walls, and wicker baskets of the salty sludge dripped into trays as the salt dried and provided both the final product, the precious salt crystals, and the ‘seeding’ for the next vat of brine. Here was a centre of salt making that sent the vital commodity far beyond county borders, perhaps seventy miles. There were salt pits to the north in the Earl of Chester’s palatinate, which were nearly as important, but no other places were so exclusively centred upon salt production from the earth. Toll was paid upon every load leaving the town, unless it was the property of a person or religious community owning one of the salt shares and houses. The Benedictines of Shrewsbury salted their fish with the product of their Wich salt house, as did monks in Gloucester. Everyone would always need salt, and Wich was comfortable, even a little smug, in the knowledge. It had a busy, industrious air and, on a cold October day, men without even a cotte to cover them laboured, skimming the impure froth, pouring, ladling, carrying, shovelling.
Walter the Reeve was not in his house when they arrived, and they were greeted by his wife, bobbing an embarrassed curtsey and offering bread and ale. Her husband, she explained, had gone out only briefly, and when he entered, still in the process of tying the fastenings of his breeches, and turning red of face, Catchpoll had to bite his lip not to laugh. The reeve’s position was important, and Walter a self-important man who would not enjoy being discovered on return from a very basic act.
Hugh Bradecote caught his serjeant’s expression from the corner of his eye and understood its cause. He accepted the hospitality with thanks, for, after all, they had not eaten since dawn. He turned then to Walter Reeve.
‘We have seen the place of the attack, and Edric has told all he knows. We would like to know what happened when the bodies were bought here. Did they come straight to you?’
‘Aye, my lord, and a fair to-do it caused and no mistake. There was one went to tell Thorold’s wife he had been brought in dead, and she came half fainting and screaming fit to set her off in childbed, and the family of Edwin Pack came to take him for shrouding. My lord FitzPayne I recognised, of course, as did a brother from Bordesley Abbey. My lord was a patron, his youngest brother being one of the original brethren as came from away over at Garendon to build the place. The brother said he would arrange for the body to be given a respectable burial in the abbey church, and well, it seemed fitting, so he took the corpse.’
‘Did you not send to the lady FitzPayne?’
‘I … er … did afterwards. There was so much going on, with townsfolk all a-dither, and trying to prevent them setting out with a party of men with sticks and bows to find whoever did it, as if they would find them waiting …’
‘You were glad to have one corpse and its attendant responsibilities taken from you.’
Bradecote was not totally unsympathetic, but felt that the reeve had a duty to inform the lord’s widow, and it told in his tone.
‘My lord, I am sorry for the omission, truly. I did send to the earl’s representative in Worcester, as I said before, and when I did go to her, in person, she was unable to see me, being abed and ailing. I was told she lost the child she was carrying, though it is but what I heard from a wench.’
The undersheriff frowned.
‘Did you take note of the injuries that killed these men?’ Catchpoll wanted answers not explanations. ‘And do not tell me they were arrow wounds, for we know that.’
‘But they were.’
‘Serjeant Catchpoll means what manner of arrow wound, Master Reeve.’
‘Thorold must have died quick, for the wound was through his throat. Edwin, now I think there was the entry here,’ he pointed to his chest, a little to the left of the breast bone, ‘yes, right over the heart, and the lord was struck just below the ribs, here,’ he moved his finger to his solar plexus.
‘And the men killed on the way to Bordesley?’
‘They were brought slung across a pair of ponies and the shafts removed, so I did not see really.’
‘Not see a wound in bare skin?’
Bradecote sounded disbelieving.
‘Oh they were not stripped, my lord.’
‘Were they not? Was their garb tattered and not worth stealing?’
‘Well, if I was a beggar yes, a burgess, no.’ The reeve pondered. ‘One had a shoe missing, that was all.’
‘Either our thieves were warm enough or they thought they might be disturbed again.’
‘Not sure that fits, my lord.’ Catchpoll shook his head. ‘If one of their number is so fine an archer, why not bring down any witness as they did with Corbin FitzPayne.’
‘They thought they heard hoof-beats?’ Bradecote turned back to Walter Reeve. ‘Were the bodies cold when they got here, and how many men accompanied them here?’
‘I could not say as to warmth, my lord, I did not handle them. You could ask the brother of Oswin, who took his body for burial, or Father William who took charge of Ansketel, who had no kin living. And there were three men brought them here, travellers from the north. They were directed here from where they found the bodies, upon the Old Road up on the Lickey Hills.’
‘Heading where?’ Bradecote pressed further.
Catchpoll almost pounced on the words, like a cat by a mouse hole.
‘I did not ask. What reason had I to ask?’
Catchpoll’s look said enough.
‘Direct us, then, to the priest and this brother, when we have finished eating.’
The reeve, thankful that he would be left in peace, almost chivvied his wife to refill the tankards of ale accompanying the food, and even pressed ale and a crust upon Walkelin when he appeared, shaking his head silently at Catchpoll in answer to a raised eyebrow. The crust was devoured swiftly.
As they left, Catchpoll wondered casually whether Walkelin’s mother secretly starved her son. Walkelin grinned.
‘So there was nothing to be learnt from William Tanner.’
‘No, Serjeant, though I did as I have learnt. I asked him the same sort of questions, and he gave the same sort of answers, but not in such a way as I would think he and his son had planned their replies.’
‘Good lad.’ Catchpoll looked almost paternal, and patted Walkelin on the shoulder. ‘We are now off to see the priest who took charge of one of the bodies returned from the Bordesley cart, to see if he recalls the wound, and then on the same task to the other victim’s brother.’
‘Well, at least a church won’t smell foul. I could barely eat afterwards.’
‘But you managed, somehow.’ Catchpoll hid his grin.
The priest shook his head over the evils of man, and the mark of Cain, but frowned over the arrow wound.
‘There was not much blood, I can say that, and what there was was upon his chest. I did not shroud him. Goodwyf Fletcher did that. She cleans the church, and is a godly soul. She knew Ansketel in her youth, I believe.’ He saw Catchpoll’s raised eyebrow and coloured. ‘Not in the Biblical sense, no no. Her first husband and he worked together in the same salt house. Shall I call her, my lord?’
Bradecote nodded, and the priest trotted from his little dwelling to call the widow from her sweeping of the chancel. She returned in his wake, bobbing to the undersheriff and Catchpoll, and bestowing a motherly, if gap-toothed, smile upon Walkelin. The priest told her what the sheriff’s officers needed to know, and her face grew solemn. She crossed herself.
‘Wickedness, such wickedness. A comely man was Ansketel in his youth, before he took to too much ale, but that was after the flux took his wife, poor man, and her not nineteen. Never married again, he didn’t. But what a way to end, I ask you.’
‘Well, we are really asking you, Goodwyf Fletcher, about the manner of his end, and from your name you might have a better idea than most about arrows.’
Bradecote flashed her his best smile, and she simpered and blushed without thinking.
‘Ah, but my Godric fletched ’em, my lord, not killed with ’em like this man did. The arrow was pulled out, but you could see it had not been a hunting arrow, no barbs. The archer used a bodkin, a man-killer, not for game. I mean both would do, of course, but the archer carried arrows best suited for taking down a man, not a deer or a pigeon. The wound was a clean hole and to the heart, as I reckon it.’ She sighed. ‘Leastways it was quick, poor soul.’
Bradecote thanked her, and the priest also, and they left to find the brother of Oswin, whose name was Azor. Bradecote thoughtfully conducted the interview outside, where mother and sisters were not therefore forced to hear the grim details over again, but it was a short and simple conversation, which corroborated everything they had heard about the skill and intent of the archer. The sheriff’s men came away in no doubt that the same man killed all five who had been slain.
The obvious place to go next was the manor at Cookhill, and to see the lady FitzPayne. They set out along the same road that the ill-fated packmen had taken towards Alcester. It was a good road, an old road, straight as so many of those were that the Romans had made long, long ago. They paused again at the site.
‘All the victims were shot from the front. Pity we could not see if there was an angle or we might know roughly where the archer concealed himself.’
