‘May I draw the water for you?’ asked Walkelin, with a shy smile. He had the ability to look remarkably unthreatening and trustworthy. Winfraeth was not immune to that charm. She nodded, and let him fall into step beside her as she walked to the well.
‘Hot work, hay making, though I am from Worcester and not used to that labour, I confess.’ He made it sound a failing, but Winfraeth saw a certain glamour in not having a life based upon the fields and crops.
‘I have never been to Worcester,’ she said, softly, as though it were Jerusalem. ‘Is the cathedral as big as they say?’
‘Oh yes,’ Walkelin could not disguise his pride. ‘The roof is so high inside you could put two houses on top of each other, even tall ones with a solar, at the least. And there is glass in the windows, lots of glass.’
‘Oooh,’ sighed Winfraeth, even more impressed, as Walkelin dropped the bucket down the well. He paused a moment.
‘That Welshman, the one who came here. He is dead now.’ Walkelin wanted to see her reaction. She said the right words, but they sounded rehearsed.
‘He never is! Well, I ought to pray for his soul, but he was not a nice man.’
‘My lord Undersheriff and Serjeant Catchpoll, they say that too. He would not keep his hands to himself, they say, and was a menace to decent women.’
‘He was. I—’ She stopped, but Walkelin looked the picture of sympathetic understanding, and he was only a lowly man-at-arms and not the lord Undersheriff or his rather frightening serjeant. Her resolve melted away. Here was a sympathetic ear, and with no connection to the folk among whom she lived. ‘I saw him, the second morning after he came, by the twin oaks, and with the lady Avelina.’ Her voice dropped. ‘I was not looking, but I saw. She was in his arms, and … I would have said by choice, but for …’
‘But for what?’ Walkelin sounded more intrigued than interrogative.
‘He saw me. I know he saw me, and I ran away, and I told nobody, not even my father or Ketel.’
‘Ketel?’
‘He is … I had hoped … And we are very fond … but …’
‘You speak in riddles, Winfraeth, if I may use your name.’
‘I ran away and I told him, when he, the Welshman, found me, that I had told nobody, but he did not believe me.’ She was not truly attending to him now. ‘I was in the field, and he must have watched for me, for when I went to the thicket to—’ She blushed. ‘I never saw him until he grabbed me from behind, and his hand was over my mouth. He said as how I was a nosey wench and he ought to slice my nose right off as a warning.’ She was silent for a moment. ‘I almost wish he had, instead.’ She bent her head, and a shudder ran through her.
‘Sweet Jesu, your father and your man must have wanted to kill him. How did you stop them?’
‘They would have … so I did not tell them, said I had caught my gown in a bramble and fallen, to account for tears to the cloth and the bruise on my face and … When I heard he was dead I could not let Ketel wed me with the lie in my heart. I told him, though not about the lady, and he said as he believed me, and … There will be no child from it, thank the Holy Virgin for hearing my prayers,’ she crossed herself. ‘He told my father it was his choice, and he would stand by me … But now I wonder if it is right to make him do so. What must he think? I could do nothing, nothing, but—’
Walkelin laid a tentative hand upon her arm, and when he spoke, it was not as a sheriff’s man.
‘If he said it was his choice, it was so, and he knows that you are maid at heart. If you blight his life, and yours, by keeping from him, then the Welshman has another victory over you, even though his body rots. Winfraeth, what you have told me is important, and I am duty-bound to tell the undersheriff, but I swear to you, no other person in Doddenham will know what you have said to me, nor shall we speak of it with Ketel or your father. It is further proof of the man, and his misdeeds, not of guilt that you or yours should feel.’ Walkelin was perhaps no more than eight or nine years her senior, but he felt as old as Serjeant Catchpoll, and as serious. ‘Now, I will carry these buckets to where you leave the track, and no further, so none sees that you spoke with me.’
She looked at him through her tears, and his honesty was so patent that she sniffed, wiped her nose upon her sleeve, and nodded.
‘Thank you.’
When his superiors saw the look upon Walkelin’s face they knew, knew as clearly as if he had told them in words. It was rare to see him look other than an essentially kindly soul, and at this moment he looked like a man who had killing on his mind.
‘So he did. We had to think it likely.’ Catchpoll hawked, and spat into the grass.
‘If he were not dead already, I would see him swing, Serjeant, but only after I had had my time with him, and he would want the rope by then.’ Unthinkingly, Walkelin echoed Bradecote’s words to Rhys ap Iorwerth. He proceeded to tell them Winfraeth’s tale. ‘I swore we would not make it known in Doddenham, not see her shamed.’
‘Why should she suffer more? You did right, Walkelin. We can only be thankful that he let her live, and that her man is sensible and understanding. But it gives us more to think upon.’ Bradecote was grim.
‘Not least where the bastard got the stamina,’ grumbled Catchpoll. ‘He seems to have needed women like most men need bread.’
‘He cannot have gone about like this in Mathrafal, my lord, else there would not be a woman untouched.’ Walkelin was still seething.
‘I think he saw this time in England as his chance to do what he wanted as often as he wanted, without fear of consequences, since he had no intention of returning. I, like you both, think the knife was too swift a death, but that is what he got.’
‘Pity it is that a knife in the back cannot be self-defence, for even if it went before the Justices for the killing, if the man − or woman − did for him to keep his own life, the penalty would be light. That is if any at all, especially if we gave it that Hywel ap Rhodri had raped and murdered his way through our shires.’ Catchpoll shook his head.
‘Which helps us not at all now,’ remarked Bradecote, stretching. ‘Winfraeth saw him with the lady Avelina, but told nobody. What we need to know is whether any other saw their indiscretion, and whether husband or ailing lover, in thought or deed, saw them. Might Durand have followed her, seen her with Hywel, and feigned illness to cover his plans for later that day?’
‘The ladies nursing him would have known, at the least,’ Catchpoll reminded him.
‘But the lady Matilda only said he fell ill the second day, not when upon that day, and … could he have left the solar in the night, murdered Hywel ap Rhodri and his servant and … He could not have got the bodies away, though, not without people knowing.’
‘But they did know, within the manor walls and in the village. Winfraeth said she told her swain Ketel when it was known the Welshman was dead, and we did not say to them he was dead. Besides, everyone in the manor would be happy if he were dead and gone after the things he did. If Durand killed “the Welsh bastard” and his servant, he need not even have admitted it, my lord. Come the morning, the bodies are discovered. The lord Thorold decides it is best hidden and forgotten, since whoever had cause had a just one, and arranges for the disposal of the bodies. In which case Rhydian might lie as far as the shire boundary.’ Walkelin warmed to the theory.
‘So why keep one horse, and where is the pony, Walkelin?’ asked Bradecote.
‘Rhydian’s body was taken under a cloth on a cart, with produce or wood, or some other disguising reason. The pony was used to take Hywel ap Rhodri’s body over the border into Oswaldslow Hundred, or on as far as the woods by Cotheridge, and then taken perhaps and sold in Worcester before any of us knew of the death. One grey pony sold by a man is not worthy of questioning, in the way of everyday. The horse is more distinctive, and worth more also, and so if nobody is like to come sniffing about in Doddenham, the horse is best kept until the lord Durand takes it with him to Gilbert de Clare, as his spare horse or to sell to another knight.’
‘Now that, young Walkelin, is at least a sound reasoning. Beasts change hands often enough in Worcester that the animal, if ever there, might be long gone, and other than it was grey, we have no description of it. We cannot trace it.’ Catchpoll shrugged.
‘And if we ask who left the village for several days, let alone with a pony that did not return, we will get blank looks again, pox on it.’ Bradecote frowned. ‘Did you get anything new from Corbin, son of the steward?’
‘He is clearly smitten by the lady Avelina, and spoke as if it were common knowledge that the lord Thorold is lacking as a husband, as I said. He also said Hywel was a bastard who “liked them young” so he knows, at least after the event, of what happened to Aldith and also, as I guess, Milburga. Winfraeth we can discount on this, since she kept her tongue in her head until after the death, and only spoke to man and father.’ Catchpoll pulled one earlobe. ‘He was very aggrieved, so if he did not see, then he saw the results in Aldith’s anger or the girl’s muteness. If someone had told him the Welshman had laid hand on his adored lady Avelina, he would have been capable on that score too, but in the run of things he is an ordinary lad, and not the killing type without cause.’
‘But perhaps he had cause, or was given it. One man we have not spoken to by name is Tovi, father to the silent Milburga. He would have cause enough by any reasoning. I should have asked for him in the field, since he might well be with his fellows in their time of need for every strong arm.’ Bradecote chastised himself for forgetting another man by name.
‘I think not, my lord, for I heard the sound of hammer upon iron when we went to the field to ask our questions. I would say his workshop lies on the west side of the village and set a little apart in case of fire.’
‘Keeping your ears open, good lad,’ nodded Catchpoll, approvingly, and Walkelin relaxed a little, and smiled.
The wheelwright’s was in fact perfectly obvious from the fact that there was a new wheel lying on the bare earth beside it, and from the sound of sawing within. They entered, and saw the wheelwright and a lad who was almost certainly his son, from colour and build. Tovi the Wheelwright was a big man, with a mane of hair that was plastered, at the front, to his sweat-beaded forehead. Bradecote expected a booming voice to match, but he spoke with diffidence, in a slow, deep voice. He was also very wary, and as soon as Bradecote identified himself, sent the boy to draw fresh buckets of water from the well.
‘We have to ask about what happened to your daughter, because it concerns Hywel ap Rhodri, who is dead by violence.’
‘He frightened her, frightened her so bad she says no word since.’ The wheelwright’s chest seemed full of a deep rumble of wrath. ‘Wanted to kill him myself I did, when I saw her, but …’
‘Why didn’t you?’ Catchpoll asked, reasonably.
Tovi looked at him blankly.
‘It is a good question, Master Wheelwright. If this man … harmed your daughter so, what father would not feel as you did, nor act upon that feeling?’
‘He was my lord’s guest, a guest in this manor. Guest right is—’
‘Guest right? You did not want to break guest right? But the man broke it himself by his act, so there was nothing to prevent you taking action, nothing at all.’ Bradecote was amazed. Tovi looked at the ground, sullen, and peculiarly defeated.
‘I did not kill him.’ There was genuine regret in the voice.
‘Do you say this for fear of the penalty? Tovi?’ The wheelwright did not look up.
‘Answer the lord Undersheriff,’ commanded Catchpoll, feeling that he needed reminding of the rank of the man addressing him.
‘I did not kill him,’ repeated the big man, with great emphasis. ‘My Milburga is but a girl still, a little girl, not a woman. She had no strength to fend him off, no more than a lamb before a wolf. You think it does not torment me, seeing her as she is, broken in spirit, timid even with me and her brother? She flinches at sudden movement, stares at me with big, empty eyes, and makes little sounds in her dreams, whimpering wordless sounds. I would have killed him, broken him with my bare hands, and broken him slow, but it was not for me to do.’ The man’s face was a conflicting mask of pain and anger.
‘You stood back? I cannot see how you did that.’ Walkelin looked wonderingly at the wheelwright.
‘It was not for me to do,’ repeated the man slowly, regretfully, and Bradecote had the feeling they were words he said as often as did Father Dunstan the offices of the day.
‘Then who did? Whose right was greater than yours, Tovi?’ Catchpoll was trying to comprehend, and failing.
The wheelwright just stared at him, and the serjeant thought he might as well be asking questions of one of the great oaks. Bradecote was as confused. This man was ravaged by what he faced every time he looked at his daughter, guilty that at one vital moment he had not been there to protect her, and had not thereafter taken action on her behalf, gutted by the way it had taken her from him and left a trembling wraith. The first might have been beyond his power, but the second … Only something very important could have prevented a father taking rightful retribution for such an act upon a child.
‘Tovi, in the end we must know, must know all that happened. If you did not kill him, then you must know who did, and that name we will have, now or later.’ Inevitability seemed better than threat, for how could one threaten a man to whom the worst must have already seemed to have happened?
He stood immobile, not even blinking, and there was a limit to how long they could stand staring back.
‘This is not the end of it,’ said Bradecote, heavily, and turned to leave. Catchpoll and Walkelin followed, and for several minutes none of them spoke.
‘He knows and will not tell, and he did want to kill Hywel ap Rhodri, wanted it bad.’ Walkelin shook his head.
‘Cannot have been easy to stop him, either,’ mused Bradecote, ‘which must mean more than physical strength involved, unless you had four strong men, and kept the wheelwright chained for the rest of the Welshman’s stay.’
‘Which means power, my lord, and that means the FitzRogers. If they promised—’
‘If they promised, Serjeant, why did they do nothing for another whole day and then kill him?’ Walkelin asked, with calm reason. ‘They did not even imprison him, for he was at liberty that second morning to be with the lady Avelina and attack the maid Winfraeth. It is madness.’
‘We are missing something, something important.’ Bradecote shook his head. ‘And we have nothing in proof but victims who tell us little or nothing.’
‘We really need that horse,’ sighed Walkelin, ‘then we can face them with being involved, all of them. One will break rank in this shield wall of silence.’
‘Then that is your duty for the morrow, Walkelin. Follow Corbin, since it was more likely him than some man-at-arms that moved the beast, so he knows where it is concealed. Find the horse, and Serjeant Catchpoll and I will try and untangle the FitzRogers.’
‘I knows which task I would prefer,’ growled Catchpoll, as they entered the courtyard.
The sheriff’s men ate in the manor, but scarcely ‘with’ it. In the hall, Bradecote felt as welcome as a chilblain, and conversation between the family veered between stilted and unnatural and wildly insulting, all conducted in angry whispers. The altercation between the two ladies had become a mixture of haughty silences and barbed comments, and Thorold FitzRoger siding with his mother had won him surprisingly little support from that dame.
‘Oh, do not grovel at my feet, Thorold. It is your fault she is here, in this hall, in my place,’ the lady Matilda glanced venomously at Bradecote, as if he too were to blame for this. ‘I warned you, but would you listen? There was nothing wrong with the widow of Payn of Martley.’
The lady Avelina nearly choked, which would have pleased her mother-in-law.
‘Golde! She is three of you, my lord, and that just in size. Had you taken her to the marriage bed she would have squashed you like a grain of wheat in the quern.’
‘At least she was fertile,’ snapped the lady Matilda.
‘And as big as a field. Ploughing her would have taken a man like an ox team, not my loving Thorold.’ Wife curled lip at husband, and Hugh Bradecote wished he could have eaten among the servants and men-at-arms, who looked as though eating were the most strenuous exercise they undertook from one month’s end to the next.
‘Are you wed?’ asked FitzRoger, with obvious desperation.
‘Yes.’ Bradecote was not going to help the man. It left FitzRoger stuck, since he could scarcely ask after the lady Bradecote’s looks, demeanour or, in view of what had just passed, whether she was the mother of a hopeful brood. Bradecote let him flounder, and found himself under the scrutiny of the lady Matilda, whose expression showed that she knew exactly what he was doing. She smiled, wryly.
‘Clever fools are dangerous,’ she murmured, ‘but foolish “clever” men are worse. Give me a man of sense and I would be content.’
‘Just give me a man,’ purred the lady Avelina, in a voice so deep it nearly rumbled, and won a look of revulsion from the senior lady and enraged embarrassment from her husband. However, since she accompanied the comment with a lengthy gaze under her lashes at Bradecote that made it quite clear that she counted him in that category, he could not be said to enjoy the exchange.
‘Do you think that my lord Bradecote is not enjoying his dinner?’ whispered Walkelin to Serjeant Catchpoll, with a suppressed grin.
‘I don’t get ideas, not about them as sits up that end, not unless I want to see ’em before the Justices,’ responded Catchpoll, repressively. ‘And you ought to hope as he does enjoy his dinner, since an undersheriff with an underfilled belly is likely to take it out upon lowly things like serjeants’ apprentices, and you are the only one hereabouts.’
‘Sorry, Serjeant.’ Walkelin looked suitably chastened, and Catchpoll relented. In truth he was wishing himself in his own home, with a beaker of ale, and an evening of ease. He was, he hated to admit it, getting too long in the tooth for riding day after day without a decent rest, and his back ached and his knees ached, and several muscles he had long ago forgotten he possessed ached. As a result he was jealous of Walkelin’s youth and ability to just keep going without a sign of fatigue. It was not the lad’s fault, though.
‘Never you mind, young Walkelin. If you learns, and keeps yourself from getting killed, one day you won’t be an apprentice any longer, and then you can be not getting ideas, just like me.’ Catchpoll gave his death’s head smile, and a man-at-arms opposite dropped his spoon of hot pottage into his lap and his eyes watered.
Aldith was serving, and still looked as approachable as a hedge-pig, rolled up. Her eyes sparkled with a dislike of anything male, and it was clear that the men-at-arms had long ago learnt that Aldith was not a maid to try and flirt with, at least when not in the mood for it. She was not in the mood.
‘They never look happy,’ observed a man-at-arms with a double chin, ‘even though they gets meat more often than I could ever imagine.’
‘But you imagine it every day, anyway,’ sneered Aldith, as she passed behind him.
‘They had pigeon last week, that the lord Durand got with my lord Thorold’s falcon. Four of them there were.’
Catchpoll pricked up his ears.
‘So he was up and about was he, back then?’ It was a casually put question.
‘Well, he was out but for an hour or two, and I doubt he rode far. I heard him say he would go mad if cooped up indoors much longer, but two days later he was back in his bed, and groaning, so I hear, same as the week before. He ought to have taken things steady, I say.’
‘And there speaks the physician.’ Aldith banged him on the head with her ladle. ‘The only thing you do not take steady is your food, and that you take like a swine among beechmast.’
The man-at-arms reddened, and opened his mouth, but then closed it, as Brictmer glared along the table at him. The men-at-arms were not all manor born, and not ‘family’. Aldith was, and Brictmer, who, like the priest, rather thought that one day she and Corbin would be plighted, was not going to let a fat man-at-arms insult her. She was prickly, and at present he understood why, but she also had a head on her shoulders, and good common sense. He liked the girl, though she had been orphaned young and had no dower.
‘But they should be happy. They sleeps in comfort, eats well and fear not empty plates, and they do nothing,’ whined the man-at-arms.
‘Much like you, then.’ Aldith would have the last word, every time.
There was laughter about the table, of the nervous sort. Aldith had a sharp tongue and wit, but the man-at-arms was big, and if he did bestir himself in anger among his fellows, could hurt.
‘You are a needle-wench, Aldith, needle-witted and needle-worded, and I pity the fool—’
‘Enough.’ Brictmer spoke sharply and banged the flat of his hand upon the table. ‘Aldith, the platters are full. Go to the kitchen,’ he commanded, but without anger, more a weariness, like a mother who parts squabbling children.
She gave him a glare, but did not defy him, and stalked out as proud as the ladies at the high table.
‘Mark him,’ muttered Catchpoll to Walkelin, without looking up from his plate. His lips barely moved. ‘Find out.’
Walkelin said nothing, but his hand tapped the table twice, as if without meaning, and the serjeant knew his apprentice understood.