‘Oh, I was regrettin’ it afore I even reached Bradecote, my lord.’ Walkelin smiled.

  ‘And what exactly takes us to Ripple? What do we know?’

  Walkelin explained, and Hugh Bradecote sought out his lady with the hopeful expectation of returning home very soon.

  Christina looked up from feeding the babe at her breast and smiled beatifically.

  ‘We shall await your return, my lord, anxious only that you do so in good health. However, you must remember that you promised Gilbert that you would sit him up before you on your horse and ride three times about the bailey because he was a good boy this morning. Might I suggest that you do so before your departure, for I fear that otherwise I may be driven to distraction by his asking when you will be back.’

  ‘I think that much delay will not be detrimental.’ He bent and kissed her cheek, fondly, and she made a purring sound of appreciation.

  It was thus only after Walkelin had seen his superior ride very slowly about his bailey with the infant Gilbert astride the big grey’s withers and clasped tightly by his sire, that the two sheriff’s men cantered out and headed towards the road that linked Worcester to Gloucester.

  Catchpoll’s reception from his wife was resigned rather than aggrieved. When he suggested the girl Osgyth sit up behind him on his horse, it occasioned no more than a womanly warning to her that if she was not used to it, sitting upon a horse would have her stiff of rump come next morning.

  ‘And if you comes not back by sunset tomorrow, Catchpoll, that fish is all mine.’ With which admonition Mistress Catchpoll sent them upon their way.

  He rode at a sedate pace, not wanting Osgyth to either fall off or grip him so tightly that she was snuggled up behind him. She was perhaps fifteen or sixteen, and Catchpoll knew it would be unseemly. If he could still enjoy the visual charms of a good-looking woman, it was always those twice Osgyth’s age. He was old enough to be her oldfather, and it was certain that is how she regarded him.

  After a while she began to speak, at first to cover the discomfort of silence. He let her talk, asking only the occasional question about the events of the day before, drawing from her the details without her dwelling upon them, and aware she might give him something of relevance to how things stood in Ripple, not just about yesterday’s deaths.

  ‘Selewine, the lord Bishop’s reeve, is not a bad man, I suppose, not as a reeve. He just takes the position very serious, perhaps a bit too much, sometimes. Very full of “I be Reeve of Ripple” as though t’were “King of England”, if you understands me. He knows his tasks and responsibilities, but is a right dunghill cock for crowin’. It makes ’im think he is not just the most important man in Ripple, but the best catch as an ’usband.’ Catchpoll could almost feel Osgyth’s blush. ‘He has buried two wives – the second he lost last summer to a fever. The other evening he came to Thorgar, as man of the house, and asked to speak privily with ’im. Turns out he had his eye on me for ’is next wife!’ She sounded suitably surprised in a shocked and horrified way.

  ‘Some would take that as a compliment,’ suggested Catchpoll, to see what it would elicit.

  ‘Some might, but not me, not ever,’ Osgyth responded in a low and determined growl. ‘Besides, Mother cannot keep the home and the little ones, her being stricken some years back, and not able to move her right arm. It is sort of curled up to her bosom and stuck there. Until Thorgar weds …’ She gasped, and stifled a sob. ‘How can I keep us all? Baldred is two years short of the tithing, and not a big lad, and the twins has but eight years come midsummer. They cannot do more ’n lead the oxen, at best, not guide the plough, and Thorgar and Father afore ’im was the ploughman in Ripple. We may well starve. I cannot dig and weed our strips and keep the home with but three young boys to aid me.’

  Privately, Catchpoll thought there was a fair chance that a man, less old and off-putting to a girl than the unlamented reeve, might solve the family situation, but he said nothing of it.

  ‘How old was Thorgar?’

  ‘Only twenty years he had, and him not deserving to die. There were two more between Thorgar and me, but they died young.’

  ‘Of an age to be thinking of maids, then.’

  ‘Oh, I think he thought of them, but mayhap he was not quite sure which one.’ Osgyth sighed. ‘Not that Mildred, who is the fairest maid in the village, did not make it plain she wanted to be his choice. Always makin’ eyes at ’im, she were, and givin’ ’im such smiles as only a wife should give a husband, to my way of thinkin’. Even more than she did to all the other young men.’

  Catchpoll could not see Osgyth’s face, but could tell from her tone that she wore an expression of outraged virtue. Then he frowned at her next words.

  ‘I wonders why she spoke up against Thorgar.’

  ‘What did she say?’

  There was a pause, and he felt Osgyth tense.

  ‘What did she say, girl?’ Catchpoll’s voice dropped. It was not threatening but brooked no refusal to give up the information.

  ‘She – she said as she had seen Thorgar very angry with Father Edmund early in the day, afore ’e went to Tewkesbury.’

  ‘You mean the priest went there afore ’e were killed?’

  ‘No, no. Thorgar it was as went.’

  ‘Why did Thorgar go to Tewkesbury that mornin’?’

  ‘I does not know, other than it rained hard overnight and was still rainin’ well past dawn and the ground was too wet to plough or to sow where Thorgar ’ad finished, so he was free to go. Everyone did things indoors. In the forenoon I mended my brother Baldred’s cotte where a bramble had broke a thread and ripped it.’

  Catchpoll now had quite a list of Ripple villagers he would like to speak with directly, and matters he would like to mull over with both Walkelin and the lord Bradecote.

  He did not have too long to wait, for the sound of horses loping along at a gentle canter made Osgyth turn her head in concern, as though she was about to be attacked by desperate outlaws. Who else, in her mind, would travel so fast and be catching them up? She was not much relieved when Bradecote’s big, steel grey horse drew close enough for her to see the quality of the rider. Osgyth had never encountered anyone more important than the village reeve and priest until today, and had found it traumatic enough speaking with a haughty clerk at the lord Bishop’s residence by the cathedral and then Serjeant Catchpoll. When Catchpoll introduced the rider as the lord Undersheriff of the shire she very nearly fell backwards off the croup of Catchpoll’s horse as she attempted a sort of crumpling motion that indicated an obeisance. Bradecote found it hard not to laugh, and although he controlled himself well, his eyes danced.

  ‘How are the knees, Serjeant Catchpoll?’ Bradecote thought the question a suitable greeting.

  ‘Holdin’ me up as sturdily as ever, my lord, though I prefer to let Walkelin do the runnin’ around Worcester. They doesn’t bend as well as they once did, but then I ’ave made ’em bend a lot all these long years, so I mustn’t grumble.’

  Since grumbling about his stiff knees was something Catchpoll did upon a very regular basis, this did not make the humorous light in the undersheriff’s eyes dim one bit, but it did so with his next question.

  ‘So, we are looking into the death of the priest of Ripple, for which a’ – he paused for a fraction of a moment, catching the tensing in the girl on the horse – ‘price has been paid?’

  ‘Aye, my lord, we are.’ Catchpoll was not going to discuss his thoughts in front of the girl Osgyth, and instead told a somewhat rambling tale of a recent domestic killing in Worcester, which had not needed the lord Undersheriff to be called from his manor. Bradecote caught the look that told him anything on the current death would need to wait.

  Chapter Two

  It was mid-afternoon when the three horses turned off the well-used road to Gloucester, which was known as the Old Road, since it still showed, in its straightness and in hints of a cobbled surface, its Roman origin. They turned off it and along the gently descending trackway that led into Ripple, a village whose most fertile fields lay beside the waters of the Severn. Osgyth sniffed and caught a tearful breath as they passed a narrow strip of fresh-turned earth near where the track left the road. It was about the length of a tall man and a noose had been pinned into the earth with withy pegs. Beyond, sheep grazed the common and a man with a crook stood watchful over the remaining heavily pregnant ewes and many lambs at foot. A bulging bag was slung across his shoulder, which would have stones for his sling to keep crow, fox and raven from the vulnerable arrivals. The man spared but one glance at the strangers, and returned to his vigilance.

  Catchpoll suggested that Osgyth dismount before they entered the village, and return to her mother, who would be worried about her absence. In reality he needed the time to relay what he had discovered to his companions. He also wanted them to arrive ‘having heard of the death of the priest by violence’, and thereby have all wondering how they had learnt of it so fast. It meant they would have an added advantage and authority over them. It was always good, he felt, to give the impression that the lord Sheriff’s officers knew things by almost mystic powers, since most folk then doubted they could hide things.

  ‘The reeve, Selewine, will be of interest to us, my lord, because his voice calling for a hangin’ would be the most listened to, if these folk are as most in small villages, and “sheep” who leave big decisions to others.’ Catchpoll, a man of Worcester through and through, always felt that townsfolk were more independent and less biddable than those who toiled in the fields, year in, year out. Walkelin, equally urban, would have agreed with him, but Hugh Bradecote, who had known the peasants of his manor all his life, saw this view as biased. ‘What is more, he had a reason, mayhap, to think that Thorgar, the man whose neck felt the noose, stood in ’is way.’ Catchpoll went on to explain what Osgyth had told of Selewine’s marriage offer and rejection, and the failure of Thorgar to persuade his fellow villagers of his innocence.

  ‘So we know that Thorgar was found by the corpse, and accusation of murder was made. I take it we do not know exactly how the priest died?’ Bradecote was frowning.

  ‘It is said, my lord, the priest were beaten bad, and that blood were upon ’is face and on Thorgar. If they hasn’t buried the priest, and who would there be to do so, then we shall find that out soon enough. Since everyone is likely to be in the fields, we might visit the church first, nice and quiet like, and see both the body and where the priest died. That will give us truth when questions might get answers that is either plain false or just guessin’.’

  ‘Agreed, Catchpoll. The “answers” you get from dead bodies never fail to be important.’

  They were now reaching where the track broadened in what might loosely be called the centre of the village. A great oak stood there, freshly in leaf, and it looked as though the dwellings had given it space as water parts about a rock in the bed of a tumbling stream. The church was no more than fifty paces away. They tied the reins of their mounts to the church gate. It was a large church for a small village, though the parish took in hamlets some miles distant, and even across the river. Its decoration and weathered stonework showed it to pre-date the death of The Confessor, and it appeared that Bishop Simon was disbursing silver upon repairs to some part. The side walls of the north porticus were propped and a temporary structure, somewhere between a tent and a lean-to, roofed in oilcloth, was set against the church’s north wall, halfway down the outside of the nave. The sound of an adze biting into wood came from within. Bradecote raised a questioning eyebrow and looked at Catchpoll. If there was work being done to the church, it was odd that the killer had risked discovery by a workman.

  It was a cold afternoon, and both ends of the lean-to were draped with pieces of oilcloth that had too many holes to be used for a roof. Catchpoll stepped forward and drew one aside.

  ‘Well, there’s a surprise. I had not heard as you was away from Worcester, Pryderi.’

  A florid-faced man turned, his adze half raised. He did not look especially pleased to see Serjeant Catchpoll, but nor did he look worried.

  ‘Well, see, we has been in Ripple this last eight days, me and young Gwydion ’ere, working for the lord Bishop, who knows a good man with the wood.’

  ‘And doesn’t know how often you lie senseless from the ale.’ Catchpoll sighed. ‘At least here you is less likely to be robbed of your pennies when you cannot keep awake.’

  ‘You’ll be ’ere about the priest, then.’ Pryderi did not want to discuss his unfortunate weakness for drink.

  ‘Aye, and since you are workin’ on the church and is all set up out ’ere, the lord Undersheriff,’ Catchpoll indicated Bradecote with his hand, ‘and me too, would like to know what your ears and eyes told you.’ He did not specifically include Walkelin, but the underserjeant did not take umbrage at that.

  ‘Nothing. Nothing at all.’ The words were swift, distancing the man from the deed.

  ‘That seems unlikely.’ Bradecote frowned, and the carpenter made haste to explain.

  ‘I was ill yesterday. Never left my bed, and we are lodged with the reeve’s brother, it being so cold of a sudden. We had hoped to sleep ’ere, but the weather turned the day we arrived, it did, and so we ’ave walls and a roof about us.’

  ‘And Tofi’s wife cooks a fine pottage.’ The lad Gwydion, just at the point where the chest had broadened and the voice dropped, added his mite.

  ‘So you was ale-sodden again. Mystifies me, it does, how you keeps all your fingers, let alone work.’ Catchpoll shook his head.

  ‘It was not tad’s fault, Serjeant Catchpoll. Tofi kept refilling the beaker and saying “just a little more” until both of them could not stand. His wife spoke harsh words over him as she dragged him to their bed – Tofi, that is. I had to help her.’ Gwydion, used to his father’s failing, still defended him.

  ‘But did you not work yesterday, lad?’ Catchpoll looked at Gwydion.

  ‘I did. There were pegs to make for the joints.’

  ‘Yet you too can tell us nothing, despite being here?’ The undersheriff folded his arms.

  ‘No, my lord. Leastways, only for the forenoon. I saw Father Edmund come to say Sext, and leave afterwards.’ Gwydion coloured a little, his face adopting more of his father’s hue. ‘He … he said the lord Bishop was paying for a craftsman, not an apprentice, and if there was another day without tad at his bench, he would make sure the lord Bishop heard of it. I finished the pegs just after that and, well, I did not want to ruin the wood with a badly made joint, so I stopped and went for a walk.’

  ‘Went for a walk?’ Pryderi looked at his son as if mad. ‘Why?’

  ‘I …’ The lad looked at his feet and shuffled them.

  ‘Why, Gwydion bach?’ the father repeated.

  ‘Tofi’s daughter dared me to go up the hill yonder, where the old banks and ditches are among the trees. She said there were ysbrydion there, the spirits of warriors from many generations before the village even existed, and when they gets to tithing age, all the village boys go up there alone to prove their manhood.’ He pointed to the wooded hill just beyond the village, where an Iron Age hill fort slept beneath its patchwork coverlet of ash, oak, holly and birch.

  ‘Pretty, is she?’ enquired Catchpoll, with a wry smile. The boy blushed more furiously. ‘So when did you return from this brave feat?’

  ‘When all the excitement was over, and they had hanged the man who did it. I just saw them take him down from the oak, that is all.’ Gwydion clearly felt he had missed something far more exciting than a potential encounter with a ghost.

  ‘And the work is delayed today, look you, since it would be unseemly to be working, hammering in pegs and climbing the ladders, with a priest’s corpse before the altar, and a priest dead by violence at that.’ Pryderi sounded as if Father Edmund had sought his own demise just to be inconvenient. ‘They cannot get the other priest back across the river, or leastways not until tomorrow now.’

  ‘The other priest? What other priest?’ Catchpoll looked genuinely taken aback, which was rare.

  ‘Why, this is a large parish, with some parts lying on the other side of Severn, and has had two priests for generations. Father Ambrosius, the other priest, had to go across to a woman who was long in travail, and was feared might die. That is what I ’eard, but it might not be that exactly. Anyways, he is away, and so it will be the morrow when we can get back to finishing our repairs to the porticus roof trusses.’

  Bradecote thought there was nothing much to be gathered further from the treewright and his son, and glanced at Catchpoll, who gave a small nod.

  ‘We will let you get on with what you can out ’ere, then, and see where the killin’ took place.’ Catchpoll did not add that they would be inspecting the body also.

  ‘Diolch yn fawr.’

  ‘Hmm.’ Catchpoll understood the thanks, but did not appreciate them in Welsh.

  The sheriff’s men entered the church by the west door, their eyes adjusting to the lower level of light within, genuflected and crossed themselves, and walked up the nave, with Catchpoll to the fore, casting his gaze over every flagstone for some indication of where the attack itself took place. It was just before they reached the chancel arch that he raised a hand to halt his companions, and, with a grumble, crouched down towards one side.

  ‘Been cleaned, o’course, but that is what tells us the place. Not often a church floor is scrubbed not swept, and especially not just one bit of it. Too clean is this, and you can see there is traces of mud t’other side, from the feet of the treowwyrhta Pryderi and his lad as they brings things in and out.’

  Walkelin, with the ease of youth, also squatted down, and looked very hard where Catchpoll was now pointing.

  ‘Missed a bit here, Serjeant, in the crack between two flagstones. That’s dark, and dried blood, yes?’

  ‘Your eyes is better ’n mine, so I will not doubt it.’

  ‘But this we would discover anyway, when we speak with the reeve and those who dragged Thorgar from the church. At this stage the body is far more important, even if,’ Bradecote conceded, ‘we then find it was not he who killed the priest.’