‘The voice of wisdom, Catchpoll?’

  ‘The voice of long experience, my lord.’

  ‘Indeed, Serjeant.’ There was the smallest hint of a smile from both men.

  Once mounted, the three men rode out of the castle gate and headed down the hill to the Pershore road, each thinking of home and hearth, leaving murder behind and with the cheerful sound of the skylarks and the yellowhammers on the hint of a welcome breeze.

  Author’s Note

  While this is a work of fiction, many of the details relating to real historical characters and events are true. There had been rivalry between the Abbots of Evesham and Sheriffs of Worcestershire since the time of Urse d’Abitôt, the first post-Conquest sheriff, and Bengeworth was a focal point of that antagonism since both claimed the land. William de Beauchamp had a wooden castle erected there in the early years of The Anarchy, ostensibly to protect the bridge over the Avon, but the Chronicon Abbatiae de Evesham, written by the monks, recorded many depredations of abbey property by the garrison, and states that during the abbacy of Abbot Reginald’s successor, William de Andeville, a particularly bold raid involved the demolition of the abbey cemetery wall and plundering of the enclave. Abbot William promptly excommunicated William de Beauchamp, and the abbot’s forces took the castle, razing it to the ground. The site was then turned into a cemetery.

  Reginald Foliot’s lineage and family connections are genuine, though whether that added to William de Beauchamp’s animosity is purely my conjecture.

  The stewardship of Evesham Abbey was an inherited post for several centuries after Abbot Walter installed one of his kinsmen as steward, and at one time in the early twelfth century there were two anchoresses living within the abbey demesne.

  Recent archaeological excavations in Evesham have unearthed the little stone bridge over the water course that ran towards the Hampton ferry, and two channels off it, with indications of buildings that were not just domestic, though these actual remains could be later and producing almost anything. However, they gave me a plausible location for the maltster and mead maker.

  About the Author

  Sarah Hawkswood describes herself as a ‘wordsmith’ who is only really happy when writing. She read Modern History at Oxford and first published a non-fiction book on the Royal Marines in the First World War before moving on to medieval mysteries set in Worcestershire.

  @bradecote

  bradecoteandcatchpoll.com

  By Sarah Hawkswood

  Servant of Death

  Ordeal by Fire

  Marked to Die

  Hostage to Fortune

  Vale of Tears

  Faithful unto Death

  River of Sins

  Blood Runs Thicker

  Wolf at the Door

  A Taste for Killing

  Too Good to Hang

  Litany of Lies

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  Copyright

  Allison & Busby Limited

  11 Wardour Mews

  London W1F 8AN

  allisonandbusby.com

  This ebook edition published in Great Britain by Allison & Busby in 2024.

  Copyright © 2024 by Sarah Hawkswood

  The moral right of the author is hereby asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All characters and events in this publication, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent buyer.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  ISBN 978–0–7490–3103–9

 

 

  Sarah Hawkswood, Litany of Lies

 

 

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