‘Yes, my lord.’

  ‘Then we will go there so as not to be a burden upon any one household, but would have food and drink provided to us. You will show us the house, and when we have spoken privily with you, we will speak with the Widow Reed and the person who shrouded the body, who is …?’

  ‘Agnes, who is our healing woman.’ Selewine pointed to a thin-framed dame of middle years, who pursed her lips. Bradecote hoped they would not stay so firmly closed upon questioning.

  ‘We also need stabling for our horses.’

  ‘Yes, my lord.’ Selewine’s normal cocksure manner had deserted him, although only briefly. ‘If you will follow me.’ He then turned to the crowd of villagers and raised his voice. ‘And there is still another good hour or so of daylight, so them as is not called forward remember that talk is for the fireside and there is work to be done.’

  Chapter Three

  The priests’ house was, unlike most of the village homes, of stone up to the height of a man’s thigh, though it was thatched as all the other dwellings were and was of a generous size for just two men. It looked as if constructed in part with leftover stone from the original building of the church. Selewine opened the door and stood back for Bradecote and his subordinates to enter.

  The chamber was sparsely furnished, as befitted men for whom worldly goods had no real meaning. There were two wooden cots at one end, each close to a side wall as if keeping as far from the other as possible, and between the head of each hung a wooden cross upon the end wall. A long, narrow chest, which might also serve as a seat, was set lengthwise down the middle as a very visible division of the space. There was a cold hearth, with the ashes from the last fire still upon the stone, a simple table, two stools, and a shelf with beakers, a jug, bowls and basic cooking utensils above pottery crocks that would contain flour and dried pease. There was a vague smell of old fish and, as Walkelin entered, a small, black cat rushed past him and went to snatch a fish head from behind a crock. It glared at them, back arched, since hissing was difficult with a mouth full of fish, daring them to take its prize, then made its escape.

  ‘Father Ambrosius is a good fisherman, and generous with what he catches too, not only to our poor, but Oldmother Agatha’s cat. I think she, the cat that is, likes to come and curl up on his lap and remind him she likes fish. Mind you, Father Edmund could not abide her presence. I wonder if that was half the appeal to Father Ambrosius.’ He gave a short laugh.

  This might account for the smell, but there was something not right in the priests’ house. The clergy were tidy, ascetic souls who liked things orderly, and yet the blanket on one bed was a little askew, the pissing-pot showing from beneath the other, and the chest showed the corner of a piece of charcoal-coloured cloth peeping from beneath the lid. Bradecote said nothing, but glanced at Catchpoll, and saw the flicker of mutual agreement cross his face. Someone other than a priest had been in, and had probably been seeking something. Well, they could think about that later. First, they needed to get all they could from Selewine the Reeve.

  ‘How long have you been the reeve of Ripple?’ Bradecote’s first question made the man blink.

  ‘Why, nigh on ten years, my lord, since my father died. He was reeve afore me.’

  ‘And is it a peaceable manor? Do the folk get on with one another?’

  ‘Aye, my lord, barrin’ the odd squabble between women over the bushes they lays their washin’ over, and lads who find they has eyes for the same girl. Ordinary stuff, my lord, and nothin’ as would lead to a death.’

  ‘And you have not had cause to think Thorgar violent.’ This was not a question.

  ‘No, my lord. A shock it was that he could turn like that. A big, peaceful lad, not unlike his oxen, other than he had more brains.’ Selewine shook his head. ‘There seemed no other explanation than he had killed Father Edmund, though, and everyone agreed it.’

  ‘You mean nobody raised an objection once you put it before them,’ growled Catchpoll. ‘I knows sheep when I sees them, and the folk in that field are sheep on two legs. You shepherds ’em and they will be biddable. When did one last say nay to you, Master Reeve?’

  ‘No, no. If you is tryin’ to say it is all my fault Thorgar is dead you are wrong. Why, it were my brother Tofi who said first as ’e must hang, and it were my duty as reeve to see it done. And his daughter Mildred, who were as sweet as a maid might be on Thorgar and be a maid still, she cried clear and loud that Thorgar had been at odds with Father Edmund that very morning, raisin’ his voice and wavin’ his arms about, which were not like him at all. It all fitted.’ There was a touch of desperation to Selewine’s voice now.

  ‘Then we must speak with this Mildred and hear from her own lips what she saw. Make sure she knows to come to us after the healer.’ Bradecote paused. ‘Is it not to your advantage that Thorgar, the only man grown in his household, is no longer present to object to your taking his sister to wife?’ The question was put very evenly.

  ‘How did …? No, of course not,’ spluttered Selewine, colouring.

  ‘Well, you can see as why the lord Bradecote asks, Master Reeve, ’acos if there is no man to say you nay, the path looks a lot less stony. At least it does to me and Underserjeant Walkelin ’ere.’ Catchpoll nodded towards Walkelin, who concurred.

  ‘Not used to anyone sayin’ you nay, I dare say.’ Walkelin sounded very reasonable. ‘Must ’ave been a surprise, and not a good one, eh?’

  ‘It has nothin’ to do with my decision.’ Selewine was flustered.

  ‘So it was your decision. Glad we sorted that out.’ Catchpoll smiled, slowly, and with eyes that remained quartz hard. Logic said it had to have been, but it was good to keep Selewine worried and more eager to assist them. The man babbled about having no choice, being sorry and it not being his fault, and Catchpoll dismissed him to bring Mildred.

  The Widow Reed was in her thirties, as best as could be judged by Bradecote, and the sort that missed having a husband, not just for the security of food upon the table and digging in the garden patch. She was like a flower just past full bloom, with petals a little bedraggled and browned, but still showing the form of its prime. She held a scrap of cloth, which she dabbed to her eyes even as she made her obeisance, and immediately launched into self-exculpation. It was not her fault Thorgar had been hanged.

  ‘This is not about blame for his death, but about what you saw, and even did not see.’ Bradecote wanted to make sure the Welsh apprentice, Gwydion, was absent as he had said. ‘Why were you in the church?’

  ‘It were time for None, and since we was not in the fields I thought it would be good for my soul to go and listen to poor Father Edmund say the Office.’

  ‘Had the bell been rung?’

  ‘It had not, but the rain were stopped and the sun come out a little, so I knew the hour was about right. I could always sit awhile in prayer if early. But it were odd that the bell was not rung. I did not think of it at the time, but oh, poor Father Edmund. Such an awful thing to happen.’ The cloth was deployed to the corner of her eye.

  ‘So you went to the church. Was anyone else about outside?’ Bradecote did not specifically ask about the apprentice.

  ‘Nobody. Mind you, the rain had only just stopped, which were why I decided to leave my spinnin’ and go to church.’

  ‘Are the Offices of the Day usually well attended?’ Walkelin enquired.

  ‘Not unless there is a saint’s day or festival, though Compline sees more when it is after the day’s work is over but afore we is all in our beds. Often it were only me and poor Father Edmund.’

  ‘Did Father Ambrosius not attend also?’

  ‘Oh, yes of course, but I did not count ’im, and also he is often over the river. I think poor Father Edmund were happier when he was. I ought not to say things of a priest, but I do not think Father Ambrosius liked poor Father Edmund.’

  It was clear that to Widow Reed, the dead priest would always be ‘poor Father Edmund’.

  ‘And when you entered the church, what did you see, exactly?’ Catchpoll wanted details.

  ‘Thorgar, bent over poor Father Edmund’s body.’

  ‘And what did he do?’

  ‘He turned around and looked at me. I screamed and he half got up and I ran outside crying “murder” and knocked upon Selewine the Reeve’s door, and Tofi ’is brother’s, and cried they must come quick. They went together to the church, bein’ brave, and they said to knock upon folks’ doors, so I did and everyone came out, and they dragged Thorgar from the church to the green and … he looked guilty. He was over the body.’

  ‘Astride it? Holding up the shoulders?’ Catchpoll pressed for more.

  ‘No, not that. Sort of knelt close to the head and facing away from me, so I could see ’is back. Sort of under an armpit, for one of poor Father Edmund’s arms was flung out.’ The woman threw out her own arm to the side to illustrate this. ‘I did not recognise it was Thorgar in the first moment, just a murderer, but of course I did when he faced me. So unlike him it was – to do it, not the look, you understand.’ She looked from Catchpoll to Bradecote and back.

  ‘So you knew Father Edmund was dead?’ Bradecote guessed she had leapt from one conclusion to another but wanted to check.

  ‘Well, ’e was not movin’ and I could see blood upon the floor.’

  ‘Did you see anything else? A weapon?’

  ‘Nothing more, my lord. No stick or staff.’

  ‘Or anything smaller?’

  ‘No, but if you had seen the body, my lord, the bruises upon his poor body and head …’

  ‘You saw those?’ Bradecote frowned. The reeve had said it was the village healer who had tended to the shrouding.

  ‘I did. Mother Agnes went to do what was needed, but I-I wanted to do this last thing for poor Father Edmund also, so I joined ’er. Cruel it were, what were done to the poor man, so cruel.’ She sniffed. ‘There was blood everywhere, and one of ’is teeth was lost. I suppose it were swallowed, for I looked and could not find it in the habit or on the nave floor.’

  ‘And who lifted the body onto the trestles, and indeed set them up?’

  ‘Oh, the Welsh boy brought the trestles from where they is stored, for the workmen ’ad been told not to use them in their work. He offered the help. Poor Father Edmund was a slight man, not fat or bulky, and it was easy enough for the lad and Mother Agnes to roll him onto a blanket and carry him to the trestle table. He were very polite and asked if there were anything more we needed, then left. We removed the clothes,’ she sighed, ‘and washed the poor body, though it made the bruises show the more. Poor Father Edmund.’ There was a pause. ‘And poor Thorgar as well, of course, if he did not do it after all.’

  ‘Thank you. If there is anything else you remember, come to us.’ Bradecote dismissed her with a small smile of thanks, and Walkelin held open the door.

  There was a woman outside, but she was not the healer, whom they expected. Mildred was a good-looking girl, the sort local young men would scramble to claim for a wife. She had a thick glossy plait of raven black that lay upon her shoulder and peeped, not quite demurely, from under her coif, heavy lids with long lashes over violet eyes, and a figure that no man could fail to appreciate. She was also clearly aware that she drew that appreciation, but in the current situation was rather less bold than normal. She looked nervous, even a little frightened, and those violet eyes had shed tears recently.

  She entered, made a deep obeisance to Bradecote, and offered up her name.

  ‘I am Mildred, Tofi’s daughter. Mother Agnes, she says she is sorry but she is seein’ to Cuthwulf, whose back has gone again. Everyone offered to plant the pease for ’im, knowin’ that back of his, but … Yellin’ loud ’e was, when I left the field.’

  ‘Then we will speak with you, Mildred. Now, you saw Thorgar arguing with Father Edmund the morning of the killing, yes?’

  ‘I did, my lord.’ She nodded, but sniffed, not once but twice, and then took a gulp of air and began sobbing loudly.

  Bradecote’s eyebrows flew up in surprise, and he glanced at his companions, who shrugged.

  ‘Sit upon the stool and tell us what you saw. You need not be afraid of us.’ Bradecote thought perhaps it was fear upsetting her.

  She obeyed the first part of the command, but wailed, ‘I should not ’ave spoken. It was spite, and God will judge me. Poor Thorgar!’

  ‘So did you really see them argue, girl?’ Catchpoll exuded ‘firm oldfather’.

  ‘Yes, yes, but I did not ’ave to tell it.’

  ‘You do to us, because all truth is of use to us.’ Bradecote thought this a pompous thing to say as the words left his lips, and he caught Catchpoll’s choked back gurgle of laughter, but the girl was not attending to his every word but rather fighting her own guilt.

  ‘I was takin’ the pail to the midden. Guthlac, my little brother, had been sick and it stank. We told ’im not to eat the mushrooms mother dried and keeps for addin’ to the pottage, but then Guthlac is greedy and disobedient. I felt no sympathy.’

  ‘So you left the house for that reason.’ Bradecote did not want to hear more of Guthlac’s indisposition. ‘How far from this house is that?’

  ‘Oh, we lives but the first house along from the churchyard.’ She pointed, but since there was a solid wall in the way that was not very helpful.

  ‘You mean near where it comes to a point outside, not up where it is wider by the oak tree?’

  At the mention of the oak tree Mildred began to cry again, and Bradecote cursed his own thoughtlessness.

  ‘Come now. Give the lord Undersheriff an answer.’ Catchpoll was encouraging rather than threatening.

  ‘Yes.’ She nodded. ‘Next to the reeve’s house, where my Uncle Selewine lives.’ She clearly thought that the reeve’s house was a landmark in the village that the world at large would know. ‘I saw Thorgar walk down to knock upon this door and then Father Edmund opened it, and they spoke, not loudly. Then Thorgar began to wave his arms about and ’is voice grew louder. I never saw Thorgar angry ever before.’

  ‘Did you hear what was shouted?’ Bradecote could not keep a touch of hope from his voice.

  ‘No, my lord. It was a wet and windy morning, and the wind took the words. I just ’eard them as loud and angry. Father Edmund opened ’is arms like this.’ She spread her arms but with the palms facing forward, fending away rather than raised upward in any calling down of a benediction. ‘He shook his head also and Thorgar did the same and pulled the piece of oilcloth up more on ’is shoulders and went along the path that goes beside the Ripple Brook. I did not linger, for it was wet.’ She swallowed hard. ‘If’n I had said nothin’, Thorgar would not be dead.’

  ‘Well, Mildred, that may well be blaming yourself without need. If you spoke up true, then you did right.’ Bradecote, a man prone to self-blame, knew how much it tied one into knots inside.

  ‘But I did it for the wrong reason, my lord. I was angry. Night afore, we met as often we did, just for a little while, and … and Thorgar said as I was a test. A test!’ Mildred lost her sorrow in the residue of outrage. ‘All these months when we was talkin’ and cuddlin’ and … I even offered—’ She blushed, but not so much that Catchpoll thought it was the first offer she had ever made.

  ‘What sort of test?’ Walkelin was confused, and Mildred, who had ignored him thus far, looked at him.

  ‘A test to see if he could resist the sin of fornication – “the Daughters of Eve”, he said. Admitted he loved me, but loved God more, and that I should seek an ’usband elsewhere.’ She clearly found this incomprehensible. ‘Rejected, I was, and that made me want to speak up. It was wrong and God will judge me.’

  ‘If it lies badly with your conscience, tell the priest, the other priest, Father Ambrosius. It does not sound a sin that is beyond penance and absolution.’ Bradecote thought this the only suggestion he could make, and it served also as a dismissal. Mildred left, sniffing forlornly.

  They had some time to ponder upon what might have angered Thorgar, and then there was a knock upon the planked oak, and upon Walkelin’s opening it, a woman stepped within and, after glancing towards Catchpoll, looked straight at Bradecote.

  Agnes, the village healer, was a woman best described as ‘narrow’. She was on the tall side for a woman, with a long, narrow face, narrow shoulders and narrow hips. Her face showed no signs of a beauty faded, but every sign of resolution. Her lips were thin, her nose aquiline and pinched, and everything about her declared that this was a woman who realised early in life that men would always look first at others when looking for a wife. Her gaze, with eyes that were a surprisingly vivid blue, was firm and unflinching. She made an obeisance to him, and then stood as straight as a bullrush.

  ‘I am Agnes, the healer in Ripple. Me, and the Widow Reed, washed and shrouded the body of Father Edmund.’ She sounded matter of fact, though ‘and the Widow Reed’ was given in a tone that implied her presence had not been needed.

  ‘Then we would ask you, mistress, about the state of the body afore it was cleaned, not least because yours will be eyes that see where others just looks.’ Catchpoll was not flattering the woman but acknowledging her experience.

  ‘There were a lot of blood about the face, and the nose were broke, which would account for much of it. The skin were puffed and bruised about the jaw and cheekbones, and a tooth gone. I reckon as the cheekbone might well ’ave been cracked.’

  ‘Which one?’ Catchpoll wanted every detail.

  ‘The right, and I think that were from the kickin’. Many a bruise and broken face has I put mosses on over the years where men,’ and Agnes gave a half snort, clearly unimpressed by the whole gender, ‘has taken to usin’ their fists on each other. The lost tooth and broken nose most like came from a fist, and Father Edmund were never a heavy man. I reckon as ’e fell back on the floor and were lucky then not to crack his skull open, not that it helped later. Then ’e got kicked good and proper. A man as kicks in another’s head is blind drunk or mad angry.’