‘Say it is not true, oh, say it is not. I can’t do it all, not right I can’t, and there’s the birthing for Gytha, and all I have done is help and watch, not been a-catching of the babe myself. Holy Virgin aid me!’ The girl Hild was clearly as distressed at the burden laid suddenly upon her as at the loss of her mentor. She looked to authority, to the undersheriff.
‘Wait here.’ It was a command, but not harshly given. A panicking girl was the last thing they needed at the scene. He sensed more than saw the lady of the manor behind him and turned. ‘Will you keep her with you, my lady, until we return?’
She nodded, and the swine boy and the three men left the woman and girl together.
Chapter Eleven
The coppice was mostly hazel with a little holly scattered amongst it like prickly green sentinels and the odd legacy of a greater wood, an occasional oak or ash. The body lay in a small clearing, where one of the great trees had fallen, not at its end of years, but lightning-struck and split. Such a ‘ghost tree’, accounted cursed by many, had not fed the village hearths, and its parts lay supine, the saplings that would fight to replace it merely supple mourners about the skeletal remains. The clearing was perhaps fifteen paces from the trackway, behind a wall of hazels and green shrubbery. A shaft of slightly dappled light played over the corpse like shimmers upon water, creating an illusion of movement, though Winflaed the Healer would never move again. She lay with one cheek upon the earth as if listening to its heartbeat, one arm still outstretched towards a sprouting of mushrooms against the pale roots of the ghost tree. Another of the tree’s roots, ripped from the earth and pointing skywards, seemed to be drawing the attention of Heaven to the evil that had been perpetrated. Her other arm was still beneath her, and the fact that it was not flung out suggested to Bradecote that she had been insensate even as she toppled forward. He did not need Catchpoll’s skills to work that out. The pale cloth of her coif was pale no longer, but heavily stained scarlet, and the ground was damp-dark.
Catchpoll skirted to the side of the body and knelt down. He touched the flesh of her cheek.
‘Only warmth in the skin is the little from the sunlight.’ He closed the sightless eyes. ‘No real death-stiffening as yet, but then we knows she was alive a couple of hours ago, so that is no surprise at all.’
‘And the basket for her foraging is almost empty,’ noted Walkelin, picking up a shallow basket that the woman had evidently set down out of the way before her death. It had but half a dozen mushrooms and a sprig of some plant, its leaves slightly wilted. ‘So she was killed not long after setting out.’ He cast about the edge of the clearing and added that a horse had been there. ‘We are not far from the track, but no rider would bring their horse among the trees and bushes by mistake.’
Catchpoll nodded his agreement and approval, though he was still looking at the body. ‘Leastways it was quick.’ His fingers touched the red stain upon the neck of her gown and soaked into the folds of her coif. ‘Blade went in behind the left collarbone and straight down to the heart, I reckon.’ Catchpoll looked up and caught the movement of the swine boy wiping his sleeve across his nose. He looked pinched and rather green-tinged. ‘You go back and fetch two men and a strong blanket or a hurdle, boy. Be swift.’ The boy just nodded, turned and ran. ‘Should’ve thought of him before. Doubt he will say anything but we doesn’t want gossip, and we doesn’t want the truth spread neither.’
‘Agreed.’ Bradecote was pondering the wound. ‘That is clearly not a woman’s strike, nor that of one who has not borne arms. It was a man, with a dagger or as good as, and one who knew what he was doing.’ The undersheriff frowned. ‘So if we discount a wild coincidence that had her killed for no good reason by a passing stranger, it leaves us with Baldwin de Lench, who left us just before she did, and whom we did not see again between the confronting of Raoul Parler and the fight over the treasure box, and his brother, Hamo, who was out hawking until the same time. The angry lord Baldwin stamped out of the hall saying he was going up the hill, but I doubt he went.’ He shook his head. ‘This seems very cold-blooded for both, who are quite capable in hot blood but …’ The undersheriff did not look happy.
‘And that messire is no warrior, my lord. You can see as how he would make a monk, but I doubt his sword arm.’ Catchpoll sniffed.
‘My lord, what about the lord of Flavel?’ Walkelin encountered a look of some surprise but continued. ‘I do not say it is likely, but is it not possible? He left from the church before we did, but what if he had seen the healing woman as he mounted his horse?’
‘But what reason could he have to kill her, lad?’ Catchpoll’s face screwed into an expression of strong doubt. ‘Good that you consider it as an idea, but …’ He was gently rolling the body over. The right hand had been pressed over her chest, but once released fell sideways.
‘What reason had anyone to kill her, though? None we can see, and yet there she lies.’ Walkelin pointed at the corpse and sounded almost angry, affronted. In truth, he found the murder of this woman who
