‘Very true, Catchpoll. We will see Winflaed the Healer carried home, speak with her girl to know a little better when she left, and then we speak, at last, with the perhaps none-so-loyal steward.’
‘He might be loyal, my lord, but not to his lord.’
‘Which we will discover shortly.’
‘My lord.’ Walkelin had been staring towards the mushrooms, thinking, but was now looking. ‘I think I may also have a reason for the Healer’s death. Look here.’ He got up and went to kneel a foot or so from the fungi. There was a tangling of undergrowth bowing down to the ground, but Walkelin moved it. ‘Someone has dug, and dug straight, and then tried to hide it with the branches. I saw the edge of the mark.’ There was a line of fresh earth less than a foot and a half long, and although it had been stamped flat it was a little darker.
‘Now that,’ commended Catchpoll, ‘is using your eyes.’
‘Osbern de Lench had a dagger, and it was not abandoned with the clothes,’ murmured Bradecote. ‘We just assumed it was worth the taking, and kept, but if easily recognised …’
‘We cannot be sure that this was not the place that Alnoth the Handless did not step aside and then find the cap and cloak, my lord.’
‘Scrabbling about to bury it would have taken longer, as I see it,’ said Bradecote, thoughtfully. ‘Whoever killed her would have removed it, yes? There would be bound to be a hunt for her when she did not return.’
Walkelin clawed at the earth where it was loose, and shook his head.
‘Nothing remains, my lord.’
‘Yet something narrow was there, and if whoever buried it even heard this poor soul so close, then she was doomed.’
‘But there’s the thing, my lord.’ Catchpoll got up, slowly. ‘It would have to be the greatest of mischances for him to be close enough just when she was here, unless he followed her. So we have the slim possibility that it was the lord of Flavel as that mischance, or we have one of the other three who already had a reason to follow her to silence her, and then found even her death would point to him the more. If that be so, you would have to think he is now wondering if he is destined for the noose whatever he does.’
‘If we succeed, Catchpoll, he is.’ Bradecote looked grim.
The final return of the healing woman was met with much genuine grief, and no small degree of concern in some minds, as they wondered if the girl Hild knew enough of her craft to keep any from pain, let alone death. She had less than three years as the healer’s aide, and, as was noted in sob-laden whisper by the heavily pregnant Gytha, was not even woman enough to bear a child as yet, let alone deliver one. The healer’s body was taken to the church, where it was tended by priest for the soul, and Hild’s oldmother, who was Winflaed the Healer’s sister, for the body. Catchpoll was confident that he did not need to look upon the body further. The girl was kept from the washing and shrouding, and so Hugh Bradecote took her to one side and gently asked what had happened when she had gone to prepare the sick man’s warmed ale and herbs.
‘I did what Mother Winflaed told me, my lord. I bound the herbs and had them in the pot warming up gradual, and then she came in and said as she might add more sage, and that a pottage with a little of the healer’s mushrooms in it might be good for the poor man. I can recognise them, every time, and offered to go, but she said it was a fair day and she had thoughts to think, and … and … and that was the last I saw of her.’ The girl wiped her eyes and sniffed, dolorously. Bradecote was about to dismiss her when he thought of something.
‘Tell me, when you have gone in Mother Winflaed’s place to Father Matthias, to cook and such, have you ever seen a box, a small box?’
The girl shook her head and denied the presence of any box that she knew about. Bradecote sent her to minister to the injured man in the hall, thinking it neither too difficult and yet something for her to do other than worry about her own competence.
‘So those that knew of the box leaves Baldwin, young Hamo and the priest, who is much used to keeping secrets,’ Bradecote declared to his subordinates.
‘No wait, my lord. Fulk knew, for it was him as told me about the box with vellum writings in it.’ Walkelin spoke up, urgently.
Bradecote swore at his own forgetfulness, low but long, and Serjeant Catchpoll sucked his teeth in a hiss of self-disgust.
‘Trouble is, my lord, this has new things tumbling upon us like rocks in a defile, and we is so busy dealing with the current one we loses sight of what lies behind. We was all set to speak with the steward Fulk when the girl came and called us to the injured man of Flavel, and we no sooner tried to have words with him than we had the messire going off hawking, the lord of Flavel turning up, then the fight between the brothers and the death. All in all, it is not a surprise we forgot Fulk, and forgot he knew of the box.’
‘Perhaps not a surprise, but Heaven help us, Catchpoll, we need to keep everything in mind, and it is not as though we have a large number of people who could be the killer. There are four men, and that is all.’
‘Aye, my lord, but the answer is not leaping out at us because of time.’
‘We are short of it?’ Bradecote frowned.
‘No, my lord, because there is no sense to
