‘Holy Mary, has the man found someone else upon whose body he can vent his ire?’ complained the undersheriff, and then he saw what was happening. ‘Halt there!’ he cried, in so loud and peremptory a voice that obedience would be instinctive. The lady de Lench, her wrists bound, her head bare and her hair in disorder, was tied to the ring in the wall where her late husband’s mare had been tied upon its return. The gown had been stripped from her back and hung in tatters to her waist. She was screaming, pulling in vain against the binding rope like a soul possessed. Yet the villagers were not looking at her. Every eye was upon the lord Baldwin de Lench, with a knife in his hand, the short blade catching glints of evening sunlight. Before him, also bound and already half insensible, Fulk the Steward was stretched back over an upturned handcart, the pale skin of his belly exposed, and his braies torn down to his knees. It did not need any question to know what Baldwin intended to do. Bradecote scrambled from the saddle and drew his sword, as Baldwin, deciding that he was not going to stop after all, reached to Fulk’s soft flesh.
‘Touch him, de Lench, and your blood will flow more freely than his.’ There was no bluster, just a grim promise.
‘I have the right. You know I have the right. This filth betrayed my sire with that whore,’ the knife flashed as he pointed it at the now-sobbing woman, ‘in his own hall. What he would have done, I will do.’
‘No, you will not.’ Bradecote was firm. ‘Walkelin, get the poor bastard way from here.’
Walkelin came forward silently, his eye upon the knife, cautious but determined. He tried to lift the steward, but the man was both in no position to gain purchase with his feet and help himself, nor with wits enough to try. It was the little priest who stepped out to take the other arm and help lift him upright, though the man’s legs buckled, and he had, perforce, to be dragged away.
‘This is my manor, and I decide—!’ shouted Baldwin de Lench.
‘No,’ Bradecote interrupted him immediately. ‘You do not decide. Your decisions are made in haste and heat, and are the acts of anger.’
‘She admitted it. So did he, eventually.’ The lord of Lench was livid with anger.
‘Faced with your wrath and a knife, I doubt not they would admit anything.’ Whatever he knew as truth, agreeing with de Lench was not going to help, and Bradecote felt no desire to shame the woman further. He caught sight of the girl Hild’s oldmother, grim-faced, at the doorway of Gytha’s cott. ‘Oldmother, see to the lady. Take her within.’
The woman nodded and went to untie the bound lady and lead her, stumbling, into the hall.
‘I will not have her in there!’ Baldwin still had no other voice than a yell.
‘It is not your decision. Put down the knife, de Lench, and for the sake of Heaven, muster what wit you possess.’ He did not actually think that Baldwin would obey, but that was not important, since Catchpoll, at his most invisible, had quietly moved so that he was behind the ranting lord. Baldwin just stood there, and the undersheriff gave the very smallest of nods. In a moment the serjeant, with a nimbleness that defied his complaints about his creaking knees, had borne down the arm with the knife and twisted it so hard and far up Baldwin de Lench’s back that he was forced onto tiptoe.
‘There now,’ said Catchpoll, soothingly, ‘that’s better, isn’t it?’
Baldwin stared, panting, at Bradecote.
‘As I said, not your decision.’ The undersheriff was unsmiling. ‘Now we could have done this the easy way, but you chose the hard. So be it. Serjeant, bring him to the church.’
Bradecote ignored the villagers and strode towards the church, with no doubt whatsoever that Catchpoll would bring de Lench with him. The undersheriff was thinking. For all his bluster and violence there was some truth in what the lord of the manor had said. He had the right to take action, but not this. He might thrash the steward and send him, lordless, from the village, an exile that would mean no other local lord would employ him, and he had no craft for town work. He might also cast out the lady. As he saw it, Bradecote could not prevent either for more than a few days, though the thrashing seemed to have already taken place. Until the killer of Osbern de Lench was taken, he would hold sway, but that might, and he hoped it was so, be only until the morrow.
He turned and stood before the chancel arch, his arms folded. Catchpoll, perhaps thinking that a penitential attitude was suitable for the church after such wrath, pushed Baldwin de Lench to his knees.
‘Is this how Osbern de Lench ran his manors? Are you truly following his precepts, or just unable to control your temper, de Lench?’ Bradecote was in no mood to be gentle with the man. ‘You are their lord; you are meant to think more than they do. Act with decisiveness, yes, but with intelligence, not just rampage about like a goaded bull. If it is your decision that the lady de Lench leaves the manor, you have the right, and if you also choose to dismiss your steward, you have that right also, but what makes you so sure, other than confessions obtained at knife point, that what you claim is true?’
‘I found them together.’
‘You mean they were …?’ Bradecote could
