Whited Sepulchres by C B Hanley Read Free Book Online Page B

with his mother, and peace reigned once more.
    Joanna looked at the earl, who throughout all of this had remained silent and almost motionless. His face held no expression, but his hands were gripping the arms of his chair, and behind him Martin looked worried. She was relieved when Sir Geoffrey stepped into the room and bent over the earl to speak quietly in his ear. With a very brief and hardly muttered ‘excuse me’, the earl stood and followed Sir Geoffrey out of the room. There was a short pause in all the conversations as he left, but then everyone returned to what they were doing, and there was a comfortable buzz about the chamber.
    From her corner of the room, Joanna could see out of one of the open windows into the inner ward, and she watched as both men emerged from the building. She couldn’t hear what they were saying, but she saw Sir Geoffrey gesture, and then both of them moved towards the centre of the ward. Some guards were dragging something towards them, and she had to stifle a gasp as she saw what it was – an unconscious man with blood on his face. The guards dropped him on the ground while the earl and Sir Geoffrey stood over him and spoke. Eventually the earl nodded and Sir Geoffrey signalled to the guards to move the man away again. This time they pulled him by his feet, and as his head was dragged along it left a trail of blood in the dusty earth.

Chapter Three
    Refreshed by his ale, although not by the conversation, Edwin left his mother’s house. Marriage? He hadn’t really thought of it before, or had he? Perhaps it had been at the back of his mind since … strange, as soon as his mother had mentioned the word, Alys’s face had appeared before him, her summer-blue eyes smiling. She was so different from any of the girls he’d grown up with. Well, of course she would be, she was from a different part of the country and she lived in a big city, but even accounting for that she was still … but there was Godleva again, lurking at the side of one of the houses. She looked as though she was about to step over to him again, so he hurried across the green to the street on the other side, entering the yard of one of the village’s other larger houses and calling out a greeting before he stepped over the threshold.
    The door stood open in the warm weather, and the windows were uncovered, but still it was darker than the bright sunlight outside so he stopped to let his eyes become accustomed to the gloom. As he did so, his aunt bustled forward and embraced him, smelling as always of the fragrant herbs with which she often worked. She stepped back and patted him on the cheek, but had barely started on an offer of refreshment before a harsh voice came from the cottage’s other room, demanding to know who was there and what was going on. Cecily rolled her eyes at Edwin and said he’d better go in.
    Edwin stepped into the bedchamber and leaned over to shake the hand of the man in the bed. William cheered up on seeing who his visitor was, but it was almost grudging – he’d probably been looking for an excuse to take his temper out on anyone else unfortunate enough to get in his way. He motioned Edwin to a small stool which was overturned by the side of the bed, and Edwin righted it and sat down to ask him how he was.
    He expected something of a rant and he wasn’t disappointed. He let it wash over him – the normally even-tempered William was probably entitled to be irritable given his current situation. He’d been crippled ever since Edwin could remember: he’d once been a soldier in the service of the old earl, and had returned from a long-ago campaign with part of his left ear missing, a horrific scar which disfigured the entire left side of his face, and a maimed and twisted leg which caused him to limp heavily. Normally he managed to hobble about fairly well: as the steward his work was almost entirely in the castle rather than out on the estate, and he hauled himself up the hill and back