BURY ME DEEP an utterly gripping crime thriller with an epic twist (Detective Rozlyn Priest Book 1) JANE ADAMS (fox in socks read aloud TXT) 📖

in your name, Treven of Theadingford. A claim was made. You, as Thegn, must be seen to do your duty as regard that claim and to act immediately. You should not allow time for folk to question your intent or your reasoning.”

Treven’s anger surged, the more piquant because he knew there was truth in what Kendryk had just said. “When will you cease instructing me in the rule of my affairs?” he demanded under his breath.

“When you learn to see what must be done without my guidance,” Kendryk returned. “Treven, in war, I doubt you have equal. In this time of so-called peace you have no practice and as yet, little skill. Though,” he smiled and the death’s head grimaced, skin tightening over bone so Treven thought almost that it might split, “I have high hopes of you King’s Thegn.”

Treven glowered at him, but his planned retort was interrupted by a cry from across the field that lay between the homestead and the wood.

“They have found something?”

A small knot of searchers broke from the woodland and struggled through the snow that now lay ankle deep. Their leader held something in his hands. Fabric, Treven saw as they drew closer. Woolen cloth that had once been deepest blue but which now was half black with mud and torn and mired.

“Aliss Scrivener wove this cloth two winters since,” the man told Treven and the Abbott.

“You are certain?”

“I am certain. She taught my children the art. The Scrivener women wove fine cloth, the mother and the two girls. Cate was the better spinner of yarn, but her sister wove with a tight weft and this pattern on the hem . . .” He thrust it forward for Treven to see. A band three fingers deep had been created in a pattern that twisted the weaving into a checkerboard design. Treven, no weaver himself, could not guess how it was done, but the tightness and skill were obvious even to an unskilled eye. “This was a pattern of her own making,” the man told him.

“So, if the cloak is there, so might be the owner.”

Treven looked upward at the sky. Snow-filled and dense, he could not see higher than a house roof before his vision became blocked by the swirl and dance of heavy flakes.

“Be that as it may,” he said. “I’ll not send any out in this.” He reached out to take the cloth from the searcher. “You’ve done well.” He said. “When the weather clears, lead me to the place you found this. If the woman lies in the woods, we will find her and bring her body back for decent burial.”

“And the Waelas man she ran with?” Kendryk asked him, and Treven knew this was yet another of the abbot’s tests. Impatience and anger battled but he held them back. “The man and woman fell into sin through too much love,” he said quietly. “I’ll not expect Edmund to have him here, but I’ll see him buried on my own lands. It seems to me they have paid penalty enough for such misjudgment.” The man with the cloak nodded and handed Treven the sorry bundle of blue cloth.

“I’ll get to my home. My wife will be watching for me.”

“That was well done,” Kendryk told him when the men had left.

“I do not seek your approval.”

“No, but you will get it or otherwise. Treven, make no mistake, I would rather claim this land for my Abbey and for the glory of the Christ, but since my earthly lord decrees otherwise, I would at least see his servant keep it well, whether that servant enjoys my words or not.”

Treven scowled and strode off towards the Scriveners’ homestead. Inside, he ordered the trestle table lifted from the wall and spread out the cloak. The shape was simple; a long rectangle of cloth meant to wrap around the body and (if necessary) be drawn over the head. He could see the signs of wear at the point where the brooch would usually have fastened. The fabric next to that had been ripped as though the cloak had been torn from the body while the brooch was fastened. Streaks of black mud showed, Treven fancied, where the fabric had folded and creased and been most exposed.

“The cloak was torn from her body some time after death,” he told Kendryk.

The Abbott nodded. “Wild animals could have done that. See, here, tears from teeth or tusks. There are boar in these woods and a body lying on the ground would attract scavengers.”

Treven nodded. “I doubt there’ll be much to bury,” he said “unless we find her before winter really sets hard. This, I believe, is blood. It looks like rust against the blue, though the whole is so caked in mud and filth it is impossible to tell.”

“It seems that Hugh’s claim may be genuine,” Kendryk observed.

“And if we find the older sister and her lover, what to do with the father?”

“Unless another can be found with more reason to kill, and, I do not believe, Treven, that either brother struck the blow that killed their wives, then the father is guilty and such guilt cannot be left unpunished.”

“The man has lost his mind.”

“But did he lose it and then strike his children down? Or lose it after through grief and guilt.”

Treven shook his head. “I find it hard to think that a man with full reason would want his child dead because she loved unwisely.”

“Fathers have killed for less.”

“Then they are not fathers.” Treven drew a deep breath. “I find it hard, no, impossible, to think of a reason or an act that would lead me to want to strike my own child dead.” He folded the cloth, then changed his mind and laid it by the fire to dry. “Where is Hugh? For that matter, where are the brothers?”

“The