Read A Friar's Bloodfeud: (Knights Templar 20) for Free Online

his head and set
     off at a smart canter, the others followed behind him in an untidy, straggling mass.
    Hugh was lost in contentment as he carried his tools down to the road where the hedge stood.
    It was an old one, this. A good local hedge, with solid moorstone inside to support it, covered with turves. Earth had been
     piled at the top, and the first farmers would have thrown acorns and berries on to it, or perhaps planted young whips of hawthorn,
     blackthorn, rose and bramble. Anything that would help to form a prickly, dense mass. And as the years passed, the thin little
     plants had grown strong and tall, and when they were thick enough the farmers had come back with billhooks and slashers and
     axes, and had cut half through the inch-thick stems and laid them over, fixing them in place by weaving them between stakes.
     And the hedge had grown, solid, thick, impenetrable, self-renewing.
    All that was long in the past. Hugh had kept his eyes on this one for the last two years, thinking that it was grown too tall
     and straggly, and he had begun work here a week and a half ago, cutting out all the dead wood, trimming the smaller branches,
     hammering in new stakes. Now he had to hack at the surviving plants so that he could lay them afresh.
    It was all but done. He had only a few more hours’ work, and the field could be used again for pasture. That would be a good
     day. With luck, the ale that Constance had put tobrew last week would be ready at the same time and they could celebrate their fresh little success with her best drink.
    ‘God’s blessings on you!’
    Hugh peered through the hedge to see the priest from the chapel down the road at Monkleigh. ‘Father.’
    ‘This hedge is a mess. It must take a lot of effort to keep it clear?’
    ‘Yes,’ Hugh said, feeling his former sense of well-being begin to ebb away.
    ‘What is your name?’
    ‘I’m Hugh. Some call me Hugh Drewsteignton or Shepherd,’ he responded. He swung the billhook at a stem and sliced three-quarters
     of the way through the thick wood.
    ‘Well, Hugh Drewsteignton or Shepherd, are you one of the villeins of Sir Odo?’
    ‘No. My master lives at Lydford.’
    The priest lifted his eyebrows in surprise. ‘Really? What are you doing here, then?’
    ‘My wife lives here.’
    ‘Your wife? Who is that?’
    ‘Constance.’ By now Hugh’s contentment was all but gone, and he wished that this priest would go too. There were some in the
     vill who had muttered when he had arrived there with Constance. It was noticeable that one or two had turned away from them
     when they went to the church door to be married, as though no woman before had ever wedded her man with a swelling belly.
    The priest must have heard the tale, because he gave Hugh a very shrewd look. ‘I have heard much about her.’
    ‘So?’
    ‘She is a wise woman, so they say. Good with healing potions and salves.’
    ‘Yes. She learned it at Belstone.’
    ‘What did she do there?’
    Hugh began to chop at the stems again, concentrating on the work in hand. ‘She was busy learning potions and the like, I dare
     say.’
    ‘Well, you look after her, man. She deserves all the care she can receive.’
    Hugh ignored him, and soon the young priest was off again, walking slowly homeward down the Exbourne road, his feet splashing
     in the puddles and mud. For a moment Hugh wondered what he had meant, but then he shrugged. He had work to do.
    Robert Crokers could have saved himself if he had kept his eyes open. The riders would have been clearly visible coming through
     the trees.
    He had lived here only a few short months. Born at his father’s house at Lyneham near Yealmpton, he had been sent to Lord
     de Courtenay’s household when he was five, so that he could learn manners and humility, and he had hated it from the first.
     A great lord’s household was never at rest. When it was newly arrived at a manor there was the noise and bustle of unpacking,
     the fetching and