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Page 28
Chapter 3
The next morning, at first light, Walter led his troop west. Despite Richard's warnings, he was pleased with his errand. It was a relief to have something that demanded his immediate attention, for Walter had two personal problems that had occupied his mind fruitlessly and somewhat painfully for many weeks.
The first of these was the lands that he had inherited upon the death of his brother Henry seven months earlier. There was a question of whether or not the lands were his. Walter had loathed his brother and thus had never visited him, so he knew virtually nothing of the estates or the castellans who held them. Moreover, Henry had died rather mysteriously, shot by an narrow during a hunt attended by all those castellansevery one of whom swore that the others had been visible to him and therefore innocent of the shooting of their overlord.
Since Walter was no novice at hunting, he knew that it was most unlikely indeed that all the men should have been in sight of each other while engaged in the chase. Conversely, at any other time there was no reason to loose an arrow. There was nothing Walter could do thatproblem, however, since the king had been at Gloucester at the time, holding his Easter court, and had already accepted the testimony of the castellans. Nor, to speak the truth, was Walter eager to prosecute his brother's murdererif Henry's death had not been an accidentsince he was quite sure Henry had deserved death ten times over.
Walter's real problem lay in the delicate political situation and the fact that he had no way to enforce his overlordship if the castellans wished to resist him. His own estate of Goldcliff, inherited from his mother, was small and could supply neither enough men nor sufficient gold to hire an army with which to any conquer any castellan who defied him.

 
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