Shroud of Dishonour

by Ash, Maureen

  Roget quelled any further protest Verlain might have made with a glance and asked the bawd where Elfreda said she was bound.

  “She wouldn’t tell me,” Sarah said. “Just said she was going to earn a plentiful measure of silver to put by for her little daughter. I thought mebbe she’d hooked herself a rich customer, one who’d pay good money for a session away from this place.” The bawd’s shoulders drooped in a disconsolate fashion. “I wished her well. If I’d guessed for one minute she was goin’ to her death I would have stopped her.”

  Roget asked to see the belongings that Elfreda had kept in the stewe. At a nod from Verlain, one of the bawds went upstairs to the cubicle the dead girl had used and returned a few moments later with a bag made of rough, cheap, material. The contents were pitifully few—a change of kirtle and a worn pair of hose, a comb of bone with a few teeth missing, a much-knotted length of bright yellow ribbon faded by time and two wedge-shaped fourthings of silver, penny coins that had been broken in half and then broken again. At the bottom was one of the dyed horsehair wigs the women wore when they were abroad in the town. The only thing of value was the fourthings which were, no doubt, tips from satisfied customers.

  The paucity of the dead bawd’s material wealth brought tears to the eyes of all the prostitutes. Roget carefully replaced the possessions back inside the tawdry bag and told the stewe-keeper he would see that they were kept for Elfreda’s daughter, and then asked Verlain where the child could be found.

  “There’s an old woman who lives nearby that takes care of prostitutes’ children for a few pennies a week,” Verlain said. “Her name is Terese and she lives here in Butwerk, two streets over from the Werkdyke.”

  As the captain and the Templar left the brothel to go and speak to the childminder, Bascot said to Roget, “It would appear it was the enticement of money that persuaded the harlot to accompany her murderer to the preceptory. Do you know any of the customers Verlain mentioned?”

  “All of them,” Roget replied. “But none seem likely to have had a part in this devil’s scheme. They’re all citizens of the town—a couple of older men with wives past their prime and the others regular tradesmen who visit a stewe when they have an itch in their loins. It might have been one of the others Verlain mentioned, the customers whose names he did not know.”

  “And it may just as easily have been someone she knew, or met, outside the brothel,” Bascot opined.

  The captain nodded glumly. “Perhaps this woman, Terese, will know his name.”

  Five

  WHEN GERARD CAMVILLE RETURNED TO LINCOLN CASTLE, HE went to the chamber where his wife, Nicolaa, attended to the many details involved in managing the vast demesne she had inherited from her father. Although nominal lord over her estates, Gerard was a restless man, his temperament more suited to the excitement of the hunt than the mundane administration of the fief, and he left all such matters in her hands. Nicolaa had also inherited the constableship of the castle and, while the country was at peace, supervised the fortress’s household. It was she, rather than her husband, who was referred to as the castellan by the local populace. Only in matters concerning the shrievalty did Camville take an interest. It was a lucrative post, and he guarded his rights jealously.

  When Gerard entered her chamber, Nicolaa was engaged in a scrutiny of the fees collected from one of the Haye estates with her secretarius, John Blund. The castellan was a short, slightly plump woman of mature years, her figure encased in a serviceable dark blue kirtle and white coif. She looked up in surprise when her husband entered the room. It was rare for him to interrupt her when she was at work and she felt a brief frisson of alarm.

  “I have just come from the Templar preceptory, Wife,” Camville said brusquely. “There has been murder done in their chapel; the victim was a harlot from one of the stewes in town.”

  Both Nicolaa and Blund, an elderly clerk who had served his mistress for many years, listened in horrified silence as Gerard related the circumstances of the murder. When he had finished, Nicolaa rose and poured her husband a cup of wine from a jug sitting on a small table.

  “This is a serious business, Gerard,” she said to her husband, “and a crime that will be difficult to solve.” She waited until he had taken a good mouthful of his wine, contemplating what she had been told. Then she said, “Have you considered that someone in the preceptory may be responsible?”

  The sheriff shook his head. “Why would I? This is an attack on the honour of the enclave. It does not make sense that someone belonging to the Order would commit the crime.”

  Nicolaa sat back down and paused before she continued, judging her next words with care, not wishing to set her impatient husband chasing after a false quarry. “As we have sorry cause to know, Gerard, it is often those that seem to be friends who are the enemy.”

  For a moment Camville glared at his wife, and then he nodded, recognising the truth of her words. It had not been so long ago that a member of their household had been guilty of secret murder and had, for a long time, screened his evil nature behind a mask of genial bonhomie. The lives of both Nicolaa and their son, Richard, had been placed in jeopardy before Bascot de Marins had finally tracked down the culprit.

  Seeing her husband’s agreement, Nicolaa leaned back in her chair and extrapolated on the thought that had come to her. “A life of chastity is not easy for some men, even though they have given their sacred word to be continent. Supposing, as you suspect, one of the Templar brothers is guilty of consorting with prostitutes, and while his transgression is not known to the preceptor, there is one other in the preceptory that is aware of it. Would not most men find it difficult to battle with their own sexual frustration while watching another break his vow with impunity?”

  “The solution would be to report the erring brother to d’Arderon or Draper Emilius.”

  “But what if it is one of the lay brothers, or a lay servant?” Nicolaa persisted. “The former have sworn, as do lay brothers in other monastic institutions, to devote their life to Christ, but they are not fully fledged monks of the Templar brotherhood. They give the gift of their labour so that the Templar brothers can devote their energies to the ongoing battle against Christ’s enemies. To witness the transgression of a monk betraying his vow of chastity would not be easy to swallow and yet, because of their lower station, any protest they made might be disregarded; and if there was no proof of the charge, might even earn punishment for the sin of bearing false witness.”

  She paused for a moment, and then continued, “And if one of the lay servants is privy to such a secret and could not corroborate his claim, he would have even more to lose, for his livelihood would be at risk. Even though the lay servants have not taken a vow of chastity, they are expected to comport themselves with circumspection, and so must eschew the pleasure of a woman’s company. The knowledge that one of the brothers was enjoying what was denied to them could easily cause a rancorous burn in the gut.”

  Camville took a few moments to carefully consider his wife’s words and found they had merit. John Blund, the secretary, had kept silent during the exchange, but it was obvious from the look on his face and the slight nodding of his head while Nicolaa had been speaking that he found her premise worthy of consideration.

  “I hope you are wrong,” Camville finally said. “My writ has no authority over any member of the clergy and even less within the Templar Order.”

  His statement brought to their minds the struggle that the late King Henry II had waged with Thomas à Beckett, when the king and the archbishop had come into violent disagreement over the church’s autonomy in matters relating to crimes committed by those in clerical orders. Even though Beckett was now dead, murdered by a few of Henry’s loyal, but rash, knights, the issue had not been resolved. Gerard faced a similar problem to the one that had plagued the late king; if the murderer belonged to the Templar Order, he could not lay a charge against the killer. Only the pope, or a Master Templar, could take action against the guilty party.r />
  “I think d’Arderon will cooperate to the fullest extent he is allowed,” Gerard said slowly. “But if the murderer is a man under his command, he has no choice but to obey the dictates of the Order.”

  “Then we must hope that my postulation is an erroneous one,” Nicolaa said.

  “Just so, Wife,” Camville replied with a concerned look on his face.

  THE DWELLING WHERE TERESE, THE OLDER WOMAN WHO LOOKED after the children of prostitutes, lived was in a row of houses even more shabby that the ones in Whore’s Alley. The stench from the Werkdyke was almost overpowering; the ditch contained all of the refuse collected from the streets of the town and, in the increasing heat brought by the spring sunshine, had begun to renew decomposition. The house they were seeking had only two floors, but the doorsill had been swept and the iron knocker rubbed free of rust. Terese had once been a prostitute herself, Verlain told them, and now that she was too old to entice customers to her bed, earned the few pennies she needed to live by caring for children that younger and more attractive harlots had the misfortune to accidentally produce.

  When Roget knocked on the door of the hovel, the former bawd opened the door. She was not the old crone that both men had expected. About fifty years of age, she was extremely thin, but upright in her bearing and even though her face was marked with old scars of some disease, probably the pox, a trace of lingering beauty could be seen in her dark eyes and high cheekbones. Her clothing was shabby, but clean, and the coif she wore over her greying hair was whiter than some of those worn by affluent goodwives in the town.

  When Roget told her of Elfreda’s death, tears sprung into her eyes, but she kept her composure and asked them to come in.

  Her dwelling place was comprised of only one room on the lower floor of the tumbledown house with a small scullery at the back. The sounds of tapping could be heard coming from above and Terese explained that the noise was being made by a tinker who lived upstairs. “His work consists mainly of repairing household vessels from goodwives in the town,” she said. “Thankfully, he does not labour at night.”

  In the chamber were half a dozen children, all female, and ranging in age from about a year old to a child of around nine. Terese pointed to one of the smaller ones, a little girl just past the toddling stage, and told them she was Elfie’s daughter, and was called Ducette. The child was a pretty little thing, her hair startlingly blond, and there were two large dimples in her cheeks.

  “She looks just like her mother,” Terese said with a catch in her voice. “I don’t know what will happen to the child now that Elfie is dead. As far as I know, Elfie had no family, not hereabouts, anyway. I can keep Ducette for a little while, but I am not a rich woman, as you can see.”

  She gestured around the room, which was sparsely furnished with a pile of skimpy straw pallets and a few wooden bowls and spoons lying on the surface of a rickety table.

  “Did Elfie ever mention to you that she knew one of the men from the Templar enclave, mistress?” Bascot asked. “Or that she had any intention of going there?”

  Terese shook her head. “I cannot recall her ever speaking about your Order, Sir Bascot, even in passing. But if it was a recent notion, she would not have done so, for I have not seen Elfie since a week past, when she came to pay me the four pennies I charge each mother for the children’s keep. She said nothing to me then that was out of the usual. She played with Ducette for a while and gave her a kiss before she left.”

  “One of the women who worked with Elfreda told us that she was expecting to earn a substantial sum of money for her services on the night she left,” Bascot said. “And a well-filled purse was found alongside her body, so we believe it was the promise of monetary reward that lured her to her death.”

  “I am sure that is so,” Terese agreed. “The mothers of every one of these children are desperate for money. Harlots do not willingly have babies. It only happens when the medicants we use to prevent such an occurrence fail. We know the fate that awaits our offspring—especially the girls. Most of them will end up in the same trade as their dams. I do my best to keep the little ones clean and fed, and teach them what manners I can, but their destiny, unless there is enough money to save them, is to be harlots. There are a few foundling homes available for such children, but not nearly enough.”

  She looked towards the little girls. The eldest was keeping a couple of the younger ones amused by throwing a small coloured ball back and forth, another was drawing in the hard-packed dirt of the floor with a stick while the other two—aged about three or four—were clapping their hands as they repeated a nonsense rhyme in a singsong fashion.

  “I do not tend any male children here. All these little ones will have more than enough congress with men once they are past childhood,” Terese said with a catch in her voice. “For a short time, I save them from that fate.”

  One of the younger children began to cry and Terese picked her up and soothed her. Her world-weary eyes looked straight into Bascot’s blue one as she held the child against her withered breast. “I am sorry I do not have any knowledge that will help you, lord, but there is only one thing I can tell you for certain, and that is Elfreda would not have been tempted to go into the preceptory for love of a man.”

  BASCOT AND ROGET PARTED OUTSIDE THE FORMER PROSTITUTE’S house, the captain to go to the castle and give his report to the sheriff, and the Templar to return to the preceptory. As Bascot rode up the track outside the city walls, he pondered on the motivation for the murder. On the surface, it appeared that it was an attack on the Templar Order, and intended to expose hidden vices. But his thoughts, although he was not aware of it, soon began to echo those of Nicolaa de la Haye. Reluctant as he was to consider it, he came to the realisation that it could have been someone in the Templar enclave who had murdered the harlot, and also desecrated the chapel, in retaliation for what he saw as an unacceptable sin on the part of one of his brethren.

  Viewing the situation dispassionately, he had to admit that there were some in the Order that found the strict dictates of the Rule difficult to obey. Brothers inclined to garrulousness found keeping the Grand Silence during meals irksome; others thought the stricture against hunting a deprivation almost beyond bearing, while some of the knights complained of the forbiddance of adding ornate bridles or reins to the accoutrements of their destriers.

  But most of these were viewed as minor inconveniences; it was the need to be chaste, in accordance with the vow they had taken, that a few of the lustier men found extremely difficult to cope with. For that reason, the punishment for this particular transgression was harsh and every care was taken that none of the brothers, denied access to female flesh, lapsed into the sin of sodomy. Every Templar, of whatever rank, was forbidden to disrobe completely, even when he lay down for his night’s rest. Lights were kept burning all night in dormitories, and the lambskin girdle of chastity, which was donned at the time of initiation, must not be removed.

  From d’Arderon’s assurance to the sheriff, it was apparent that none of the brothers under the preceptor’s regular command had been punished for such a transgression, but that did not mean that the sin had not been committed and kept hidden, at least from the preceptor.

  He considered the characters of the men who lived in the enclave on a regular basis, not even pausing to include d’Arderon, Hamo, Emilius or the priest, Brother John, in his reflections. The preceptor was a man of strict honour and the serjeant the same. Both would rather sacrifice their lives than betray the brotherhood. As for Draper Emilius, even though Bascot felt his probity, too, was beyond question, his withered arm precluded him from suspicion. It would have taken two strong hands to overcome and strangle the young prostitute, a physical ability that Emilius did not have. And it was most unlikely that Brother John, a devout and elderly priest, had gone publicly into town to lure a harlot to her death.

  Apart from these brothers, there were seven men-at-arms who, during the last few years, had been posted more or less permanen
tly in Lincoln. All were veterans who had served in the Holy Land and sent to the Lincoln enclave to man the garrison and help train newly initiated brothers. Bascot knew them all well and found it hard to believe any of them had broken their vow to remain chaste.

  The same could be said of the lay brothers and servants in the enclave. The lay brothers were few in number, comprised of the blacksmith, the elderly cook who prepared the meals they ate, and a widower with carpentry skills that had joined the enclave a few years before, shortly after his wife died. All of them had been in the Lincoln commandery for some time. It seemed improbable that, after so many years of faithful service, one of them would have erred.

  As for the lay servants, menials hired to attend to some of the more tedious tasks in the enclave, again, it was doubtful that any of them could be responsible for the outrage. There were a few grooms who mucked out the stables, a spotty-faced lad who assisted the cook and ran errands, and a young man who had suffered the misfortune of being born with a twisted spine but who, despite his disability, swept out the bail, dusted sleeping pallets with crushed penny-royal to deter fleas and cleaned out the midden. All of them were biddable and seemed content with their lot. None had ever, to Bascot’s knowledge, given cause to be suspected of lasciviousness.

  If his judgements of all those within the Lincoln enclave were correct and, as d’Arderon believed, none guilty of forbidden congress with women, then it followed that it could not have been one of them that had inspired the deep outrage that had prompted this terrible crime.

  That left only the men who had passed through the enclave in the weeks since Eastertide to be considered. Nearly all of them, both those still in the commandery and the men forming the contingent that had recently left, were from commanderies far to the north of Lincoln, from York and another preceptory at Penhill, high in the Yorkshire Moors. Only a couple of the men that were still in the Lincoln commandery were from a closer enclave, the one located at Temple Hirst, a few miles to the northwest in South Yorkshire. But was it reasonable to consider any of these men, all of whom had been in Lincoln for only a short period, and would not be familiar with the location of the numerous brothels in the town?