Shroud of Dishonour

by Ash, Maureen

  “The bâtard must have strangled her first,” Roget went on, “because only a little blood had seeped from the wound.”

  “And you say he carved a Templar cross on her?” Ernulf asked disbelievingly.

  Roget nodded. “Aye, he did. A downward slash and a sideways stroke on one breast. He even splayed the ends out like they are on the crosses the brothers wear. He wanted to be sure there was no mistake of his intent.”

  Shaken by the recollection, Roget took a hefty swallow from the wine cup he held. Ernulf, too, was staggered by the captain’s description. His broad callused hands tightened around the cup he was holding, the knuckles turning white. “Hanging is too good for the villain that did this,” he growled. “He should be hung, drawn and quartered.”

  “I think both the sheriff and preceptor are of a like mind,” Roget replied. “D’Arderon is furious and Camville will be doubly so when he learns of this second murder. When we discover the identity of this chien, he will rue the day his mother bore him.”

  “What about the man who found her? Are you sure he isn’t the guilty one?” Ernulf asked.

  Roget shook his head. “I do not think so. He is one of her patrons, a wealthy armourer in the town. He says he found her when he turned up for his weekly visit and I think he is telling the truth.”

  Gianni recalled some gossip about the prostitute that had circulated among the servants in the castle household some months before. It was said that, about two years previously, she had arrived in Lincoln riding a fine palfrey and accompanied by a manservant who left her company just after their arrival. There had been much speculation about her identity after she had taken up residence in the house in Danesgate, since the house, it was said, was owned by a man of high birth who lived in Newark. The rumour went that he had married a woman of his own class just after Adele’s arrival. The gossips also said that the harlot had been the nobleman’s leman and the house—a dwelling situated on a street inhabited by people of moderate means—had been his payment to her for leaving Newark before he wedded his young wife. After she had settled in, Adele had patronised shops in the town and let it be known by her manner and suggestive glances that her charms were for sale, and that the price of buying them would not be cheap. It had not taken long before men were knocking at her door, but she turned away all except for a select few.

  “He might be lying,” Ernulf said in response to Roget’s opinion that the armourer was not guilty. “Maybe she had decided she didn’t want him to visit her anymore and he was angry for the dismissal. You are sure it wasn’t him?”

  Roget shook his head. “She had been dead for at least twelve hours when he found her last evening and raised the alarm. This morning, early, I went and questioned his family—he is a widower but has two sons and a daughter—and his servants, and they all gave witness that he had been with them all through the previous night and the morning until he went to the shop where he fashions the armour he sells. One of his apprentices lives in his house and he was with the armourer for the rest of the day. It could not have been him.”

  “Did the villain leave anything behind in Adele’s house that might help you find out who he is?” Ernulf asked.

  “Only one thing,” Roget said grimly. “Just like was done with Elfreda’s body, Adele had a leather pouch full of coins lying close beside her. I counted them. There were thirty silver pennies.”

  IN THE PRECEPTORY, BASCOT AND EMILIUS REVIEWED THE LIST that had been sent from London with details of the men belonging to the delayed contingent. As d’Arderon had said, the only information it contained was each man’s name, rank and length of service. Before the draper sat down to write letters to all the preceptories from which they had come, the pair discussed each one, trying to recall the little that had been said during snatched exchanges of conversation while the newcomers had been in the commandery. It was not much and, except for the two knights that had told of their previous battle experience—the one who had fought with William Marshall on the continent and the former crusader—none had mentioned any personal details, either of their lives before they joined the Order, or in the time since.

  Of the eighteen men, apart from Bascot, that had been scheduled to leave for Portsmouth the next day, nine were from Penhill, a preceptory some miles northwest of York. Of these, eight were comprised of the four knights in the contingent, and included the two young men who had recently received their spurs of knighthood, and their squires. Both of the older knights were widowers and had requested admittance to the Order for a period of five years. The ninth man was a man-at-arms, a veteran Templar, who had been reassigned to active duty.

  Of the remaining nine men, five were from the preceptory at York. All were of men-at-arms rank and had been stationed in the northern preceptory over the winter months while they waited to be sent overseas. The other four were from Temple Hirst in South Yorkshire. One was a man-at-arms who had proved himself to have an exceptional skill with horses and was to take charge of the contingent’s animals and see them safely to their destination. The other three comprised of two men-at-arms who had joined the brotherhood some years before and the last was the recently initiated young lad who had suffered from gripes in his belly on the night Elfreda had been killed.

  Taking the Templar seal, an image of two men astride one horse, from the wooden box where it was kept, Emilius then laid out some parchment, an inkpot and quill, and prepared to make a start on the messages. Despite the handicap of performing the task one-handed, he was surprisingly adept at handling the scribing tools. Once the letters were finished, he would roll them up and seal them with some melted wax, and press the seal into the surface. They would then be taken by messengers to their destination. As he picked up the quill to start on the first one, he gave a sigh.

  “These are to be sent off directly after I have completed them. If the messengers meet with no delays in obtaining the responses, they should return by the day after tomorrow.”

  As he dipped the quill into the ink, he added, “I shall pray that the preceptor’s suspicions prove unfounded. It is hard to think that one of our brothers could be guilty.”

  When Bascot agreed with the sentiment, Emilius rubbed his hand over the sling on his withered arm and said, “During the battle when I received this wound, one of our Portuguese brothers lost his life to a Saracen arrow. We had been sent out into the countryside south of Almourol to try and find a band of Moors that had been ravaging villages in the area. We had been gone for some hours and had stopped to take a brief rest when the heathens attacked us, taking us by surprise. The brother who was killed had unbuckled the ventail over his chin and mouth to take a sup of water and an arrow took him in the cheek. It went deep and into his brain. He died almost at once.”

  The draper’s eyes misted in sad remembrance. “Before we left Almourol to seek the Moors, that same knight had just completed his punishment for consorting with one of the Christian women in a village near the castle. She was a pretty thing, lushly formed as many of the women from Portugal are, and was unmarried and willing. The temptation was too great for him to resist, I suppose, and he bedded her. No one knew he had done so, but his conscience lay heavy on him and he went to our commander, confessed his sin and willingly paid penance. While I do not condone his breaking of his vow, I understand it. For brothers who are lusty, chastity is hard to bear.”

  He gestured towards the list of names. “If any of the men we are enquiring about has committed that same transgression, and has atoned, surely their wrongdoing could not spawn such hatred as these crimes suggest? Those of us who remain chaste are only too aware how hard it is to resist a woman’s charms and would understand, and forgive, the sin of a brother who has strayed.”

  “Sometimes envy is just as great a spur as lust, Emilius,” Bascot replied. “To watch another enjoy what you fervently desire can, in some men, foster a deep resentment which can turn to hatred.”

  The draper nodded. “You may be right,” he admitted reluctantly. “
It could be that one of our brothers has succumbed to what St. Paul called mysterium iniquitatis—the mystery of evil. But I hope it proves not to be a Templar that has either caused, or perpetrated these murders. The crimes are terrible ones for any man to commit, but for a Templar it is doubly so. He will not only have betrayed Christ and his brethren, but every man, woman and child in Christendom. The faith the populace have in the probity of those who belong to the Order will be severely tested.”

  Bascot nodded in commiseration. The purpose of the Order was to protect Christians; if it was found that one of its members had killed two Christian women, it would break a trust that should be inviolable. The doubting glances passersby had directed at Bascot on the day he had gone into town with Roget would become ones of loathing and disgust.

  Emilius looked up, his face suddenly etched with determination. “As the preceptor said, we are at battle with this villain, Templar or not. The outcome shall be as God wills it. In that we must trust.”

  Ten

  LATER THAT AFTERNOON, AT D’ARDERON’S DIRECTION, BASCOT went to the castle to speak to Gerard Camville. The Templar told Camville the departure of the contingent had been postponed and that the preceptor was taking steps to try and find any information that might uncover the identity of the murderer.

  Camville had listened in silence while Bascot had been speaking, pacing back and forth on the hard-packed earth of the ward as he did so. Finally, he said, “And if the initiator of these crimes proves to be a Templar, will I be apprised of that fact?”

  Bascot made no reply and the question hung unanswered in the air. After a few uncomfortable moments, the sheriff nodded, and said, “So be it. Since you will now be in the Lincoln enclave for the nonce, is d’Arderon still willing for you to give your assistance in the investigation?”

  Bascot confirmed that the preceptor’s sanction continued and, learning that Camville intended to send Roget into the town to question Adele’s patrons, suggested he accompany the captain. The sheriff gave his assent and the two men, relieved to be away from Camville’s ill-humour, walked down into the town through Bailgate, the massive arch that separated the upper portion of the town from the lower, and then down the aptly named Steep Hill onto the main thorough-fare of Mikelgate.

  The house where Adele Delorme had lived and subsequently been murdered was on Danesgate, a side street that debouched into Mikelgate near the bottom of Steep Hill. Roget had told the Templar of his finding of the thirty silver coins but admitted that, in the confusion surrounding the discovery of the body, he had not had time to search the premises thoroughly. It was possible, they decided, that he had missed some trace of the murderer’s presence and so they began their enquiry at Adele’s house.

  Danesgate curved in an arc down to Claxledgate on the eastern side of the city. Bascot had been in this area once before, when he had gone to view the bodies of four people that had been found murdered in an alehouse. Adele’s house was not quite so far along the road as the alehouse, and was a dwelling of modest size, two stories high, squeezed in between two houses of more substantial proportions. The location of Adele’s house, Bascot noted, was not far from the eastern wall of the town and a small gateway that led out onto the path up to the preceptory. As d’Arderon had pointed out, it would not have taken long for a man to come into the town that way, enter the prostitute’s house and murder her, and then make his escape outside the walls via the same route. The thought that it might have been a Templar brother that had done so filled him with dread.

  As they stood in front of Adele’s door, Roget told Bascot that the prostitute’s body had been removed to the charnel house of the nearby church of St. Cuthbert. “It was in a terrible state, mon ami. The priest at St. Cuthbert uses the services of a couple of parish goodwives to prepare female corpses for burial. I have no doubt they will have spread reports throughout the town by nightfall of the butchery done to Adele’s body.”

  They opened the door and went in. The entryway was small, with a floor of grey slate and a flight of stairs leading to the upper storey on one side. Climbing the stairs, they went into the bedroom where the harlot had been found. Apart from a small amount of blood that had dribbled from Adele’s postmortem wounds onto a sheepskin rug that had been lying underneath her body, the room was hardly disturbed. A bed with a thick mattress was against one wall, a silken cover pushed back as though the occupant of the bed had risen hastily, and a small table set with a flagon of wine and pewter cups stood in one corner. The furnishings were of good quality. Beside the sheepskin rug, there were two chairs with arms and padded seats. A small tapestry hung on the wall near the bed. It depicted Jesus driving out the seven devils that had inhabited the body of Mary the Magdalene, a woman that many clerics claimed had been a prostitute.

  They searched among the dead woman’s personal possessions; a chest filled with clothes made from expensive materials, a small casket with a few items of jewellery, one or two set with semi-precious stones, and a small cupboard that held vials of perfume and pots of unguents. Both men felt a reluctance for the task, it was as though they were prying into the dead woman’s intimate secrets. Underneath the clothes in the chest, they found a silk purse containing about five pounds in silver coins.

  Finding nothing that gave them a clue to Adele’s intruder, they went into an adjoining chamber, but it was empty except for some boxes containing more clothing and some household linen. In the corner was a trestle bed. On it was a rolled up straw mattress and a pile of rough woollen blankets. Roget had been told by the armourer who had found Adele’s body that the servant employed by the prostitute had recently left and not been replaced. This would most likely have been the room a maidservant would use.

  They went downstairs and into a small room that led off the entryway. It appeared to be a chamber that the harlot had used for a preliminary entertaining of her male guests before retiring to the bedchamber upstairs. Besides a table and two comfortable chairs, there was a brazier in one corner containing a few remnants of cold charcoal. On the table was an unstoppered jug of wine and a pewter cup filled to the brim. It was a handsomely appointed chamber, with wood panelling extending halfway up the walls and small tapestries hung above with depictions that were lascivious in nature. One featured a unicorn with an engorged phallus preparing to mount a snow white mare and the others were of scantily clad maidens posing in forest glades or reclining by secluded pools. Again there was no sign of a disturbance. If the murderer had been a patron of Adele’s, it was likely she had offered him a cup of wine in here—which he had not drunk—and then taken him upstairs, and to her death.

  The captain was glad that Bascot was with him. This investigation was not a task that Roget relished. More accustomed to using his fists or sword in direct confrontations with thieves and other petty miscreants, he was well aware that he had little skill in detecting the nuances that betrayed the identity of a murderer. The Templar, on the other hand, had a facility for searching out seemingly irrelevant inconsistencies and proving they were important. Roget did not know if Bascot’s talent was due to the education he had received in a monastery during his youth or whether his years of imprisonment had made him more sensitive to his surroundings but, whatever the reason, the captain was more than willing to let the Templar take the lead in their search.

  “Are there any buildings at the back of the premises?” Bascot asked, breaking in on Roget’s reverie.

  “Only a shed,” the captain replied, leading the Templar out of the chamber and along a narrow passageway to a small enclosed yard.

  There was little else and the two men were preparing to depart when the gate in the shoulder-high fence that surrounded the yard opened and a woman came through. She was about twenty-five years of age, demurely garbed in a plain grey gown and wore a white linen headdress. The rim of hair showing at the edge of her coif was dark brown. She was not uncomely, but neither was she handsome. Her most attractive feature was her eyes, which were a warm hazel colour and had a liv
ely sparkle. Her glance flicked to the Templar badge Bascot wore on the shoulder of his tunic and then to Roget, dwelling on the copper rings that were threaded through his beard before she spoke to him.

  “Are you the captain of the sheriff’s town guard?” she asked in a voice that was soft and mellow.

  “I am,” Roget confirmed.

  “I saw you both enter Adele’s house from next door, which is where I live,” she said. “My name is Constance Turner and I wanted to speak to you.”

  Looking behind her, she motioned to someone on the other side of the gate. A young serving maid crept through. She was a very small and skinny young girl, and looked to be no more than fifteen years old. Her bony little face was fearful and she was wringing her hands in distress.

  “This is my maid, Agnes,” Constance said. “I think she may have seen the man that murdered my neighbour.”

  “I AM A PERFUME AND UNGUENT MAKER,” MISTRESS TURNER said, “and, because goat’s milk is kind to women’s skin, I often use it in my preparations. I like to get it as fresh as possible and buy it from a neighbour just a few houses away who milks his goats early in the morning. Yesterday, I sent Agnes with a jug to get some and, as she was returning, she saw a man knocking at Adele’s door.”

  Mistress Turner then added, without any seeming embarrassment for living in such close proximity to a prostitute, “All of us who live in the adjoining houses were well aware that Adele was a harlot and thought none the worse of her for it. She was a good neighbour, discreet and kindly spoken, and so we took no notice of the men who came to visit her on a regular basis. They, too, were circumspect and all of them are, or were, in the habit of coming in the evening, after dark. To see a man knocking on Adele’s door at such an early hour drew Agnes’s attention.” She glanced at the maid and bid her relate what she had seen.

  The maid was shy, but her confidence had been bolstered by her mistress’s ease of manner. “ ’Twas like Mistress Turner said, lords,” she told them. “It were early, just after Prime. I was comin’ back with the goat’s milk when I saw this man walkin’ ahead of me. I didn’t take no notice ’til he stopped and rapped on Mistress Adele’s door. After a minute or two, I saw her open it and speak to the man, and then she let him in.”