Shroud of Dishonour

by Ash, Maureen

  The man with him was shorter and darker, with long brown hair tied back with a leather thong, and heavily muscled shoulders. His attitude to Sven Grimson seemed deferential as he stood patiently listening to the other man’s words, but there was no trace of obsequiousness on a face that had been tanned by sun and wind to the texture and colour of leather. At his belt was a knife, the sheath made of some type of fish skin, and he fingered the haft in an absentminded fashion while he and Grimson spoke together. As Thorson led Bascot and Roget up to the two men, the bailiff said in an undertone that the shorter man was Robert Scallion’s steersman, Askil. As the steersman turned his face towards them, the oddness in the colour of his eyes was immediately apparent. One was a clear pale blue, the other dark hazel, a striking difference that made his countenance seem strangely awry.

  After introducing Bascot and Roget to the two men, Thorson repeated what he had told Joan as to the reason for the presence in Grimsby of a Templar knight and a soldier in the service of the sheriff of Lincoln. Both Grimson and Askil looked shocked when they heard the details of the two murders, and Grimson immediately denied, albeit in a less truculent manner than his wife’s, of having any complicity in the crimes.

  “I will admit,” he said to Bascot in a straightforward fashion, “that I would like to see the Templar that killed Robert answer for his villainy, but I can see no purpose in murdering two women, or any other persons, for the sake of that animosity. Such deaths will not change what has happened or bring my wife’s brother back to life.”

  Askil’s denial was in the same vein. “Robert was my friend and I mourn him,” he said simply, the vowels in his words flatter and harder than those usually heard in the local accent. “But I have no desire for revenge, nor have tried to take any.”

  “Were you in the brothel on the night Robert Scallion was killed?” Bascot asked the steersman. Only a few details about the actual murder of the boat owner had been included in Master St. Maur’s letter and it was possible this man might have seen something or somebody that could help them confirm or refute whether Scallion’s death was connected to the recent murders.

  Askil shook his head. “The ship was loaded with cargo,” he said, “and I stayed with it along with most of the crew. Robert went into Acre to see a spice merchant in one of the souks. He said that if he could get a good price, he had a mind to buy a small quantity of nutmeg and cinnamon to bring back with us to sell in one of the ports along the French coast. Whether he made a contract to buy some of the spices or not, I do not know, and neither did the crew member who accompanied him when he went into the town.”

  “And it was from this crew member that you learned of your captain’s death?” Bascot asked.

  “Aye,” Askil replied. “Dunny came haring back to the ship in the early hours of the morning. Said Robert had gone into a brothel and got into a fight with another Englishman.”

  “And this Dunny, did he come back to Grimsby with you and, if so, is he still here?”

  Askil nodded, then turned around and gave a piercing whistle in the direction of the men who were mending nets a little farther along the shore. When he had their attention, the steersman made a motion for one of them to come forward and, reluctantly, the man did so.

  Some years younger than Askil, who looked to be in his mid-thirties, Dunny was lean of build, with straggly hair hanging in greasy clumps on his shoulders and a face scarred by old craters of childhood pustules. Sparse hair grew on his chin and he rubbed at it nervously as he joined the group, avoiding eye contact with anyone but Askil.

  “This is Sir Bascot and Captain Roget, Dunny,” the steersman told him. “They have come to ask about the death of Captain Scallion. Repeat what you know about the fight in Acre that took his life.”

  Dunny shuffled his feet for a moment and Sven Grimson, his voice tinged with impatience, said, “Speak up, man. Just tell what you saw.”

  Faced with a direct command from Grimson, the young sailor began his tale, stumbling over his words at first, then growing more confident as he went on. “The cap’n took me with him that night, just in case there was a need for someone to carry whatever he might buy from the merchant in the souk. He didn’t get anything, tho’, said we had to come back the next day. Then he said we’d go to a brothel he knew of, ’cause it was time I had a taste of some foreign women.”

  Dunny looked up at that point in his narrative and spoke directly to Roget who, the sailor rightly assumed, was partial to the company of women and would be more understanding of the reason for a visit to a stewe. “I’d only ever worked on fishing boats from hereabouts ’til the cap’n took me on board his cog and I’d never before been to a brothel the likes of those they have in France or Spain. The cap’n said the ones in the Holy Land were even better.”

  When Thorson gave Dunny a censorious glance for declaring his enjoyment of such places, the young sailor dropped his eyes before continuing. “The brothel was not what I’d expected. They had young boys for hire there as well as women. Outright sodomists, some of them were, and they gave me some sort of drink that the cap’n said was the closest thing they had to English ale. I took only one swallow and left the rest. It tasted like cat’s piss.”

  “Just get on to what happened to Robert,” Grimson said with irritation. “We don’t need to know all the sordid details.”

  “Aye, master,” Dunny replied obediently. “There was a lot of men in the place, mostly heathens, all dickering over the women—and boys—on display, and the cap’n took a fancy to one of the girls, a right little darlin’ she was, with long black hair and great big ...” A glare from Grimson curtailed his description of the bawd and he gulped nervously before he continued. “I couldn’t understand what the cap’n was sayin’ to the stewe-holder ’cause they was speakin’ in the language they all talk in those parts, but I think he had made an offer for her when another man came into the brothel. The newcomer was dressed in good clothes and had a beard, I remember, and he walked right up to where the cap’n was standin’ and said somethin’ to the stewe-keeper, then flashed a pile of silver coins he took from his purse. The stewe-keeper looked at the man who had just come in and nodded, then shrugged his shoulders at the cap’n as much as to say he was sorry, but the other man would be havin’ the girl.

  “The cap’n turned to the stranger—somehow I thought as how they knew each other, just by the way the cap’n looked at him—and told him to feck off. The other man pushed the cap’n in the shoulder, and told him, in English, to do the same and to find another girl ’cause he wasn’t getting this one. ’Twas then the cap’n called him a Templar, sayin’ as how he was breakin’ his vows by being in the place at all, let alone payin’ for the company of one of the women.”

  Dunny shrugged his shoulders. “That was when the other man and the cap’n started to fight. They traded a few blows and the cap’n fell on the floor. The cap’n was a right good brawler, but the man he was fightin’ was more than a match for him. All the rest of the men in the brothel was yelling, but I couldn’t understand what any of ’em was saying. The whoremaster was screamin’, too, and started banging on a big drum he had beside him. I thought as how I should maybe help the cap’n in some way, but couldn’t see what I could do. If the cap’n couldn’t get the best of the other Englishman, there was no way I was going to be able to. I wouldn’t have had a chance anyway, ’cause it was then that I saw a knife flash between the pair of ’em.”

  Tears came into Dunny’s eyes and he faltered for a moment. Askil laid a hand on his shoulder and the young sailor swallowed a couple of times to smother his anguish and then finished the tale. “I don’t rightly know which of ’em pulled the knife, whether it was the cap’n or the other Englishman, ’cause everyone was millin’ around and I couldn’t see right plain,” he said. “Alls I knows is that blood started to gush and I saw the cap’n go still. The stranger got up from where the pair of ’em was lying and one of the heathen customers tried to grab ahold of him, but he knocked the man
down and scarpered out of there like a flash of lightnin’ just before two big infidels rushed in—I think they was men the stewe-keeper hired to keep peace in the place and had come when they heard the drum bangin’. I went over to where the cap’n was laying, but I could see he was dead. The blade had took him under the ribs; must have gone right through his heart, so I ran out of the place myself. I didn’t want one of those heathen bastards grabbin’ ahold of me, and I run as fast as I could back to the ship.”

  Bascot looked at Askil. “And then what happened?” he asked.

  The steersman’s face was full of grief as he finished the young seaman’s tale. “An official from the port arrived almost on Dunny’s heels. I went and identified Robert’s body and was told that the man who killed him had not been caught. I offered the information that he was a Templar knight, but apparently the stewe-holder had already told them he belonged to the Order, but that he didn’t know his name.”

  “How did you know he was a knight and not of man-at-arms rank?” Bascot asked.

  “Dunny told me,” Askil replied.

  Bascot turned to the younger sailor with an interrogative look.

  The young seaman answered the unspoken question readily enough. “He was wearin’ clothes that was too fine for an ordinary soldier,” he replied. “They was made of better stuff than any man-at-arms would own and his gloves were soft leather. And the way he spoke to the cap’n—even if he was angry and swearing—it was educated like. He was a knight, right enough. Anyone could see that.”

  Bascot accepted the explanation. There was a difference in the type of cloth used for garments in the ranks of the Templar Order. Those of knight’s rank wore clothing made from finely spun wool or closely woven linen, while the material used for the serjeants’ and men-at-arms’ garments was a much rougher type of cloth. Bascot briefly wondered why the knight had been wearing gloves in such a hot climate but, thinking it was possible he had injured his hands in some way, gave it no more thought and asked Askil what had ensued after he had identified Scallion’s corpse.

  “The official who was questioning me asked where our cargo had been bought and who from, then I was given permission to take Robert’s body on board our ship and leave the port. We waited until we were well away from the harbour and buried the captain at sea.”

  A silence fell over the little group at Askil’s last words. Even though the recounting of Scallion’s murder had been told in sketchy words by the young seaman, it was vivid, and Bascot could understand why Joan, Scallion’s sister, had been so angry. That a Templar had not only broken his vow of chastity by frequenting a brothel, but also committed the sacrilege of killing a Christian and fellow country-man was enough to raise the ire of any who heard the tale, let alone that of a family member. Bascot, although well aware that there would always be men who broke solemn oaths—history recorded that even kings that done it in the past—was heartily sorry that such a one had apparently been a Templar brother. However, he also knew that the Order did all it could to prevent any applicant suspected of harbouring baseness in his soul from joining its ranks. The sins of this one man should not be allowed to taint the purity of the many brothers who served the cause of Christ with absolute fidelity.

  He glanced at Sven Grimson’s face. His features had remained impassive throughout the recounting but he had heard the tale before and it would have been easy for him to disguise his true feelings. Was he as innocent of wishing revenge for Scallion’s death as he claimed? Or had he, along with his wife and Scallion’s good friend, Askil, conspired to murder the two Lincoln prostitutes as a means of extracting retribution?

  “We shall need an account of your whereabouts, Grimson, during all the hours of the day the first prostitute was killed eight days back,” Bascot said. “And also for the time of the second murder, three days ago.”

  It took a moment for the purpose behind the Templar’s instruction to register, but when it did, Grimson’s face tightened into an angry scowl. “Are you accusing me of killing those bawds?” he demanded, his hand dropping to the knife he wore at his belt. “I have already told you I have no knowledge of their deaths. Do you insult my honour by implying I have lied?”

  Bascot took up the challenge with one of his own. “An innocent man would not balk at giving proof of his claim. It is not I who insult your honour, but yourself, Grimson.”

  Seeing the anger that flashed in the glacial blue of the Templar’s eye, Bailiff Thorson intervened. “Sir Bascot is right, Sven. If you are, as you say, not involved in these killings, then you have no reason not to answer. Tell us where you were on the days the two women were murdered.”

  Grimson’s aspect turned surly, but he realised the futility of pitting his strength against that of a Templar knight, and answered the question. “About ten days ago, Joan and I took one of my boats and went up to Hull to look into the practicality of keeping Robert’s vessel and becoming, as he was, a trader. I am a fisherman; I know nothing of transporting commodities overseas and wanted to speak to some of the merchants that Robert did business with there. Hull is a large port and the one where Robert took a lot of his cargo on board. We wanted to see if these merchants, now that Robert is dead, would continue to trade with me. If the venture did not seem to be viable, we thought we would sell the ship.”

  “How long were you and your wife in Hull?” Bascot asked.

  “We did not return until yesterday,” Grimson replied.

  “Then you were both away from Grimsby during the times the murders took place,” Bascot stated flatly. “Do you have witnesses in Hull to verify your claim of being there?”

  “Yes,” the boat owner replied angrily, “Askil and Dunny were with us as a skeleton crew on the journey and can verify our whereabouts. And the merchants we visited, they will tell you the same if you wish to go to Hull and speak to them.”

  Bascot saw the flash of apprehension, albeit quickly masked, in Askil’s eyes, as Grimson went on. “We discovered it will require a considerable outlay of silver to hire a crew and pay a deposit of surety for any cargo entrusted to me, so we also made enquiries about anyone who would be willing to purchase the boat and for how much. If you contact these men they will confirm that I was there.”

  Hull was in the county of Yorkshire and some thirty miles to the northwest on the northern shore of the Humber estuary, so any journey there, except by boat, involved crossing the estuary on a ferry. It was a long way for Bascot and Roget to travel to verify Grimson’s statement, especially since it would be necessary for them to return to Lincoln first so that Roget could get Camville’s permission to continue the investigation beyond the borders of Lincolnshire, and into a county that was outside the sheriff’s jurisdiction. Roget glanced at Bascot. Camville’s writ authorised the arrest of any individual that was thought to be suspicious. Grimson, his wife, Askil and Dunny could be taken into custody and detained until proof of their presence in Hull over the ten-day period was obtained. That way, the onus would be on them, rather than on the sheriff, to supply witnesses that would attest to Sven’s veracity, either in person or by signed documentation. If Grimson was telling the truth, there would be no choice but to accept his word that the steersman and young sailor had accompanied him and his wife. It was not likely that any of the Hull merchants would have knowledge of the identity of the men who had crewed the fisherman’s boat.

  Bascot gave Roget an almost imperceptible shake of his head. Until they had further reason to suspect Grimson and the others of the crimes, it would be precipitate to arrest them. The Templar, however, did not intend to let them believe that he and Roget found their story entirely credible. There had to be a reason for Grimson’s reluctance to admit his whereabouts during the times the prostitutes had been murdered. Bascot was sure he was lying about something and until the truth of his tale was determined, he did not intend to allow the wealthy fisherman to believe his story had been accepted.

  “For now, Grimson, I will advise Sheriff Camville that you and your
wife do not seem to have any complicity in the crimes he is investigating,” Bascot said. “But I am sure he will send a messenger to the bailiff in Hull with a request that steps be taken to confirm your claim. Until that is done, both you and your wife, along with Askil and Dunny, will remain in Grimsby and report each evening to Bailiff Thorson. If any of you fail to appear as instructed, you will be declared outlaw and all your goods and chattels confiscated.”

  Grimson’s pale face mottled red with fury as Bascot was speaking. “You cannot place such a restriction on me,” he shouted in outrage. “You are not an officer of the king.”

  “Sir Bascot may not be, but I am,” Roget interjected, his fearsome visage set in a merciless smile as he pulled Gerard Camville’s writ from the inside of his tunic and held it up so the sheriff’s seal could be seen dangling from the bottom. “You will do as the Templar says, or suffer the consequences.”

  Sixteen

  LATER THAT EVENING, AFTER A FINE MEAL OF POACHED SALMON and vegetable pottage provided by Thorson’s plump and amiable wife, Bascot and Roget sat with the bailiff in his office over a jug of excellent Spanish wine and discussed the probability of Sven and Joan Grimson, along with the two sailors, being responsible for the recent murders.

  “I still don’t believe that any of them, especially Sven or Joan, are capable of such grisly acts,” Thorson said, leaning back in his chair and lacing his fingers over his swelling paunch as he mused. “On the other hand, if it was a Templar knight that had been murdered, and it was known he was the one that killed Robert Scallion, I might say differently. Such revenge would be understandable. But killing two harlots and carving one of them up—no, I do not think so.”