Shroud of Dishonour

by Ash, Maureen

  Bascot noticed that Askil was watching Joan with undisguised admiration in his eyes. There could be no doubt that the sailor, as Thorson had judged, was in love with her. How far would such devotion drive a man? Would Askil commit murder if Joan asked it of him? The Templar thought it entirely possible. Sven, too, seemed in thrall to his handsome wife. It was evident that this scheme of discovering the identity of her brother’s murderer was of her making. Both her husband and Askil were merely following her direction, taking Dunny along in their wake.

  Bascot switched his gaze to Joan and tried to assess the truth of her words. She had merely glanced at him as she had made her accusation against the Templar Order and her words had been charged with seeming sincerity. But, once again, he had the feeling she was masking her true purpose. He leaned forward and asked a question of his own.

  “Now that you have made Sheriff Camville cognizant of your intent, mistress, you have no need to fear any complicity on my part in aiding the man who killed your brother. Tell us, did either you or your husband discover the name of the guilty knight?”

  “No, we did not,” she replied coolly. “Our journey was in vain.”

  “As is the reason for holding this meeting,” Camville said heatedly. “I am trying to find out who murdered two women and attacked another last night in the town. Your futile search is a distraction and wasting time that I, and my men, could put to better use. You will stay in Lincoln until I receive an answer to the message I sent to Hull. I will allow you to remain in the lodgings you have secured, but Bailiff Thorson will keep watch over all of you.”

  With that, Camville strode to the back of the hall and called loudly for Eudo. When the steward appeared, the sheriff gave him an order to have some wine sent up to his private chamber and left the hall. Lady Nicolaa rose from her chair and Bascot did the same.

  “You have heard my husband’s judgement,” the castellan said to Sven and Joan Grimson. “If you are wise, you will obey his command and not cause him further irritation.”

  As the pair departed, the two seamen trailing behind them in a disconsolate fashion, Bascot took care to notice the manner in which each of them walked. If their story was a cover for a more nefarious purpose, they could still be guilty of the murder of the two prostitutes and the attack on Terese. A glance at Roget told the Templar that the captain was also watching all of the party, including Joan, carefully. But there was no hesitation in the steps of any. Sven paced the length of the hall without a falter in his long-legged stride, and Joan glided over the rushes on the floor of the hall with her head held high. The two sailors followed them with the swaying gait common to seamen. Whatever any of them might be guilty of, it seemed it had not been one of them that had attacked the former prostitute in the street outside Verlain’s bawdy house.

  Twenty-two

  BASCOTAND ROGET DECIDED THATIT WASSTILL EARLY ENOUGH for them to make the trip to the Roulan property at Ingham. The village was situated just a little over eight miles northwest of Lincoln, a distance that would take them barely an hour on horseback. As they rode out of the bail, Roget asked Bascot what he thought of Joan Grimson’s story about the reason she and her husband had gone to Hull.

  “It seems to me,” Bascot said, “that she is lying by omission. Just as we were not told all the facts in the first tale Sven gave us, there are still some details that have been left out.”

  Roget snorted his agreement. “I do not believe that if they had discovered the name of the Templar that killed her brother, she would have meekly told the sheriff about him. If the knight has returned to Lincolnshire, she would have ensured he was dead before she denounced him. She is a determined woman, that one, and does not intend to be thwarted.”

  Bascot nodded. The Templar remembered the besotted look on Askil’s face as Joan had courageously faced Gerard Camville’s threat of imprisonment. The steersman would do anything to please her, Bascot was sure, even commit murder.

  As the pair rode out onto Ermine Street and headed north, they passed many other travellers. Some were on foot—tinkers with packs slung on their shoulders, charcoal burners carrying sacks secured by a heavy band around their forehead, and the occasional tradesman walking alone, carrying a sack of tools. There was wheeled traffic too, a few small carts and a couple of men pushing barrows, along with a small number of affluent merchants on horseback. As they exited Lincoln through Newport Arch, they found a large dray laden high with sacks of grain in front of them. The iron shod wheels on the cart must have been new, for the metal glistened in the early summer sun but, as the wagon began its journey up the dusty road, grime began to film the shiny circles and within a few moments, their brightness started to become tarnished. The rhythmic glitter of the turning wheel was hypnotic and Bascot found his attention drawn to it as they overtook the wagon and passed it.

  It was not long before they came to the turnoff for Ingham. As they slowed to ride onto the track, Roget gestured to the east, where the rolling terrain stretched northeast towards the Humber estuary. “If, as Bailiff Thorson suggested, Grimson’s two seamen did come down the Ancholme in a small skiff, we are not far from where their journey would have ended at Bishopbridge.”

  Bascot turned his head so his sighted eye had a better view of the landscape. Sheep were scattered over the grassland, some partially hidden by the occasional clump of trees or bushes. There were many small villages in the area, and tracks would lead from all of them to join up with the highway, including Bishopbridge. It would not have taken the seamen many hours to walk to Lincoln, just as Thorson had said.

  The path to Ingham was a dusty trail that led west towards the Trent River. Urging their horses into a trot, they rode down the track and through a small village. Beyond the hamlet the road ended, its terminus the large manor house owned by the Roulan family.

  THE RESIDENCE WAS A SOLID STRUCTURE OF TWO STORIES ENCIRCLED by a stout fence of wooden palings. Nicolaa de la Haye had told them that after Jacques left to join the Templars, his father had died, and the eldest brother, Gilbert, had inherited the estate.

  “The property mentioned in the document that Gianni was given to copy is not far from Ingham, near a village called Marton. It was part of the dower Gilbert’s mother brought to her husband on their marriage day,” Nicolaa had told them before they left. “Both Ingham and Marton are part of the demesne I inherited from my father, and held in fee, but it is the property at Ingham that brings in most of their revenue, mainly from sheep. Originally, Jacques was named as beneficiary of the Marton property in his mother’s will, but when he left to join the Templars, she changed the document and named the youngest brother, Hervé, as the son that will inherit Marton after her death. Besides Gilbert and Hervé, there is also a sister. I seem to recall her name is Julia.”

  Nearly all of the Roulan family were inside the capacious hall of the manor house when Bascot and Roget were shown in by a manservant. The eldest brother, Gilbert, a man of about forty years of age with greying hair and weary eyes, was seated with two women at a large oak table in the middle of the room. Slumped in a chair beside an unlit fireplace was a younger man, the aquiline curve of his nose and set of his jaw enough like Gilbert’s to proclaim that he was the youngest brother, Hervé. At his feet was a wine jug and in his hand a full cup. His mulish expression and slack jaw suggested he had been drinking for some time. Leaning against the far wall, alongside an open casement, was a man of an age somewhere between that of the two Roulan brothers. He, too, possessed the same beak of a nose as Gilbert and Hervé, but the rest of his features were more softly cast. He stood with arms folded and a solemn expression on his countenance. The top half of his face was tanned to a copper hue, but the flesh about his mouth and chin was much paler, as though he had recently shaved off a beard. There were no servants present in the room and a faint aura of tension hung in the air, giving the impression that a heated argument had been in progress, which the arrival of Bascot and Roget had interrupted. When the servant announced the name o
f the visitors, Gilbert rose from his chair and came forward to greet them.

  “The sheriff has sent us to ask you a few questions concerning the recent murders that have taken place in Lincoln town,” Roget told Gilbert when he enquired the reason for their presence.

  A wary look came into Gilbert’s eyes, but he bade them be seated and directed the elder of the two women, who he introduced as his wife, Margaret, to bring wine for their guests. She was a few years younger than her husband and had a wan comeliness in her pale blue eyes and small shapely mouth. A few tendrils of blond hair showed at the rim of a linen coif which covered her head in a haphazard fashion, as though she had donned it hastily. Bringing cups from an open-faced cupboard at the end of the room, she poured a full measure in each and then set them before the two visitors.

  The other woman, much younger and with the same dark hair and hazel eyes as Gilbert and Hervé, but without the unfortunate prominence of the family nose, also rose from her seat and went to stand beside the man standing by the window. Her figure was plump, and the set of her shoulders seemed defiant.

  “My sister, Julia,” Gilbert said as she moved away from the table. He then gestured to the man seated by the fireplace. “And that is Hervé, my younger brother.”

  “And this,” Hervé proclaimed in a slurred voice and throwing his arm up and pointing to the man beside his sister, “is Savaric. He is also a relative, a half brother, a baseborn offspring of my father’s lechery, but a member of our family all the same.”

  A look of disgust crossed Julia’s face. “Have another cup of wine, Hervé. Perhaps it will make you incapable of speech, for which we will all be truly thankful.”

  “Enough, both of you,” Gilbert said and turned to Bascot and Roget with a look of apology on his face. “I am sorry if we seem inhospitable. A private matter we were discussing has caused some dissension between us but”—here he gave a stern glance at his siblings—“it will be put aside for now.”

  Returning his attention to his visitors, Gilbert said, “We have heard about the murder of two prostitutes in Lincoln. But I do not understand why you have come to ask us questions about these crimes. I can assure you that neither Hervé nor I are in the habit of frequenting brothels, so we could not have seen or heard anything that would be pertinent.”

  Although it had been Roget who had related the purpose of their coming to Ingham, it was to Bascot that Gilbert, who held the status of knight, made his response, addressing him as a man of equal rank.

  “The reason we have come is that the motivation for both of these murders seems to be dual in nature. The manner in which they were carried out suggests not only a hatred for harlots but also for the Templar Order,” Bascot replied. “We are therefore looking for some trace of a connection between the two. It could be, for instance, that a Templar brother was in the habit of consorting with prostitutes before he joined our ranks and, because of that indulgence, has incurred a grievous enmity in a person who is seeking revenge. We have been told that your brother, Jacques, often sought out the company of such women....”

  A bark of drunken laughter came from Hervé. “Often! That is an understatement. The only time Jacques wasn’t rutting was when he was sleeping. And even then, more often than not, he kept a bawd in bed beside him to be handy for when he woke up.”

  Everyone was, momentarily, shocked into silence by Hervé’s outburst. Julia broke it by striding across the room and slapping her brother firmly across the face. “You pig! Have you no compassion for our brother? I wish it was you who suffered—”

  Gilbert cut his sister’s outburst short. “I said that is enough, Julia. Be quiet!”

  As his sister, her face flaming with anger, clamped her full lips shut and walked defiantly back to stand beside Savaric, Gilbert once again apologised for his family’s rude display of emotion. “We were recently told that Jacques is dead and are all sorely grieved. I fear that sorrow has overtaken my sister’s sensibility.”

  Gilbert’s pronouncement surprised Bascot and he asked how they had learned of their brother’s demise. It was usual for the Order to send a message to the preceptory nearest to the family of any brother who had met his end while serving in their ranks, in order that the dead Templar’s relatives could be informed. None such had come to the Lincoln enclave.

  “Savaric came with the news two weeks ago,” Gilbert replied, waving a hand in the direction of his baseborn half brother. “When Jacques joined the Order, Savaric went with him as his squire. After my brother was taken from his earthly life, Savaric returned here as quickly as he could and told us what had happened. I am sure a report of his death will soon reach your preceptor.”

  Bascot focussed his attention on the man by the casement. Savaric’s grave expression had not altered throughout the exchange between the Templar and Gilbert, nor had he moved when Julia had leapt forward and slapped Hervé’s face. If Savaric had returned to Lincoln after Jacques’ death, it meant he had reneged on his oath to serve in the Templar ranks. It was not a common occurrence for a squire to leave the Order when the lord he followed died, but it was not unknown. Such a sad event usually strengthened a man’s devotion, but there were a few occasions when it eradicated it. Now the darkness of the skin on the upper half of his face was explained. When he had shaved off the beard that was required to be worn by every Templar brother, the newly exposed flesh was much paler than the rest from lack of exposure to the harsh glare of the sun in Outremer.

  “How did Jacques die?” Bascot asked the squire. The Templar recalled that the records in the preceptory had stated that Jacques Roulan had been stationed at Qaqun, near Acre. There were often confrontations with the Saracens in the area and, if the knight had died in battle, the report of Jacques’ death would have been sent quite quickly, for a notation of it would have been included in the details that were sent of any clash with Saracen forces to Templar headquarters in London or Paris. But if Jacques had been stricken with one of the many illnesses that afflicted men in the harsh climes of the Holy Land, it was quite possible the news had been delayed, waiting for inclusion in the next regular report that was sent every few months to London from commanderies in Outremer.

  “Sir Jacques’ horse bit him in the shoulder and the wound suppurated,” Savaric replied in a harsh monotone. “He withstood the infection for a time, but a fever took him in the end.”

  The Templar nodded. Destriers could be fractious and often struck out with teeth or hooves and even if the wound was small, it could easily become putrid. The Templar offered Gilbert condolences for the family’s loss and then returned to the reason he and Roget had come.

  “Even though your brother is dead, it does not change the possibility that the indulgence of his carnal appetites may have spawned a reason for the murders. We are considering the likelihood that it may be a woman who is responsible and that the passage of time has deepened her hatred. Are you aware of any paramour that Jacques had, highborn or otherwise, that may have been left distraught, or in humiliating circumstances, by his desertion?

  Hervé, far from being discountenanced by his sister’s attack, now lurched to his feet. “If you mean, Sir Bascot, did my brother leave a pregnant female behind him when he went overseas, the answer can only be one of uncertainty. Jacques roamed far and wide to take his pleasure. He could have scattered bastards from Nottingham to York for all we know.”

  Now it was Gilbert who became angry with his brother and, rising, he went over and pushed the drunken man back in his chair. “If you cannot speak of Jacques with respect, then speak not at all, Hervé. If you open your mouth again, you will feel the weight of my fist.”

  Gilbert returned to his chair and once again expressed his regret for one of his sibling’s unseemly behaviour. “All of our family are under great pressure at the moment,” he said tightly. “It is not so long since my father died and then Savaric brought the news about Jacques . . . Hervé seeks solace in a wine cup, while our mother lies upstairs on her bed and refuses to ri
se. It is a difficult time.”

  He motioned for his wife to refill his wine cup before he continued. “To answer your question in a sensible fashion, Sir Bascot, I do not know of any woman that Jacques may have treated in the fashion you suggest. There had been no marriage arranged for him, nor had he professed any interest in a woman of suitable rank. As for any . . . other females he consorted with, of them I have no knowledge. To put it less crudely than Hervé, not only was Jacques of a licentious nature, he was also fickle with it.”

  “Did he visit any brothels in Lincoln?” Bascot asked. Even though Jacques Roulan had left Lincoln well over a year ago there might have been a prostitute who, like dead Elfie, had borne a child and believed him to be the father. The Templar remembered the bitterness with which Terese had spoken of the ways of men. A woman struggling to raise an infant may well have felt hatred for the man who impregnated her and focussed her rage on the Order he had joined. If so, other women in her profession would be an easy target, for none would expect violence from one of their own.

  “He may have done, and most probably did,” Gilbert replied. “He visited stewes in most of the towns throughout Lincolnshire.”

  The eldest Roulan brother raised his tired eyes to Bascot. “Jacques’ immoral behaviour caused my father much distress. While it is understandable for a man to visit a brothel on occasion, there was no excuse for my brother to neglect his duties on our demesne so he could spend his days in a constant bout of drinking and whoring. He was never here, and not often at the Marton property that would one day be his and which Father had given into his charge. Finally, my sire issued an ultimatum and told Jacques that if he did not mend his ways, he would disown him. At first, my brother paid no mind and continued with his profligacy, but when Father ordered all of Jacques’ belongings packed into a coffer and told him to leave, my brother finally realised our sire’s threat had not been an idle one.