by Maureen Ash
She stopped for a moment and wiped her running nose on the sleeve of her gown. “I went down to the taproom and opened the door, thinking I’d pull him a draft, just to set him right, you know. When I went inside, it was still dark from the shutters being closed and I went. .. I went…”
Here she broke down and began to sob again. Father Anselm took up her tale. “Apparently she went to open the shutters and stumbled over something. As she fell she realised it was a person lying on the floor. She was not alarmed at first. It seems”-and here he looked down with a stern but understanding expression at the woman, who was again hiding her head in her hands-“that there are often patrons who spend the night on the floor after they have had more ale than is good for them. However, when she managed to get the shutters open she found that there were not one but four prone figures on the floor, and that they were not insensible from drink, but dead. One of them was her husband.”
Bascot regarded the nearly incoherent woman and spoke to the priest. “The serjeant and I will go and see for ourselves what is at the alehouse. Please keep Mistress Agnes here until we return.”
Father Anselm, with a resigned sigh, agreed to do as he had been asked. The corners of his mouth turned down in an exasperated grimace as they left him to the difficult duty of trying to console the unfortunate alewife.
Coming outside from the dark interior of the church the light of the sun, which even this early had more heat than was usual, dazzled their eyes. They went across the cobbles to the door of the alehouse, ignoring the stares of a small crowd that had now begun to gather about the horses and men-at-arms, and removed the bar which the priest had placed across it. From the outside it had the appearance of a moderately well-run establishment. The walls had been freshly limed and the shutters were clean and in good repair. The sign above the lintel had been recently repainted. But as Bascot pushed the door open the smell of heat and death, wrenchingly familiar from the time of his captivity, rushed out to meet him. No amount of cleanliness or industry could defeat that stench.
Ernulf told the two men-at-arms to remain where they were, then he and Bascot went in, finding themselves standing on a small threshold just inside the door. To the right was the entrance to the taproom, in front of them a passage with what appeared to be an open door leading outside at its end, and to their left a flight of narrow stairs presumably giving access to the floor above. Both men drew their swords and, moving swiftly, made a thorough search of the premises. They found no sign of any intruder.
Returning to the taproom they stepped inside, the death smell more pungent here. The interior was dim, lit only by the glare of the sun glancing off the wall of the building opposite through the one open casement which the alewife had unshuttered. The bodies lay like piles of unwashed linen on the floor and Ernulf stepped around them to throw open the other casement. The scuttling of rats could be heard, and the insistent drone of flies.
The task was unpleasant, but necessary, and one by one Ernulf and Bascot went to each body and examined it. There were three men and a woman. One of the men was elderly, and wore the long beard of a Jew. Nearest to the door, he was half-propped against a three-legged stool. At the front of his gown was a long rent through which the marks of a dagger thrust could be seen just below his heart; a thin trickle of blood mixed with the grey hairs on his chest. The exposed tissue had a drained look and was tinged a bluish white. His face was the colour of clay, the mouth hanging slackly and the lids of his eyes not quite closed. His hands lay one on each side of his body, loosely, palms up. The left one bore evidence that the rats had begun to feed.
The body in the far corner was that of a young man, plainly dressed in sturdy clothes. He was fair of hair and face with a broad sprinkle of freckles across his nose. A crease of skin at the side of his neck showed the scar of an old injury, possibly a burn. This victim had been stabbed from behind and he was slumped forward, as though he had obligingly offered his back to his attacker. Again, there was only a small stream of dried blood from the wound on the back of his jerkin.
Bascot and Ernulf moved to where the woman lay, halfway between the Jew and the young man, in front of one of the casements. It must have been her body that the alewife had tripped over. She was slightly turned onto her side, and one arm was flung out in front of her as though in useless supplication. She was wearing a gown of cheap but bright material with sleeves of green. There was no covering on her head and her hair, the shade of pale honey, tumbled down her back in riotous disarray. Nearby lay a wig such as those worn by prostitutes, made of hair taken from the mane and tail of a horse and dyed. The colour of this one was a deep dark red. Ernulf turned her over. Even though dead, she had a fair prettiness that was marred by the ver-million face paint daubed on her cheeks. Like the Jew, her breast bore the marks of a dagger thrust above the low neck of her gown, with a small stain of blood smearing the lace just below it.
The last victim was a man of late middle age, with thick shoulders and a large stomach barely contained by the black leather belt that encircled it. He was sprawled on the floor beside a cask of ale, face down in the rushes, his limbs stiff. The back of his skull had been smashed in. Beside him lay two empty ale cups.
None of the victims had purses at their belts or were wearing jewellery of any kind. If any of the men had been equipped with dagger or sword, these too had vanished and there was no trace of any blade that might have been used in the stabbings.
Bascot looked at Ernulf. “Except for the alekeeper, these bodies have been dead longer than since curfew last night.”
Ernulf agreed. Both were too familiar with the state of bodies during the aftermath of battle to mistake the length of time it took for the telltale signs of deterioration to show.
“The death rigor has come and gone except for Wat. And there’s precious little blood for three people stabbed. The walls would be spattered with it if the deed was done in here. And there’s no sign of a struggle, either.”
Bascot knelt down beside the Jew, the nearest corpse to him. He lifted the hand that had not been molested by the rats. The nails were free of any skin or material that might have been torn from an attacker and, apart from the rent made by the dagger, his clothes seemed untouched. The young man and woman’s bodies and clothing were in a like condition. “I would think that all three were dead before they were stabbed,” he said. “The blood had already settled and the hearts ceased to pump when these wounds were made. There are no bruises. Whatever the means of their deaths, it has not left a mark.” He looked up at the serjeant. “Do you recognise any of them?”
“Two,” Ernulf replied succinctly. “The Jew-his name is Samuel. Cousin of Isaac that lives in the big house in Mikelgate. And the one over there”-he nodded in the direction of the body lying beside the ale cask-“that’s Walter, the alewife’s husband. The other two I’ve never seen before. The girl looks, by her dress and wig and face paint, to be a harlot, but she’s not a regular from the stewes down in Butwerk. I’d recognise her if she was.” He rubbed his stubble-encrusted jaw. “ ’Course, with all the strangers that we’ve got in Lincoln right now she could be some newly arrived country girl who decided to turn bawd in the hope of earning a few pennies. If she is she might have strayed out of the whores’ patch.”
The serjeant waved his hand towards the young man. “Don’t know about the lad. Could be a visitor come for the fair, or perhaps an apprentice new to Lincoln.”
If Ernulf did not know the two young people then it was most probable that they were strangers. In his short time at the castle, Bascot had come to realise that Ernulf seemed to know every person that dwelt within the precinct of the town walls as well as having an almost intimate knowledge of most of the buildings. Since Ernulf had spent all his life in the town, except for occasional sojourns abroad in the service of the Hayes, this was not surprising.
As fresh air came into the room from the opened shutters, it became a little easier to breathe in the fetid atmosphere. Bascot and Ernulf move
d back towards the door. Near the entrance was a table, on its surface a candleholder with a burnt down stub and a pair of dice. Apart from that, and the two empty tumblers on the floor, the place was tidy and seemed to have been scrubbed within the last few days; even though the reek of ale was exceptionally strong, there were no obvious spills and the rushes on the floor looked fresh.
“Why bring three dead bodies in here and stab them?” Bascot mused. “Why not leave them wherever the deed was done? It is most strange.”
The serjeant shrugged. He had seen death too often to be much affected by it, and the bodies in the chamber were not, as far as he knew, anyone of importance-two strangers, a Jew and an alekeeper. “I’ll send for the infirmarian at the Priory of All Saints. The monks’ll take the bodies and see them ready for burial-the Christian ones, that is. The Jews’ll want to take care of their own, I reckon. Good fortune that one of the dead was a Jew. Otherwise the whole lot of ’em would be blamed for the murders. That’s usually the way it is. And that’s the last thing Lady Nicolaa needs, right in the middle of the biggest fair of the year, a hue and cry after any member of the Jewish community. Not good for trade, is that.”
Bascot flinched inwardly. His enmity towards the Jews had been the same as that of every other good Christian until he had been captured by the Saracens. It had seemed logical and just that they were to be hated as the race who had crucified Christ. But during his years of captivity there had, at times, been Jews imprisoned with him, especially after the great infidel leader, Saladin, died and his unruly family fought for control of the Muslim world. Bascot had come to know one of them well, a young Jewish lad named Benjamin. He and the Jew had never become friends, but with the enemy a common one, they had helped each other and it had been Benjamin who had been instrumental in Bascot’s escape from his Muslim captors. That Benjamin had lost his life in aiding the Templar was a fact that Bascot found hard to forget, just as it also made it difficult for him to blindly accept the premise that all Jews were unworthy of any emotion but contempt from a Christian.
Uncomfortable, he made no reply to the serjeant’s comment and Ernulf continued, “Will you want to talk to the alewife again? Seems strange she slept upstairs all night and didn’t hear her husband havin’ his head bashed in.”
Bascot, remembering the near hysteria of the alewife, reluctantly agreed that it seemed necessary to question her again and instructed Ernulf, while he was seeing her, to send news to the Jewish community of Samuel’s death.
Ernulf nodded in a brisk fashion at the instructions. “I’ll send one of my lads to do that after he’s been to the Priory. In the meantime, I’d best stay here. That crowd outside is not going to be satisfied until they find out what’s happened and it might need a firm hand to curb their questions. When you’re ready, we’ll go back and report to Lady Nicolaa.”
Bascot nodded, taking a last look at the bodies, particularly those of the woman and the young man, before he left. Death was fast removing the bloom of youth from the faces of these two, but there still remained vestiges of their vitality: the smoothness of the unlined cheeks, the bright hue of their hair, so similar in colour. It had been too soon for them to die, these two youngsters, especially from a cause as foul as murder. To die on a battlefield was one’s own choice; for a life to be taken in stealth and for the purposes of another was a grievous offence, not only to man but to God Himself.
Outside, as Ernulf had predicted, the number of curious people had grown and they were pestering the two men-at-arms, who stood firmly silent, about what had happened. When Bascot appeared, they drew back a pace, respectful of his knight’s rank and not a little intimidated by the small replica of the Templar badge he wore high on the shoulder of his tunic. He walked, unaccosted, across the street and into the church. The coolness of the interior and the smell of incense were welcome after the stifling aroma of death.
Three
Several hours later, in a small carpentry shop hard by the church of St. Mary Crackpole near Mikelgate, the alewife, Agnes, sat with her sister, Jennet. She had ceased to cry but an occasional sob would still shake her ample frame and she was having difficulty sipping the posset made of herbs and honey that Jennet had prepared for her.
The two sisters were very different in appearance, for Jennet was tall and slim and the carrot-coloured hair that framed her thin sharp face still bore no traces of grey even though she was only three years younger than Agnes. In one respect, however, they had a similarity, and that was in strength. Agnes possessed it in her thick bones and sturdy flesh; in Jennet it evidenced itself in her mind, which was aggressive and quick.
The younger sister regarded the older. Jennet bore no grief that her brother-by-marriage was dead. She had thought Agnes a fool for marrying him and was not sorry to see him gone except, perhaps, for the manner of it and how it would affect her sister.
“You must try to calm yourself, Agnes,” she said sternly. “The monks have taken Wat. They will see that he is prepared right and laid out for his burial. Which won’t be delayed too long,” she added thoughtfully, “because of this hot weather.”
This unfortunate but true observation set Agnes off into a fresh paroxysm of tears and Jennet lost her patience. “Why do you carry on so? Wat were not a good husband to you, as I’ve told you many a time. How many beatings have you had off him since you married him two years ago? More times than you can count, I’ll warrant. I thought you would have learned your lesson with that other wastrel our da wed you to when you was young. Even though he didn’t raise his hand to you, he was the laziest swine I’ve ever met in my life. And when he died, not beforetimes I might add, from drinking too much ale, you went and married another useless oaf, twice as worse. And he was your own free choice, too. God forgive me for saying so, but it’s maybe not a sad matter that none of your babbies survived to grow. They’d never have thrived, not with the husbands you’ve had.”
“Oh, Jennet, don’t scold me,” Agnes sobbed. “It’s bad enough Wat was killed the way he was, and those others-stabbed right in my own taproom. But I could have been murdered, too. Haven’t you thought of that? It’s making my flesh creep, knowing I was there while… while…” She started to cry afresh.
“Well, you weren’t murdered, were you? Whoever did it wasn’t after you, was he? If he had been, you wouldn’t be here in my house now.”
Jennet looked at her sister, purposely stifling the pity she felt. She had learned through their years of growing up that if you once gave Agnes any compassion she would give herself over completely to self-pity. The only way to get her through any difficulty was to bully her out of it. Their father had been the same, and Jennet had learned how to deal with Agnes by watching their mother. As Agnes began to recover somewhat and took a sip of her posset, Jennet looked at her consideringly. There was something more to Agnes’ tears than grief. She was frightened alright, but Jennet was sure there was something else, something she was not telling. Agnes could be sly at times and secretive, just like their old dad, but Jennet could usually worm any secrets out of her sister, most of them anyway.
“When Father Anselm sent for me and I came to the church this morning, that Templar knight was asking you some strange questions. What did he mean about anything hidden in the ale house?” Jennet had arrived at St. Andrew’s just as Bascot was about to leave and had only caught the last part of the conversation between him and Agnes.
“I don’t know, Jennet, truly I don’t.” Fear now completely took over Agnes. It was plain in the way her hands and voice shook. “He said that them bodies-the others, not Wat-might have been in my house or yard the day before. But I never saw anything. We had our custom as usual and I served up the ale. The taster even came and said I’d made a good brew. I don’t know anything about any bodies, or anything else. …”
Jennet took a seat beside her sister. The table at which they were sitting was good and solid, as were the four chairs arranged around it. She was proud of the few bits of furniture she had, f
or her husband, Tom, who was a carpenter, had made them. He wasn’t a master craftsman, but he belonged to the town guild and earned a reasonable living making simple items and doing repairs in the yard out behind their little house. He was a good man, worked hard and never took too much ale or hit her even though, by law, he was allowed to strike her if she gave him just cause. And they had raised three children; the two girls married well, one to a freeman with a small holding outside Lincoln and the other to a tanner, while the boy, her youngest, helped his father. She felt pity again for Agnes in her plight and unhappy life, but quashed it down. She didn’t want her to start crying again.
“Did Wat come to bed with you last night? Or did he stay up?” Jennet asked.
Agnes looked at her sister, then her eyes slid away. Jennet knew there was something she was not telling. “He always stayed up after curfew, just for a little while usually. To have a last glass of ale, or…”
“Play at dice?” her sister finished knowingly. “But last night? What did he do last night?”
“The same,” Agnes mumbled.
“If there was something different, you had better tell me,” Jennet said firmly. “If that murderer missed you by mistake and you know something-well, he might just come back to finish you off. If there’s anything you haven’t told, the more that know it the better. You’ll be safer that way.”
Agnes’ eyes rolled in her head and she began to shake again. Jennet gripped her by the arms with surprising strength in her bony fingers. “What happened, Agnes? Tell me.”
“Wat said… Wat…” Agnes began to stutter and Jennet shook her so hard that her sister’s large bosom wobbled beneath her gown.
“Tell me,” she demanded.
Agnes gulped. “Last night Wat told me to go up to bed and not to come down, not for anything. He said if I did, I’d be sorry. When I asked him why, he said someone was coming to see him and whoever it was wouldn’t take kindly to me being about. I thought it was just another of his dice games and said so, but he gave me a slap and said I’d better keep my mouth shut and put myself out of sight.” Agnes stopped for a moment and wiped the wetness of her tears from her face with the hem of her gown.