by Maureen Ash
“You are lying, mistress,” Bascot said flatly. “You were not in your bed all night. If you had been, whoever murdered those three people and your husband would have killed you too. It is not likely he would have left so convenient a witness. Unless, of course, you were his accomplice.” It was a wild guess he was making, that she had not been in her bed, but it seemed a reasonable one.
Agnes began to cry again, protesting her innocence and her sister, white and drawn, stood watching him. He stood up and said harshly, “My patience is at an end. Ernulf, take this woman to the castle. Perhaps a few days incarceration in a lonely cell will loosen her tongue. If not, there are other ways of making her tell us what she knows.”
As he finished speaking there was a crack of thunder overhead, so loud that it seemed as though the very walls would split asunder. From the doorway to the yard two men appeared, one tall and thin with the leather apron of a carpenter over his rough smock, the other similarly clad but younger, with a sturdy frame and a shock of hair as red as Jennet’s. When they caught sight of Bascot they stopped in the doorway and bobbed their heads deferentially. They were, presumably, Jennet’s husband and son. The thunder continued to sound and then there was the heavy patter of falling rain, plopping loudly into the yard behind them. The noise lent weight to Bascot’s words, seeming as though God himself was reinforcing the Templar’s judgement.
Agnes had now fallen to her knees, imploring Bascot not to take her away and begging her sister to help her. Her wailing was interrupted by a loud knocking on the door of the small house. Ernulf opened it to find outside the man-at-arms he had left on guard at the alehouse. The soldier asked the serjeant if he could speak to him privately and Ernulf disappeared through the door, returning almost immediately.
“There’s been a stabbing,” he said in response to Bascot’s questioning look. “The priest at St. Andrew’s, Father Anselm. A parishioner found him behind the altar, lying in his own blood.”
“How could that be? I just left him preparing to celebrate evening Mass,” Bascot exclaimed.
“Must have happened after you left, and before anyone arrived for the service.”
“Is he alive?” Bascot asked.
“Barely. Sheriff Camville’s town guard is there, and a leech. My man thought you might want to know.”
“He was right. We’ll go at once.” Bascot rose and added, “Bring the alewife with you, Ernulf. Perhaps the sight of the priest’s blood will loosen her tongue. If not”-he shrugged-“the sheriff’s guard can take her to the castle.”
Bascot pushed out of the small house, Gianni behind him and Ernulf, with a loudly screeching Agnes in tow, following. They mounted their horses, dumping Agnes on the saddlebow in front of the man-at-arms, where she clung to the mane of his horse sobbing and calling out to her sister. Jennet, along with her husband and son, ran into the street after them, following Bascot as he spurred his reluctant horse forward into the drenching rain.
Eight
Acrowd was gathered outside the door of St. Andrew’s church despite the heavy rainfall. They stood with bowed heads, fear written large on their faces, keeping a conspicuous space between themselves and the ring of the sheriff’s guard who stood in a phalanx of four, swords drawn, outside the church door. To harm a priest, a man of God, was a serious matter. His attacker would have damned his immortal soul.
They fell back quietly as Bascot dismounted and made for the door. The sheriff’s guard parted to let him through, their badges bearing Camville’s emblem of a silver lion glinting brightly through the mist of streaming rain. Ernulf pulled Agnes roughly from her seat and, dragging her behind him, they followed Bascot into the church.
At the far end of the nave, beside the altar, a small group of people were kneeling around the prone body of the priest. Bascot recognised the burly figure of Roget, the captain of Camville’s guard. He and Roget had first met on crusade when Roget had been a serjeant under Mercadier, the commander of King Richard’s mercenary forces. Roget was a brutal and vicious man, but he was extremely capable and usually loyal to his current paymaster, a trait not always found in hired soldiers. Tall, black-visaged and rangily built with the scar of an old sword slash running from brow to chin, he nodded to Bascot in recognition and moved back so that the Templar could see the body of the priest more clearly. Kneeling on the far side of Father Anselm was another priest, murmuring prayers and robed in readiness to give extreme unction. Beside him was a short rotund man, a fine gold chain strung with extracted human teeth hanging around his neck. This must be the leech that Ernulf had mentioned, a barber-surgeon. His neatly trimmed grey hair and clean-shaven chin gleamed with oil as he looked up at Bascot, round face shiny with excitement.
“I am sure he will live. And it is God’s own hand twice over that has willed it so. Firstly, in that the saintly man was wearing a hair shirt beneath his garments, which served to deflect the blow, and secondly, in that it was I who found him. My skill in staunching blood was sore needed this night.”
It was plain that the man spoke the truth for blood had spread in a dark viscous pool below the altar step on which Father Anselm was lying and his garments were soaked with it.
“Never in all my years of letting a patron’s blood have I failed to stem it at the right moment,” the barber said, displaying with pride where he had ripped apart the priest’s robe and the inverted shirt of bull’s hide, then wadded material from Father Anselm’s own vestments over the lips of the wound. The priest, his body on one side and head cradled in the barber’s lap, was unconscious and deathly pale but as the slow pulse at the side of his neck indicated, still breathing.
Bascot motioned to Roget and they moved aside. “I take it you did not catch the assailant?” he asked.
“No,” Roget replied. “Nor was anyone seen or any weapon found. The barber and his wife, along with a couple of neighbours, came for Mass. They were a little early and the first to enter. They saw the priest’s feet sticking out from behind the altar and the barber attended the wound. A few minutes more and the priest would have bled to death. No one else was about until the rest of the congregation began to arrive.”
Roget glanced at Bascot shrewdly, the dim light in the church accentuating the hollows of puckered skin where the scar on his face pulled at the flesh around his eyes, and sending points of brilliance sparkling from the rings of gold threaded through his earlobes. “Nothing was stolen. The poor box is intact and nothing of value among the communion vessels appears to be missing. Do you think this assault is connected with the murders in the alehouse across the street?”
Bascot nodded. “It has to be. So near in time and so close in proximity. The priest must have been a threat to the murderer in some way. If Father Anselm recovers, and can identify his attacker, we may learn not only why the murders were committed, but who did them.”
A few feet away Ernulf stood with Agnes, her arm firmly in the serjeant’s grasp. She had ceased to sob and was watching Bascot and Roget with wide eyes, her body trembling with fear. Ernulf was leaning down, speaking to her, and suddenly she nodded, hands pressed to her lips.
The serjeant approached Bascot. “The alewife says she wishes to speak to you.”
“The sight of the priest has shocked her into telling the truth, has it?” Bascot asked.
Ernulf gave a snort of laughter. “No. I told her that if she did not, we would give her over to Roget for questioning.” He looked at the mercenary captain, eyes alight with mirth. “Seems the threat has loosened her tongue. Do you always have that effect on women?”
Roget threw his head back and laughed, showing teeth that were still strong and white but gapped in many places. “My mother was a scold, always berating me. I swore when I left her tender care at the age of nine that I would never let another woman lash me with her tongue. And I never have. Perhaps your Agnes can sense my remarkable intolerance with wailing women and has chosen the wiser course of tormenting you instead.”
As Bascot took Agnes into
a corner of the nave, Jennet, along with her husband and son, were admitted by the guard. They came hurriedly to the alewife’s side. Agnes, shocked by the brutal attack on the priest and fearful of being handed over to the intimidating Roget, was now eager to talk. Her voice came rushing in a tumble as she told that she had not been in bed at all the night before, but had gone down into the yard while her husband was occupied elsewhere and had hidden behind the privy.
“I wanted to see what Wat was up to, sir,” she said. “I thought maybe he was going to have a woman in there, or another of his dice games. So I hid and waited.”
She looked up in earnest supplication at Bascot. “I didn’t know them bodies was in the barrels until I saw Wat lifting them out. Truly I didn’t. The barrels they were in were at the back, where I put ones waiting to be rinsed out and dried. I’d just made a new brew. Wat knew I wouldn’t be using any of those for a day or two. I swear, sir, in the name of the Blessed Virgin, I didn’t know those bodies were there.”
“What else did you see?” Bascot asked impatiently.
Agnes’ hands clutched nervously at the folds in the front of her gown as she answered him. “I saw a man-I think it was a man-at the door into the yard. He was standing there, watching, as Wat carried those poor dead souls inside. I couldn’t see his face, he was wearing a cloak with a hood, and the candlelight was dim and behind him. There was little light from the moon. But it was him that shut the door after Wat had finished and then I didn’t see either of them anymore.”
“How long did you stay hidden?”
“Until the morning light came, sir.” The tears on Agnes’ face had dried, leaving her face flushed. “I waited all night watching for some sign that the stranger had left. He must have come in at the front and left the same way. It wasn’t until it was light that I was bold enough to go inside and, then… you know what I found.”
“There must have been some noise from inside-when your husband was killed.”
“No, sir, there wasn’t. Not that I heard anyway. The only other thing I saw was some candlelight from our bed chamber above. Just glimmed briefly at the open casement, then it was gone.” She looked up at him hopefully. “You was right, sir. If I’d been up there, I’d of been dead, too. That was why I was frightened to tell the truth. I thought if the murderer knew I had been there, seen him-well, he might come back again and do me in to be along with my Wat.”
“Did you tell the priest what you just told me?” Bascot asked.
“No, sir. I didn’t tell anyone, not even Jennet. I didn’t even show her this.” She thrust a hand in the voluminous folds of her skirt and pulled out a small shiny object and handed it to him. “I found it, in the morning, just as the sun came up. I saw it glinting on the ground, beside one of the barrels that Wat took, took… one of them that had a body in it,” she finished lamely.
Bascot examined the object she handed him. It was a small silver brooch, too tiny to be of use for a cloak, probably intended for pinning a woman’s garment of light weight. It was fashioned in a circle, formed by a pair of clasping hands, and with the letter M-most likely for the Virgin Mary-scrolled on the top. The design was not unusual, betrothal rings were often made so, but uncommon in a brooch. The pin was bent, but still held in the clasp, as though it had been pulled from the material it held. It was not particularly valuable, but to Agnes it was worth quite a few of the pennies she charged for stoups of her ale. The fact that she had produced it meant that it was probable she was finally telling the truth.
He put the brooch into the purse at his belt, to keep company with the scrap of material Gianni had found. “Yesterday-you did your business as usual? You tended to your ale, served customers-all as on any other day?” Bascot asked Agnes.
She nodded. “It were busy, what with all the people come from other parts of the country for the fair. I served in the taproom. I barely had time to set out my malt for the next mash, or prepare my gruit.” Bascot knew that gruit was the flavouring for the ale, and that Agnes would have used the herbs he had found in the cubbyhole upstairs in the alehouse. “I uses a special mixture for gruit that my mam taught me, bog myrtle and honey. That’s what makes my ale so good.”
“The Jew and the two strangers-they were never in the taproom?”
“No, sir,” she denied positively. “I never have Jews in my house-and they wouldn’t come in neither-and the other two I never saw before, before…” She faltered to a stop.
“Then they must have been brought to your yard and put in the barrels, or brought to the yard already inside them.” Agnes looked at Bascot in confusion as he went on. “Your husband, Wat-did he leave the premises at all yesterday?”
“Only to do deliveries,” Agnes said.
“What deliveries?” Bascot asked with more patience than he felt for the woman’s slow thinking processes.
“There were three. Master Ivo the Goldsmith-he took two kegs; Mistress Downy, the widow-she took one ’cause she has her son and his wife coming to stay for the fair; and the steward of Sir Roger de Kyme, he took two for his master’s house in town.”
“And how did Wat go about these deliveries-what was his routine?”
At Agnes’ look of bewilderment, her sister Jennet, who had seen the purpose of his questions, gave the answer. “He would put the kegs full of ale on the cart, get the cart-horse from its stable at the end of the lane and deliver them. If there were any old kegs that were empty, he would bring them back and put them aside for cleansing and reusing. That’s how the bodies were brought back, sir. In the empty kegs.”
“Thank you, mistress,” Bascot said gratefully. “Then Wat must either have killed them himself, or have knowledge of who did.”
“Oh no, sir,” Agnes protested. “My Wat would never have killed anybody. I know he wouldn’t.”
“Seems he knew somebody else had, at least,” Jennet remarked to her sister dryly. “If they had died natural-like he wouldn’t have been stuffing them in ale kegs and lifting them out after dark, would he?”
Bascot felt satisfied that it was now known how the bodies had arrived at their final destination, and that Wat had been an accomplice in their deaths, if not the actual murderer. But he was already dead when the priest had been stabbed, so the person Agnes had seen in the yard last night must have been responsible for the attack in the church.
The noise of the rain pelting down outside was louder now, and Bascot looked to where the carpenter and young boy were respectfully standing a short distance away. He beckoned for them to come forward.
“This is your son?” he asked Jennet. She nodded and told Bascot his name was Will. He looked strong, with the big bones and wide frame of his aunt, rather than the slight ones of his mother and father. The boy stood uncertainly before Bascot, awed by his presence and that of the sheriff’s guard, and looked anxious at being singled out for attention.
Bascot pointed to the hammer tucked into the belt of the lad’s leather apron. “You know how to use that, Will, do you?”
“Aye, sir. I helps me da in the yard,” the boy answered. Behind him his father nodded.
“Then keep it with you, and stay by your aunt for the next few days. If anyone threatens her, use it on them as you use it on the wood in your father’s yard. Do you understand me?”
Will nodded his head in a determined fashion. “Aye, sir. I’ll not let anyone harm her.”
Bascot looked down at the drained face of the alewife. “If you recall any more of what you saw last night, send a message to Ernulf at the castle. He will see that I am informed.”
Relieved that she was not to be taken to the castle for questioning, the alewife left the church with her sister and family. Bascot waited until the priest, still unconscious but with his wound now neatly bandaged by the barber with strips torn from an altar cloth, had been removed on a hastily constructed stretcher before he called to Gianni and Ernulf and they rode slowly back through the downpour of rain to the castle keep.
Nine
“You believe, then, that the victims were killed elsewhere and their bodies transported to the ale house in empty casks? The obvious question is: why?”
Bascot was once again ensconced with Nicolaa de la Haye and Gerard Camville in the small chamber where he had given his report earlier that day. Roget had reported the attack on the priest to the sheriff and Nicolaa had summoned Bascot, to listen to his account of the affair and any other information that he had uncovered.
Now, sitting at her table, she had carefully laid before her the scrap of material that Gianni had located and the little brooch that Agnes had found. Across from her stood Bascot, while her husband prowled restlessly about the room, his footfalls soft and sure despite the massive bulk of his body. From the hall below came the distant sounds of revelry as the multitude at the table enjoyed the entertainment of the tumblers and minstrels that their hosts had provided. Nicolaa and her husband had excused themselves from their guests to hear Bascot’s report, and Gianni had been sent in the company of Ernulf to get some of whatever food still remained after the vast number of visitors had eaten their evening meal. The occasional flash of lightning could still be seen through the opening of the small arrow slit set high on the chamber wall, but the rumble of thunder was decreasing in strength and seemed to be moving away to the east. The rain, too, was lessening in intensity and already the fresh smell of its cleansing fall could be felt in the air.
“As to the first question, lady, I think that is the most likely explanation,” Bascot confirmed. “Before being put into the barrels, they were probably put to death by means of poison or suffocation-although the latter is not likely unless they were given a potion that would have rendered them insensible beforehand. There was no sign of a struggle on their bodies, as would be the case with at least one of them, if they had been smothered while still in possession of all of their faculties. What the reason was-I am afraid I cannot even hazard a guess. If Father Anselm recovers, or regains consciousness, he may be able to tell us who his assailant was, or at least the reason why he was attacked. It seems plausible that the person who assaulted him also committed the other crimes.”