The Alehouse Murders

by Maureen Ash

  Lady Nicolaa gave his words some thought. “Still, it is worth investigating,” she said. “See her again. Be discreet, but thorough. You may call on Ernulf whenever you require his assistance.”

  With that, he and the serjeant had been dismissed and Bascot had left the chamber, feeling a tinge of admiration for the economy of Lady Nicolaa’s direction and the ease with which she had quelled the uncertain temper of her husband. Such diplomacy was a rare gift.

  Bascot ruminated on the task he had been given as he sipped his ale and enjoyed the delicious sweetness of the brew. How was he to set about finding out the identity of two strangers in a town half-full of people not ordinarily resident here? The smell of the ale in his cup rose strongly to his nostrils and he felt a jog at his memory. The reek of ale in the taproom earlier that day had been just as powerful, the room filled with the odour even though there had been not a drop poured in any cup, and the room clean of spills. It was not unusual for a taproom to smell so, but it had been powerfully strong, almost overwhelming, as though a barrel had been standing open in the middle of the floor. Even the bodies had stunk of it.

  He began to ponder on this when Gianni made a movement and attracted his attention. The lad, though mute, had developed a series of gestures that Bascot easily interpreted. Now the boy was rubbing his stomach and pointing to his mouth. Bascot grinned. It was time for the midday meal and Gianni was hungry.

  “I cannot face those stairs again in such a short time, Gianni. Go down and see the cook. Get us some food and bring it back here. When we have eaten, there is work to do.”

  The boy scampered away, and Bascot lay back on his pallet and lifted the patch that covered the place where his eye had once been, rubbing the socket gently. Not vanity but pride accounted for the fact that he did not like anyone, even Gianni, to see the wound uncovered. It was a grisly sight and for a moment the pain that had burned and taken away his senses when a Muslim lord had ordered the hot iron to sear his flesh returned like a flash of lightning, then receded. He would not think on that, he decided, the memory was too painful, not for the loss of his eye but for the helplessness he had felt afterwards, and the deep anger that followed.

  He got up and moved to the tiny window slit. Overhead the sky was a clear translucent blue, a heat haze shimmering over the fields and woods beyond the castle walls. Down in the bailey he could see Gianni running back across the ward towards the tower, the dark curls on his head bouncing as he struggled to balance two wooden bowls filled with food, one on top of the other. Bascot was glad to see that the boy was beginning to fill out, to put some flesh on his slight frame. When the Templar had found the lad on a wharf in Palermo the boy had been fighting with some mangy street dogs over the body of a dead pigeon, his bones protruding sticklike under a thin covering of skin. The lad had been starving, covered with the festering sores of malnutrition and eyes no more than black circles of pain. Bascot, his soul stirred by the utter desolation of the boy’s expression, had taken pity on him and given him food, then made him his servant, training him and teaching him his letters on the long journey back to England. He had been rewarded by finding that the boy had a quick and intelligent mind hidden beneath his inability to speak. Bascot did not know how old he was—nor did Gianni—but it was a reasonable guess that the young body had been stunted by lack of food and that he was older than his size would suggest, and was probably about eleven or twelve years of age. Not being able to speak his name, if he had ever known it, Bascot had christened him Giovanni, after the saint of the day on which he had found him. This had soon been shortened to the diminutive, Gianni. The boy was devoted to Bascot and, in return, the Templar had come to regard the lad in almost the same light he would have had he been his own son.

  Gianni’s light footsteps pattered on the stairs outside and, as Bascot slipped his eye patch back into place, the door was pushed open to reveal the boy and his burden. One bowl, on the bottom, was filled with chunks of bread; the other, on top, was brimming with a hearty meat stew thickened with root vegetables. Carefully Gianni set them down on the floor then, removing the bread, he poured a smaller portion of stew for himself into the empty bowl and served Bascot with the remainder, laying chunks of bread beside his master on a clean cloth which he had carried folded in his belt. Two wooden spoons appeared from the folds of his tunic and he carefully polished one of them with the hem of his shirt before laying it beside Bascot. Looking up at his mentor with liquid brown eyes, he waited until Bascot gave a nod of approbation before sitting down cross-legged on the floor and hungrily attacking his own food.

  As they ate, Bascot thought again about the events of the morning. In a sense, Lady Nicolaa was not only giving him a duty to perform, but a test of his capabilities. She had taken him into her household on the recommendation of the Templar master in London, who was an acquaintance of hers. When she had learned that Bascot could read and write she had asked him, after he had regained some of his strength, if he would assist her in carrying out some of the tasks of running the demesne. Literacy was uncommon, even amongst the nobility, and she had need of someone trustworthy to aid her and her overworked bailiffs and clerks in preparing the records necessary to overseeing her lands. Nothing too onerous, she had explained, or unfitting to his rank, but she herself had so little time and it would bring her great relief if he would agree. Bascot had smiled at her guile. Since he was eating her food and accepting the shelter of his room he could hardly refuse, but she had given him the courtesy of putting the request in the form of a favour to her, not as payment for her generosity. He had agreed to do as she asked and she had given him her thanks.

  So far, since coming to Lincoln, his duties had consisted of visiting some of the lands belonging to Haye and overseeing the tallies of sheep and grain, recording the stores that had been used from the castle stock and helping with the many accounts that had to be kept of wages paid to knights and servants. Now, it seemed, Lady Nicolaa had given him a task that would stretch his capabilities, see if he was able to cope with a situation that gave him more responsibility, albeit on her behalf.

  He wondered why. There were other knights in her retinue to whom she could have handed over the responsibility of investigating the murders. He was, after all, not strictly in her service, but only a guest. She knew he could have refused but she had also surmised that he would not. Why had she chosen him? Was it just convenient, or had she done it deliberately? Her calm face, slightly round with a margin of red hair turning grey showing beneath her coif, had regarded him steadily, her pale, slightly protuberant, blue eyes deceptively innocuous. She had held his own gaze as she spoke. She seemed to be defying him to refuse. Why?

  At last he shrugged and left his pondering. When the Saracens had first put him into a prison cell after his capture during a skirmish on the road to Ascalon, he had asked himself a similar question. Why had God chosen that he should not die along with his comrades; why had he not fallen with honour and glory, as they had? Why had the Muslims not killed him? No ransom was ever paid for a Templar. It was a rule of the Order to bolster courage and reinforce dedication. But his captors had not killed him. Instead they had kept him as a slave. And he had never understood why. From prison cell to base servant in the household of a Saracen lord to chained oarsman on an infidel pirate ship, through all these happenings he had asked himself the purpose of such a fate. Shipwrecked and washed ashore on the coast of Cyprus, as he had lain recovering from his injuries in a Templar hostel on the friendly island, still he had questioned what the good Lord above had chosen for his destiny. Then, during the long journey home, by boat to Sicily where he had found Gianni, and then on horseback through lands both hostile and friendly to an English knight, he had wondered until finally he had arrived in London and found that the family he had left behind—brother, father and mother—had all, in various ways, perished while he had been in captivity. Then he had ceased to ask or to care. God had forsaken him, forgotten his existence. No longer could he find consolati
on in the vows he had taken on that far gone day when he had joined the Templar Order. The faith that had burst forth so joyously when he had pledged himself to Christ had dwindled, becoming no more than the flicker of a feeble rush light.

  It had been because of this lapse of faith that the Templar master in London had suggested he leave the Order for a space and recover his health within the shelter of the royal castle of Lincoln. Usually, any Templar knight leaving the Order had to enter a regime that was stricter in its rules than their own, but in his case Bascot knew that the Templars hoped he might return to their fold. Sending him to Nicolaa de la Haye had been a way of releasing him, but not quite letting him go.

  Bascot knew this and accepted it. When he had first arrived at Lincoln he had just wanted a quiet place to recover from the rigours of his captivity and the shock of learning about the deaths in his family. So far, he found himself content. He was well fed and had slowly, by dint of steady bouts of exercise on the practice field with Ernulf, found his body responding so that he had recovered much of his former strength. Lady Nicolaa, he suspected, had purposely allowed him this space of healing. Now he thought that she gauged him ready for something more and was challenging him. Was he being manipulated and, if so, to what purpose? Once again, he put the question aside.

  Gianni had finished his stew, the bowl wiped clean with a chunk of bread, and that chunk devoured. Bascot gave him his own utensils to carry and they made their way out of the chamber into the passage where, set into the wall of the tower, was a latrine. Nearby a cistern had been fashioned with a tap that sluiced rain water from a tank on the roof and flushed the waste into a midden on the lower floor. After using the facilities, Gianni carefully rinsed the tumblers from which they had drunk their ale and put them back in their chamber. Then they descended the stairs, Gianni running ahead to return their eating bowls to the kitchens while Bascot headed for the stables. If he was to discover the identity of the two dead strangers he would need to have a more careful look at their faces, and their clothes. Mounted once more on the grey gelding he had used that morning, and with Gianni riding pillion behind, he headed for the Priory of All Saints, set in the ward of the cathedral.

  The priory was an ancient institution, inhabited by Benedictine monks in one part and, behind a high wall that separated its buildings from the rest, a nunnery of the same order. Bascot dismounted at the gate and, after informing the porter of his errand, was ushered into the presence of the infirmarian, leaving his mount with Gianni in the priory yard.

  Brother Jehan, the infirmarian, was tending a few sick and aging monks in the long low room that served as a hospital. He listened attentively while Bascot explained his errand. The monk was an elderly man, with white hair ringing his tonsure and a face creased with lines of care. He seemed to Bascot almost as frail as his charges until he bent to administer a draught of some herbal mixture to a young novice raging with a fever. The patient, in his delirium, fought against the cup held to his mouth and Brother Jehan, revealing an unexpected strength in his long bony fingers, gripped the young man by the shoulders and forced him back so that he could tip the contents of the cup into the gaping mouth. Smoothing the brow of his charge with fingers now gentle, he gave instructions to an assistant to watch the patient and motioned for Bascot to follow him.

  The infirmarian led the way out of the chamber and down a passage to another room, this one smaller and in semidarkness. The shutters were drawn and only two candles, set in holders below a crucifix hung high on one of the walls, gave any light. In the centre of the room, on trestle tables, lay two linen covered mounds. The odour of sweet-smelling herbs was strong in the air, along with the aroma of incense.

  “These are the earthly remains of the alekeeper and the boy whose identity is unknown. The female is with our sisters in the nunnery,” Brother Jehan informed Bascot. “The bodies have been cleansed and wrapped in their shrouds, and Masses will be said for the repose of their souls in chapel tonight, where they will lie until they are interred. Ordinarily the alekeeper would have been laid out in his home, but since it was the place of his murder, his wife’s family has asked that we keep him here.”

  “I would like to see the stranger’s face again, Brother,” Bascot said, “and would also ask if there were any marks, other than the dagger wound, on his body. It appeared, to the castle serjeant who was with me when we examined the bodies, and to myself, that all except the alekeeper had been dead for more than just the previous night, and also that the knife thrusts in both the young man brought here, as well as the woman and the Jew, were not the cause of their demise, but had been inflicted after they were dead.”

  The monk had been nodding as Bascot had spoken. “Yes, when I was laying out the young man I thought it strange myself that there was so little blood around the wound.”

  He walked over to one of the trestle tables and drew back the linen cover, revealing the face of the stranger. The skin was now waxy and covered with a slight sheen of putrefaction. Against the pallor of his face the freckles stood out on the bridge of his nose like spatters of blood. The old scar at the crease of his neck could be plainly viewed now that his tunic had been removed and the shroud left open about his face. It would not be sewn closed until the body was ready to be sealed in its coffin. The young man’s hair was still crisp and fair, curling in a parody of life over the fast deteriorating flesh.

  Brother Jehan sighed. “So young to be taken from life,” he murmured, crossing himself. “It would appear that he was dead for some few hours at least before he was stabbed. His life blood had settled in his extremities and so there was little left to spill from the wound.

  “There were a few welts on the body,” Brother Jehan continued, “on the back and across both knees, but none of any such magnitude that would cause death.”

  “What, then, do you think killed him? Poison?”

  “Possibly. There are many fatal mixtures that can be made from plants and herbs growing in the countryside and few that would leave traces of their ingestion. Or he could have been rendered unconscious by a similar mixture and then suffocated whilst out of his senses.”

  Bascot agreed that the latter was a possibility, then asked, “The stranger’s clothes, Brother—do you have them here?”

  “They are in the next room, awaiting cleansing, as are the alekeeper’s. The alekeeper’s, of course, will be returned to his widow once they are in a state that will not upset her. The stranger’s I had thought to give to the poor, or to the leper house outside Pottergate. Do you wish to dispose of them in some other way?”

  “No,” Bascot assured him. “I would just like to see them. Perhaps they may give me a clue to the identity of their owner.”

  The monk left the room for a few moments, then reentered, carrying a bundle of clothing. His expression was one of distaste. “I have no discontent in dealing with stains of the blood with which our good Lord sustains life, but the stink of ale is offensive. The room where they were found must have been awash with it.”

  He handed the young man’s tunic and hose to Bascot who had already, at the approach of the monk, smelled the acrid reek of old ale. There were few stains on the clothing however; rather it seemed that the odour had permeated the cloth without wetting it.

  He looked up at the monk. “I think, Brother, that I may have some idea of how this stench adhered itself to the fabric, and also where it was that the young man spent the hours after his death.”

  He shook out the garments, thinking as he did so, then asked, “When the clothing has been cleansed, may I have it for a time? I will return it for you to give as alms wherever you choose, but this cloth is of a fine weave and, to my eyes, looks distinctive. It may be that its origin will be recognised by one of Lincoln’s weavers, either as their own, or as that of a competitor in another town. If it can be determined where the cloth was purchased, we may then discover where its owner came from.”

  The monk readily gave his acquiescence to the request and then Bascot
asked if he might speak with Jehan’s counterpart in the nunnery. “I would ask her the same questions about the dead female that I have asked you about the young man, and I would also like to see if the cloth of her garments can be identified as to the maker.”

  Brother Jehan arranged for Bascot to enter the nunnery through a small door kept for visitors, and the Templar was ushered into a tiny guest room. After a few moments a nun came in, leaving the door open. Outside, within sight and earshot, was another habited figure acting as companion. The nun who had entered was in her middle years, with a broad heavy face that wore a look of inner contentment. She sat herself on a small stool, her hands folded into the sleeves of her gown, then bade Bascot be seated also.

  “I am Sister Bridget, the infirmarian. Brother Jehan has told me you have some questions about the unfortunate young woman brought here today?”

  Her voice had a singsong quality about it that was calming. Bascot imagined she would be a comforting presence to the sick or dying. He asked her, as he had Brother Jehan, about any wounds or marks on the body of the dead girl and got almost the same reply.

  “Yes, some welts on her legs and across her back, but nothing else,” the sister said. “Poor pretty young thing—for pretty she was once, Sir Bascot, even though death has taken the bloom from her cheek.”

  “Her clothes, Sister, do you have them?”

  “Yes. Like our brothers in the priory, we were going to give them to the poor once they had been cleansed of blood. It was not so much, just a little on the lace in front. They are not costly garments, but will be welcomed all the same by those that have only rags, even though they are a bit gaudy. But that can be put right by taking off the sleeves and putting in some of a darker and more sober colour. An easy task since the green ones were only loosely sewn. They were already half out of their seams, which was strange . . .” Sister Bridget’s eyebrows pulled together in what Bascot was sure was an unaccustomed frown.