The Alehouse Murders

by Maureen Ash

  “Looks like a deputation on their way to the castle,” suggested Ernulf, “probably to protest that there is not enough being done to catch the murderer in our midst. The sheriff will not be pleased.”

  Bascot made no response. Soon they came to the small turning that held the shop of Thomas the Carpenter, and left their horses on Mikelgate, tied to a post put there for the purpose. Overhead the first hint of lightning appeared, a small tongued flash flickering momentarily before it vanished, making the horses skitter and pull at their fastenings.

  Ernulf and Gianni went to the door of the carpenter’s shop and the serjeant rapped loudly. In a short time a woman appeared. She was slim and neatly dressed, her head tidily covered in a white coif, with a large apron covering her gown. Ernulf announced Bascot in a manner that made the Templar smile inwardly.

  “Sir Bascot de Marins, Templar knight in the service of Lady Nicolaa de la Haye, come to question the woman, Agnes,” he said in a strong voice.

  The woman bobbed in deference, then stood aside to allow Bascot to enter. “I am Jennet, Tom Carpenter’s wife, and Agnes’ sister,” she said. “I will get her for you directly, Sir Bascot.”

  She led them into the only room on the ground floor of the dwelling, where a table and chairs were standing in the middle of the room. On one side a few wooden eating utensils had been placed on top of a shallow chest, and baskets of onions and other root vegetables hung from the rafters. Directly in front of them at the back of the room a door looked as though it led out into the yard. Jennet disappeared up the narrow staircase to the room above, returning quickly with the alewife trailing reluctantly behind her.

  Jennet bobbed again as Bascot seated himself in one of the chairs. Ernulf took up a position at the front door while Gianni placed himself behind his master’s chair.

  “Here is my sister, sir,” Jennet said, pushing Agnes forward and down into the semblance of an obeisance. “She is still somewhat mazed from the loss of her husband, my lord. Earlier I gave her a potion with herbs to help her sleep. It is this that is making her so muddled in her steps.”

  The alewife did indeed look slightly disorientated but Bascot thought it was due more to his presence than her sister’s herbal potion. “You told me this morning that you knew of nothing having been secreted in your brewing yard, mistress. That was not true, was it?”

  His stern words and the import of them seemed to snap Agnes back to clearheadedness. “Oh, yes, my lord. It was. Truly it was,” she said, clutching her hands together in front of her, mouth quivering.

  “Tell Sir Bascot what you told me, Agnes,” Jennet interjected, then looked at Bascot. “I’m sorry to interrupt, sir, but my sister—well, she gets confused sometimes, especially now, finding her husband and those others dead and all. I was going to see Father Anselm in the morning and ask him if he would arrange for us to see you, Agnes and me, so she could tell you what she forgot to tell before.”

  Jennet said this deferentially and Bascot scrutinised her more carefully. There was only the faintest of physical resemblances between the two sisters, and he could see that, unlike the alewife, Jennet possessed an innate intelligence. Agnes, on the other hand, looked to be more sly than clever. That morning when he had questioned the alewife in the presence of the priest she had seemed so distraught that the answers he had received had been scarcely understandable. Now, he realised, this could have been merely a method of dissembling.

  He gave the alewife a look of impatience and she responded by repeating, in a rush of words, what she had told her sister that morning. “I don’t know anything of what Wat was doing, sir,” she said finally. “He told me to keep myself upstairs and that’s what I did, all night until it was time to come down in the morning.”

  As her sister looked at Bascot to see if he was impressed by the tale, the alewife hung her head, darting a glance from beneath her brows first at Bascot, then at her sister. Her wide face was blotchy, which could have been due to the tears she had shed that morning, or it could have been from fear. Throughout his long captivity Bascot had become well versed in the meaning of facial expressions—a sudden colour, or lack of it, in the skin; the quick glance of an eye or the tremble of a muscle. When one is a slave among other slaves and all subject to the whim of a master, it is well to be able to recognise the emotions behind another person’s eyes. He instinctively knew that the alewife was not telling the truth.

  “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

  A CROWD 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.”