by Maureen Ash
“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.”
“You still haven’t found out who the two strangers are,” Gerard interjected, irritation in his tone. “That’s what I want to know. And if they have relatives who will come claiming compensation for their deaths.”
“If Father Anselm is still unable to tell us what he knows by morning, then I will question the drapers and weavers in the town,” Bascot replied. “The material is a fine cloth, too rich for a prostitute to wear, unless she was the leman of a patron of substantial means. If it can be determined where it was made, it might provide an answer to her identity.”
“There are weavers and cloth mercers aplenty in Lincoln now, and will be for the next week,” Nicolaa said. She picked up the scrap of material and held it in her hand. “It looks like the red Greyne that is made here in Lincoln, but . . .” She rubbed it gently between thumb and forefinger. “It seems a little too fine, too loosely woven.” She sighed and replaced it on the table. “I have no doubt Rolf the Draper could tell you, although I fear his mood is somewhat truculent at the moment.” She added this last with a smile. “He and his fellow townsmen were not best pleased with their reception tonight, or the rain that most probably drenched them as they left in hasty retreat for their homes.”
“Bloody merchants,” Gerard said, stopping his pacing to refill his goblet with wine from a leather bottle on the table. “Whatever ails them they bleat and cry like lost lambs, pleading poverty while they count their silver in secret.”
Bascot made no remark; neither did the sheriff’s wife. Camville resumed his pacing. Bascot could not ever recall him being still, except when he was eating. It was said the old king, Henry, father to both Richard and John, had been the same, forever moving. Gerard Camville had been familiare to King Henry, one of a coterie of young knights that the old king had kept about him and to whom he had shown much favour. Perhaps that was the key to the sheriff’s fractiousness, the losing of a lord who had been a just and fair monarch, as well as a friend. King Richard, against whom Camville had rebelled while the king was in the Holy Land on crusade, had fought with his father and, the rumour-mongers said, had caused King Henry’s death through heart-break at his son’s treachery. Even John, the present king, had failed his father in the end, siding with his older brother and King Louis of France to bring about Henry’s downfall. Now Camville was in the position of having to trust his wife’s friendship with one of Henry’s traitorous sons in order to retain the royal favour that he had once held so firmly from the father. It was not surprising that he was often in an ill temper.
“I will also ask about the brooch, lady,” Bascot said, attempting to divert the sheriff from his train of thought. “It is not valuable, but it may be remembered, if only because it is so small and the design unusual for a brooch, rather than a ring.”
Nicolaa picked up the tiny piece of jewellery and held it against her clothes. “Too small to be of any use except for the flimsiest of gowns,” she said, “almost as thou
gh it were to be worn under the outer clothing, hidden from view and unremarked except for the knowledge of the wearer. It looks familiar to me, but . . . it is probably only because it is a common design.” She laid it back on the table.
“Are you sure the alewife has no part in this coil?” Camville asked suddenly. “If these people were given a sleeping potion first, then it could be that she did it. She would have a knowledge of the properties of herbs by reason of her trade, those both beneficial or poisonous.”
“I think she is innocent of any complicity in the deaths,” Bascot replied. “She has not the wits for such scheming and is of too hysterical a nature for her husband to have trusted her with any secrets. And I took the herbs I found in the alehouse to the castle cook. They are harmless. Mistress Agnes is nothing more than she appears to be—a competent brewer of ale.”
“It might prove worthwhile to question the harlots in Butwerk,” Nicolaa said. “They will know if one of their number is missing.”
“I will do that,” Bascot assured her, “but I have some doubts that the girl was a bawd. Rather, I think, she was made to look like one.”
“What makes you think that?” Nicolaa asked.
“Her outer clothing was too big for her and was of cheap stuff, not like the undergarments from which I think that scrap was torn. Once I have all of the clothing from the nunnery, I will be sure of that assumption but, if I am right, it was put on her, along with the face paint, to give the impression that she was from the stewes in the lower part of town.”
“And you say she was with child?” Nicolaa asked.
“So Sister Bridget told me.”
“Another life for which damned compensation can be claimed,” Camville said angrily.
A flicker of irritation crossed Nicolaa’s face, so subtle that if Bascot had not been looking straight at her with his one good eye, he would have missed it.
“You have done well, de Marins,” she said, rising from her seat. “Learn what you can about the cloth and the brooch. It may be the merchants of the town will be too busy to attend closely to your questions. You have permission to use my authority if you have need of it.
“We best return to our guests, husband,” she said to Camville. “Tomorrow will be a busy day, even if this rain continues to fall.”
As they prepared to depart Bascot thanked her and said, “I intend to visit the family of the dead Jew, as well.”
Camville snorted. “At least I will not have to pay compensation for that death. Any property he owns will come to the crown, and I can claim a fee for collection. The shame is that all of the dead are not Jews. Then there would be no cause for concern, only profit.”
This time Nicolaa did not veil her annoyance. “The king is careful of the Jewish community, as you well know, Gerard. He would rather have them alive and lending him money than being killed and losing silver they could bring to him in the future.”
Camville made no reply and Bascot remembered that there had been some talk that it had been the sheriff who had instigated the raid on the Jewry of Stamford some years before. Now Gerard let his wife’s words slide off him, and turned to the Templar.
“Bring me the murderer, de Marins, and I promise you I will hang him high enough that his feet will kick the heavens. If you can prove these people earned their death through their own fault rather than any lack of mine, I will be doubly grateful. You will not lack for a reward.”
With that the sheriff left the room, his girth filling the door frame for a moment before he pushed through. Bascot followed Nicolaa out of the chamber and, once they were down the winding stairs of the tower, opened the door for her to pass through into the hall. As she returned to her place on the dais, he felt a sudden desire for a candi and, taking one from the scrip at his belt, put it in his mouth and savoured it as his eye searched the crowd for Gianni.
Nicolaa resumed her seat with a feeling of resignation. The hall was packed to its farthest walls tonight. With easy capacity for perhaps a hundred souls, now there were nearer two hundred crammed into its large space—visiting nobility and their servants, prominent merchants from outside Lincoln who needed to be shown a welcome from the castellan of the castle, a troupe of travelling musicians and acrobats, and the additional men Gerard had hired to swell the ranks of his guard. All sat in their various places, the nobility and knights above the salt, merchants a little lower, with the visiting nobles’ servants and men-at-arms crowded against the rear wall. The storm-laden air was close in the press, with smoke from the myriad wall torches and candles making it into a murky eye-watering haze. Dogs barked, servants rushed and hurried with wine ewers and plates of sweetmeats and, in the midst of all this chattering humanity the musicians strolled, adding to the din with the screech of viol or rebec. The tumblers thrust their bodies through the aisles between the tables, turning somersaults and tossing brightly coloured balls as they whirled, the red and blue hues of their tunics and the spinning orbs making a kaleidoscopic pattern that hurt the eyes if one stared too long.
Nicolaa sighed and signalled for a page to refill her goblet. This was a feast that had been expected of her and Gerard, she owed it as a contribution to the success of the fair, but she would be glad when it was over. Once, long ago, when she had been but a girl and her father had still been alive, she had revelled in such gaiety, laughed at the antics of the acrobats, sang with the musicians, eaten marchpane until her stomach rebelled. Now, she thought, she was growing old, for she longed only for it all to be over and to escape for a week or two to her small manor house at Brattleby, relishing a stay in its quiet confines while Lincoln castle was cleansed of the collected rubbish of the year and prepared for the onset of winter.
The guest at her elbow made a remark and she turned to speak to him. Hugh Bardolf was, like herself, a vassal of King John and holder of much land in the area, some of it from her own fiefdom, most of it directly from the crown. He was a tall rangily built man with sharp clean features and a shock of light brown hair now liberally sprinkled with grey. About her own age, he had once been suggested, before her marriage to Gerard, as a candidate for her husband. She liked him, but was glad that in the end an alliance between the Hayes and Bardolfs had not been forthcoming. They were too much alike, she and Hugh, with a similar need for order and control. They would have battled constantly over the smallest decisions. Gerard she had never loved, or even liked very much, but he left her to run the Haye demesne as she wished, purely because he was too lazy to do so himself, preferring his hawks and hounds to the trivial details involved in the management of their lands.
And, she suspected, Hugh would have been more of a demanding partner in the marriage bed. He had five sons, as well as two daughters, and his wife was expecting another, the last baby she would have, Nicolaa surmised, before she became too old for childbearing. Hugh’s need to control his surroundings would extend to ensuring his own blood would benefit from his industry, while Gerard, once their only child, Richard, had been born and was seen to thrive, had never again come to her bedchamber. She had never been sorry that this was so, although she would have liked more children. She supposed that it might be different to bed a man for whom you felt some affection but, for all that she and Gerard managed to maintain some degree of amiability on the rare occasions it was necessary to be in one another’s company, it had been very apparent that neither of them had enjoyed the brief liaison that producing an heir had required. She did not think Gerard was a lusty man, for she had never heard of any leman or female servant that had attracted his attention, and thought rather that he expended all his energies on his enjoyment of the hunt and his duties as sheriff. Even though her husband had not liked King Richard, she reflected, they had been very much alike, both preferring the challenge of bloody conflict to the embrace of a woman.
“You haven’t answered me, Nicolaa,” Hugh complained softly, but without offence, beside her.
“I’m sorry, Hugh. My mind, I am afraid, is on other matters. Please forgive
me and repeat your question for, truly, I did not hear it.”
High gave her a mildly admonishing smile and leaned closer. “I am, as usual, asking if you have come to any decision about my Matilda and your Richard. It would be a good alliance, Nicolaa. One that should have been made between you and I, and was not. Now we should remedy it by uniting our lands through our children.”
Nicolaa smiled in return and gave her usual reply. “As I told you, Hugh, Gerard wishes to give it more thought. And we would need to consult with the king. He may not relish such a union, especially now while he is trying to bring his vassals on the continent under control. I am sure he would not happily consider two such vast fiefdoms as ours being joined together. He has not a liking for his barons to have too much power in their own hands.”
“He knows you would never betray him, Nicolaa. He has often spoken, not only to me but to others, of your father’s loyalty, and your own.” Hugh was being his most genial and persuasive but Nicolaa had known him too long for such tactics to work.
“He has no reason to doubt mine, Hugh, but every reason to doubt Gerard’s. And Richard is Gerard’s son. John is not a king to overlook past histories, or future possibilities. He has switched sides himself too often to be unaware of the propensities of others for doing the same. The question of marriage between my son and your daughter will have to wait. Neither Gerard or I will be offended if you should look elsewhere for a match for Matilda.”
Hugh sat back, rebuffed, his smile disappearing. Nicolaa motioned for a server to refill his goblet. Her mind was too full of tiredness, the thought of the energy that would be required for tomorrow’s festivities at the opening of the fair, and of the strange murders in the alehouse as well as Father Anselm’s dire state, to be overly concerned about Bardolf’s hurt feelings. There was not a lack of marriageable heiresses for her son, as Hugh well knew.