The Alehouse Murders

by Maureen Ash

  Brunner had slept not at all, but had lain tossing on his pallet until dawn. He had been up and drinking a cup of wine to steady his nerves as, one by one, the customers his women had been entertaining had left. Then he had heard of a priest being stabbed and his fear intensified. Anyone who would try to kill a priest would think nothing of murdering a lowly stewe-keeper. And now the very thing he had been dreading was about to take place. He was about to be questioned by someone in authority. Thinking furiously he began to pace, then he left his room and ran up the stairs to the landing above. Along the narrow passageway dirty leather curtains hung, shielding the entry to a number of small closets, each one only big enough for a pallet and stool, where the doxies carried on their trade. He went to the curtain at the farthest end and pulled it aside. On a straw mattress lay a young girl. She was buxom and fresh faced, with long blond hair loose and spread on her pillow. She was not asleep, however, even though her eyes were closed, for her hands were pressed hard against her mouth to stifle the sobs that were shaking her.

  Brunner went inside and grabbed her by the arm. “Up, you. Now. I want you downstairs.”

  She pulled away from him, but there was no way to escape. He stood at the door and watched her as she crouched against the wall. “I want to leave,” she snivelled. “ ’Tis against the ordinances for you to keep me here against my will. You said you wanted me for a servant, not to be a harlot. If you don’t let me go, I’ll find the bailiff and tell him.”

  Brunner leaned over her and gave her a sharp kick in the belly. She doubled up and began to moan. “You knew what it was all about when you came here, my girl. Don’t pretend the innocent with me. Not so keen now you find that you have to lay with whoever wants to pay for you instead of being able to pick and choose your customers, are you? Well, you say one word to the bloody bailiff and I’ll fix you up so no man, not even an old and ugly one, will ever want you to pleasure him again. Now get up and go downstairs, before I take a paddle to your bare arse.”

  He flung the leather curtain aside and strode out into the passage. The girl rose and crept after him, her hands to her stomach where he had kicked her. She followed Brunner downstairs and into his room, and he shut the door behind her. Then, with more threats of physical injury, he primed her in what she was to say when Ernulf and the Templar arrived.

  Twelve

  AS THEY APPROACHED BRUNNER’S DOOR, ERNULF HAWKED and spat. “If I find any ordinances broken in here, I’ll take the fine out of the stewe-holder’s hide. Nothing would give me greater pleasure.”

  Bascot looked at the serjeant and smiled. “I take it you have no liking for the man,” he said.

  “None at all. Most of the stewe-holders we’ve just seen are not too bad. They treat their wenches passably well and don’t take too many liberties with the regulations. But this one . . . I’ve been tempted more than once to take my fist to his pasty face.”

  “Has he given you a personal offence?” Bascot asked while Gianni, still holding the horses, looked in surprise at Ernulf’s grim face.

  “No, but we fished a young girl out of the river once. One of the rat-catchers down on the docks saw her as she jumped in, but she drowned before anyone could get to her. About two year ago now, it were. She was just a little bit of a maid, not much more than a child. Drowned herself she had, but before she jumped into the river someone had taken a birch rod to her back and legs. She was cut from neck to ankle. Been one of Brunner’s wenches we were told, but he swore he hadn’t seen her for a week or more before we found her and, although we tried, we couldn’t prove different. But I know he did it. Beat her so badly she committed the sin of killing herself rather than face him again. Poor soul was probably too afraid to go to the bailiff, so she took the only way out left to her.”

  “What did you say his name is?” Bascot asked. “Brunner?”

  “That’s right, but he should be named Devil’s Backside, for that’s what he is.”

  When Ernulf knocked on the door and the stewe-holder opened it, the serjeant did not enter into any good-natured banter the way he had at the other stewes. He pushed Brunner roughly aside and told him to call his women down, and to be quick about it. When the harlots were all roused and standing downstairs, Ernulf asked them the same questions he had asked at all the other houses along the street. Did they recognise the clothes? Did they know of any harlot that had pale brown hair, was about midway in her term with an unborn child and had not been seen lately?

  Most of the women shook their head but one of them, a blond-haired wench who called herself Gillie, had looked startled when Ernulf had said they were looking for a woman who was pregnant. She had then hesitantly said she had met a girl like that the week before, when she was travelling the road to Lincoln.

  “Where were you coming from?” Bascot asked, the first question he had personally put to any of the prostitutes.

  “From near Nottingham, sir,” she said. “But I’ll not tell you the name of my village. I run away and I don’t want my kinfolk to find me. Especially here.”

  She kept looking nervously at Brunner until Ernulf, a scowl on his face, said to her, “If you want to leave, you have only to walk out of that door with us when we go. No one shall stop you.”

  For a moment the girl faltered, then she glanced once more at Brunner and, curling her arm so that it crossed her stomach, murmured, “I thank you, sir, for your offer. But there’s no need. I’ll stay where I am.”

  “Are you free born?” Bascot asked. If she was a villein and tied to the land, she was committing a crime against her family’s lord by running away.

  “I am, sir. That I promise you. I ran away because my mam died and my father married again. His new wife don’t like me and she beats me all the time. A week ago when she took a rod to me, I struck back at her and when my father came home he gave me the brunt of his fist for giving her an injury. So I left and joined up with a party of travellers coming to Lincoln for the fair.”

  The girl’s attitude throughout had been one of extreme nervousness, but this last sounded like the truth and Bascot let it go. “This girl you met on the way here, was she with the other travellers?” The girl nodded. “Did she tell you her name or say where she was from?”

  “No, sir, she did not. She said she was coming to meet her husband, that he was a mason and had sent for her to come and enjoy the fair with him. But I didn’t believe her. She didn’t look like a goodwife.”

  “Why?” Bascot asked.

  The girl looked down. “It were her clothes, sir,” she said, her voice so low Bascot had to ask her to repeat herself. “It were her gown, sir. That one you’ve got there. She had a light summer cloak over it, but I seen it plain and clear. No decent man would want his wife dressed in colours like those. It looks like a harlot’s gown and I reckon that’s what she was. Like I am now.” She lifted her shoulders and dropped them as though she had been defeated.

  “When was the last time you saw her?” Bascot asked.

  “The day we got to Lincoln, sir. About a week ago now. We all came through Stonebow gate, then each of us that were in the party went their own ways. The last I saw of her she was going up Mikelgate towards the upper part of the city.”

  “Did she mention to you the name of anyone she knew? What her husband was called, perhaps, or on what building he was working?” The story could be true. Masonry was an itinerant trade and those who plied it had to travel to whatever town had need of them.

  “No, sir. Like I said, I didn’t believe her anyway, so if she did say his name I didn’t hear it for I wasn’t paying much attention. I didn’t talk to her much. I fell into company with another girl who was more to my liking.”

  “And you’re sure she didn’t say where she was from?” Bascot asked again.

  Gillie shook her head. “I’m sure, sir.”

  Bascot looked at the other girls, who had been listening to Gillie’s story with curiosity and awe. Even though she didn’t look very happy as she had spun her tale, t
his new girl in their midst would now enjoy the fame that went with having actually spoken to the young woman who had been found murdered. It might even earn her a few extra pennies from customers who had a grisly interest in her tale.

  The Templar nodded to Ernulf, and they started to leave. Before they went through the door, however, the serjeant turned and spoke to the girl again. “If you find yourself ill-treated here or”—he paused to gaze at each of the harlots in turn—“if any of you others have cause to complain, send for me at the castle. My name is Ernulf.”

  Turning towards Brunner he said, “And I’ll be telling the bailiff to have an extra sharp inspection here next week, so there better not be anything amiss, either with your premises, or your wenches.”

  Brunner made no reply but once the Templar and Ernulf had disappeared through the door, he sank onto a stool and called to one of the women to bring him a full measure of wine.

  Thirteen

  THE PEOPLE OF LINCOLN TOWN WERE ENJOYING THE entertainments of the fair to the full, and trade was brisk in the cloth markets, on the stalls and outside the walls where sheep and cattle were being sold. Pedlars of pies, bread rolls and savoury jellied meats were everywhere, their boards balanced on top of their heads or held in front of them by means of a strap around their necks. Women sold trinkets and ribbons from baskets held on their hip, tinkers offered cheap pots and mended spoons from the selections dangled about their bodies on lengths of twine, and beggars covered with sores or having some disability such as a withered arm or a crippled leg—some real, some faked—importuned passersby for alms. Among the throng walked the sheriff’s guards, while town officials bustled to-and-fro, checking that every stallholder had paid the fee for keeping it and watching to see that no unwary customer was cheated by short weight or measure. There were bearbaitings and dog fights, wrestling matches and strolling players, each contending with the others to win a fourthing or half-part of the silver penny pieces thrown by the spectators. Near the end of the afternoon, the prostitutes joined the crowd; green sleeves attached to their gowns and dyed horsehair wigs on their heads.

  As day drew into evening, the selling halls and vendor’s stalls closed, but still the fair went on, the entertainment now of a different nature. Mugs of ale purchased at the packed alehouses were carried into the streets and young men and women danced to the music of wandering troubadours, the girls’ skirts twirling in gay abandon and hair tumbling unheeded from discarded coifs. Their partners lifted them high and swung them about, faces sweating from exertion and excitement. Tonight, and for all the next ten nights of the fair, there would be no curfew, and torches would be kept burning all night along the main thoroughfares so that the revellers could enjoy themselves in safety.

  In the keep of Lincoln castle, there were far fewer to sit down to the evening meal than there had been the night before. Only those members of the castle garrison who would be on duty that evening were eating the cold viands and cheeses that had been laid out by a depleted staff of servants and, at the high table, the company was diminished to the relatives and personal guests of the sheriff and his wife.

  Bascot sat at a lower table, alone except for an older knight who was attacking his trencher with vigour. Below the salt sat a few clerics and a couple of squires. Gianni, after serving his master, had retired with his own food to his favourite spot in a corner of the hall with the dogs, and Ernulf had gone to ensure that the castle had been made secure for the night.

  As he ate, Bascot ruminated on his visit to Brunner’s establishment and the tour he had made of the cloth halls afterwards. What he had learned had not aided him much and, as to the young harlot’s protestation that she had seen the dead girl on the way to Lincoln, he was uncertain as to how truthful she had been. The elderly knight beside him kept up a steady flow of conversation, mostly about previous fairs that had been held in Lincoln and of the various troublesome incidents that had plagued them. Bascot listened with only half his attention.

  At the table on the dais he could see that Philip de Kyme was seated next to Lady Nicolaa, on his other side Hugh Bardolf’s daughter, Matilda. Both of the women were engaging him in conversation and he seemed both flattered and animated. At the far end, beside Nicolaa’s sister Petronille, sat de Kyme’s wife, quietly eating her food and nodding occasionally as her companion sought to draw her into speech. A judicious arrangement, Bascot decided. Distract the husband and placate the wife and perhaps there will be no more arguments. He could not see Conal anywhere, or Richard Camville either. Perhaps the two had not returned from their headlong flight out of the west gate that morning.

  “And there’s more trouble at this fair, too, so I understand. Murder done—four of ’em killed in one night—and a priest attacked.” Bascot’s companion was still talking and the Templar brought himself back to the conversation with an effort. “Always trouble at these fairs. Common people get too excited and don’t know how to behave, that’s the trouble.”

  The knight, who was wearing what surely must be his best tunic, a knee-length garment of bright yellow over a handsome undergown of dark blue with an embroidered cap of matching colours on his straggly white hair, gave Bascot a direct look, finished chewing his mouthful of cheese and apple and said, “Lady Nicolaa set you to find the villain who did it, didn’t she? Have you got him yet?”

  As Bascot started to explain he was merely trying to discover the identity of the unknown couple found on the taproom floor, he was interrupted by the arrival of the young man who acted as secretarius to Philip de Kyme, a fresh-faced fellow named William of Scothern. He had come into the hall while the old knight had been speaking and had made his way at once to where Bascot sat, standing quietly until a pause came in the conversation.

  “Sir Bascot. I have seen you about the castle, but have never yet had speech with you. I hope you will excuse my interruption, but I have just spoken with Ernulf and we both thought I should bring a concern I have to you.”

  His manner was deferential, even though Bascot had heard a tale that he was a grandson of Nicolaa de la Haye’s father, Richard, son of an illegitimate daughter born to one of the baron’s lemans, a woman who had been kin to one of the more prosperous merchants of the town. The leman, Scothern’s grandmother, had died in birthing the child, and Richard de la Haye had provided for the girl, marrying her off to one of his retainers. In due course she had produced William and, Bascot seemed to recall it being said, another child, a girl. They were both now in de Kyme’s household. William, although eligible for a knight’s rank because of his father’s status, had chosen instead to be educated and now fulfilled the role of personal clerk to de Kyme. The girl was one of Lady de Kyme’s attendants. Scothern was a fair-looking lad of about twenty years, with a touch of the Haye red in his brown hair and serious green eyes. He seemed extremely edgy and Bascot noted that his ink-stained fingernails had been bitten to the quick.

  Bascot gave him permission to speak and the clerk said that Ernulf had told him that the cloth merchants he and the Templar had spoken to had been of the opinion that the clothing they had been shown had come from Maine, in particular from the town of La Lune where there was a weaver of great skill. The cloth was easily recognised by its individuality among merchants accustomed to trade with those parts of the Angevin empire which lay on the borders of France.

  Bascot, wondering at Scothern’s interest, gave no reply beyond agreement with the statement, and waited for the clerk to continue.

  Scothern glanced at the elderly knight, who was listening to their conversation with interest, and said, “I do not wish to interrupt your meal, Sir Bascot. Perhaps you will give me a few moments of your time when you are finished. I do not think you will find it wasted.”

  Bascot nodded and said he would meet with the clerk in his room in the old tower in an hour’s time. As Scothern left, Bascot’s companion leaned forward. “Bright young spark that. De Kyme wouldn’t know what to do without him, so I’m told. Old Richard de la Haye would be proud
of his grandson, I’ll warrant. Too bad William’s mother hadn’t been born male for, even though illegitimate, a boy child might have been made Richard’s heir, since his wife only gave him daughters. Then it would have been young Scothern’s destiny to sit up there on the dais instead of Lady Nicolaa. Not that he’d have made a better castellan, of course, for Lady Nicolaa fills the office just as well as any man. But a man’s parts are easier in the saddle than a woman’s, if you know what I mean.”

  Bascot let the knight ramble on while he finished his meal, then excused himself and, calling Gianni, made his way to his chamber.

  Scothern was waiting on the steps outside the door to Bascot’s room when the Templar arrived. They went inside and Gianni poured a cup of ale for both of them then, at Bascot’s signal, made himself comfortable on his pallet in the corner. The room was so small that Scothern had to sit on a stool beside Bascot’s bed in order to speak to him, but what he had to say soon drove the closeness of their proximity out of the Templar’s notice.

  “A couple of months ago, Sir Philip bade me write to a lady who lives in Maine,” the clerk said. “It was a letter he told me to hold in the closest of confidence, but in view of the knowledge I had from Ernulf tonight, I am in a quandary as to whether to inform Sir Philip of my suspicions, or to just let the matter rest. It is really your advice I have come for, Sir Bascot. I know you will keep what I have to tell you as private as I have myself.”

  Scothern took a swallow of ale and waited for Bascot’s nod of agreement before he continued. “As you are probably aware, for most of Lincoln is, Sir de Kyme is not happy that he has only Conal, his son-by-marriage, for an heir. If he should pass Conal by there is a nephew, Roger de Kyme, who at least has a son to follow him, but my master would rather have an heir of his own issue, if at all possible.”