The Alehouse Murders

by Maureen Ash

  “I have been content alone,” Sybil responded. “Were it not for the lack of a child, it would suit me very well.”

  “And Philip—is he chaste?”

  “If he has a leman, I have not heard of her. But, truth to tell, I have never taken much trouble to find out. If he has one, he obviously hasn’t sired a son on her, for I have no doubt if it had been so he would have boasted of the feat to all of Lincoln. And there would have been no need to send for Hugo.”

  Again Isobel’s eyes gave a covert flicker in the direction of her mistress before returning to the written pages of her Psalter. Some emotion had again been quickly masked. Was it speculative, as Hilde had first thought, or was there something else—contempt, perhaps, with maybe a trace of fear? Hilde nodded absently in agreement with what Sybil had said and turned her attention to the girl. “You are assiduous in your reading, Isobel. Do you not wish to indulge in a game, perhaps, like those two girls over there?” She nodded to the pair tossing a ball to and fro. “I am sure your mistress will excuse you if you wish to.”

  As Sybil started to give her assent, Isobel shook her head. “Thank you, lady, but no. I will gladly absent myself if you want to have private speech, but I have not a nature for playing games.”

  Sybil laughed. “I have exhorted her many times to entertain herself with something frivolous, Hilde. But she always declines, attending Mass twice as often as I or making herself busy with some other duty. It was with the greatest difficulty that I persuaded her to enjoy the fair that day I was so ill in Roger’s house. As it turned out, I wish now that she had stayed by me. Her witness to my sickness would have proved my innocence in this whole affair of murder.”

  “Yes, that was unfortunate,” Hilde responded absently, keeping her attention on Isobel. “Your diligence commends you, girl.”

  With a glance from her amber eyes Isobel thanked her for the compliment. Hilde studied her, remembering the looks the girl had flashed earlier at her mistress. It had been akin to panic, Hilde was sure. Did the maid know something about Sybil’s habits that might prove incriminating, Hilde wondered? She resolved to get the girl alone as soon as she could and make an attempt to find out if a lover had been warming Sybil’s empty bed.

  Philip de Kyme stood in the small chapel that abutted his manor house and stared down at the spot where he had buried Hugo and his wife. A slab of expensive marble marked the place near the head of the nave, and it would be suitably inscribed by a skilled mason in a day or two. At the baron’s side stood William Scothern, head bowed and hands clasped as he waited for his master to finish the prayer he was murmuring.

  “Well, William,” de Kyme said finally, “my only son is buried. I would wish it were my wife instead.”

  “She will be suitably punished by the justices, my lord,” Scothern answered quietly.

  “Aye, I am only sorry that her rank will probably prevent them from demanding her life,” de Kyme replied. “Still, there is the comfort of knowing that my marriage will be dissolved. Not even our sanctimonious Bishop Hugh would demand I stay married to a wife who is guilty of murder.”

  “It will give you great pleasure to be free of her, my lord,” Scothern replied smoothly.

  De Kyme’s wine-ravaged face lit up. “Aye, Will, great pleasure. The moment of our parting will be sweeter than a cup of nectar from the finest grapes of Auxerre. I will not carp at the cost of achieving it.” He threw his arm around the shoulders of his secretarius. “And do not think I shall forget your loyalty throughout this matter. You have served me well, and shall be just as well rewarded.”

  Wine was also being mentioned in the Lincoln town house of Philip de Kyme’s nephew, Roger. But it was about the lack of it.

  “God’s Blood, is there nothing but this soured ale to drink?” he demanded of his steward, an aging retainer with the shabby clothes and pained expression of a long-suffering servant.

  “There was only a small store of wine put by, my lord,” the steward replied. “And it was almost all used during the occasion of your uncle’s last visit. The last was served at the evening meal yesterday.”

  At mention of his uncle, Roger’s temper lightened. He turned to his son, Arthur, who was keeping him company through the long hours of the afternoon, and said, “Philip’s grief will ease now that he has buried his bastard. Soon, I think, he will realise that I am the only one of our family worthy to be named his heir. I should have been named so before this if my uncle had not decided to send for that wretched boy. Still, the bastard is well gone now, and not before time.”

  Arthur mirrored his father’s expression. “Yes, father. It is your good fortune that he and the child his wife was carrying were murdered together. Once Lady Sybil and Conal are denounced there will be no one to stand in your way.” The lad looked up at his father and said carefully, “Unless Sir Philip should marry again. He may yet father a legitimate child of his own.”

  Roger’s heavy brows came down and met over the hook of his large nose. “He’ll not marry again. Not while I am here to persuade him against it. I shall be his heir, and no one else, I tell you.”

  Arthur took a discreet course in his answer, recognising the blackness of his father’s expression. “There is only you deserve to be such, Father,” he said.

  In the fine stone house of Isaac the Jew, Nathan was laying a soiled and malodorous purse in front of his brother.

  “This is Samuel’s?” Isaac asked, wrinkling his nose and touching the stained scrip with the tip of his forefinger.

  “It is,” Nathan said. “It is one I gave him myself.”

  “Where was it found?” Isaac asked.

  “It was buried in the midden at the back of the alehouse.”

  “By the beard of Abraham, it must have been a brave man who searched for it,” Isaac declared, moving back from the table to escape the stench that wafted up from the purse.

  “It was necessary. The servant who found it waited until the alewife was away from her yard, engaged with the attentions of her new admirer, Goscelin the baker.”

  “You were wise in your decision to search the premises, even though the Templar said he had done so and not found anything other than a scrap of cloth.”

  Nathan gave a grim smile. “There are places that a knight would not think of looking.”

  “So it seems,” Isaac replied. “It was empty?” Nathan nodded. “And there was nothing else hidden with this?”

  “My servant said not, although he claims he did not have much time to search the midden having, understandably, left it until last. But it may be that his stomach rebelled and he lacked the fortitude to be more diligent.”

  “I would not blame him, if that were the case.” Isaac rose and walked a few paces, his robe billowing as he moved. Then he turned and came back to face his brother. “The Templar will have to be told of this,” he said.

  “I know,” Nathan replied.

  Twenty-three

  BASCOT WAS THOUGHTFUL ON HIS RIDE BACK TO LINCOLN from Alan de Kyme’s messuage. The fief he had just seen was a small one, set some ways off the main road to Torksey, and gained by a narrow track that wound towards the central house and yard near the Trent River. As the Templar rode, he went over in his mind what Alan had told him. It had not been much. The baron’s cousin had cheerfully said that he had been at home with his wife on the evening and night that Brunner had been murdered and, on the day that Hugo and his wife must have met their end, had been at work on his holding, preparing a few of his lambs for sale at the fair. His wife and two of his servants would vouch for him. Bascot knew they would be unlikely to gainsay his words, since their own meagre livelihood depended on him.

  “I can’t prove I didn’t kill them, Templar,” Alan had said with a crafty smile, “but neither can you prove that I did.”

  One piece of information was new, however. Alan had told Bascot that his manor house had been the destination that day of the Jew, Samuel. “He was to bring me a small loan of silver I needed for repairs to m
y mill,” Alan had said. “He never reached here, although I don’t suppose you’ll believe that. I only wish he had. One dead Jew and no proof on him that I had received the money would have fitted me fine. But I never saw him. And that you can believe.”

  As he neared the junction of the narrow dirt road from Alan de Kyme’s property and the Torksey road, Bascot noticed a small track leading back through the trees and thick underbrush in the direction of the river. He had seen a few such, all leading off the main road in the same general direction, and this was no different except it looked less used. Bringing his mount to a halt, he dismounted and walked a short way up the track. It seemed no more than a faint trail, with a few barely discernible marks of passage by either man or animal. He stopped and looked to the west, enjoying the silence and the fresh breeze while he thought. The river was close at this point, no more than a mile distant. Easy access for fishing. Or to snare the birds that inhabited the marshy ground close to the river. Or for someone who had need of a boat.

  Bascot walked back to his horse and remounted. He believed he had just found the way that the dead Jew, at least, had been brought back to Lincoln.

  Ernulf was waiting for him when Bascot returned to Lincoln Castle. “There is a Jew come for you. Says that Isaac sent him with a message. He won’t give it to anyone but you.”

  The young Jewish boy waiting near the barracks was relieved to see Bascot. He had been there some time and being the only Jew in the midst of so many Christians was unnerving him. Hastily he handed Bascot the roll of parchment with which Isaac had entrusted him, then bolted off on a dead run out of the bail.

  After reading the words written on the scroll, Bascot turned to Ernulf. “Send two men to arrest the alewife, Agnes. Bring her here and incarcerate her in your holding cell. Leave her alone, with no comfort of either food or drink. Then go yourself and fetch her sister, Jennet. Tell the sister that we have Agnes locked up and I wish to speak with her before I hand Agnes over to Roget. I’ll be waiting in the armoury.”

  Bascot used the time while he waited for Ernulf to return to think. When Ernulf finally ushered Jennet in before him, Bascot was ready for her.

  “You have been told your sister is being kept confined?” he asked.

  Jennet nodded. “What is it that she has done, sir? I thought you were satisfied she had no involvement in those . . . those deaths.”

  “I was. Now I am not.” Bascot walked to where shirts of mail hung on their crucifix-shaped holders. Beside them dangled the complicated trappings of a score of arbalests, the metal quarrels used to load them resting neatly on shelves nearby, well greased as preservation against rust. Lances were stacked in a corner, lengths of chain were coiled on the floor and a mound of leather wrist guards spilled from an open sack. Bascot picked up a sharpening stone from a pile that lay there and, taking his dagger from his belt, began to hone the blade, glancing at Jennet as he did so.

  “Your sister has consistently lied to me. First about where she was on the night the bodies were left in the alehouse and then about the fact that she had nothing to do with the slayings.”

  “I know she lied in the first instance, my lord,” Jennet said nervously, eyeing the dagger. “She was frightened, that is all. But she told the truth in the end, I am sure. Just as I am sure that she could not have had a hand in the murders. It is not in her nature, my lord . . .”

  “Her nature, woman, is to lie.” Bascot tested the edge of his blade with the ball of his thumb and replaced it in its scabbard, throwing the sharpening stone back onto the pile of others as he did so. “The dead Jew’s scrip was found on the alehouse premises. It was in a place that she claimed to have overlooked the whole night long, so no one—neither her dead husband, nor the man she claimed killed him—could have put it there without her seeing it done. Does not that, along with all her other lies, suggest to you that she was involved in these murders?”

  Jennet looked at him grimly. “If I were you, my lord, I would believe that it did. May I ask what you are going to do with her?” Her voice quavered slightly as she asked the question.

  “For the moment, mistress, that depends on you,” Bascot said. “I have no more use for your sister’s caterwauling and pretense of grief. You will go to her directly and get the truth out of her. If what she tells you does not satisfy me I shall turn her over to Roget, who will, in turn, hold her for trial at the assizes. Until that time she will be held in the sheriff’s gaol in the town, along with any other prisoners he may have there. I will give Roget leave to try any method he desires to persuade her to tell what really happened to her husband and the others. Do you understand me, mistress?”

  Jennet’s pale complexion turned ashen. “I do, my lord.”

  “Ernulf will take you to your sister and leave you alone with her for the time it takes him to drink a sup of ale. You will get this one opportunity, and this one only, to speak to her. If you value your sister’s comfort, I suggest you use it wisely.”

  “I will, my lord.” She turned to go but Bascot stopped her. “What was the alekeeper’s trade before your sister married him?”

  Jennet looked at him in surprise. “Wat? He were a wherry man, sir. Had an old boat he used to hire himself out on to haul goods for a short distance. That’s how Agnes met him. She had some kegs of ale to be taken up the Fossdyke to a customer who lived on the other side. Wat didn’t make much of a living out of it. Reckon when he met Agnes he saw a good chance to improve himself, and have all the ale he wanted into the bargain. She always was foolish about men,” she added bitterly.

  “This boat—where is it now?”

  Jennet shook her head. “I wouldn’t know, sir. He had a place for it somewhere on the river, t’other side of the stone bridge. Agnes did tell me that they still used it sometimes, to carry her ale, but not so much lately since she had made herself such good customers in the town. Is it important, sir? Should I ask Agnes about it as well as . . . as well as about the other, sir?”

  “Not yet,” Bascot said. “If I fail to be satisfied with what she tells you, there will be time enough to ask her about the boat when she is in Roget’s care.”

  Jennet suppressed a shudder, then went to where Ernulf was waiting by the door, squaring her shoulders as she came up to him. “Take me to my sister, if you please, serjeant. And you don’t have to take overlong with your ale while you wait. I will make it clear to Agnes that there is no more time left to waste.”

  “Apparently, when the alewife found the three dead strangers on her taproom floor, she took the scrips of each one, removed what was valuable and burned or buried the rest,” Bascot told Hilde later that morning. “There was some silver in the Jew’s purse, a few coins in Hugo’s and a comb made from bone along with a pot of unguent and the little brooch in the girl’s. There was also a piece of parchment in the purse of de Kyme’s son, with some writing on it, but Agnes cannot read, so she burnt it.”

  “Are you sure she is now telling the truth?” Hilde asked.

  “I think so.” Bascot smiled. “Ernulf waited outside while Jennet went in to Agnes. He said there was no crying or wailing from the alewife this time, just the sound of two or three hefty slaps being administered, and then she told her tale to her sister as meekly as a babe.”

  “So we now know it was intended that the bodies be identified as soon as they were found. The parchment was most likely one of de Kyme’s letters inviting the boy to Lincoln.”

  As Bascot nodded in agreement, Hilde called to her maid, Freyda. They were sitting in the privacy of Hilde’s chamber, with only the maid and Gianni in attendance. On the floor was a basket of plums which the boy was rapidly popping, one after another, into his mouth.

  “Some wine, Freyda,” Hilde ordered. “And some of those cakes you brought up from the kitchens this morning.

  When the refreshments had been served, Hilde leaned back in her chair. “You have done well, Templar. Now, I would like to hear about the boat.”

  Bascot told her that the boa
t that had belonged to Wat had been found at a mooring near the Lincoln end of the Fossdyke. “It had empty ale barrels fore and aft, and a canopy under which it would have been possible to secrete three people, unseen by any passerby or the occupant of another boat.”

  “And you think that was how Hugo and his wife were brought to Lincoln? By boat?”

  Bascot nodded. “I think they were brought upriver alive—probably willingly and thinking themselves making the last stage of their journey—then given a potion that either rendered them unconscious or killed them. They were then put into barrels on the boat which the alekeeper offloaded onto his wagon before driving into town.”

  “Then the bodies were never at Roger de Kyme’s town house?”

  Bascot shrugged. “Perhaps, or not, it makes no matter. Wat may have left them there while he made his other deliveries to prevent them being discovered on his premises. Or he may simply have left them on the wagon until night fell.”

  “But what about the Jew? It is certain he was never on a boat.”

  “No, but he was on the Torksey road, and close to the river. Whoever hired Wat needed to meet the alekeeper at some point, either to carry out the killing, or to help convince the victims that they were being taken to de Kyme’s residence. If Samuel saw that person, or persons, making their way down to the river by one of the paths from the Torksey road, he would have been a witness as to their whereabouts at the crucial time. He could not be left alive to recall their presence later, and tell of it.”

  “Yes, it all fits,” Hilde remarked. “What about the harlot’s gown, and the stabbings? I can see no reason for either. Why not simply leave the bodies in the alehouse and the girl in her own clothing?”