The Alehouse Murders

by Maureen Ash

  Bascot had tried, with difficulty, to raise Benjamin up, but the boy had looked at him with his soft brown eyes, moved his lips once in an attempt to speak and died. A moment later the pirate vessel was pitching and tossing in its own death throes and Bascot was thrown into the raging torrent of the sea. He remembered no more until the next day, when he found himself on an empty strand of shore, his body lying half-in and half-out of the receding waves. Like flotsam he had been thrown up on the beach with other bits of wreckage from the pirate ship. It had been there, his ankle smashed and his lungs full of seawater, that some fishermen had found him and taken him to their village. They cared for him until he could be removed to the Templar hospital on the island of Cyprus. The following months were misty in his memory, a blur of pain and fevered images, but he had not forgotten Benjamin, or the look on his face as he had died.

  Bascot saw that look now, in his mind’s eye, and murmured a prayer for the soul of the dead Jew. It might be blasphemy to do so, but if Benjamin had not freed his leg, at the cost of his own life, Bascot would not be alive now. He pushed his face into the stone. If he had been spared it must have been for a purpose. Was it for this night’s vigil, this catching of a killer? Would the murderer even come? Had he been wrong in his assumptions, was the person he believed responsible for all those deaths innocent of it all? Was it another, even now sleeping the untroubled sleep of those without a conscience?

  And, if he was correct, and the murderer appeared and succeeded in his attempt on Bascot’s life, what would happen to Gianni? Hilde had assured him she would care for the boy and Bascot knew she would keep strictly to her promise, but how would the boy react? Would he go on as he had been, growing up strong and straight, happy in his studies? Or would he run away and revert to the urchin he had been when Bascot had found him, trusting no one, scrabbling with the rats for food?

  Silently he repeated a paternoster and prayed to God for guidance and help.

  In the keep, all of the revellers and servants were asleep. Except for one. A shadowy form rose from the dark confines of a chamber and stepped lightly and quietly through the snores and slumber-deep breathing of the other occupants of the chamber. The door creaked slightly when it was opened but, thanks be to God, no one was sleeping across the threshold.

  Outside, in the hallway, by the light of a guttering torch, a knife was pulled from its sheath, checked for sharpness and replaced. Then its owner crept down the stairs and out of the building.

  Overhead moon and stars twinkled in a heaven devoid of cloud. It should be a fine day tomorrow and would have been an even better one had it not been for Hilde’s carelessly imparted tidbit of information. Damn the Templar! Tonight’s excursion would not be necessary were it not for his incessant poking and prying into matters that were none of his concern. Ah, well, he would not be a threat much longer. Soon he would join the others, join them in paradise—or hell.

  The candle was burning low in its holder when Bascot heard the first sound. A tiny scrape as the door to the chapel was eased open, quickly stilled as the intruder must have paused to see if the sound had been detected. Bascot tensed his muscles, straining his ears and forcing himself to lie still as he heard the soft brush of one footstep, then another, then a pause. The intruder seemed to be still some feet away from him. Was it the person they sought, or merely one of the castle guests, sleepless and come to seek the solace of prayer in the hours before dawn?

  Seconds passed like hours, then the footsteps again began their slow approach. If it had been a guest, they would have retreated at the sight of Bascot on the chapel floor in apparent communion with God. This was the one they had been waiting for, the person who had wantonly killed six people and would, without compunction, kill again. Bascot felt the muscles in his back twitch in protest at their vulnerability. He knew he must wait, wait until an attack was made, else the murderer would deny any intent of violence, claiming only an accidental intrusion into the chapel precincts. Wait, Bascot said to himself, wait. Ah, God, it was hard to do. He held his breath, heard the footsteps move again, bolder now, and quicker as they came nearer. He heard the swish of a blade being drawn from a scabbard, felt, as though it were his own, the sudden intake of breath as his attacker steeled himself to strike . . .

  Bascot judged the last second of safety, hoped it was enough, and rolled, pushing out with his good leg to give himself purchase on the stone of the floor, presenting his blind side to the blade that swept down in an arc above his head. He threw up an arm to protect himself, drawing the blade from his belt at the same time. From the direction of the sacristy, he could hear d’Arderon and the priest burst through the door, their shouts of warning, the ring of their mail-shod feet on stone. Steeling himself for the slice of the blade, he turned his sighted side towards his attacker and readied his own knife to thrust, just as the preceptor’s fist crashed into the jaw of the person above him.

  “By God,” he heard d’Arderon shout in disbelief. “It is not a man. It is a woman.”

  Bascot pulled himself to his feet and bent over the figure that lay unconscious on the floor, the hand the knife had held thrown out to one side, the sharp wicked blade glittering in the candlelight a few feet away. Silently he pulled back the hood that covered the face of his assailant to reveal a mass of dark russet-coloured hair.

  “I thought you said it was the secretarius, William Scothern, that you suspected?” d’Arderon demanded.

  “It was,” Bascot replied.

  “Then who is this?” the preceptor asked.

  “It is his sister,” Bascot answered. “Isobel.”

  Twenty-six

  “SO THAT LITTLE LASS MURDERED THEM ALL,” ERNULF said, disbelief on his weathered countenance. “Seems hard to credit.”

  He and Bascot were standing outside the door of the holding cell, where Isobel had been taken after she had been revived. Dawn was near to breaking and the castle servants were beginning to stir. From the direction of the poultry sheds a rooster let out a call warning of the imminence of daylight.

  “That little lass, as you call her, serjeant, killed six people. After stealing the key to the chest where her brother kept de Kyme’s private correspondence, and discovering that Sir Philip was sending for his illegitimate son, she calmly wrote and instructed Hugo and his wife to come to Newark, where she told them they would be met. She then hired Wat, and his boat, and had him ferry the couple up the river just past Torksey. It was her that went to meet the alekeeper there, and gave the boy and his wife a draught of ale with a potion in it that would render them unconscious. She then smothered them with a piece of sacking.”

  “That was where she met the Jew? On the Torksey road?” Ernulf asked.

  “Yes. It was Samuel’s misfortune that he had stopped there, perhaps to take a break in his journey before going on to Alan de Kyme’s. He must have seen her making her way to the river. Since she could not let her presence be noted, she persuaded him she needed assistance and took him to the river and onto the barge with Hugo and his wife. Samuel was given the same adulterated ale as the others and suffered the same fate.”

  “You said she claims her brother had nothing to do with the business. How did she explain her absence that day to him? If I remember aright, it was originally claimed that she and him had kept company together at the fair. That was why she wasn’t there to give Lady Sybil a witness to being sick in bed all day.”

  “She told Scothern she was going to Parchmingate, to see a new Psalter at one of the parchment makers, and would meet him later. Scothern was not averse to leaving her to her own company. It seems he has been visiting the pretty young widow of a cloth merchant, and used the time to spend with her.”

  “And Brunner?”

  “Isobel tracked him down much as we did. Remember, she was in the castle. She not only had the advantage of knowing what we were going to do, and when, by observing our movements, she also could glean information from her brother. She was clever, and careful. It is only by God’s
grace she did not get away with it.”

  “It is hard to believe she killed the priest. That takes an evil heart.” Ernulf said the words with distaste. “It’s like that verse in the Bible, about what is an abomination to our Lord.”

  “ ‘A proud look, a lying tongue and hands that will shed innocent blood.’ ”

  “Aye, that’s the one. Well, she had all of those, I reckon.”

  Bascot thought of the serene look of hatred that Isobel had given him when she had come to her senses on the floor of St. Clement’s nave. There had been no sign of remorse in her eyes, nor a trace of guilt. She had calmly risen, rubbed the bruise that was swelling on her chin and said, “Well, Templar, you have found me out. I hope you burn in hell.”

  In the holding cell he and d’Arderon had questioned her. She had told them all she had done, hiding nothing. She had found herself pregnant, she had said, and not wanting her child to be born a bastard had decided that she would gull Philip de Kyme into thinking the child was his and then would persuade him to marry her.

  “First I had to get rid of the boy that my spineless brother had helped de Kyme to find. Then I needed a way to make the baron set Lady Sybil aside.” She had shrugged, the heavy fall of her dark auburn hair spilling around her shoulders, her graceful hands folded and still in her lap. D’Arderon and the Templar priest had stared at her. She was beautiful, with alabaster skin and eyes the colour of burnt honey. It seemed impossible to believe she was so evil.

  “It seemed to me that the easiest way to accomplish both aims was to use one end to achieve the other. And it would have worked, but for the alewife. Had she left their scrips in place, they would have been identified immediately and Sybil and Conal charged straight away.”

  For the first time she showed tension. Her fingers tightened one around the other until her knuckles turned white. “Damn the alewife. Wat said she was upstairs, in bed, but she wasn’t. If she had been I would have killed her, like the others.” Her eyes met Bascot’s, glittering with intensity. “Just as I would have killed you.”

  Bascot had pointed out that even had Hugo and his wife been identified at once, it would have made no difference. Nicolaa de la Haye would still have ordered an investigation to either substantiate Sybil and Conal’s guilt, or clear them of culpability.

  Isobel had looked at him scornfully. “Yes, but such an enquiry would have been only cursory. There would have been no need for you or any other to pry and dig. She had no witness to attest to her presence elsewhere when the murders were done. I saw to that by putting a little of the juice of the same plant I used on Hugo and the others into her food. And her precious son was off to visit his crippled paramour, as usual. He thinks it is a great secret, but it was not difficult to discover why he goes to Newark, as that simpering bitch Matilda could have done if she had thought to lift her jealous eyes from my face for a moment. Conal and his mother would have been able to bring no defence to the charge against them.”

  “And you would have seen your mistress and her son accused and found guilty, knowing that they were innocent?” Bascot had asked incredulously.

  “Of course,” Isobel had responded. “Why not? We are all at the mercy of fate. My grandfather might have given preference to a male bastard, but my mother suffered the ill chance of being born female, and so was relegated to a life of low station. As, in turn, have I. I should be the daughter of a baron, not merely a companion to the unwanted wife of one.”

  Her composure slipped slightly and there was a tremor of passion in her voice as she added, “My mother should have been born male, and so should I. My brother is weak, satisfied to pander to the whims of a wine-sop. Were I a man, I would have used my sword to carve a fortune, not wasted my life scratching messages on pieces of parchment.”

  She had told them the rest of the tale quite willingly. She had murdered Wat—smashing his head in with one of the alehouse stools when he had turned to pour them both a cup of ale after bringing the bodies inside—to prevent laying herself open to extortion at some later time. She had murdered Brunner for the same reason, tracking him down in much the same manner that Ernulf had done, by talking to the serving girl from the bawdy house the evening before the youngster had come to tell Ernulf she had seen the stewe-keeper. There had been a smile on her face as she told them how she had intended to dupe Philip de Kyme into thinking the child she had carried was his.

  “I crept into his bed one morning before he awoke. As usual, he had drunk more than his fill of wine the night before and was sleeping alone in a small chamber adjacent to the hall. Will had told me how he often had to help his master to bed because his wits were so befuddled. When Sir Philip woke up, I pretended we had slept together all the night through, and that he had enjoyed my body during that time. It was plain he couldn’t remember if he had done so or not, and it was also clear he wasn’t going to admit to his loss of memory. When the time was right he would have accepted the child as his, and married me to have his precious heir, even if it was a female.”

  “And who is the father of your child?” Bascot had asked.

  Isobel had looked at him in surprise. “Why, Anselm, of course. That was why I had to kill him.”

  At that point, the Templar priest had begged d’Arderon’s permission to leave. Even though used to hearing the confessions of dying men, he protested, never could he recall being privy to such depravity as was spilling from the mouth of this woman. He felt a great need of the solace of prayer. The preceptor gave him his leave and, shortly afterwards, he and Bascot left Isobel to the solitude of her cell, putting a pair of Ernulf’s men-at-arms on guard at the door.

  Now it was clear what Anselm’s repeated muttering of the word “unclean” had meant. He must have been a lecher, just as the shoemaker’s son had said, and that could have been the reason why he been removed to such a distance from his parish in Canterbury. After coming to Lincoln he had met Isobel and succumbed to the temptation of enjoying her body. Hence his wearing of the hair shirt; an act of atonement for his renewed lapse from grace. It was probable he had seen her when she attacked him, perhaps realised the depth of her depravity. The enormity of the sin he had committed had robbed him of the will to live. From Isobel’s point of view, his knowledge of their relationship was a threat to her plans. She had to murder him, to keep him quiet.

  “What made you think it was her brother that was guilty, Bascot?” D’Arderon had asked when they were once more outside.

  “It was Lady Ermingard’s mention of the cloak. And her insistence that the girl that had it was hiding the fact that she was pregnant. I had puzzled long over the implication that there was the need for a quick discovery of the bodies. When I learned from Agnes that she had removed the young couple’s belongings, thus effectively obliterating any way of discovering who they were, it seemed that the requirement for haste had been very real. All had been done to ensure they were discovered and identified quickly. Why? Once the boy was dead, and the child his wife carried with him, any of the other people who might have had reason to benefit from their removal could have waited to convince Sir Philip of their worthiness at their leisure.

  “There could only be one reason, and that was that another child was soon to be born that could fill dead Hugo’s place. Since Philip did not seem to have a paramour, there was only one woman other than his wife who could be carrying his seed, and that was Isobel. She was in his household all the time, and of such a supposedly pious nature that she would not have been suspected of having a liaison with the husband of a mistress she appeared to be devoted to. Besides, Scothern was extremely nervous when I went to de Kyme’s keep to see the letters that had been written to Hugo’s mother. His explanation was weak, but there was no doubt his fear involved his sister. I reasoned that it was Isobel who Lady Ermingard had meant when she had been talking about the cloak being the wrong colour. And it had been the sight of her, not the tapestry, that had prompted the same reaction that morning in the solar. Isobel was sitting right in fr
ont of it. Ermingard had also said that the cloak was wet. It started to rain just about the time that Anselm was killed. Anyone leaving the church just then would have been drenched. Therefore, whoever had done the stabbing must be connected with Isobel. And have knowledge of the whereabouts of Hugo and his wife, and the movements of Lady Sybil and Conal. I thought it must be Isobel’s brother, William; that he had discovered the intimacy between his sister and his master, and also her condition as a result of it. To keep her from the shame of unwed motherhood he had devised a plan to get the baron to marry his sister by removing de Kyme’s illegitimate son and also Sybil at the same time. The others—the alekeeper, the Jew, Brunner, Anselm—had been killed to prevent them making public any knowledge that would implicate him.”