A Plague of Poison

by Maureen Ash

  Germagan offered Bascot the most comfortable chair in the room, which, to the Templar’s surprise, had both arms and a padded seat. He had not realised that exterminating rats was such a profitable business. Gianni stood behind him, gazing in awe at the draught-excluding cloths of rat skins that hung from the walls and the marvellous pewter bowlful of rats’ claws that sat in the middle of the table.

  Bascot took a sip of his ale and regarded the two catchers. “I would have you stay with us, Germagan, while I ask my questions of your cousin. It may be that where his knowledge fails, you are able to fill in the gaps.”

  Motioning to both of the men to be seated, he asked Dido how long it had been since he left the service of the Templars at Wragby.

  “Five months since, lord,” Dido replied. “ ’Twas a good post, but I am town born and bred and I missed Lincoln.” He paused for a moment and then elaborated on his reason for returning to the town. “There is also a maid that I wish to wed. I was married once afore, but my wife took sick and died after she had our first babby. Not long after, the child became ill as well and followed his mother to her grave. At the time, I was glad to get out of Lincoln and leave the memory behind me, but now I’ve a fancy to make a home again and perhaps raise another family. The girl I would like to marry has told me she might be willing but she is reluctant to move out into the countryside and away from her parents. She said if I plied my trade within the city walls there was a chance she would look on me with favour. So I come back here, and Germagan kindly offered to give me a bed until she says yea or nay.”

  Bascot nodded. “Did you ever have occasion to go to the Nettleham apiary while you were employed at Wragby?”

  “Only once,” was the reply. “That was in the old bailiff’s time. There was a nest of rats in the beekeeper’s barn and his dogs couldn’t lodge them. I stayed there for two days and a night and sent my ferrets in.” He patted his pocket and one of the tiny animals poked its nose out, bright eyes shining as it looked around the company before disappearing back into its hiding place. “They got rid of them soon enough. Found their nest as quick as lightning, and between them and the beekeeper’s dogs the vermin was all dead within the space of a few heartbeats.”

  “And you stayed at Wragby after the former bailiff died, didn’t you?”

  “Aye, I did. Terrible time that was, when his son was hanged. Went right out of his senses with grief, did Rivelar. One morning he came out into the yard and called for his horse, but before it could be brought he’d dropped down stone-cold dead as though he’d been hit with a poleax. ’Twas a quick death, but a sorry one.”

  “And Ivor Severtsson was employed there before he took over the post of bailiff after Rivelar’s death?”

  “He was, lord,” Dido said, his face clearly showing that he did not understand the import of the Templar’s questions.

  Bascot leaned forward. “During all the time you were there, Dido, did you ever have knowledge of any animosity between the potter at Nettleham and Severtsson, either before he became bailiff or afterwards?”

  For the first time, Dido dropped his gaze. When he looked up, he glanced at Germagan, who said, “Cousin, the purpose of our trade is to keep the dwellings of Lincoln clean and free of vermin. Sir Bascot’s aim is the same as ours, but the two-legged rat that he is after is far more dangerous than any of those we catch. It is your bounden duty to assist him, no matter if it needs that you speak ill of others.”

  Dido listened to his cousin’s words and gave his answer slowly and with a show of disinclination. “ ’Tis not an easy thing to tell tales of another’s affairs, but I reckon Germagan’s right. ’Tis my duty.” He gave a sigh. “You are right, lord. There is bad feeling between Wilkin and Severtsson, and has been for a long time.”

  “Do you know the reason?”

  Dido nodded. “Wilkin’s daughter, Rosamunde—the potter thinks Severtsson raped her and is the father of her baby. When it was first noticed in the village in Nettleham that the girl was pregnant, the potter accused the bailiff of ravishing her to anyone who would listen.”

  Having already thought it was possible that Severtsson might be the father of the child he had seen playing at Rosamunde’s feet, Bascot was nonetheless startled by the additional accusation of rape. Here, indeed, was cause for the potter to have a deep hatred against the bailiff, and a fervent desire for revenge on the man who had defiled his daughter’s body. Had the potter tried to extract his retribution by attempting to poison the bailiff while he dined at his uncle’s house in Lincoln? But if so, why had he also placed a pot of the same poison in the castle kitchen?

  The Templar returned his attention to Dido. “Do you believe the potter’s accusation?”

  Dido reflected before he gave his answer. “I suppose it might be true, but I don’t think so. Wilkin’s daughter is beautiful, and always was, even before she became mazed. There were quite a few who came after her alongside the bailiff, and I heard many a tale of how a hopeful swain would have a sudden urge to stop and linger in Nettleham in the hopes of catching a glimpse of her. And she was aware of it, for she often took walks in the woods nearby, even though I heard tell her father beat her more than once for doing so.”

  “So it could have been anyone that raped her, not just Severtsson?”

  A shadow of reluctance came over Dido’s face again as he said, “That’s if she was actually raped, lord, and didn’t give herself willingly.”

  Bascot became a little impatient with Dido’s reticence and said, “I have no time for niceties, catcher. Tell me all you know, and tell it now, without prompting.”

  Germagan added his own exhortation to Bascot, saying angrily, “Get on with it, Cousin, and do as you are bid.”

  The older catcher’s words prodded Dido into continuing his tale, albeit in a resigned fashion. “It is said that Rosamunde was enamoured of Rivelar’s son, the man that became a brigand and was taken by the sheriff and hanged. His name was Drue. I saw him with her myself once, in the woods near Wragby when I was out looking for a rat’s nest near an old well there. They were lying in the grass entwined together—nearly stepped on them I did, but saw them just in time—and she didn’t give no appearance of being there against her will. If anyone’s the father of that babe, it’s Drue Rivelar, not Ivor Severtsson.”

  “Did you know this Drue well? He must have been on the property at Wragby before he became an outlaw, while he was growing up.”

  “Aye. He was just a young lad when I went there about six years ago. He was a bit of a hellion and didn’t take kindly to his father’s harsh ways. Many a time I saw Rivelar give his son a thrashing for some wrongdoing, but the boy took all his father gave without so much as a whimper and then went out and did what he’d just been told not to do all over again. He was a merry lad, and, I suppose, well-favoured to a woman’s eyes. Seems to me that he and Rosamunde were two of a kind, both wayward, but with a joy in them that no amount of punishment would ever quench.”

  “And yet Wilkin insists that it is Severtsson who impregnated his daughter—was he not aware of her liaison with Rivelar’s son?”

  Dido wrinkled up his face in thought. “Wilkin may not have known about Drue. All of us at Wragby did, but the potter never had no cause to come there and the villagers in Nettleham may not have felt easy with telling him about his daughter’s love games in the greenwood. And Severtsson would have taken Drue’s place if he could. I used to see him look at his master’s son with envy in his eyes.” He shrugged his shoulders. “That’s all I know of the matter, lord. As I said, there were many men for Rosamunde to choose from. Only she knows who she gave her favours to, or how many.”

  Bascot mused over what he had just been told. The potter had good reason to hate the bailiff, and it was entirely possible he would wish to harm him, deeming it a justifiable retribution for the shame he believed Severtsson had inflicted on his daughter.

  He asked Dido if he knew whether any rat poison was kept at the Nettleham apiary. Dido had
shaken his head. “Not the poison itself, lord. I asked special before I turned my ferrets loose in case my little creatures should eat some of the stuff by mistake. Old Adam told me his bees wouldn’t stand for such a substance being kept where they lived, and he was so upset at the notion that I believed him.

  “But,” he added, “despite the old man’s words, he did allow Margot to keep some of the root of that there hell herb to treat their cow in case it should be taken with a cough. She cuts a little slit in the dewlap of the beast and pushes a bit of the root through and leaves it for a day or two. It’s an old remedy and works right well. When I asked about the poison, she showed me the pot where she kept the roots. It was tightly sealed and I knew I needn’t have any fear that my beauties would get near it.”

  Dido again patted one of the pockets on his coat and the ferret, as before, popped its head out. Gianni was entranced with the inquisitive little creature, and the catcher took it out and gave it to the boy to hold. The ferret immediately dived inside Gianni’s tunic, causing the boy to jump in alarm, but Dido laughed and reached inside the garment to retrieve the tiny animal. “He won’t hurt you, boy, not unless you hurts him,” he said, stroking the ferret. “Just likes to be where it’s dark and secret, same as the rats he hunts.”

  What Bascot had learned seemed to point to Wilkin as a most likely suspect for putting the pot of poisoned honey in the merchant’s house, since he not only had a reason to hate Reinbald’s nephew but also had access to the herb that was used to make the poison. But Bascot had still not discovered a reason for the potter to have adulterated the pot that was found in the castle kitchen. The Templar felt his frustration mount as he and Gianni left the rat catcher’s home.

  Thirteen

  AS THE HOURS Of THE DAY CREPT FORWARD, IT SOON became apparent that Nicolaa de la Haye’s prediction would prove true: the deaths of three of Lincoln’s citizens would provoke an outcry among the townspeople. The news of what had befallen le Breve and his family was passed along with the speed of a raging conflagration. The deaths in the castle had not concerned them greatly, for all considered them to be in retaliation for a grudge against the sheriff, Gerard Camville. He was an uncompromising and brutal man, and there were many who had reason to resent his harsh administration. Most of the townspeople had shrugged their shoulders in dismissal when they had heard about the poisoning of the clerk and the knight, and there had even been a few who had quietly whispered that it was a shame that Camville had been away when the deaths had taken place, for if he had not been, he might have been one of the fatalities. It would have made the passage of many lives a little easier.

  But now the poisoner had struck at a family in the town, and one of them had been a young child who could not have been anything but innocent of injury or unkindness to others. As the story of the murders passed from one person to the next, not only fear but outrage rose to the surface. Soon other recent fatalities were recalled, ones where the cause of death had been obscure. It did not take long for such speculation to give rise to the certainty that these other deaths were the result of the poisoner’s machinations.

  The first to be remembered had occurred about two months before when the wife of a prominent baker had died. She had been ailing for many months, complaining of pains in her stomach. The baker had obtained the services of a leech, but the numerous bloodlettings he administered did not ease her complaint, and so the baker had asked Alaric, as a physician reputed for his learning, to attend her. After Alaric had checked her blood for its viscosity and inspected her feces and urine for the balance of the humours within her body, the physician had cast her horoscope and shaken his head; there had been a malign conjunction of planets on her natal day, he told the woman’s husband. He would do his best to cure her, but she would need a lengthy treatment and it would be costly. The baker, a moderately wealthy man, gave his assent, and Alaric prescribed the use of several medicines, including feeding her on a diet of roasted mice and applying a paste made from pulverised laurel leaves to her abdomen. None of his remedies prevailed, however, and the woman finally died after a great outpouring of blood from her mouth. There was now no doubt in the retrospective minds of the townspeople that she had been a victim of the poisoner.

  Another case that, with hindsight, was viewed with suspicion was the death of a tanner who practiced his trade near the banks of the Witham River. He had been strong and fit one day, and dropped down dead the next, seemingly taken by a stoppage of his heart. Only his wife knew that he had, for some time, been drinking a pint of bull’s urine every day, hoping that the potency of the animal from which it came would prove to be an antidote for his own sad lack of performance. She never considered that the urine had been in any way connected with his death, for it had been recommended by a local apothecary who had sworn that many of his clients had benefited greatly from drinking it. After the death of le Breve and his family, however, and since her husband had complained of a stomachache a few days before he died, she began to wonder if the poisoner had somehow adulterated the honey her spouse had mixed with the urine to make it palatable. She did not hesitate to voice her opinion to her neighbours, and this story, too, soon became fact instead of conjecture.

  The most recent fatality, and perhaps the one that most convinced the people of Lincoln that the poisoner had been killing victims over the last few weeks, was the death of a boy of about sixteen years. The young man had suffered almost identical symptoms to that of all of the recent victims, for he had been taken with great bouts of vomiting and a looseness in his bowels, but unlike in the others, these had been milder and had lasted for two days before he finally succumbed. It had been thought at the time that his illness had been due to eating an eel pie he had bought from a roving vendor. The pie seller had suffered great damage to his reputation and much loss of trade from the accusation and, as soon as he heard the news of the poisoning of le Breve’s family, quickly claimed that his young customer’s death had not been due to the staleness of his pie, but that the boy had, instead, been a victim of the villain that was murdering the people of Lincoln.

  As morning crept towards afternoon, suspicion, like a malignant condiment, was mixed into the brew of rising terror, and fingers were pointed in accusation. Neighbour turned on neighbour, some out of spite for an old dispute, a few out of envy for another’s more lavish possessions and even a couple out of resentment because a would-be lover had spurned his or her amorous advances. Little knots of people began to gather along the streets in the town, and not a few arguments broke out, many of which ended in physical violence. The worst were outside the alehouses, where drink had loosened tongues and made people reckless. Roget and his men were finding it difficult to comply with Nicolaa de la Haye’s directive to treat the townspeople gently and had no choice but to incarcerate some of the worst offenders in the town gaol.

  A few citizens believed that the safety of themselves and their families could only be ensured by leaving the confines of the town, and within hours, wains laden with household goods began to trundle their way through the streets towards the exits of Newport Arch at the north end of Lincoln, and Stonebow in the south.

  As the day progressed, Roget found himself more weary than he could recall having ever been before, even on those many occasions when it had been necessary to fight all day long on a bloody battlefield. As he paced the streets in an attempt to maintain order, he promised himself that never again would he drink wine flavoured with honey, even if he was sure it was untainted. The remembrance of this day would make its sweetness turn sour in his mouth.

  By THE TIME BASCOT And GIANNI LEFT GERMAGAN’S house, it was almost midday and they were both getting hungry. The Templar purchased a loaf of bread from one of the bakers in Baxtergate, and they munched on pieces of it as they walked back into the town, passing through Stonebow Gate and going up Mikelgate Street in the direction of the castle. As earlier in the day, people were still gathered in the streets, and some of the groups Bascot and Gianni passed w
ere engaged in passionate argument. A few of those who had decided to leave Lincoln had wains or packhorses outside their doors and were in the process of piling them high with panniers containing clothing and other personal possessions.

  As the Templar and his servant neared the intersection of Brancegate, Bascot saw the merchant, Reinbald, accompanied by a younger man who had enough resemblance to Ivor Severtsson to be his brother, coming towards them. The merchant hailed the Templar and, after introducing him to his companion—who proved to be, as Bascot had suspected, Ivor’s brother, Harald—asked if the search for the poisoner had made any progress.

  “Not yet, I am afraid,” Bascot replied. “But it is to be hoped that will change soon.”

  Reinbald shook his head, the heavy jowls on his face quivering with the movement. “I fear these deaths are causing much alarm amongst all of those in the town. My poor wife is very distraught, not only at the thought that she was the means by which her good friend, Maud le Breve, and her family died, but also that it could have been us that are lying on our biers in their stead.”