A Plague of Poison

by Maureen Ash

  Bascot understood what the boy was saying, but not why he thought it was important. “Yes, Gianni, it is probable that Cooper would have delivered the fish to the back door of the Marchand house,” the Templar said. “The kitchen is at the back and that is where the fish would be stored until it was cooked.”

  It was not until Gianni made further motions, bringing his fingers up to shade his brow in an indication he was looking for something, and then pointing to his stomach and drawing his forefinger across his neck in the sign for death, that the Templar realised the implication of what the boy was communicating. The lane Gianni was pointing to led down behind Reinbald’s house and had been considered to be the way that Wilkin had got onto the merchant’s property on the day he had placed the poison in the kitchen. Since the draper’s wife had said Cooper had seen the person she believed was his killer just before Reinbald’s wife gave the honey to her neighbour, Gianni was suggesting that the fishmonger’s assistant had seen the man who had done it and, since Wilkin was in the castle gaol at the time Cooper was killed, it could not have been the potter.

  When Bascot asked the boy if his understanding of his hand motions was correct, Gianni clapped his hands together and nodded enthusiastically. The Templar gave the boy’s conjecture consideration for a moment and then said, “But Cooper did not say to Mistress Marchand that he saw the person from his childhood in the lane, Gianni, only that he met him on the day he brought her previous order of fish. He could have seen him somewhere else in the town, in the marketplace, perhaps, or near another house where he was making his deliveries.”

  Gianni pointed to his mouth and shook his head.

  “Yes, you are right. There is nothing in what Cooper said to suggest he did not meet his killer in the lane.”

  Rather than being the poisoner, it was much more likely, Bascot thought, that it had been as the draper’s wife had suggested and Cooper’s murderer had been an outlaw he had known when he was young. Some felon that had mended his ways and come to Lincoln to take up honest work and did not want his past, and his former crimes, known. But Mistress Marchand had also said that Cooper had told her he had found out about a crime this person had committed which he wished kept secret—that did not sound as though the fishmonger’s assistant had been referring to former villainy, but something much more recent.

  Bascot thought back over the last few months. The only serious crimes that had occurred in the town were the poisonings. There had been a few petty thefts, some drunken brawls and one case where a man had beaten his wife’s lover so badly that her paramour had almost died, but nothing of sufficient import to warrant killing a man to keep the commission of it from being revealed. He knew Gianni was desperate to help the beekeeper’s family, and proving Wilkin innocent would be a sure way of doing so. It was more than likely that the boy’s desire had led him into imaginings that had no basis in fact. But even so, Gianni’s suggestion had led the Templar into remembering the nagging doubt he had formerly felt about Wilkin’s guilt. Was it possible he had allowed the proliferation of evidence to subjugate an instinct that had been a true one?

  He bid Gianni pick up his leather satchel. The boy’s logic had enough merit for him to investigate it further. “The Nettleham apiary is near the alehouse where Cooper once lived. I will question Wilkin about the customers that used it. Perhaps that will give an indication of whether the man who killed the fishmonger’s assistant could have had any connection to the poisonings.”

  Twenty-five

  WHEN THEY ARRIVED BACK AT THE CASTLE, THE Templar sent Gianni to their chamber at the top of the old keep, telling him to unpack the paper and scribing instruments they had bought that morning while he went to question Wilkin. Gianni nodded happily, rubbing his hand lovingly over the soft leather of the satchel before he scampered away. His jubilation had been increased, Bascot knew, by the hope that his master would be able to prove Wilkin innocent.

  The potter was in an apathetic state when Bascot entered the cell. He was crouched in the corner, his eyes dull and devoid of any emotion. There were fresh bruises on his face. It would appear the guards were continuing their rough treatment of the prisoner. Bascot called his name and Wilkin looked up.

  “The night before last a man was stabbed to death in Lincoln, potter,” Bascot said. “It is possible you may have known the victim. His name was Fland Cooper; he was about twenty years of age and was the son of the man who was the ale keeper at an alehouse on the Wragby road.”

  His words produced no response from Wilkin. “We can find no trace of whoever killed Cooper,” Bascot went on, “but it is believed it may be someone from his past, from the days when he was a young lad growing up in the alehouse.” Still there was no flicker of interest from the man in front of him. An incentive was needed to rouse the prisoner from his stupor. “If you help to find his murderer, potter, there is a chance that, by doing so, you will aid your own cause.”

  That suggestion brought a response from Wilkin, whose eyes brightened as he drew in his breath sharply.

  “I do not promise that such will be so,” Bascot cautioned him sternly. “Only that it might.”

  The potter nodded his understanding, but his listless expression had disappeared. “Tell me,” Bascot asked, “did you know Fland Cooper? He has been working in the fish market near Spring Hill for the last few months.”

  Wilkin shook his head. “I do not remember him from Wragby, so I would not have known who he was if I had met him in the town.”

  “Did you frequent the alehouse his parents ran? It was not far from Nettleham, I understand.”

  “I went there only a few times, many years ago, when I made deliveries to a customer who lived in Wragby,” Wilkin replied. “Guy Cooper was not the ale keeper then. His old widowed mother was the one who ran it.”

  “I have been told that many of the alehouse customers were outlaws. Is that true?” Bascot wanted to try and ascertain if Cooper’s murderer could be, as the draper’s wife had assumed, an outlaw from the past. If he was, then Gianni’s assumption that the monger’s assistant had been killed to keep secret his knowledge of the poisoning crimes would be in error.

  “There were no brigands there while the old woman was alive,” Wilkin told him, “but there was talk of them being there when her son took over after she died.”

  “When did the widow die?”

  “About three or four years ago, I think,” Wilkin replied. “After her death her son inherited the alehouse and took charge of running it. He was a tosspot. He served his ale to all manner of miscreants. ’Tis said his drinking was the cause of the place catching on fire, that he left a candle burning and him and his wife were too drunk to escape.”

  If it had been a brigand who had killed Cooper, three or four years ago was too recent for him to have known one of them in his childhood. Nonetheless, the Templar pressed the potter further, trying to confirm this fact.

  “Are you sure that the old alewife did not allow customers of disreputable character to come and buy her ale?”

  Wilkin shook his head with certainty. “I wouldn’t have gone there if she had. The widow served good ale and kept a clean house. She would never have allowed any wolf’s heads under her lintel. They only came in after her son became the ale keeper. That’s why I never went in there anymore.”

  Convinced that he could eliminate a brigand as a possible suspect for Cooper’s death, Bascot asked Wilkin about the customers who had used the alehouse while the old alewife had been alive, and if, on his occasional visits, there had been any that he knew to be regular patrons. “I need you to go back at least seven years or more,” Bascot told him, reckoning that Cooper would have regarded his childhood as when he had been thirteen years of age or younger.

  Wilkin screwed up his face as he searched his memory. As he did so, the bruises on his face were more apparent, with one that was fresh and livid colouring the lower half of his jaw. “That was the only alehouse along the stretch of road between Nettleham and Louth,
so the customers were mostly travellers that used it for the same purpose I did, when they had a need to wash the dust of the road from their throats,” he told the Templar. “They were packmen and carters and the like, most of them heading to Lincoln with their wares. Sometimes there would be a merchant or two that was either going or coming back from Grimsby or Louth, but they would not have gone there regular, only when they were on a journey.”

  “What about local people? Do you know of any that went in there often?”

  “I suppose there might have been a few that lived in Wragby, but the only one I know of that was there more than once is John Rivelar, the old bailiff. He’d pass me on the road near there sometimes, him and his two sons, and a couple of times I saw their horses outside the alehouse. On those days I never stopped for a sup of ale, for I didn’t want to be in his company, but they must have been inside because their horses were there, tied to the hitching post.”

  Bascot remembered that Adam had told him that Drue Rivelar had an older brother who had left the area many years ago. He then had a sudden memory of Wilkin’s daughter, Rosamunde, running through the crowd after her father’s trial because she believed, so the beekeeper had said, that she had seen her dead lover. Was it possible it was his brother she had seen?

  “John Rivelar’s oldest son, what was his name?” Bascot asked Wilkin. “And what did he look like? Did he resemble his brother?”

  “His name was Mauger,” the potter replied in answer to the first question and then shook his head in answer to the second. “He wasn’t much like Drue. He was bigger, for a start; thickset and strong like his father. And he was just as vicious as the bailiff as well.” Wilkin’s eyes grew angry at the memory. “Rivelar carried a blackthorn staff and used it on the backs of his tenants whenever he had the chance. A couple of times he hit me with it when his sons were with him and Mauger just laughed and looked as though he’d like to crack me one as well. I didn’t like him any more than his father.”

  “Were Mauger’s features like Drue’s? Could it be easily seen that they were brothers?” Bascot pressed.

  Wilkin considered what he had been asked. “I suppose there was a likeness in their faces, but Drue was dark and Mauger was fairer of hair and eyes . . .”

  He broke off as he realised the point of the Templar’s questions and looked up into the intensity in the one pale blue eye of the knight standing over him. Against the darkness of his beard and sun-browned skin, it glittered like the sword of an avenging angel. The Templar frightened him more than all of the guards who kicked and swore at him every time they brought him food. Finally, he asked hesitantly, “Is it Mauger you think killed Guy Cooper’s son, lord? That he came back after all these years and stabbed him to death?”

  Bascot shook his head. “Until it is discovered who murdered Fland Cooper and why, potter, there is nothing of which I can be certain.”

  AS BASCOT LEFT THE HOLDING CELL And CROSSED the ward on his way back to the chamber in the old tower, his thoughts whirled. As he had been questioning the potter, he had realised that until Gianni’s deduction was proved to be valid or otherwise, it would be dangerous to discount it. The draper’s wife had said the man Cooper had met had been using a false name; he could be anyone, a man who lived in the town, the priory or even the castle, hiding behind his assumed identity and free from suspicion. He would have to find out more about Mauger Rivelar before he could consider him as a likely suspect for killing Cooper, but whoever it was, and especially if it was also connected to the poisonings, any person who might recognise the man that the ale keeper’s son had remembered from his childhood was in danger, and precautions would have to be taken to keep them safe. That included Rosamunde. If Cooper’s murderer was the man she had seen in the bail on the day of her father’s trial, he would be aware that she had recognised him and might do so again. He must ask Preceptor d’Arderon to send men to keep watch over her and the rest of her family.

  When he entered the chamber, he found Gianni practicing some Latin phrases on the wax tablet they had bought that morning, erasing them carefully when he had finished and then using the stylus to write others on the newly smoothed surface. For a fleeting moment Bascot allowed himself to enjoy a sense of gratification for the boy’s industry, and then, as Gianni looked up expectantly, he told him what he had learned from the potter.

  “There may be some merit in your belief that Cooper’s killer is also the poisoner,” he said, “but even if he is not, there is still the risk that the lives of any who remember this man, as Cooper did, are at hazard. I will ask Preceptor d’Arderon to ensure that the beekeeper and his family have protection.”

  The boy nodded solemnly. “While I am at the preceptory, Gianni, or at any other time that you are not in my company, I want you to stay with Ernulf and not leave his side, even if it means having to accompany him while he is making his rounds of the castle grounds. If this man should become aware that we are looking for him, he will consider anyone connected with the investigation to be a threat. Until this matter is resolved, I do not want you, at any time, to be alone.”

  Bascot took the boy to the barracks and asked Ernulf to watch over him, explaining briefly that, due to the brutality of Cooper’s murder, he did not want to leave the boy unprotected while he was gone. Then he left the castle by the eastern gate and walked through the Minster grounds to the Templar enclave.

  Everard d’Arderon listened in silence as Bascot told him of his fears for the safety of Wilkin’s family and why.

  “I have come to ask you to send a couple of men to the apiary to provide protection for them,” Bascot said. “It would be best if it seemed as though they are there merely to help maintain the property, to carry out the manual chores that the potter would normally do, mending fences and the like. That way the beekeeper will not be aware of the real reason they are there. I do not want him and his family, or the man I am seeking, to be aware of their true purpose until I am sure such precautions are warranted.”

  D’Arderon nodded. “I have two men-at-arms who will be suitable. Both of them have done a spell of duty in Outremer. Unless this murderer has more stealth than an infidel, he will not get by them. I will send them to Nettleham immediately.”

  Bascot asked the preceptor if there was anyone at the Wragby property who had been there long enough to remember customers who had patronised the alehouse seven or more years ago. “If there is, they, too, will need to be guarded. Although I would be glad to find someone who might be able to give me information, it is certain Cooper’s murderer will want to eliminate any witnesses who may be able to identify him.”

  D’Arderon said there were none. “All of the servants at Wragby have been there no longer than five or six years. There was one old cowman that had been there longer, but he died a few months ago.”

  Bascot thanked the preceptor and, before he left, told him what Roget had found out about Ivor Severtsson. The older knight’s face suffused with anger. “Such a man is a disgrace to humankind. He shall be dismissed forthwith.”

  Twenty-six

  THE NEXT MORNING BASCOT RODE OUT TO Nettleham with Gianni riding pillion behind him. He wanted to try and find out more about Mauger Rivelar, and it was possible that Margot or her father might remember more about the former bailiff’s son than the potter had. As he pressed his mount to a gallop along the road to the apiary, he reviewed his conversation with Ernulf the night before.

  When Bascot had asked the serjeant if he remembered Drue Rivelar’s brother, Ernulf had shaken his head. “I don’t recall that I ever heard mention of the brigand as having one,” he said. “But one thing’s certain, if he had come back to town and said who he was, I’d know of it. Everyone in Lincoln turned out to watch Drue and those other brigands get hanged, and there are plenty who would remark on it if a brother to one of ’em had returned. ’Twould have been a tidbit of gossip to repeat to all and sundry.”

  The serjeant shook his head in sad remembrance of the day the executions had tak
en place. “Sir Gerard ordered me to hang them all, including Drue Rivelar, from the parapets, and let their bodies dangle over the wall in plain sight of all as a warning to any others as should be tempted to rob honest travellers. ’Twas his right; all of them had been caught in the act of thievery and murder, and no trial was needed. The people in the town agreed with him and gathered along the south wall by Bailgate to see the deed done. There was a multitude of cheers when they breathed their last. ’Twas one of the few times they gave Sir Gerard their support, but it was well deserved.”

  Bascot then said that Richard Camville had told him that John Rivelar had accused the sheriff of meting out too swift a justice and had claimed that his son should have been publically tried so that his innocence could be proven.

  “Aye, he did,” Ernulf confirmed. “Stood in the bail and ranted at the sheriff as we put a noose over his son’s head. When the boy was dead, tears streamed down his face and he could barely keep to his feet. Then he went down into the town, to see Bailiff Stoyle, trying to enlist his help in bringing a charge against Sir Gerard, but Stoyle would have none of it. On the day the brigands were captured, the prior from All Saint’s had been among the party they were robbing, returning from a sad journey to visit his father on his deathbed. He had been beaten during the attack, but he came to the bail and denounced all of the brigands, including Drue, to the sheriff despite the fact that he could barely walk for soreness at his injuries. The townspeople were outraged that a man of the church, and one who had been on an errand of mercy, should have been attacked so violently.”