A Deadly Penance tk-6

by Maureen Ash

  The Templar regarded the furrier. Was he a man who would commit murder to protect his cousin’s dark secret, or pay another to do so? Adgate had, so far, evidenced a merchant’s glib evasiveness, side-stepping all of the questions put to him, never telling an outright lie but confining himself to a partial truth when nothing else would suffice. Despite his irritation at Adgate’s continuing subterfuge, Bascot felt that the furrier was an honest man at heart and that if he was involved in the machinations of the murder, would have found it impossible to successfully conceal his guilt. The Templar looked carefully at the man seated before him. For the first time since Bascot had made his acquaintance, Adgate looked his age. The pouches beneath his eyes looked bruised and his skin was sallow. The Templar could not detect any trace of culpability in the furrier’s demeanour, instead Adgate exuded an ineffable lassitude, as though the events which had overtaken him-Tercel’s haranguing, his wife’s betrayal and, last but not least, the admission of his cousin’s secret-had wearied him beyond his strength. Although he felt some sympathy for the man who fate had, it appeared, chosen to buffet through the actions of others rather than his own, it remained imperative to discover if the murdered man’s mother had a connection with her son’s death and, to that end, he must pursue the matter.

  “How did Tercel learn that his mother was related to you?” he asked.

  Adgate raised haggard eyes to Bascot. “I do not know. Truly I do not. He merely said he had proof of his mother’s identity and that she was my cousin. Then he pressed me to tell him who his father was.”

  “And who was it?”

  “I could not tell Tercel and nor can I tell you, Sir Bascot, for I do not know,” Adgate replied.

  The Templar felt his temper rise. “Come, furrier, surely your cousin’s parents, at least, would have known the man’s name. Or are you saying they refused to tell you?”

  “No, I am not. No one knew who he was.”

  At Bascot’s uncomprehending look, the furrier added, “My cousin was raped, Sir Bascot. The assault took place in the darkness of evening and she was attacked from behind. She never saw the face of her assailant.”

  The Templar finally began to understand Adgate’s reticence. To have borne a child as the result of an illicit liaison would certainly cause damage to a woman’s reputation, but it was a sin that, although frowned upon, would have been understood and perhaps forgotten with the passage of time. But to have conceived a child due to a sexual assault would tarnish the mother, and the babe, with a stigma that could never be erased. Any woman defiled in such a fashion would be thought to have attracted her attacker due to her lewd nature, and so it would be she, and not the rapist, who was blamed for her misfortune. She would be considered on a level with a harlot, and her child no better than those born to the women in that profession. It could not be wondered at that she had hidden her condition and was willing to give up the babe after it was born. It was the only means she had of hiding her shame and, at the same time, protecting the child from a life filled with the scorn of others.

  “Did you tell Tercel the truth of his paternity?” Bascot asked.

  “What would have been the purpose in that?” Adgate said resignedly. “He seemed to have formed the impression that his father was of royal blood. Even though he angered me with the haughtiness of his demand, so much so that I felt like striking him, I could not bring myself to tell him what had happened to his mother, for he was, after all, related to me by blood.” The furrier looked at Bascot with a plea for understanding in his eyes. “Surely it was better for him to believe that a royal prince had been his father than to be told that his sire was a nameless villain who had violated a defenceless young girl.”

  In the castle solar, Nicolaa and Petronille sat with Richard discussing what Willi had told them. The boy was still in the chamber, standing a little apart from the group, huddled close to the protective presence of Ernulf at the far end of the room. Richard had returned to his mother and aunt after Elise had been removed from the hall and had told them that the leech and Alinor were watching over the wounded maid.

  Once assured that no more could be done at the moment for the unfortunate girl, Nicolaa told her son what Willi had related about his sighting of the person near the old tower.

  “The boy says he saw a figure coming through the door of the armoury while he and the other children were being taken to the stables. It would have been about the time we assume that Tercel was killed; just as the meal for the guild leaders was about to be served and a little while after Clarice Adgate had left to meet him.”

  “Could he see the person clearly?” Richard asked.

  “Well enough to say it was a woman. Although her head was covered by the hood of a cloak, the edges of a coif showed beneath it and there was a trail of skirts below the hem of her mantle.”

  Richard considered the information. “There would be no reason for a woman to be in the armoury, so that fact in itself is suspicious, and makes me inclined to believe the boy. Now we have only to find the woman and have him identify her.”

  “Yes,” Nicolaa said, “but therein lies the difficulty. Willi is not familiar with any of the guild leaders’ wives or, beyond the two or three maidservants he has come into contact with, any of the females in my household. Neither is he acquainted with many of the women in the town. He says he believes he would know her if he saw her again, but we can hardly take him by the hand and traipse him through the bail and the streets of the town so he can search the faces of all the women who live here.”

  “And while she remains undiscovered, the boy is in danger,” Petronille interjected. “It will not take long for the real reason the boy was brought here to become common knowledge. Even though his sighting of the murderer was never told to anyone directly and is, so far, known only to us few, such information has an insidious way of being ferreted out and then travelling from one person to another as though it was borne on the wind.”

  “We must contrive a means of keeping him safe and yet, at the same time, seek an opportunity for him to regard the faces of any of the women who might be deemed culpable,” Nicolaa said. “We could start with the wives of the guild leaders. If I ask them all to come here under the pretext of discussing further candidates for the foundling home, Willi could be in the hall when they arrive…”

  As the castellan was speaking, Alinor came into the room. Her gown was splattered with bloodstains, but there was a smile of relief on her face. “The leech thinks that, with careful nursing, Elise will recover,” she said. “She came to her senses for a few moments and although she is in pain, seemed rational. Hedgset says that her humours are weak, but appear to be in balance, and he has given her more juice of poppy to help her sleep. I have told him to remain with her until I return and that I will personally keep watch over her. I have also asked your steward, Aunt, to arrange for one of your men-at-arms to stand guard at the door.”

  “Was the girl able to tell you who attacked her?” Richard asked.

  Alinor shook her head. “She remembers little; only craning her head to see the talking bird and then a sharp pain in her side.”

  “Thanks be to God that she was not killed,” Petronille exclaimed. “What of Margaret? She, too, must be sore distressed.”

  “She stayed with me while Hedgset attended Elise and, like myself, is relieved to hear that the leech thinks she is out of danger. I have sent her to the stables to tell the groom, Nicholas, that, as far as Hedgset can determine, Elise is not mortally wounded. I thought it only right that the groom should be reassured, for if it had not been for his valiant effort, Elise could have bled to death in the street.”

  For a moment, the ghost of a smile appeared on Alinor’s face. “I think Nicholas has taken quite a fancy to Elise. If she returns his affection, I may still yet lose her company but, thankfully, it will only be to a husband and not because of her death.”

  Twenty-six

  Willi remained standing quietly beside Ernulf at the back of the r
oom as Lady Nicolaa spoke to the young noblewoman who had just come in about the girl that had been stabbed. The young lady had blood spatters on the front of her gown that he supposed must have come from the victim and he stared at them in growing fear until, after she left, Lady Nicolaa began to discuss with her sister and son the ways in which they could manage for him to see the faces of all of the women who had been in the hall on the night of the feast. Then he began to wish he had lied and told the castellan that he hadn’t seen the murderer. If he had, they might have let him go. He felt unsafe here in the castle, even with the serjeant standing by his side. What would happen when he went to sleep? Even if they put him in the barracks with all the men-at-arms to keep watch, that murdering woman had managed to slip past everyone in the castle to kill that man up on the ramparts, hadn’t she? And it must have been her that stabbed that girl in the town. What was to stop her from creeping past the soldiers and sticking a knife in him in just the same way?

  He waited with seeming patience while the lord and the two ladies talked, but his thoughts were whirling. He had felt much safer on the streets of the town and knew he had to get away from the castle. He didn’t know where he would go, but his guts had been churning ever since Ernulf had brought him into the ward. He must look for a way to escape. He knew the gates on the eastern side of the bail were left open during the day; if he got a chance, he could dart through them and run across the Minster and out one of the gates in the town wall into the countryside. He didn’t know where he would go once he reached there, but he knew he had to get away from here.

  As Bascot rode away from Adgate’s shop, he pondered on whether or not he should visit Gildas on the way back to the castle and ask the barber if he knew the names of the furrier’s cousins. The story of how Tercel had been conceived had saddened him; the dead man’s mother must surely have suffered great anguish during that terrible experience, and it would be a calamity if now, after all these years, her secret was exposed for no other purpose than to eliminate her from the suspicion. Although it was commonly believed that women who had been sexually assaulted were the cause of their own misfortune, Bascot had seen the aftermath of many such incidents during the time he had been on crusade in the Holy Land with the Templars, and knew that conviction to be a falsehood. After a battle, there were always a few men in a victorious army, both Christian and infidel, who violated the unprotected women belonging to the foe they had vanquished. And he was well aware that the men who perpetrated such bestiality in war had their counterparts among a peaceful populace, and were entirely capable of inflicting their unnatural lust, by stealth, on an unwary maid. He could not, in all conscience, take the risk of betraying Tercel’s mother by openly enquiring about her and decided he would first discuss what he had learned with Lady Nicolaa and Sir Richard. If they felt it necessary to continue the investigation into her identity, perhaps a way could be found to do so discreetly, at least until they could be assured she bore no fault for her son’s death.

  Perhaps, he reflected, Ernulf and Gianni had found the missing boy and he would be able to tell them the identity of the murderer. The Templar fervently hoped that was so. It would save any more painful delving into the past of the people who had been connected to the dead man and, even if one of them was found to be guilty it would, at least, make the judgement a certain one.

  His course settled in his mind, he turned onto the main thoroughfare of Mikelgate and saw, a little way farther along, the figure of Hugh Bruet standing beside his horse with one of the de Humez men-at-arms, engaged in conversation with a small group of townspeople. As the Templar approached, Bruet hailed him and, when Bascot drew near, the knight told him of the attack on Elise.

  “This is the spot where she was stabbed, and I hoped I might be able to find someone who saw the person that did it,” he said to Bascot, “but, so far, I’ve not been successful. Everyone had their eyes fixed on the talking bird and saw nothing untoward before Margaret screamed. I’ve asked all of the shopkeepers along this stretch and a few of the roving vendors that were nearby, as well as some of the goodwives that were on the street, but they all claim they didn’t see anyone with a knife approach the girl. If I didn’t know better, I’d say Elise’s attacker was a wraith.”

  The Templar commiserated with the knight, and Bruet, deciding he could do no more, mounted his horse and said he would return to the castle as well. “I am reluctant to admit to Lady Petronille that I found nothing that could help us catch the villain who wounded the maid,” he said. “And I do not relish having to face de Humez when we go back to Stamford. I was sent to protect his lady and her household; now one of them is dead and another sorely hurt. Margaret was right when she said that Lincoln has changed since the days of her youth. Even with Sheriff Camville’s heavy hand upon it, the town abounds with thieves and murderers.”

  Bascot had forgotten that the sempstress was from Lincoln, but now recalled that Petronille had previously mentioned that Margaret had been in her retinue at the time of her marriage to Richard de Humez and had later accompanied her mistress to Stamford. “There are far more people within the town walls than were here so many years ago,” Bascot opined in response to Bruet’s statement. “As a population increases, the incidence of crime swells in proportion.”

  Bruet gave a grunt of agreement. “You are right. And I must admit that it is little better in Stamford. Thankfully, the de Humez manor house is some distance from the town and not so much bothered with the criminal activity that takes place there. I pity the townsmen who have wives and children to protect. Sometimes they must regret ever having been wed.”

  As they reached the top of Mikelgate, and neared the turning of Danesgate, Bruet’s words echoed in Bascot’s mind and, his thoughts still partially on the woman who was Tercel’s mother and the ordeal she had undergone, his perspective of her suddenly shifted. Throughout the investigation they had been looking for a married woman or one that had been widowed. They had also considered the possibility that she had died, but never once had they entertained the notion that she may have remained unwed. And therein they might have made an error. The trauma of her experience could well have made her eschew marriage and the only implication that she had not done so was entirely due to Lionel Wharton’s letter, and the passage where he stated that such was her intention. But the knight would not have known whether or not she had actually done so, for he had no knowledge of her fate once she left the convent. Suppose she had refused to wed her intended bridegroom and had retained her spinster status? This was a likelihood for which no allowance had been made, mainly because there were few women in society that, unless they entered a convent, remained unmarried-the practise of forming useful alliances through females relative was just as common in the merchant class as in those of noble status-but, nonetheless, there were some females who chose this path in life, and it was entirely possible, nay, even probable when one took into account her devastating experience, that Tercel’s mother was one of them.

  As he mentally examined the viability of this premise, a number of coincidences occurred to him and he realised there was one woman they had all overlooked. She fit the description admirably-being of the right age, a resident of Lincoln at the time of Tercel’s conception and had remained unwed. She had also been in the castle on the night of the feast and present when Elise had been stabbed. And because of her close proximity to the murdered man, it also explained why no evidence of him making a search for her within the town had been found. He had no need to go abroad to seek her, she had been in his company all along, for she was living within the castle walls. Bascot was now certain that he knew her identity, and he was also confident that, despite the furrier’s denial, it had been she who had killed her son.

  By this time they had passed Danesgate and the street where Gildas’ shop was located. He was about to go back and ask the barber for the names of Adgate’s cousins as further proof of his theory but instead turned to Bruet.

  “The sempstress, Margaret-d
o you know whether or not she still has family in Lincoln?”

  “I am not sure,” the knight replied, a little startled by the question. “She said to me once that her parents were dead, but I don’t recall her mentioning any other relatives.”

  “It is important, Bruet,” Bascot said tersely, curbing his impatience. “Has she ever said anything about a cousin, or the trade that he followed?”

  Recognising that the Templar’s peremptory tone was dictated by the importance of his question rather than rudeness, the knight took no offence but pursed his lips and thought back over the years he had spent in Margaret’s company while they both served in the de Humez retinue. “About a cousin, no, but she did tell me once that her father was a draper. She said she learned to sew in the shop where he sold his bolts of cloth, helping to stitch vestments for those customers who did not have a wife with sufficient skill to make them.” Bruet paused. “Is that what you want to know?”

  Bascot made no answer. Reinbald had told him that all of the Adgate family had been engaged in the clothing trade. He had no doubt now that Margaret was the woman they were seeking and, as the assurance came to him, hard on its heels came the thought that if the missing boy, Willi, had been found and could identify her, she might seek an opportunity to silence his tongue before he could pronounce her guilt. If Ernulf had taken Willi back to the castle, he would not have removed the lad from danger, but placed him directly in its path.

  “Bruet,” he said urgently, “do you know if Ernulf found the boy that ran away?”

  The abrupt change of subject disconcerted the de Humez knight and he looked at Bascot in surprise. “The one from the foundling home? I think he may have. I saw the serjeant return with a red-headed youngster in tow just a short while before Elise was brought into the bail…”