Shroud of Dishonour tk-5

by Maureen Ash

  “How did he get into Lincoln? Did you leave him a mount?”

  “No, I did not, for there was no reason for him to have need of one,” Savaric replied. “He told me that he walked into Torksey after the swineherd was abed-the pig man drinks his fill of ale in the village alehouse every afternoon and then comes home to sleep like a stone until morning-and hired a horse from a stable there.”

  “And the women he killed, how did he entice them into his company?”

  The former squire looked shamed as he repeated what Jacques had told him. “He said he went to the brothel where the first girl worked and asked her to aid him in winning a wager that a woman could not be smuggled into the chapel at the preceptory. She came willingly when he offered to pay her handsomely for her help.”

  Savaric’s voice diminished to almost a whisper as he described how Jacques had gained entry to Adele Delorme’s house. “The second harlot was known to him from before he entered the Order. He had been friends with her paramour, a knight who lives in Newark, and had helped to persuade her lover to pay her handsomely to leave the town before he got married. When he called at her house, she recognised him as an old friend and had no suspicion that his intention was anything other than harmless.”

  The Templar felt a tide of loathing flood him at the recounting of such flagrant evil. “And, knowing all this, your family still did not give him up to Captain Roget’s authority when we came to Ingham,” Bascot spat out. “How many more women did he have to kill before you would have done so?”

  “There would have been no more!” Savaric responded heatedly, his sorrowful demeanour vanishing. “I came back to Marton after you left the manor house and stayed to keep guard over Jacques. We knew he could not last much longer; that it was only a matter of time before he became too weak to be a threat to anyone. He was starting to lose the feeling in his fingers and his toes had begun to waste. And, more than once, he had been taken with a wracking fever that I thought would be the end of him. We planned to take him to a shepherd’s hut at the edge of the pasture lands at Ingham that is isolated and not used anymore. I was going to send the pig man away on some errand and take Jacques there today. If you had not come to Marton this morning, I would have cared for him until the end and he would have spent whatever time was left to him with his family nearby…”

  “He was a foul murderer and deserved no such consideration,” Bascot said brutally. “His death was too quick to serve justice; he should have swung at the end of a rope and had a taste of the terror he inflicted on the women he attacked. And the rest of you should suffer a like fate for enabling him to commit his vicious crimes.”

  Bascot’s reply was deliberately pitiless. He had seen the body of poor Elfie and heard Roget’s description of Adele Delorme’s corpse. Had she not been fortunate, Terese would have died in a similarly cruel manner. And if that had happened, little Ducette, Elfie’s young daughter, would have been twice bereft, not only of her mother, but of the only other person in the world who cared for her.

  Savaric made no reply and they sat in silence until Roget and half a dozen men-at-arms rode up the track towards them. Bascot explained to Roget as succinctly as he could what had happened and suggested that Jacques’ body be secured in the building where it lay and left there until someone from the lazar house in Pottergate could come and fetch it.

  “The baseborn brother may be infected. He can ride his own horse back to Lincoln under escort by your men,” Bascot added. “Once you reach the castle he should be put in a cell on his own until a leech has examined him to see if he has contracted leprosy. Then the sheriff can do with him, and the rest of his cursed family, as he will.”

  In a hard voice he added, “Tell your men that if Savaric tries to escape, they are to cut him down. He should not be shown any mercy, for he deserves none.”

  Roget nodded and watched with concerned eyes as his friend went into the ramshackle building and emerged a few moments later with the body of Emilius cradled in his arms. Going over to the horse the draper had ridden on their journey to Marton, Bascot laid the dead Templar across the saddle, covered him with his cloak and tied him securely in place. Then Bascot mounted his own steed and, taking up the reins of Emilius’s horse, rode off down the track. Roget’s heart went out to his friend and the rest of the brothers in the Lincoln enclave. The draper had died at the hands of one of their own, a corrupt brother who had kept neither the vows he had sworn nor upheld their honour. Their grief would be inconsolable.

  Twenty-eight

  After Roget locked Savaric in a holding cell and went to relate to Gerard Camville what he had been told by Bascot, the captain was sent to Ingham to arrest Gilbert, Herve and Julia Roulan. Gilbert’s wife, Margaret, was left at the manor house to manage the supervision of the servants and to care for their grief-stricken mother. The two brothers and sister were locked in a separate holding cell from that of Savaric and, at Nicolaa’s suggestion, a request was sent to Brother Jehan, the elderly infirmarian at the Priory of All Saints, asking him if he would come to the castle gaol and examine the prisoners for signs of leprosy. Jehan was an extremely able herbalist who had, in his long lifetime, treated most of the ailments that plagued mankind. Both Nicolaa and Gerard trusted his judgement in the matter.

  After spending some time with Savaric, and a brief visit with the other Roulan siblings, Jehan returned to the hall and said that, as far as he could tell, all four of them were free of the disease.

  “With regard to the three legitimate members of the family,” the monk told them in his slow sonorous voice, “I am assured, both by them and the baseborn son, that they had no close contact with the leper. They did not even, at his request, embrace him, so it is unlikely they have been infected. With regard to the illegitimate son, however, I would ask you to bear in mind that I cannot be certain he has not contracted the disease. Although there is no rash with the distinctive scales that the word lepra implies, he had been exposed to the noxious breath and touch of a leper and may yet contract it. While many of the monks that attend the lazar house below Pottergate do not become infected with the disease, there is usually one or two who catch it in the fullness of time.”

  For a moment Jehan’s gaze became unfocussed as he pondered on the affliction. Finally, he said, “I asked the baseborn son some questions about the leper who was slain by Sir Bascot and I would be very surprised if he contracted the disease in Outremer. I think it most likely he was already infected before he went to the Holy Land.”

  At the looks of astonishment on the faces of Nicolaa and the sheriff, the infirmarian explained his reasoning. “I base that judgement on studies I have conducted among the monks who have served in the lazar house in Pottergate and eventually fall prey to the disease. The monks do not, of course, have carnal liaisons with the women there, but are in close contact with all of the lepers on a daily basis while they tend their needs. I have never seen any of the monks become infected before at least a year of service and, even then, the telltale rash develops slowly. From what I was told about the advanced state of the leprous brother’s symptoms, it would seem he may have been infected long before he lay with the heathen prostitute and probably some time before he left England.”

  “Then he was already ill before he joined the Order,” Nicolaa exclaimed. “His judgement of the Templars was entirely misplaced.”

  Jehan nodded. “I could be in error, of course. God has yet to reveal to mankind any certainty of the manner in which the infection is spread, or why some escape the disease and others do not. I also suspect that there are often cases which are deemed to be leprosy but are, in fact, a different ailment entirely, for I have noticed that the flesh of many marked by an unsightly rash does not waste with the passage of years.” He sighed with frustration at his inability to be of more help to those infected with the disease and finally added, “I do not think the dead man would have lived for very long, in any case. Many lepers’ lives are taken prematurely by a secondary infection that prove
s fatal in their weakened state, while others live to a great age even though they are terribly deformed. It sounds as though his volatile nature made him susceptible to minor ailments, any of which could have killed him.”

  The monk stood up, his reflections done. “I fear that all I can assure you, at the moment, is that none of the prisoners appear to be suffering from the disease.”

  Nicolaa thanked the infirmarian for his assistance and, after he left, she and Gerard decided that it would be best to keep Savaric in solitary confinement until they could be certain he carried no taint. In the meantime, there remained the question of what charges were to be brought against him and the other members of Jacques Roulan’s family.

  “If what de Marins was told by the baseborn brother is true, then they did not truly give their aid to Jacques when he murdered the prostitutes,” Nicolaa said to her husband. “But by shielding him, they made the crimes possible, and should be brought to answer for that action.”

  Camville’s eyes glinted with anger. “Do not fear, Wife. I will ensure they pay for their complicity,” he said. “Had they not harboured their murderous brother in the first instance, neither of the prostitutes would have been killed. Nor would a Templar knight have been slain. I will take great pleasure in bringing charges against them when I preside over the next sheriff’s court.”

  By early afternoon, the whole castle had heard of what had passed and the news had spread down into the town. The reaction it provoked was one of commiseration. Many of the women shed a tear for the Templar who had been slain and the men gathered in alehouses about the town discussed the matter with grave expressions on their faces. In the scriptorium, Gianni listened with horror as Master Blund told of the details he had learned when summoned by Nicolaa to write down a record of the events for subsequent presentation in Camville’s court.

  For Gianni, the worst part of Blund’s recounting was the manner in which the Templar knight had died. The lad was appalled by the thought that it could so easily have been his former master who had been fatally struck by the spikes of the flail. Gianni had always been aware, since the day that Bascot had rejoined the ranks of the Templars, that the knight would most likely face death many times while he was on active duty in some war-torn land, but this recent close brush with death suddenly made that nebulous possibility now a frightening reality. It was with a heavy heart that the lad left the scriptorium at the end of his work day and wandered out into the bail.

  In front of the barracks he saw Roget and Ernulf standing with pots of ale in their hands. The faces of both men were downcast and their conversation, usually bantering, was desultory. The events of the morning had cast a pall over the entire castle as servants tended to their tasks in a dispirited fashion, and occasional baleful glances were directed towards the holding cells where the family of Jacques Roulan was imprisoned.

  Gianni did not feel like partaking of the meal that was being laid out in the hall, nor did he wish the company of others, so he turned his steps towards the old stone tower that stood in the southwest corner of the bail. This building had once been the keep and main residence of the sheriff and his wife but with the erection of a taller, and much more capacious, fortress a few years before, now housed only the armoury on the bottom storey and a few empty chambers above that were used to accommodate visitors to the castle. The tower was three stories high and, at the top, was the small room that Bascot and Gianni had been given when they arrived in Lincoln in the winter of 1199. The lad entered the building and slowly mounted the stairs to the upper storey, remembering how it had been difficult for his former master to climb them when they first arrived because of an injury he had sustained to his ankle while escaping from the Saracens. It had only been due to Bascot’s acquisition of a new pair of boots skilfully fitted with strengthening pads by a Lincoln cobbler that the Templar had finally been able to climb them with ease.

  Gianni came to the door of the room they had occupied for two long years and slowly pushed the door open. It was as bare as he remembered it, with a stone shelf on one side where the Templar had slept on a straw-stuffed mattress. Gianni’s bed had been laid on the floor, his covering an old cloak Bascot had provided. The straw pallets were still there, rolled up and piled in a corner for use by the next guest, and the small brazier that had dispensed their only warmth in the cold days of winter stood in a corner, piled high with unlit charcoal. Gone, of course, were their meagre personal effects-the trunk with their few items of clothing and the little box in which Gianni had kept the scribing instruments with which the Templar had taught his young servant to read and write.

  Gianni went over to the stone shelf that Bascot had used for a bed and knelt beside it. This was where he and the Templar had been accustomed to saying their prayers and that is what he did now, sending up heartfelt thanks to God for keeping Bascot free from harm. He then added an earnest plea that Brother Emilius be greeted with favour in heaven. Once this was done, he took the straw pallet that the Templar had used, spread it on the stone shelf and lay down. Nicolaa de la Haye had said he was now a man but, at this moment, he still felt like the young orphan that the Templar had rescued from certain starvation in Palermo. He knew his insecurity would pass with time and that once the Templar had departed from Lincoln, he would be able to accept his master’s absence with more equanimity. But, for now, he felt a comfort in remembrance of the days when the Templar had been by his side. Closing his eyes, he felt himself relax, and was soon fast asleep.

  In the preceptory, as Roget had foreseen, Emilius was deeply mourned. With Preceptor d’Arderon, Bascot undertook the task of cleansing and readying the draper’s corpse for burial. Since the Lincoln preceptory did not have a cemetery within its confines, it was decided that Emilius would be taken to the burial ground of a much larger enclave a few miles south of Lincoln. Until arrangements for the ceremony could be made, the men of the next contingent would stay in the preceptory and, along with the brothers regularly based in the commandery, keep vigil over the draper’s bier.

  Twenty-nine

  On the morning of the third day after his untimely death, Emilius’s coffin was secured to the bed of a large dray and the men who would form the escort lined up alongside to accompany the draper’s body on its last earthly journey. Temple Bruer, where they were bound, was situated in a lonely stretch of land in Lincoln Heath, a property that had been donated to the Order some fifty years before. It had then been a desolate place, inhabited only by the sheep that provided wool for the preceptory’s main source of income, but the brothers’ arrival had enlivened it with their presence. To reach it, the cortege needed to travel down the track that led outside the eastern wall of Lincoln town, cross over the River Witham and onto the southbound stretch of Ermine Street. After a few miles, where Ermine Street ran along the edge of Lincoln Cliff, they would reach the western edge of the preceptory’s property and could travel down a forked track, one arm of which led south to Byard’s Leap, where the enclave’s horses were exercised, and the other eastward to the Temple Bruer preceptory.

  Bascot and d’Arderon led the funeral procession, riding at the head of the column in front of the cart on which Emilius’s coffin, draped with his own white surcoat, lay cushioned on thick blankets. A man-at-arms held the reins of the two horses hitched to the dray and Brother John, the priest of the enclave, rode beside him. At the end, riding two abreast, were six brothers from the Lincoln preceptory. Serjeant Hamo had been left behind to take temporary command in d’Arderon’s absence. Tears had trickled down the dour serjeant’s face as he had watched the cortege exit through the preceptory gate. He, along with the lay brothers and servants and the men of the contingent, had stood in a solemn line as the procession passed by.

  As the cortege neared the suburb of Butwerk, they could see that a great number of Lincoln townsfolk had gathered along the track. Stretching down along the city walls past Pottergate and along to the banks of the River Witham, they stood respectfully silent as the procession came n
ear, many of the women weeping and the men with bowed heads. One small group was composed entirely of prostitutes. Terese stood at the front of the women, holding Elfie’s little daughter, Ducette, in her arms. The child’s eyes were round with wonder as she gazed at the sober-faced Templars, all clad in full armour covered by surcoats with the blood red cross of the Order emblazoned on the chest.

  Tears blinded Bascot’s eye as he saw the sorrow on the faces of the people they passed. Throughout the murder investigation that had led to Emilius’s death, the draper had always been fearful that the reputation of the Templar Order would be defiled, tainted by a shroud of dishonour that could never be expunged. Along with the majority of Templar brothers, Emilius had an unshakeable belief in the rightness of their cause, and had never doubted that his duty lay to fight for Christ in defending Christian lands against the encroachment of the Saracens and to protect the pilgrims who wished to visit the places Our Lord had sanctified with his presence. But one rogue Templar like Jacques Roulan could, in the eyes of the Christian populace, give a false impression of corruption. The grieving presence of the townspeople gathered along the path proved that had not happened. The draper’s sacrifice of his life in commission of his duty had, instead, inspired admiration and respect for his memory and, in so doing, for the Order to which he belonged. Emilius had not died in vain.

  When the men of the escort returned to Lincoln two days later, a Templar messenger from London was waiting for d’Arderon. On the day that Bascot had returned to the preceptory with Emilius’s body, the preceptor had sent a letter to Thomas Berard relating all the sad details of what had passed. He had also appended a note of his intention to allow the departure of the long delayed contingent for Portugal. The messenger waiting in the enclave had brought Master Berard’s reply.