Shroud of Dishonour (11 page)

“Did the villain leave anything behind in Adele’s house that might help you find out who he is?” Ernulf asked.

“Only one thing,” Roget said grimly. “Just like was done with Elfreda’s body, Adele had a leather pouch full of coins lying close beside her. I counted them. There were thirty silver pennies.”

I
N THE PRECEPTORY,
B
ASCOT AND
E
MILIUS REVIEWED THE LIST that had been sent from London with details of the men belonging to the delayed contingent. As d’Arderon had said, the only information it contained was each man’s name, rank and length of service. Before the draper sat down to write letters to all the preceptories from which they had come, the pair discussed each one, trying to recall the little that had been said during snatched exchanges of conversation while the newcomers had been in the commandery. It was not much and, except for the two knights that had told of their previous battle experience—the one who had fought with William Marshall on the continent and the former crusader—none had mentioned any personal details, either of their lives before they joined the Order, or in the time since.

Of the eighteen men, apart from Bascot, that had been scheduled to leave for Portsmouth the next day, nine were from Penhill, a preceptory some miles northwest of York. Of these, eight were comprised of the four knights in the contingent, and included the two young men who had recently received their spurs of knighthood, and their squires. Both of the older knights were widowers and had requested admittance to the Order for a period of five years. The ninth man was a man-at-arms, a veteran Templar, who had been reassigned to active duty.

Of the remaining nine men, five were from the preceptory at York. All were of men-at-arms rank and had been stationed in the northern preceptory over the winter months while they waited to be sent overseas. The other four were from Temple Hirst in South Yorkshire. One was a man-at-arms who had proved himself to have an exceptional skill with horses and was to take charge of the contingent’s animals and see them safely to their destination. The other three comprised of two men-at-arms who had joined the brotherhood some years before and the last was the recently initiated young lad who had suffered from gripes in his belly on the night Elfreda had been killed.

Taking the Templar seal, an image of two men astride one horse, from the wooden box where it was kept, Emilius then laid out some parchment, an inkpot and quill, and prepared to make a start on the messages. Despite the handicap of performing the task one-handed, he was surprisingly adept at handling the scribing tools. Once the letters were finished, he would roll them up and seal them with some melted wax, and press the seal into the surface. They would then be taken by messengers to their destination. As he picked up the quill to start on the first one, he gave a sigh.

“These are to be sent off directly after I have completed them. If the messengers meet with no delays in obtaining the responses, they should return by the day after tomorrow.”

As he dipped the quill into the ink, he added, “I shall pray that the preceptor’s suspicions prove unfounded. It is hard to think that one of our brothers could be guilty.”

When Bascot agreed with the sentiment, Emilius rubbed his hand over the sling on his withered arm and said, “During the battle when I received this wound, one of our Portuguese brothers lost his life to a Saracen arrow. We had been sent out into the countryside south of Almourol to try and find a band of Moors that had been ravaging villages in the area. We had been gone for some hours and had stopped to take a brief rest when the heathens attacked us, taking us by surprise. The brother who was killed had unbuckled the ventail over his chin and mouth to take a sup of water and an arrow took him in the cheek. It went deep and into his brain. He died almost at once.”

The draper’s eyes misted in sad remembrance. “Before we left Almourol to seek the Moors, that same knight had just completed his punishment for consorting with one of the Christian women in a village near the castle. She was a pretty thing, lushly formed as many of the women from Portugal are, and was unmarried and willing. The temptation was too great for him to resist, I suppose, and he bedded her. No one knew he had done so, but his conscience lay heavy on him and he went to our commander, confessed his sin and willingly paid penance. While I do not condone his breaking of his vow, I understand it. For brothers who are lusty, chastity is hard to bear.”

He gestured towards the list of names. “If any of the men we are enquiring about has committed that same transgression, and has atoned, surely their wrongdoing could not spawn such hatred as these crimes suggest? Those of us who remain chaste are only too aware how hard it is to resist a woman’s charms and would understand, and forgive, the sin of a brother who has strayed.”

“Sometimes envy is just as great a spur as lust, Emilius,” Bascot replied. “To watch another enjoy what you fervently desire can, in some men, foster a deep resentment which can turn to hatred.”

The draper nodded. “You may be right,” he admitted reluctantly. “It could be that one of our brothers has succumbed to what St. Paul called
mysterium iniquitatis
—the mystery of evil. But I hope it proves not to be a Templar that has either caused, or perpetrated these murders. The crimes are terrible ones for any man to commit, but for a Templar it is doubly so. He will not only have betrayed Christ and his brethren, but every man, woman and child in Christendom. The faith the populace have in the probity of those who belong to the Order will be severely tested.”

Bascot nodded in commiseration. The purpose of the Order was to protect Christians; if it was found that one of its members had killed two Christian women, it would break a trust that should be inviolable. The doubting glances passersby had directed at Bascot on the day he had gone into town with Roget would become ones of loathing and disgust.

Emilius looked up, his face suddenly etched with determination. “As the preceptor said, we are at battle with this villain, Templar or not. The outcome shall be as God wills it. In that we must trust.”

L
ATER THAT AFTERNOON, AT D’
A
RDERON’S DIRECTION,
B
ASCOT went to the castle to speak to Gerard Camville. The Templar told Camville the departure of the contingent had been postponed and that the preceptor was taking steps to try and find any information that might uncover the identity of the murderer.

Camville had listened in silence while Bascot had been speaking, pacing back and forth on the hard-packed earth of the ward as he did so. Finally, he said, “And if the initiator of these crimes proves to be a Templar, will I be apprised of that fact?”

Bascot made no reply and the question hung unanswered in the air. After a few uncomfortable moments, the sheriff nodded, and said, “So be it. Since you will now be in the Lincoln enclave for the nonce, is d’Arderon still willing for you to give your assistance in the investigation?”

Bascot confirmed that the preceptor’s sanction continued and, learning that Camville intended to send Roget into the town to question Adele’s patrons, suggested he accompany the captain. The sheriff gave his assent and the two men, relieved to be away from Camville’s ill-humour, walked down into the town through Bailgate, the massive arch that separated the upper portion of the town from the lower, and then down the aptly named Steep Hill onto the main thorough-fare of Mikelgate.

The house where Adele Delorme had lived and subsequently been murdered was on Danesgate, a side street that debouched into Mikelgate near the bottom of Steep Hill. Roget had told the Templar of his finding of the thirty silver coins but admitted that, in the confusion surrounding the discovery of the body, he had not had time to search the premises thoroughly. It was possible, they decided, that he had missed some trace of the murderer’s presence and so they began their enquiry at Adele’s house.

Danesgate curved in an arc down to Claxledgate on the eastern side of the city. Bascot had been in this area once before, when he had gone to view the bodies of four people that had been found murdered in an alehouse. Adele’s house was not quite so far along the road as the alehouse, and was a dwelling of modest size, two stories high, squeezed in between two houses of more substantial proportions. The location of Adele’s house, Bascot noted, was not far from the eastern wall of the town and a small gateway that led out onto the path up to the preceptory. As d’Arderon had pointed out, it would not have taken long for a man to come into the town that way, enter the prostitute’s house and murder her, and then make his escape outside the walls via the same route. The thought that it might have been a Templar brother that had done so filled him with dread.

As they stood in front of Adele’s door, Roget told Bascot that the prostitute’s body had been removed to the charnel house of the nearby church of St. Cuthbert. “It was in a terrible state,
mon ami
. The priest at St. Cuthbert uses the services of a couple of parish goodwives to prepare female corpses for burial. I have no doubt they will have spread reports throughout the town by nightfall of the butchery done to Adele’s body.”

They opened the door and went in. The entryway was small, with a floor of grey slate and a flight of stairs leading to the upper storey on one side. Climbing the stairs, they went into the bedroom where the harlot had been found. Apart from a small amount of blood that had dribbled from Adele’s postmortem wounds onto a sheepskin rug that had been lying underneath her body, the room was hardly disturbed. A bed with a thick mattress was against one wall, a silken cover pushed back as though the occupant of the bed had risen hastily, and a small table set with a flagon of wine and pewter cups stood in one corner. The furnishings were of good quality. Beside the sheepskin rug, there were two chairs with arms and padded seats. A small tapestry hung on the wall near the bed. It depicted Jesus driving out the seven devils that had inhabited the body of Mary the Magdalene, a woman that many clerics claimed had been a prostitute.

They searched among the dead woman’s personal possessions; a chest filled with clothes made from expensive materials, a small casket with a few items of jewellery, one or two set with semi-precious stones, and a small cupboard that held vials of perfume and pots of unguents. Both men felt a reluctance for the task, it was as though they were prying into the dead woman’s intimate secrets. Underneath the clothes in the chest, they found a silk purse containing about five pounds in silver coins.

Finding nothing that gave them a clue to Adele’s intruder, they went into an adjoining chamber, but it was empty except for some boxes containing more clothing and some household linen. In the corner was a trestle bed. On it was a rolled up straw mattress and a pile of rough woollen blankets. Roget had been told by the armourer who had found Adele’s body that the servant employed by the prostitute had recently left and not been replaced. This would most likely have been the room a maidservant would use.

They went downstairs and into a small room that led off the entryway. It appeared to be a chamber that the harlot had used for a preliminary entertaining of her male guests before retiring to the bedchamber upstairs. Besides a table and two comfortable chairs, there was a brazier in one corner containing a few remnants of cold charcoal. On the table was an unstoppered jug of wine and a pewter cup filled to the brim. It was a handsomely appointed chamber, with wood panelling extending halfway up the walls and small tapestries hung above with depictions that were lascivious in nature. One featured a unicorn with an engorged phallus preparing to mount a snow white mare and the others were of scantily clad maidens posing in forest glades or reclining by secluded pools. Again there was no sign of a disturbance. If the murderer had been a patron of Adele’s, it was likely she had offered him a cup of wine in here—which he had not drunk—and then taken him upstairs, and to her death.

The captain was glad that Bascot was with him. This investigation was not a task that Roget relished. More accustomed to using his fists or sword in direct confrontations with thieves and other petty miscreants, he was well aware that he had little skill in detecting the nuances that betrayed the identity of a murderer. The Templar, on the other hand, had a facility for searching out seemingly irrelevant inconsistencies and proving they were important. Roget did not know if Bascot’s talent was due to the education he had received in a monastery during his youth or whether his years of imprisonment had made him more sensitive to his surroundings but, whatever the reason, the captain was more than willing to let the Templar take the lead in their search.

“Are there any buildings at the back of the premises?” Bascot asked, breaking in on Roget’s reverie.

“Only a shed,” the captain replied, leading the Templar out of the chamber and along a narrow passageway to a small enclosed yard.

There was little else and the two men were preparing to depart when the gate in the shoulder-high fence that surrounded the yard opened and a woman came through. She was about twenty-five years of age, demurely garbed in a plain grey gown and wore a white linen headdress. The rim of hair showing at the edge of her coif was dark brown. She was not uncomely, but neither was she handsome. Her most attractive feature was her eyes, which were a warm hazel colour and had a lively sparkle. Her glance flicked to the Templar badge Bascot wore on the shoulder of his tunic and then to Roget, dwelling on the copper rings that were threaded through his beard before she spoke to him.