Shroud of Dishonour (16 page)

“
B
Y GOD,
T
HORSON,”
R
OGET EXPLODED ONCE THEY HAD LEFT Joan Grimson in her house and were walking in the direction of the harbour, “I do not know how you can say you do not believe that woman is responsible for the murders. Her hatred of the Templars flows from her like an ocean tide. If she were a man, I would have no doubt that she was guilty.”

“That is because you do not know the history between her and her brother,” the bailiff replied calmly. “When their mother died, Robert was very young and it was left to her to look after him. Their father was a rakehell, just like Robert, and fell dead after a surfeit of wine a couple of years later. Joan took her responsibility seriously and was always berating Robert for his scurrilous ways. The last time Robert was in Grimsby, on a warm day last summer, Joan found him down on the beach after a night’s debauch, dishevelled and still in his cups. With him was a doxy from one of the brothels. Joan took Robert to task, lashing him with her tongue and threatening to disown him if he did not mend his ways. He left Grimsby later that very day. She did not, in fact, ever have the chance to speak to him again, not by her own choosing, but because of his death.” Thorson’s face was full of pity as he related the manner of the parting between brother and sister.

“It is more than probable that Joan now recalls her threat and is filled with remorse for her harsh words,” he continued. “And it is that, not any desire for revenge, which is causing her anger. Her words do not alter my opinion. I still do not believe she is capable of sanctioning murder. She is upright and well respected, as is her husband. Besides being the owner of three fishing smacks, Grimson’s father owns a thriving ship’s chandlery, which Sven’s younger brother helps his father run. The family is fairly wealthy, and has a good reputation. Why would they endanger all that, and the future security of their two children, by involving themselves in such terrible crimes?”

“You may be right, Bailiff,” Bascot said, “but, nonetheless, she cannot be discounted as a suspect, even if it is only of authorising someone else to carry out the murders on her behalf. If Joan’s husband, or the steersman, cannot account for their whereabouts when the two women in Lincoln were murdered, we must consider not only their involvement, but hers also.”

As they had been speaking they had approached the shore. The ground was sandy underfoot, with clumps of marram grass thick along the track. From this vantage point, the Norwegian cog in the harbour could be seen more clearly. The ship’s huge sail had just been rolled up and sailors were climbing the tall mast to check the rigging that anchored it into position while below, other seamen were doing the same with the shrouds that secured the mast fore and aft. The tide was half out, and a number of smaller vessels were either beached on the shore or bobbed at the receding water’s edge. Small fishing boats, a couple of wherries used for ferrying people across the mouth of the Haven River, and some coracles were among them. On the shore, near a wooden quay, the morning’s catch was being loaded into panniers on the backs of waiting donkeys for transport into the town. A few other fishermen were sitting up above the waterline mending nets and repairing shrimp pots. Overhead gulls swooped, some landing on the furled sails and railings of the cog, their calls raucous and feathers ruffling in the strong breeze. Farther out the large shapes of gannets could be seen as they made sudden plunging dives into the depths of the ocean in a search for food.

Sven Grimson was standing in conversation with another man, looking out to sea at a vessel anchored a little way out, a sturdy clinker-built ship with a sheltered cabin at the prow and a huge rudder fixed to the side of the craft. A pennant bearing three white scallop shells on a black background flew from the top of the mast, a replica of the image beside the door of Thorson’s home and on the tip of his wand of office. The name
La Rodenef
—the Roving Ship—had been painted on the bow. The vessel sat lightly in the water, the hold below decks now obviously empty.

In appearance, if he was truly a descendant of Grim, the Danish fisherman who had given his name to what had been just a little village over three centuries before, Grimson lived up to his heritage. Taller than average height and slimly built, Sven’s hair was pale blond in colour and his eyes a clear dark blue. He was dressed in a belted tunic of dark green with matching hose and had a light cloak thrown over his shoulders. Altogether, his appearance was a prosperous one, and there was a touch of haughtiness in his wide-legged stance.

The man with him was shorter and darker, with long brown hair tied back with a leather thong, and heavily muscled shoulders. His attitude to Sven Grimson seemed deferential as he stood patiently listening to the other man’s words, but there was no trace of obsequiousness on a face that had been tanned by sun and wind to the texture and colour of leather. At his belt was a knife, the sheath made of some type of fish skin, and he fingered the haft in an absentminded fashion while he and Grimson spoke together. As Thorson led Bascot and Roget up to the two men, the bailiff said in an undertone that the shorter man was Robert Scallion’s steersman, Askil. As the steersman turned his face towards them, the oddness in the colour of his eyes was immediately apparent. One was a clear pale blue, the other dark hazel, a striking difference that made his countenance seem strangely awry.

After introducing Bascot and Roget to the two men, Thorson repeated what he had told Joan as to the reason for the presence in Grimsby of a Templar knight and a soldier in the service of the sheriff of Lincoln. Both Grimson and Askil looked shocked when they heard the details of the two murders, and Grimson immediately denied, albeit in a less truculent manner than his wife’s, of having any complicity in the crimes.

“I will admit,” he said to Bascot in a straightforward fashion, “that I would like to see the Templar that killed Robert answer for his villainy, but I can see no purpose in murdering two women, or any other persons, for the sake of that animosity. Such deaths will not change what has happened or bring my wife’s brother back to life.”

Askil’s denial was in the same vein. “Robert was my friend and I mourn him,” he said simply, the vowels in his words flatter and harder than those usually heard in the local accent. “But I have no desire for revenge, nor have tried to take any.”

“Were you in the brothel on the night Robert Scallion was killed?” Bascot asked the steersman. Only a few details about the actual murder of the boat owner had been included in Master St. Maur’s letter and it was possible this man might have seen something or somebody that could help them confirm or refute whether Scallion’s death was connected to the recent murders.

Askil shook his head. “The ship was loaded with cargo,” he said, “and I stayed with it along with most of the crew. Robert went into Acre to see a spice merchant in one of the souks. He said that if he could get a good price, he had a mind to buy a small quantity of nutmeg and cinnamon to bring back with us to sell in one of the ports along the French coast. Whether he made a contract to buy some of the spices or not, I do not know, and neither did the crew member who accompanied him when he went into the town.”

“And it was from this crew member that you learned of your captain’s death?” Bascot asked.

“Aye,” Askil replied. “Dunny came haring back to the ship in the early hours of the morning. Said Robert had gone into a brothel and got into a fight with another Englishman.”

“And this Dunny, did he come back to Grimsby with you and, if so, is he still here?”

Askil nodded, then turned around and gave a piercing whistle in the direction of the men who were mending nets a little farther along the shore. When he had their attention, the steersman made a motion for one of them to come forward and, reluctantly, the man did so.

Some years younger than Askil, who looked to be in his mid-thirties, Dunny was lean of build, with straggly hair hanging in greasy clumps on his shoulders and a face scarred by old craters of childhood pustules. Sparse hair grew on his chin and he rubbed at it nervously as he joined the group, avoiding eye contact with anyone but Askil.

“This is Sir Bascot and Captain Roget, Dunny,” the steersman told him. “They have come to ask about the death of Captain Scallion. Repeat what you know about the fight in Acre that took his life.”

Dunny shuffled his feet for a moment and Sven Grimson, his voice tinged with impatience, said, “Speak up, man. Just tell what you saw.”

Faced with a direct command from Grimson, the young sailor began his tale, stumbling over his words at first, then growing more confident as he went on. “The cap’n took me with him that night, just in case there was a need for someone to carry whatever he might buy from the merchant in the souk. He didn’t get anything, tho’, said we had to come back the next day. Then he said we’d go to a brothel he knew of, ‘cause it was time I had a taste of some foreign women.”

Dunny looked up at that point in his narrative and spoke directly to Roget who, the sailor rightly assumed, was partial to the company of women and would be more understanding of the reason for a visit to a stewe. “I’d only ever worked on fishing boats from hereabouts ‘til the cap’n took me on board his cog and I’d never before been to a brothel the likes of those they have in France or Spain. The cap’n said the ones in the Holy Land were even better.”

When Thorson gave Dunny a censorious glance for declaring his enjoyment of such places, the young sailor dropped his eyes before continuing. “The brothel was not what I’d expected. They had young boys for hire there as well as women. Outright sodomists, some of them were, and they gave me some sort of drink that the cap’n said was the closest thing they had to English ale. I took only one swallow and left the rest. It tasted like cat’s piss.”

“Just get on to what happened to Robert,” Grimson said with irritation. “We don’t need to know all the sordid details.”

“Aye, master,” Dunny replied obediently. “There was a lot of men in the place, mostly heathens, all dickering over the women—and boys—on display, and the cap’n took a fancy to one of the girls, a right little darlin’ she was, with long black hair and great big …” A glare from Grimson curtailed his description of the bawd and he gulped nervously before he continued. “I couldn’t understand what the cap’n was sayin’ to the stewe-holder ‘cause they was speakin’ in the language they all talk in those parts, but I think he had made an offer for her when another man came into the brothel. The newcomer was dressed in good clothes and had a beard, I remember, and he walked right up to where the cap’n was standin’ and said somethin’ to the stewe-keeper, then flashed a pile of silver coins he took from his purse. The stewe-keeper looked at the man who had just come in and nodded, then shrugged his shoulders at the cap’n as much as to say he was sorry, but the other man would be havin’ the girl.

“The cap’n turned to the stranger—somehow I thought as how they knew each other, just by the way the cap’n looked at him—and told him to feck off. The other man pushed the cap’n in the shoulder, and told him, in English, to do the same and to find another girl ‘cause he wasn’t getting this one. ‘Twas then the cap’n called him a Templar, sayin’ as how he was breakin’ his vows by being in the place at all, let alone payin’ for the company of one of the women.”

Dunny shrugged his shoulders. “That was when the other man and the cap’n started to fight. They traded a few blows and the cap’n fell on the floor. The cap’n was a right good brawler, but the man he was fightin’ was more than a match for him. All the rest of the men in the brothel was yelling, but I couldn’t understand what any of ‘em was saying. The whoremaster was screamin’, too, and started banging on a big drum he had beside him. I thought as how I should maybe help the cap’n in some way, but couldn’t see what I could do. If the cap’n couldn’t get the best of the other Englishman, there was no way I was going to be able to. I wouldn’t have had a chance anyway, ‘cause it was then that I saw a knife flash between the pair of ‘em.”

Tears came into Dunny’s eyes and he faltered for a moment. Askil laid a hand on his shoulder and the young sailor swallowed a couple of times to smother his anguish and then finished the tale. “I don’t rightly know which of ‘em pulled the knife, whether it was the cap’n or the other Englishman, ‘cause everyone was millin’ around and I couldn’t see right plain,” he said. “Alls I knows is that blood started to gush and I saw the cap’n go still. The stranger got up from where the pair of ‘em was lying and one of the heathen customers tried to grab ahold of him, but he knocked the man down and scarpered out of there like a flash of lightnin’ just before two big infidels rushed in—I think they was men the stewe-keeper hired to keep peace in the place and had come when they heard the drum bangin’. I went over to where the cap’n was laying, but I could see he was dead. The blade had took him under the ribs; must have gone right through his heart, so I ran out of the place myself. I didn’t want one of those heathen bastards grabbin’ ahold of me, and I run as fast as I could back to the ship.”

Bascot looked at Askil. “And then what happened?” he asked.

The steersman’s face was full of grief as he finished the young seaman’s tale. “An official from the port arrived almost on Dunny’s heels. I went and identified Robert’s body and was told that the man who killed him had not been caught. I offered the information that he was a Templar knight, but apparently the stewe-holder had already told them he belonged to the Order, but that he didn’t know his name.”

“How did you know he was a knight and not of man-at-arms rank?” Bascot asked.

“Dunny told me,” Askil replied.

Bascot turned to the younger sailor with an interrogative look.

The young seaman answered the unspoken question readily enough. “He was wearin’ clothes that was too fine for an ordinary soldier,” he replied. “They was made of better stuff than any man-at-arms would own and his gloves were soft leather. And the way he spoke to the cap’n—even if he was angry and swearing—it was educated like. He was a knight, right enough. Anyone could see that.”