The Alehouse Murders (29 page)

“It was just before Vespers, was it not, that the priest was stabbed?” Petronille asked. “If we put our minds to it, Nicolaa, perhaps we can remember who was with us then. It will not give us any harm to try.”

Nicolaa leaned back on the warm stone of the seat, closing her eyes for a moment in thought. “Gerard was talking to Richard, I think, and Conal was with them. Roger de Kyme I seem to recall seeing, but at what particular moment, it is hard to place. And shortly afterwards the representatives of the townspeople came with their complaints. And there was the storm, too.”

She and Petronille went through as many of the people they could recall as having been present, but could vouch for the constant presence of none of them. “Besides,” Nicolaa added, “it will be easy enough for any of them to lie if they have something to hide . . .”

Ermingard’s voice suddenly interrupted them. “
She
lied. I know she did because it was the wrong colour.”

The two women and Bascot started at the words. They had all but forgotten the presence of the youngest Haye sister. She had been in a more composed frame of mind for the last two days, and had moved about the keep in company with Petronille in a withdrawn, but unmazed, manner. She looked at them now out of eyes clear of confusion, her words deliberate and coherent.

“What do you mean, Mina?” Petronille asked her. “You were not in the hall that afternoon, you were resting, don’t you remember?”

Petronille spoke to Bascot. “My sister was very upset at the news of the murders. I persuaded her to lie down for awhile to calm her mind.”

Petronille did not add that later that evening Ermingard had been found wandering the corridors in the middle of the night, but it was in all of their minds.

“The cloak,” Ermingard insisted, “she said it was Sybil’s, but it was not. It was the wrong colour. Sybil is all fair and light, like ice. She would never have worn it. A dirty brown colour, the shade of old dried blood.” She shuddered. “And it was wet, I picked it up after she left. The blood stained my hands. Ah, I scrubbed at it, but still it stayed there, on my fingers.”

Ermingard’s voice faltered. Her expression became clouded. Petronille rose quickly and went to her, putting her arm about her. “Don’t talk about it, lovey,” she said soothingly. “It only distresses you.”

“But I must. She lied, I keep telling you,” Ermingard wailed.

“Perhaps if you tell us who it is you are speaking of we could help you,” Petronille suggested, trying to calm her sister’s rising terror. But the only answer Ermingard gave was to shake her head and begin to weep.

“She will not tell you, Petra. She never does, no matter how many times we ask,” Nicolaa said. “It is these murders,” she murmured to Bascot. “That is what has unsettled her mind.

“Take her inside, Petra,” Nicolaa said to her sister. “We should not have discussed the matter in front of her. I had forgotten she was there, how it might affect her.”

Petronille persuaded the confused Ermingard to her feet, began to lead her towards the gate, but her sister balked a little. “It is not my imagination. She
did
lie. It was
her
cloak.
And
she is pregnant.” With this last statement Ermingard’s voice became sly, like a child trying to divert punishment by revealing a playmate’s wrongdoing. “I saw her, winding strips of linen about her waist under her gown to hide the thickening of her flesh. She thinks no one knows. But I know. And I know what it will be like when she has the baby. There will be blood. Just like there was when I had Ivo . . .”

Ermingard’s voice had begun to rise, the note of hysteria increasing. Petronille became a little more forceful, pressing her sister towards the opening in the wall, but with little success. Nicolaa rose and went to the pair. When she spoke, her voice was low and sharp, the same tone that Bascot had heard her use to a servant that had been slip-shod. “Mina! You will be quiet and go with Petra and do as she tells you. Do you understand?”

Ermingard recoiled, as though Nicolaa had slapped her, but she calmed and slowly nodded her head. “Yes, Nicolaa,” she said obediently, but then added in a low voice with a touch of her former defiance. “But I still say it was the wrong colour.”

Nicolaa relented and patted her youngest sister on the shoulder. “We believe you, Mina. But now you must forget about it all and put your mind to something else. Petra will get you some camomile posset and read to you. You will like that, won’t you?”

Ermingard nodded and finally allowed herself to be led away. Nicolaa returned to her seat by Bascot. “I love my sister, but I pity poor de Rollos. She is so confused. First the murders, then we learned that the dead girl in the alehouse was pregnant. It has brought Ivo’s birthing back to her, and the attendant shedding of her own blood.” She shook her head sadly. “It may be she picked up a cloak of such a colour as she describes and it was wet, and now she has muddled that and the birthing in her mind, believing it to be blood. Poor Mina. It cannot be easy for a husband to have such a one for a wife.”

Bascot made no comment. The incident had deepened the lines of strain on Nicolaa’s face. She rose and walked a pace or two, then turned to him. “Go on with your enquiries, de Marins. And let us pray to God most fervently that there are no more murders.”

 

Bascot left, his head and eye socket still aching, wanting only the privacy of his chamber. With Gianni in tow he went back to the old tower and they climbed the stairs to their room. There he lay down on the narrow mattress of his bed while Gianni plopped down on the floor, taking from under his own pallet a small store of scraps of old parchment on which he practised his letters, along with a quill and pot of ink kept in a small wooden box. The parchment was much used, its surface scraped bare of ink at least two or three times and very thin. Gianni contemplated his last efforts, a copy of three verses from one of the Psalms, slowly tracing the words with his forefinger, brows furrowed in concentration, before putting the parchment down beside him and picking up the pen and beginning slowly and carefully to copy the words once more. Bascot felt the ache in his eye socket easing and enjoyed the cool breeze that was coming through the high slit window above him. Slowly his good eye closed and he felt himself slipping into a light doze.

This state of sleep he found enjoyable. In it the dreams that appeared in his mind were seen with two good eyes, not just the half-view of one. For a time the scenes were a jumble, a nonsense of pictures—the mane of a horse, the long face of the cobbler’s son superimposed over that of the elderly knight he had dined with in the hall, a notion of the smell of the sea and the heaving of waves—all accompanied by an awareness of the light scratching of Gianni’s pen. In his mind he saw the boy’s hand as he played his stone game, the pebbles going up in the air, Gianni’s hand palm side up, then palm side down, the constant reversing and turning as the pebbles were caught and thrown, balanced and then thrown yet again, over and over, the fingers young and supple, flexing and straightening. The motion mesmerized him and he felt himself slipping deeper and deeper into sleep . . .

Bascot was not sure how long he dozed, but felt himself dragged up from a deep slumber by the sound of footsteps on the stone of the landing outside the door and then a voice speaking to Gianni. Bascot opened his eye. It was Ernulf.

“Sorry to disturb you,” the serjeant said. “Sheriff Camville sent me. He wants to know if you will consent to be one of the judges at the tourney tomorrow. Since most of the barons will have a son or some other relative in the melee, he cannot ask any of them for fear of bias. The winner’s purse is a good size, and he must have men of experience and impartial judgement to fill the posts. As a Templar, your decision would be respected. He also intends to ask d’Arderon.”

Bascot got up from his bed, his head still half muzzy from sleep. “Tell Sir Gerard I will be honoured to assist him, Ernulf. And grateful. It will be a welcome diversion for my disordered mind.”

Ernulf grinned in response and left the chamber. Suddenly the room felt hot and airless to Bascot. Motioning to Gianni to continue with the practice of forming his letters, Bascot went out and up onto the roof. On the top of the tower the air was clearer and the sun beat down strongly. Although the breeze was fresh, it was warm, almost humid. Bascot limped over to the edge of the parapet, and leaned into the gap of the crenel, breathing deeply to steady the familiar dizziness that assailed him. He thought of the men that would be fighting tomorrow, young men, whole in limb and sound of faculties. He did not begrudge them their vitality for once he had been such as they, but he suddenly felt old, and it unsettled him.

He should not have slept in the afternoon. It had made him discomfited. The thought of disrupted sleep returned his mind to Ermingard. Her fear of blood, the nightmares she must endure, fuelled by the murderer abroad in Lincoln. He could feel empathy for her. Many times he had been near the edge of madness himself during the long years of his imprisonment by the Saracens. Slivers of his dreams intruded on his train of thought, disjointed now that he was awake. Again the water, but this time accompanied by the sound of rain, swirling in muddy pools. The glisten of a knife blade.

Bascot stood at the parapet, forcing himself to focus his attention on the panorama of Lincoln stretched out below him on the southern sweep of the hill. A flock of starlings swooped and wheeled above the buildings. He could make out the broad arc of Danesgate as it went down the slope past the small bell tower of the church where Anselm had officiated. Unbidden, his mind returned to contemplation of how to find the malefactor who was responsible for the murders. Somehow, he was sure, the priest had been connected to the deaths in the alehouse. But how? Somewhere there was a connection, some fact he had missed, or not taken note of. But what?

Bascot closed his sighted eye against the dizziness that resurged with the focusing of his thoughts, absently rubbing the leather patch that covered his empty eye socket. A red glow from the bright sunlight beating against the lid of his good eye suffused his inner vision, merging with the constant blackness of the unsighted side as he struggled to bring some order to his speculations.

Anselm had been the first to be told of the bodies in the alehouse, by Agnes, the alewife. The day had passed, during which he and Gianni had discovered that the bodies of the four dead had been brought there in the casks that were used to transport the ale. The priest had been alone and unharmed before Vespers, when Bascot had gone to the church and asked where Agnes could be found. Then, but a short while later, he had been stabbed, and Bascot had gone back to the church where he had met Roget and the alewife had told a little more of the truth she had been withholding. He had felt extremely angry, Bascot remembered, at having to order the screeching woman dragged back to the church in the rain.

The rain. Ermingard had said the cloak she had seen was wet. Whoever had attacked Anselm would have been caught in the downpour as he left the church. And the elderly knight he had sat with at table had advised Bascot to look for a woman. Could the offhand remark be right?

Ermingard had said the woman of whom she spoke was with child. Perhaps he should be looking for a pregnant woman. If Anselm was a lecher, had he made one of his flock pregnant? Then been killed by an irate male relative of the girl? But, if that were so, what connection would there be with the other murders? It was only his own instincts that made him think there was such a connection. And between Anselm and Brunner? The dead girl in the alehouse had been pregnant. Perhaps if she hadn’t been there would not have been such haste to kill her. But once she was dead, and the baby with her, then why the urgency for the bodies to be found?

The view of Lincoln faded from Bascot’s awareness as a new thought formed. Perhaps the haste had been not to kill Hugo’s pregnant wife before their baby was born, but to have them dead before it was time for
another
woman to be brought to her birthing. He had been looking for the murderer amongst those who would benefit by becoming de Kyme’s heir, but what if that heir had yet to be born?

His thoughts chased up and down like Gianni’s hand in the stone game. That day in the solar, when Ermingard had become distressed—where had she been looking when she had become so insistent about the wrong colour? It had been suggested that it was the tapestry about which she had been rambling, but perhaps it had not been the bright colour of red depicted in the embroidered picture. Perhaps the person she would not, or could not, name had been present. Who had been there? Bascot thrust his mind back to that morning—his own embarrassment, the air of tension. Following that line of reasoning, the motive for the murders took on a different slant, and he juggled the people that he and Hilde had suspected with others hitherto dismissed as of no importance. The shadow cast by the sun on the stone of the parapet had moved a good measure before he suddenly threw up his head and took a deep breath of air. He had found the connection he had been looking for.

H
ILDE LISTENED INTENTLY AS BASCOT EXPLAINED WHO he believed had committed the murders and his reasons for thinking so. When he had finished, she nodded. “Yes, Templar. It all fits. Like a rotten plum hidden deep in a basket, hard to find until one tastes it and knows it to be rank.”

They were sitting in Hilde’s chamber, alone. Gianni had been left in Bascot’s room and admonished to keep practising his letters while Hilde’s servant, Freyda, had been sent to keep watch outside the door while her mistress and Bascot talked together. The old lady had herself poured the wine they were drinking from a pair of small cups decorated with silver gilt.

“Will you go to the sheriff with your findings?” Hilde asked.

“I cannot, not yet,” Bascot replied. “First I must have proof. Even if Camville agrees with me, he must have some evidence to lay a charge.”