Bascot nodded in acceptance of her words as Conal burst out, “Sir Bascot, if I had wanted to kill anyone and not be found to have done so, I would have murdered them in the greenwood and left them for the wolves to devour, not pushed them into barrels and dumped them on the floor of an alehouse.”
“Exactly,” interjected Richard. “It would have been far better for Conal, if he had done this deed, that this bastard son had just disappeared without a trace, would it not?”
Bascot sighed. Always it came back to the same question—why had the young couple and the Jew been murdered as they had? Why had they been stabbed after death? Why had Wat been involved in leaving them on his premises?
“I agree with you,” Bascot replied. “This is a coil that there seems no way to unwind.”
He spoke once again to Lady Sybil and her son. “It is believed that Hugo and his wife, along with the Jew, had been dead for some hours before they were left in the alehouse. This puts the time of their deaths as during the second day before the fair began, that is three days ago. Can you both tell me where you were then?”
“We all—my husband, Conal and myself—came to Lincoln a few days before that,” Sybil answered. “We stayed at the house of my husband’s nephew, Roger de Kyme. Roger was not there himself, but his steward was, stocking up with victuals for when his master and mistress should arrive. On the day about which you ask my husband went on a hunt with Gerard Camville and later that same day—in the evening—I, on Lady Nicolaa’s invitation, took up guest’s lodging, with my husband, at the castle. Conal stayed on alone at Roger’s until the day before the fair. He left when Roger and his wife arrived since they had guests with them and the chamber Conal had been using would be needed. He then came to the castle and Richard was kind enough to share his quarters with him.”
“Then on the second day
before
the fair, both of you were at Roger de Kyme’s house?” Bascot asked, feeling a chill start to creep at the back of his neck. “What were your movements on that day?”
Sybil looked up at her son, a little frown drawing her delicate brows together. “My mother was unwell, Sir Bascot,” Conal answered for her. “She believed she had eaten something that had been turned sour by the heat, and so she kept to her bed until she went to the castle. I rode to Newark and was gone most of the day.”
“Did either of you have servants in attendance? Lady Sybil, did Isobel keep you company in your sickness? Conal, did you travel with a friend, or perhaps take a groom with you?” Bascot almost felt their answers before they were made, so great was his sense of foreboding.
“I sent Isobel away,” Sybil said. “There was much to see around the town and since my husband would not be wanting her brother to attend him while he was hunting, I gave her permission to keep him company for a few hours of pleasure. I had no other companions or servants with me. Roger’s steward was gone also, fetching fresh eels for his master’s table, a delicacy Roger enjoys and prefers to be obtained from an area just south of Lincoln. The house, I believe, was empty. The rest of the household staff, except for the steward, had not yet arrived. With the aid of a nostrum Isobel prepared for me I slept most of the time and felt much better when I awoke.”
“And you, Conal?” Bascot asked.
Conal shook his head. “I went to Newark alone. I wanted to think. I stopped for a sup of ale and food at a tavern in the town, but there was no one there I knew.”
“Why did you go to Newark?”
Conal’s face flushed, but he didn’t answer. Lady Sybil did instead, with an upward glance at her son and a tightening of her fingers on his hand. “My son and my husband exchanged heated words early that morning. When Conal is . . . distressed, he prefers no company but his own. He has been that way ever since he was a small boy. Riding to Newark helped him exhaust his temper, just as it did yesterday.”
“Richard Camville was with you yesterday. Would that he had been with you on the previous occasion,” Bascot replied heavily. “Although Hugo, his wife and the Jew were all found a day later, it is almost certain that they had been dead for longer than a few hours, and were killed on the very day that neither of you had witnesses to your movements. Moreover, Roger de Kyme’s house was one scheduled for a delivery from Walter, the alekeeper. It would have been very convenient, Conal, for you to have done the deed and then, aided by your mother, have stowed the bodies in barrels which were then passed to the alekeeper when he called, under the guise of empties being sent for return.”
Richard Camville erupted again, almost before Bascot finished speaking. “This is ridiculous. Conal, you must . . .”
Whatever he had been about to say was cut short by the entrance into the solar of Nicolaa de la Haye’s two sisters, Petronille and Ermingard. With them was Hugh Bardolf’s daughter, Matilda. The chatter of their conversation stilled as they entered the room and saw the group seated near the fireplace.
“Your pardon,” Petronille said, her eyes singling out Bascot as she apologised for the interruption. “We had not thought to find anyone here and my sister is in need of a small respite from the crowds below.”
Ermingard did indeed look flustered. Her face was flushed and tendrils of hair escaped from under the linen coif she wore on her head. Her gaze was confused, darting sideways and back, then down at the floor. As Petronille spoke, Ermingard pushed up a hand to rub her eyes, staring to where Sybil and Isobel sat.
Bascot rose. “There is no need for apologies, lady,” he said. “Our speech here is finished. We will leave you ladies to your own company.”
Bascot rose as he spoke, as did Isobel, who moved to stand behind Sybil de Kyme’s chair. As she did so, Ermingard’s confused gaze moved with her and she started to cry.
“It is the wrong colour, Petronille. I tell you, it is the wrong colour.” She became very agitated, pulling at the stuff of her sleeve as though she would tear it, and sobbing as she repeated the words over and over again.
Petronille moved close to her and encircled her with her arm, while Matilda looked to where Ermingard had been staring. “It is the tapestry,” Matilda said, pointing to a large wall hanging which depicted the Three Wise Men bringing their gifts to the Christ child. All of the figures were picked out in threads of gold and silver, with garments of deep blue and green against a background of a deep dark red, the colour of ripe cherries.
“It reminds her of blood,” Matilda added. “She does not like blood.”
“Hush, Matilda,” Petronille’s habitually benign expression flashed with a look of annoyance at the girl’s words, quickly reverting back again as she tried to comfort her sister, whose sobbing and moaning had increased. “Come, Mina,” she said, using a sister’s privileged soubriquet, “have a cup of Nicolaa’s honeyed wine. It will cool your head.”
Petronille led Ermingard over to a window at the far end and sat her down on a settle, then poured a tumbler of wine and pressed it into her sister’s hands, murmuring quietly to her. Ermingard gradually subsided, but she continued to shake her head and mutter about the wrongness of the colour.
Bascot, whose blinded right side was towards the offending tapestry, turned full around to see the object of Matilda’s words. As he did so, he caught a flare of irritation on Isobel’s face. It seemed to be mixed with something else—loathing, perhaps—but he was not sure if it was directed at the weakness of Lady Nicolaa’s sister or the offensiveness of Matilda’s outspoken words. He glanced back at Hugh Bardolf’s oldest daughter. Her eyes were fixed on Conal, and there was a little smile curled at the corner of her lips as though she had scored some small triumph. Conal and his mother’s attention were fixed on Petronille and her disturbed sister, but Richard’s face had resumed it’s angry look, with a different target this time, as he gave Matilda a look of fury.
“If you are to keep my aunt company, Matilda, I suggest you refrain from upsetting her with careless speech,” he said icily.
“I am sorry, Richard,” Matilda murmured apologetically. “I did not think.”
Despite the words, her tone did not sound contrite and Richard said no more. As the men rose to leave, Bascot was aware of undercurrents of emotion in the room, and not all caused by Ermingard’s unfortunate outburst. It was clear that Matilda and Isobel did not have any affection for each other, and also, from the sidelong glance of impatience that Isobel threw at Conal, that he was somehow involved in their enmity.
When they reached the door, Bascot motioned for the two younger men to precede him down the winding stone stairway, pleading that the enforced slowness caused by his unsound ankle would impede their descent. As they clattered down and disappeared round a turn in the tower, he could hear their voices echo back to him, Richard’s importunate and Conal’s blunt in refusal. Bascot heard his own name mentioned, then the voices drifted farther away before they were stilled by the slam of the door at the bottom of the stairway. When Bascot reached the base of the tower there was no sign of either of the two young men. Only Gianni, patiently awaiting his master’s return, was in sight, sitting in the shade of the stairway up to the forebuilding, passing the time by repeatedly tossing three stones from the back of his hand to the palm in an age-old children’s game.
Fifteen
F
ROM THE ENTRYWAY INTO THE GREAT HALL NICOLAA de la Haye stood and surveyed her guests. The company had thinned out since the eve of the fair, but there was still a fairly large number to be accommodated at mealtime. She fingered the chatelaine at her waist, and the keys hanging from it, mentally running through the supplies of wine, flour, meat, vegetables and fruit that were held in store in the huge room at the bottom of the keep. There was still plenty, and the coolness of the lower floor should keep most of it fresh enough for consumption. She was pleased that the intensity of the summer heat had abated a little. It was still hot, but not as oppressive as it had been before the storm had cleared the air. She shrugged irritably in the gown she had donned for today. It was one she had ordered newly made for the festivities and the neckline was stiff and scratchy. Then she smiled at herself. It was not really the discomfort of the gown that was bothering her, but the murders in the alehouse and the attack on Father Anselm. She was no stranger to death. The conflict of battle, accident, sickness—all took their toll, and often. It was rather the mystery of these murders that she did not like, and mystery there was even if de Kyme’s wife and stepson were responsible. She had no affection for Sybil beyond that of distant courtesy between two women whose husbands were friends, and Conal was only well known to her because of the amity between him and Richard. Still, the accusation did not lie easily on her mind. It had about it an untidiness that she did not like, and that offended her.
Her glance flicked to where her husband was seated. Gerard was in a mood of rare good humour this morning due to the fact that, as far as he was concerned at least, the charges laid by de Kyme had relieved him of looking further for a culprit to bring before the justices. The silver in his coffers was safe, for the moment.
Farther down the hall she saw Petronille take Ermingard, who was beginning to rock back and forth in her seat, by the arm and persuade her to leave the table where they had been breaking their fast. Matilda Bardolf rose with them and positioned herself on Ermingard’s other side. It was probable they would take her up to Nicolaa’s solar away from the curious eyes of the other guests. Ermingard’s husband and son stayed where they were, Ivo looking with concern at his mother’s retreating back and then turning to speak low in his father’s ear. William de Rollos shook his head briefly, placing another morsel of cold meat in his mouth and chewing with determination, eyes straight ahead. Ivo made to rise, then changed his mind and sat back down, toying with a piece of bread and staring into space. Nicolaa frowned. Ermingard had been unusually difficult these last two days. De Rollos said she had seemed better during the previous months and so he had decided to bring her with him on the long journey from Normandy. Even the summer storm that had caught them while crossing the Narrow Sea had not given her undue stress, he had told Nicolaa. It had not been until after they had arrived in Lincoln that Ermingard had become unsettled. Perhaps it was the press of so many people and the discomfort of the unseasonable heat that had disturbed her, Nicolaa thought. Or, she reasoned grimly, it was the murders that were mazing Ermingard’s senses, with gossip running rampant of poisonings, stab wounds and dead pregnant women. If so, Nicolaa could feel some affinity for her sister’s discontent.
Agnes stood in the yard behind the alehouse waiting for her cauldron of water to boil. Across the yard her nephew, Will, was crushing dried husks of barley to make the malt that would be added to the water once it was ready. Her own special gruit was waiting for when it was time to make the mash. It would take a full day for the mash to settle before it was ready for straining, then a few more hours to wait for it to be strained a second and a third time. If she was lucky, she would be able to serve ale to her customers by tomorrow night.
Wat had been buried early that morning. Jennet and her husband, Tom, along with Will, had accompanied her to the funeral Mass. She had come straight back to the alehouse afterward for she could not afford to let her yard stand idle while she made a show of grief. Tears would not turn into silver, but her good ale would, and she needed to take advantage of the influx of visitors to the fair. She shivered as she watched Will finish his task of grinding the barley and turn to cleansing the ale barrels so they would be ready for her brew. Agnes did not know which ones had held the dead bodies of the two young people and the Jew, and she had not tried very hard to find out. A good scrub would take the contamination away, she reasoned, and she could always tell her customers, if they asked, that she had destroyed the barrels that had held the dead bodies.