A Plague of Poison (24 page)
If it had been a brigand who had killed Cooper, three or four years ago was too recent for him to have known one of them in his childhood. Nonetheless, the Templar pressed the potter further, trying to confirm this fact.
“Are you sure that the old alewife did not allow customers of disreputable character to come and buy her ale?”
Wilkin shook his head with certainty. “I wouldn’t have gone there if she had. The widow served good ale and kept a clean house. She would never have allowed any wolf’s heads under her lintel. They only came in after her son became the ale keeper. That’s why I never went in there anymore.”
Convinced that he could eliminate a brigand as a possible suspect for Cooper’s death, Bascot asked Wilkin about the customers who had used the alehouse while the old alewife had been alive, and if, on his occasional visits, there had been any that he knew to be regular patrons. “I need you to go back at least seven years or more,” Bascot told him, reckoning that Cooper would have regarded his childhood as when he had been thirteen years of age or younger.
Wilkin screwed up his face as he searched his memory. As he did so, the bruises on his face were more apparent, with one that was fresh and livid colouring the lower half of his jaw. “That was the only alehouse along the stretch of road between Nettleham and Louth, so the customers were mostly travellers that used it for the same purpose I did, when they had a need to wash the dust of the road from their throats,” he told the Templar. “They were packmen and carters and the like, most of them heading to Lincoln with their wares. Sometimes there would be a merchant or two that was either going or coming back from Grimsby or Louth, but they would not have gone there regular, only when they were on a journey.”
“What about local people? Do you know of any that went in there often?”
“I suppose there might have been a few that lived in Wragby, but the only one I know of that was there more than once is John Rivelar, the old bailiff. He’d pass me on the road near there sometimes, him and his two sons, and a couple of times I saw their horses outside the alehouse. On those days I never stopped for a sup of ale, for I didn’t want to be in his company, but they must have been inside because their horses were there, tied to the hitching post.”
Bascot remembered that Adam had told him that Drue Rivelar had an older brother who had left the area many years ago. He then had a sudden memory of Wilkin’s daughter, Rosamunde, running through the crowd after her father’s trial because she believed, so the beekeeper had said, that she had seen her dead lover. Was it possible it was his brother she had seen?
“John Rivelar’s oldest son, what was his name?” Bascot asked Wilkin. “And what did he look like? Did he resemble his brother?”
“His name was Mauger,” the potter replied in answer to the first question and then shook his head in answer to the second. “He wasn’t much like Drue. He was bigger, for a start; thickset and strong like his father. And he was just as vicious as the bailiff as well.” Wilkin’s eyes grew angry at the memory. “Rivelar carried a blackthorn staff and used it on the backs of his tenants whenever he had the chance. A couple of times he hit me with it when his sons were with him and Mauger just laughed and looked as though he’d like to crack me one as well. I didn’t like him any more than his father.”
“Were Mauger’s features like Drue’s? Could it be easily seen that they were brothers?” Bascot pressed.
Wilkin considered what he had been asked. “I suppose there was a likeness in their faces, but Drue was dark and Mauger was fairer of hair and eyes …”
He broke off as he realised the point of the Templar’s questions and looked up into the intensity in the one pale blue eye of the knight standing over him. Against the darkness of his beard and sun-browned skin, it glittered like the sword of an avenging angel. The Templar frightened him more than all of the guards who kicked and swore at him every time they brought him food. Finally, he asked hesitantly, “Is it Mauger you think killed Guy Cooper’s son, lord? That he came back after all these years and stabbed him to death?”
Bascot shook his head. “Until it is discovered who murdered Fland Cooper and why, potter, there is nothing of which I can be certain.”
A
S BASCOT LEFT THE HOLDING CELL And CROSSED the ward on his way back to the chamber in the old tower, his thoughts whirled. As he had been questioning the potter, he had realised that until Gianni’s deduction was proved to be valid or otherwise, it would be dangerous to discount it. The draper’s wife had said the man Cooper had met had been using a false name; he could be anyone, a man who lived in the town, the priory or even the castle, hiding behind his assumed identity and free from suspicion. He would have to find out more about Mauger Rivelar before he could consider him as a likely suspect for killing Cooper, but whoever it was, and especially if it was also connected to the poisonings, any person who might recognise the man that the ale keeper’s son had remembered from his childhood was in danger, and precautions would have to be taken to keep them safe. That included Rosamunde. If Cooper’s murderer was the man she had seen in the bail on the day of her father’s trial, he would be aware that she had recognised him and might do so again. He must ask Preceptor d’Arderon to send men to keep watch over her and the rest of her family.
S BASCOT LEFT THE HOLDING CELL And CROSSED the ward on his way back to the chamber in the old tower, his thoughts whirled. As he had been questioning the potter, he had realised that until Gianni’s deduction was proved to be valid or otherwise, it would be dangerous to discount it. The draper’s wife had said the man Cooper had met had been using a false name; he could be anyone, a man who lived in the town, the priory or even the castle, hiding behind his assumed identity and free from suspicion. He would have to find out more about Mauger Rivelar before he could consider him as a likely suspect for killing Cooper, but whoever it was, and especially if it was also connected to the poisonings, any person who might recognise the man that the ale keeper’s son had remembered from his childhood was in danger, and precautions would have to be taken to keep them safe. That included Rosamunde. If Cooper’s murderer was the man she had seen in the bail on the day of her father’s trial, he would be aware that she had recognised him and might do so again. He must ask Preceptor d’Arderon to send men to keep watch over her and the rest of her family.
When he entered the chamber, he found Gianni practicing some Latin phrases on the wax tablet they had bought that morning, erasing them carefully when he had finished and then using the stylus to write others on the newly smoothed surface. For a fleeting moment Bascot allowed himself to enjoy a sense of gratification for the boy’s industry, and then, as Gianni looked up expectantly, he told him what he had learned from the potter.
“There may be some merit in your belief that Cooper’s killer is also the poisoner,” he said, “but even if he is not, there is still the risk that the lives of any who remember this man, as Cooper did, are at hazard. I will ask Preceptor d’Arderon to ensure that the beekeeper and his family have protection.”
The boy nodded solemnly. “While I am at the preceptory, Gianni, or at any other time that you are not in my company, I want you to stay with Ernulf and not leave his side, even if it means having to accompany him while he is making his rounds of the castle grounds. If this man should become aware that we are looking for him, he will consider anyone connected with the investigation to be a threat. Until this matter is resolved, I do not want you, at any time, to be alone.”
Bascot took the boy to the barracks and asked Ernulf to watch over him, explaining briefly that, due to the brutality of Cooper’s murder, he did not want to leave the boy unprotected while he was gone. Then he left the castle by the eastern gate and walked through the Minster grounds to the Templar enclave.
Everard d’Arderon listened in silence as Bascot told him of his fears for the safety of Wilkin’s family and why.
“I have come to ask you to send a couple of men to the apiary to provide protection for them,” Bascot said. “It would be best if it seemed as though they are there merely to help maintain the property, to carry out the manual chores that the potter would normally do, mending fences and the like. That way the beekeeper will not be aware of the real reason they are there. I do not want him and his family, or the man I am seeking, to be aware of their true purpose until I am sure such precautions are warranted.”
D’Arderon nodded. “I have two men-at-arms who will be suitable. Both of them have done a spell of duty in Outremer. Unless this murderer has more stealth than an infidel, he will not get by them. I will send them to Nettleham immediately.”
Bascot asked the preceptor if there was anyone at the Wragby property who had been there long enough to remember customers who had patronised the alehouse seven or more years ago. “If there is, they, too, will need to be guarded. Although I would be glad to find someone who might be able to give me information, it is certain Cooper’s murderer will want to eliminate any witnesses who may be able to identify him.”
D’Arderon said there were none. “All of the servants at Wragby have been there no longer than five or six years. There was one old cowman that had been there longer, but he died a few months ago.”
Bascot thanked the preceptor and, before he left, told him what Roget had found out about Ivor Severtsson. The older knight’s face suffused with anger. “Such a man is a disgrace to humankind. He shall be dismissed forthwith.”
Twenty-six
T
HE NEXT MORNING BASCOT RODE OUT TO Nettleham with Gianni riding pillion behind him. He wanted to try and find out more about Mauger Rivelar, and it was possible that Margot or her father might remember more about the former bailiff’s son than the potter had. As he pressed his mount to a gallop along the road to the apiary, he reviewed his conversation with Ernulf the night before.
HE NEXT MORNING BASCOT RODE OUT TO Nettleham with Gianni riding pillion behind him. He wanted to try and find out more about Mauger Rivelar, and it was possible that Margot or her father might remember more about the former bailiff’s son than the potter had. As he pressed his mount to a gallop along the road to the apiary, he reviewed his conversation with Ernulf the night before.
When Bascot had asked the serjeant if he remembered Drue Rivelar’s brother, Ernulf had shaken his head. “I don’t recall that I ever heard mention of the brigand as having one,” he said. “But one thing’s certain, if he had come back to town and said who he was, I’d know of it. Everyone in Lincoln turned out to watch Drue and those other brigands get hanged, and there are plenty who would remark on it if a brother to one of ‘em had returned. ‘Twould have been a tidbit of gossip to repeat to all and sundry.”
The serjeant shook his head in sad remembrance of the day the executions had taken place. “Sir Gerard ordered me to hang them all, including Drue Rivelar, from the parapets, and let their bodies dangle over the wall in plain sight of all as a warning to any others as should be tempted to rob honest travellers. ‘Twas his right; all of them had been caught in the act of thievery and murder, and no trial was needed. The people in the town agreed with him and gathered along the south wall by Bailgate to see the deed done. There was a multitude of cheers when they breathed their last. ‘Twas one of the few times they gave Sir Gerard their support, but it was well deserved.”
Bascot then said that Richard Camville had told him that John Rivelar had accused the sheriff of meting out too swift a justice and had claimed that his son should have been publically tried so that his innocence could be proven.
“Aye, he did,” Ernulf confirmed. “Stood in the bail and ranted at the sheriff as we put a noose over his son’s head. When the boy was dead, tears streamed down his face and he could barely keep to his feet. Then he went down into the town, to see Bailiff Stoyle, trying to enlist his help in bringing a charge against Sir Gerard, but Stoyle would have none of it. On the day the brigands were captured, the prior from All Saint’s had been among the party they were robbing, returning from a sad journey to visit his father on his deathbed. He had been beaten during the attack, but he came to the bail and denounced all of the brigands, including Drue, to the sheriff despite the fact that he could barely walk for soreness at his injuries. The townspeople were outraged that a man of the church, and one who had been on an errand of mercy, should have been attacked so violently.”
While listening to the serjeant’s recounting, the Templar felt his interest in Mauger Rivelar grow. If the bailiff’s elder son had returned after the deaths of his brother and father, he would have been desolated by the news of their demise, much as Bascot had been when he returned after his eight years’ imprisonment in the Holy Land and found that all of his family had died during a pestilence. Mingled with the Templar’s sorrow had also been a good portion of guilt, a feeling that he had betrayed them for not being at their sides to give them comfort during their last moments. It had been then that Bascot had raged at God for keeping him away from his homeland for so many long years. Would Mauger not have felt the same? Bascot knew that if the deaths in his own family had been caused by a human agency, he would have sought retribution; was it possible that all of these deaths had been caused by Mauger’s desire to do just that, wreak vengeance on those who had been responsible for his brother’s and father’s deaths? All of those who had been affected by the poisonings had in some way been connected to the fate that had fallen on Drue Rivelar. Ivor Severtsson had been the one who had enabled his capture, the sheriff had hanged him and the former prior had given evidence against him. Poison had been placed in all of the places where each of these men, or people close to them, lived. The likelihood that Mauger Rivelar had returned was certainly worth investigating.
When Bascot and Gianni arrived at the apiary, there was a large dray piled with sacks standing just inside the gate, and Bascot recognised the driver as a Templar lay brother. At the sound of Bascot’s arrival, one of the men-at-arms that d’Arderon had sent the day before came swiftly forward from the direction of the orchard, and the other, who had been engaged in mending wattles on a portion of the fence, quickly dropped the tool he had been using and placed his hand on the hilt of his sword. When they recognised Bascot, they saluted him and returned to what they were doing. The Templar smiled. Both of the soldiers were men about his own age, their skin bronzed from the hot sun of the Holy Land, and possessed of the wariness that came from being constantly on vigil against an enemy. Their alert and unobtrusive presence would ensure that if Cooper’s murderer came to the apiary, he would not find an easy victim among the beekeeper’s family. There was no need to worry about their safety until it was made certain whether or not they were in danger.
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