Shroud of Dishonour (26 page)

Still Joan persisted in her claim that neither she nor her husband had any intention of harming Roulan if they found him, claiming that their purpose had merely been to denounce him to the sheriff and hope that some repercussions would fall on the family, if not on Jacques himself. Since it would be easy for Askil and Dunny to pose as itinerant seamen looking for work, it had been Joan’s idea to send them to the village near the manor house and see if they could discover if Jacques had returned, while she and Sven went to Hull and looked for the knight in the alehouses and brothels where he and her brother had been so fond of carousing. The two sailors went to the hamlet and took lodgings in the local alehouse, telling the ale keeper they were on their way to Torksey and hoped to find work on the barges that carry goods up and down the River Trent. That night, they sat in the alehouse and got into conversation with some of the villagers over a few rounds of ale, encouraging them to talk about the local nobility. Eventually the name of Roulan was mentioned, and that one of the family had joined the Templar Order. Many tales were told of his rakehell ways before he became a monk, but no mention was made that he had come back to England or of his having been seen in the neighbourhood. Not aware that Savaric had only recently returned with the report of Jacques’ demise and that this news had not yet reached the villagers, Askil and Dunny decided their journey had been in vain and returned to Bishopbridge. They then went back to Barton as they had come, via the Ancholme, and rejoined Joan and Sven. After discussing the matter and deciding that Jacques must still be in the Holy Land, they had all sailed back to Grimsby.

“And, so, mistress, for this capricious whim to avenge your brother, you have wasted my time and that of Bailiff Thorson,” Camville said.

For once Joan was contrite. “I apologise for that, lord,” she said. “I admit my grief overwhelmed my good sense.”

“So it did, mistress, so it did,” Camville replied, returning to his seat on the dais and picking up his wine cup. “And you shall pay for that error. Before you return home, you and your husband will sign a pledge to submit a fine of twenty pounds for the inconvenience you have caused me, and you will also give Bailiff Thorson a sum of five pounds for the cost of his time and trouble in escorting you to Lincoln.”

Sven Grimson gasped at the amount. “But, lord, that is more silver than I can earn in many weeks with my fishing boats… .”

Camville leaned forward and glowered. “Would you rather spend six months in Lincoln’s town gaol?”

The boat owner shook his head and, accompanied by his wife and the two sailors, Roget and Thorson escorted them out of the hall.

Camville grunted in disgust as they left and took another swallow of wine. Nicolaa commended Bascot on his insight in realising that Scallion and Roulan’s similar penchant for whoring and drinking could have easily thrown them into each other’s company in Hull, and then connecting that with the fact that Bishopbridge was close to the Roulan manor house at Ingham and could quite conceivably have been the sailors’ destination instead of Lincoln. With hindsight, it was an obvious link, but one that had not been so beforehand. The Templar shook his head in denial of the compliment.

“Exposure of the Grimsons’ lies has brought us no closer to discovering the identity of the murderer. And unless we can garner some new information, or uncover a pertinent detail that has been missed, I fear we shall get no further.”

The Templar’s heart sank as he thought of telling Preceptor d’Arderon that the Grimson party was now cleared of suspicion. The elimination of their culpability took the investigation back to where it had been at the beginning and the need to once again face the unpleasant prospect that it might be a Templar brother who was guilty of the crimes.

As Bascot drained his wine cup and prepared to return to the enclave, the Haye bailiff from Brattleby came into the hall, requesting an audience with Nicolaa. Although not apparent at the time, the bailiff’s report would eventually provide the means of unearthing the evidence the Templar was so desperate to find.

B
ASCOT RETURNED TO THE PRECEPTORY IN A DISPIRITED MOOD. The Haye bailiff had confirmed what Gilbert Roulan had told them; that, to the Ingham servants’ knowledge, none of the family had gone to Lincoln during the days in question, nor left the property at all except to travel to their holding at Marton on a few occasions. As Lady Nicolaa had told him to be thorough, the bailiff had then gone to Marton to ensure the proclaimed reason for their absences had been a true one.

The property at Marton was about eight miles southeast of Ingham and close to the Trent River. It was small, its income mainly derived from a herd of pigs that was raised there and fed mainly on mast that fell from a large stand of oaks growing on the perimeter of the property. Under the guise of making a routine inspection for Lady Nicolaa, the bailiff had spoken to the swineherd who lived there and looked after the pigs.

“In answer to my question about whether any of the Roulans had lately visited the property,” the bailiff reported, “the swineherd confirmed what the servants at Ingham had said, that some of them had been there recently. He said that none of them had used to come very much in the past, but lately Savaric had been there at least three times that he knew of, although Sir Gilbert and Sir Herve had only come once, accompanied by Lady Julia. It appears the reason they went is that they are intending to make Savaric the steward of the place and there is need to sanction repairs he has suggested be made to the small dilapidated manor house on the property. At any rate, lady, they did go to Marton just as the servants at Ingham told me and aside from the times they went there, have gone nowhere else.”

After Nicolaa thanked her bailiff and dismissed him, she, Camville and Bascot had discussed what, if any, direction the investigation into the harlots’ murder should take.

“Roget has made enquiries in the town to see if anyone has lately seen Julia Roulan or Savaric about the streets of Lincoln,” Camville declared. “A couple of merchants—a cutler who supplies the Roulan household with spoons and other household utensils, and a draper from whom they buy cloth for bed linen—recall Julia, in the company of Gilbert’s wife, Margaret, making purchases last autumn, but none since then. It is the same with Savaric. Before he left to join the Templars with Jacques, he would, on occasion, carry out errands for Gilbert’s father in Lincoln, but no one remembers seeing him since he returned from Outremer.

The sheriff shifted his restless frame in his chair as he went on. “As far as I can see, if neither the Grimsons nor the Roulans are involved in these crimes, there is nowhere to look for this murderer except in the Templar preceptory.”

He had looked directly at Bascot as he spoke and the Templar felt compelled to give a response. “Preceptor d’Arderon has investigated all of the men that are in the enclave, lord, and, as far as we can determine, none are guilty, either of giving cause for the murderer’s enmity, or of committing the crimes.”

Camville nodded his acceptance of the statement and added, “Then, de Marins, much as it grieves me to say so, I fear we must accept that we may not find this miscreant.”

When he returned to the preceptory, Bascot told d’Arderon what had passed and then resumed his regular duties, but his mind was not on his tasks as he went to check on his destrier and, afterwards, join the men at practise on the training ground. By the time Compline had passed, he was more than ready to retire but found, when he lay down on his pallet, that sleep took a long time in coming. When it finally did, it was filled with fragmented dreams of his childhood, and of the years he had spent with the monks in the monastery to which he had been given as an oblate—a gift to God—before his sire removed him to fill the place of an older brother of Bascot’s who had died.

He tossed and turned on his pallet, trying not to disturb the men who were sleeping alongside him on two long rows of pallets in the dormitory. Even though he was accustomed to the rush lights that were kept burning all night long in the chamber, their glimmer disturbed his peace and he flung his arm over his sighted eye to block the light. Eventually he fell into a doze but his rest was soon invaded by a vivid dream involving the elderly monk who had taught reading and writing to the novices in the monastery. He could see the monk’s face clearly. Above his former tutor’s head was a halo and around him, whirling so fast they were almost a blur, were spinning discs of light. The sensation made Bascot feel as though he were falling even though he was lying flat on his back and he woke with a start. As he opened his eye, the dream receded but, as it did so, the sound of the monk’s voice instructing him in a lesson echoed in his mind—”and you will conjugate the verb in Latin and French.”

He knew that the tutor’s words had not been spoken in his dream, but came from some deep well in his memory of the actual days he and the other novices had been sitting at their lessons. But the words had been extremely clear, just as though the monk was sitting at his bedside. The intense reality of the experience left him fully awake and he knew that it would be useless to again seek rest, so he quietly pulled on his boots and, leaving the dormitory, went outside into the open air.

There had only been a few brief showers over the preceding days and the hard-packed earth of the training ground was dry and dusty. Above him stars wheeled in the sky, pin-pricks of light that formed a bright background for a half-full moon. As he walked from the dormitory out into the open space in front of him, the guard on the gate did not hear his steps and he realised how easy it would have been for Elfreda and her killer to have stolen through the shadows around the perimeter of the walls and gone into the chapel. The duty of the sentry was to keep out intruders, and his attention would be focussed outward, beyond the walls, not towards the inhabitants of the preceptory.

He judged it was now just about an hour before dawn and the service of Matins. Feeling a need to find a quiet place to think, he walked across the training ground to the smithy. The door of the small building housing the forge was usually left open unless it was raining, and was now pinned back by a wooden wedge. Bascot went inside and sat down on a large block of wood. Beside him was a wheel that needed the iron rim repaired and he rested one elbow on its edge and let his gaze roam around the interior.

The forge was built on a stone standing, its fire banked down low so as to be ready for morning with bellows ready to hand. The smith’s tools were neatly arrayed with the smaller ones—tongs, hammers, rasps and files—hanging from large nails on the walls, while anvils ranging in size from small to large stood on the floor, the largest one next to a barrel of water that the smith used for cooling the red hot metal. Atop the anvil lay a pair of heavy gloves and the leather apron the smith wore while he was at work. From the fire in the forge came a comfortable warmth which removed the chill from the night air, and the tangy smell of metal filled his nostrils in a comforting fashion.

As Bascot sat on the block, he thought back over the dream that had been the cause of his wakefulness. Aware that it was common for a dreaming mind to throw up bizarre images of objects and happenings experienced while awake, he made an attempt to clarify the ones that had appeared in his dream in case they should have some relation to the mystery he was trying to solve. The whirling orbs reminded him of something, but of what he could not discern. And why had his old tutor had a halo above his head? A kindly man he had been, most certainly, but not a candidate for sainthood. And, if the instruction that had come into his mind as he had awoken did, in fact, bear some relation to recent events, what verb was he meant to conjugate? Although the dream had been a powerful one, nighttime illusions were often capricious. It could simply be that the image of his tutor had been caused by recent thoughts of Gianni and the lessons the boy was learning. He wished Gianni were with him now, the lad’s recent studies might give him some insight into the echo of scholastic instruction he remembered from his childhood.

The Templar returned his mind to yet another review of the scant evidence they had managed to obtain, and recalled Agnes’s description of the cloak clasp worn by the man she had seen knocking on Adele Delorme’s door. On it had been a picture of St. Christopher. Was this the saint to which his dream referred? But, if so, how was the saint linked to the circles of light whirling around the figure of the monk?

Suddenly, Bascot held his breath and retuned his gaze to the wheel, recalling how he had been attracted by the motion of the rolling wheels on the dray that he and Roget had passed on their journey to Ingham. The turning discs in his dream had been very like wheels, spinning in the brightness of the sun as the driver urged the horses to a faster pace on the stretch of road. The Latin word for wheel was
rota
; the French,
rouet.
But these were nouns, the directive had been to conjugate a verb. Mentally he ran through verbs describing the spinning motion of a wheel. In Latin—
versare, volvo … ,
in French
tourner, rouler …
He stopped. If he conjugated
rouler—
to roll—he came to
ils roulent—
they roll, which was almost identical phonetically to the name of the family to which Julia and Savaric belonged—Roulan.