able to build up his strength, recover his faith and return to the Order.
But now it was all gone, and with it his life, his meaning. It was he who should have died, not them. The pity he had felt for Gianni had been from the comfortable perspective of a knight of Christ and the member of a solid living family. It had been his intention to leave the lad in his father’s care, knowing the boy would be well looked after and would thrive. But instead he found that he and Gianni were two of a kind, both adrift, both lost and homeless. Perhaps that was why he had become so attached to the child, using him as an anchor against his own uncertainty. Sweet Jesu, where did his future lie? He did not know what it was that God wanted him to do, nor less did he know what he himself wanted.
He looked down at the wet ground, felt the pain surge in his ankle now that his boot had been removed. Outside the bathhouse door the bail was deserted. Flies droned, the weak bleating of lambs could be heard in the afternoon heat. A discarded rag rolled lazily across the doorway. Did he belong here, in Lincoln? Part of it, yet not a part? Apart-wasn’t that what he had always been, as a child in the monastery, in the loneliness of his vows to the Order? Or was he wrong, was he a part of something after all? And if so, of what? He reminded himself of the vows he had taken-poverty, chastity, obedience. The first two were easy to follow, but the third… How could one be obedient when it was not clear in what direction that obedience lay? God had guided him unerringly through the web of lies and deceit that had surrounded Isobel Scothern’s crimes and, he had to admit, the fact that he had been the means whereby the souls of her victims had been granted retribution was very satisfying. But had he truly been an instrument of the Lord’s will or was his gratification causing him to be guilty of the sin of pride? He wished God would give him a similar assistance in determining the path of his own destiny.
Bascot folded the towel and replaced it, then turned to pick up his clothes. As he did so, he caught the sense of a slight movement at the entrance to the bathhouse. It was Gianni. Slowly the boy came forward, holding Bascot’s clean tunic and hose in his arms. Without a change of his solemn expression, the lad held up the clothes for his master to take, then turned to fold up the discarded and soiled ones. When he had finished and Bascot had dressed, he raised his face to his master and Bascot could see tears welling in the lad’s eyes.
“Does Lady Hilde no longer require your presence?” Bascot asked and Gianni shook his head. “Did she tell you to come back here and attend me?” Again the boy moved his head from side to side, then suddenly knelt and put his head down to his knees in an attitude of subjection.
Bascot reached down and lifted him gently. “I think it is time we had something to eat. Go to the kitchens and get some food. Afterwards, you may practice your letters while I sleep. Then we shall return to the tourney field and join in the festivities.”
Gianni raised his head, a smile beginning to form tremulously on his lips. With a quick movement, he had straightened and was running towards the castle kitchens, Bascot’s dirty clothing bundled under his arm. The Templar reached into the pouch at his belt and took out a candi. He felt light-headed-a transient, fleeting sense of freedom. It was not permanent, he knew, but he enjoyed it all the same. Perhaps God was giving him a direction after all. For the present, at least, he would remain in Lincoln.
Epilogue
Hamo, the templar serjeant that d’Arderon had sent on Bascot’s quest to discover the truth of dead Hugo’s identity, returned, as the preceptor had ordered, ten days after he had left. As expected, the young couple that had been slain were confirmed by the boy’s mother as Philip de Kyme’s illegitimate son and his wife. The distraught woman was herself prostrate with grief after receiving William Scothern’s letter telling of her son’s death only the day before Hamo’s arrival. She still planned to make a trip to the shrine of St. James in Compostella, this time to pray for her dead son’s soul instead of to give thanks for his good fortune.
Isobel Scothern was never brought to answer the charge of murder before the king’s justices. The morning after the tourney she was found dead in her cell, a cup on the floor beside her which the infirmarian from the Priory of All Saints declared to contain the dregs of a strong distillation of foxglove leaves, a deadly poison.
The elderly monk, called from his patients to examine the murderess’ body, had gently closed Isobel’s lids over her sightless amber-coloured eyes, murmuring as he did so, “By committing a mortal sin she has escaped her earthly judgement, but I fear her heavenly trial will be far more terrible. May God have mercy on her soul.”
A few days later, without ceremony, Isobel Scothern’s body, with the child she had carried dead in her womb, was buried in a patch of unhallowed ground at the edge of a stony field outside the walls of Lincoln.
Author’s Note
The setting for The Alehouse Murders is an authentic one. Nicolaa de la Haye was hereditary castellan of Lincoln castle during this period and her husband, Gerard Camville, was sheriff. The personalities they have been given in the story have been formed by conclusions the author has drawn from events during the reigns of King Richard I and King John.
For details of the town of Lincoln, I am much indebted to J. W. F. Hill’s Medieval Lincoln and, for information about the Order of the Knights Templar, to John J. Robinson’s very definitive book, Dungeon, Fire and Sword.
