told her sister that morning. “I don’t know anything of what Wat was doing, sir,” she said finally. “He told me to keep myself upstairs and that’s what I did, all night until it was time to come down in the morning.”
As her sister looked at Bascot to see if he was impressed by the tale, the alewife hung her head, darting a glance from beneath her brows first at Bascot, then at her sister. Her wide face was blotchy, which could have been due to the tears she had shed that morning, or it could have been from fear. Throughout his long captivity Bascot had become well versed in the meaning of facial expressions-a sudden colour, or lack of it, in the skin; the quick glance of an eye or the tremble of a muscle. When one is a slave among other slaves and all subject to the whim of a master, it is well to be able to recognise the emotions behind another person’s eyes. He instinctively knew that the alewife was not telling the truth.
“You are lying, mistress,” Bascot said flatly. “You were not in your bed all night. If you had been, whoever murdered those three people and your husband would have killed you too. It is not likely he would have left so convenient a witness. Unless, of course, you were his accomplice.” It was a wild guess he was making, that she had not been in her bed, but it seemed a reasonable one.
Agnes began to cry again, protesting her innocence and her sister, white and drawn, stood watching him. He stood up and said harshly, “My patience is at an end. Ernulf, take this woman to the castle. Perhaps a few days incarceration in a lonely cell will loosen her tongue. If not, there are other ways of making her tell us what she knows.”
As he finished speaking there was a crack of thunder overhead, so loud that it seemed as though the very walls would split asunder. From the doorway to the yard two men appeared, one tall and thin with the leather apron of a carpenter over his rough smock, the other similarly clad but younger, with a sturdy frame and a shock of hair as red as Jennet’s. When they caught sight of Bascot they stopped in the doorway and bobbed their heads deferentially. They were, presumably, Jennet’s husband and son. The thunder continued to sound and then there was the heavy patter of falling rain, plopping loudly into the yard behind them. The noise lent weight to Bascot’s words, seeming as though God himself was reinforcing the Templar’s judgement.
Agnes had now fallen to her knees, imploring Bascot not to take her away and begging her sister to help her. Her wailing was interrupted by a loud knocking on the door of the small house. Ernulf opened it to find outside the man-at-arms he had left on guard at the alehouse. The soldier asked the serjeant if he could speak to him privately and Ernulf disappeared through the door, returning almost immediately.
“There’s been a stabbing,” he said in response to Bascot’s questioning look. “The priest at St. Andrew’s, Father Anselm. A parishioner found him behind the altar, lying in his own blood.”
“How could that be? I just left him preparing to celebrate evening Mass,” Bascot exclaimed.
“Must have happened after you left, and before anyone arrived for the service.”
“Is he alive?” Bascot asked.
“Barely. Sheriff Camville’s town guard is there, and a leech. My man thought you might want to know.”
“He was right. We’ll go at once.” Bascot rose and added, “Bring the alewife with you, Ernulf. Perhaps the sight of the priest’s blood will loosen her tongue. If not”-he shrugged-“the sheriff’s guard can take her to the castle.”
Bascot pushed out of the small house, Gianni behind him and Ernulf, with a loudly screeching Agnes in tow, following. They mounted their horses, dumping Agnes on the saddlebow in front of the man-at-arms, where she clung to the mane of his horse sobbing and calling out to her sister. Jennet, along with her husband and son, ran into the street after them, following Bascot as he spurred his reluctant horse forward into the drenching rain.
Eight
Acrowd was gathered outside the door of St. Andrew’s church despite the heavy rainfall. They stood with bowed heads, fear written large on their faces, keeping a conspicuous space between themselves and the ring of the sheriff’s guard who stood in a phalanx of four, swords drawn, outside the church door. To harm a priest, a man of God, was a serious matter. His attacker would have damned his immortal soul.
They fell back quietly as Bascot dismounted and made for the door. The sheriff’s guard parted to let him through, their badges bearing Camville’s emblem of a silver lion glinting brightly through the mist of streaming rain. Ernulf pulled Agnes roughly from her seat and, dragging her behind him, they followed Bascot into the church.
At the far end of the nave, beside the altar, a small group of people were kneeling around the prone body of the priest. Bascot recognised the burly figure of Roget, the captain of Camville’s guard. He and Roget had first met on crusade when Roget had been a serjeant under Mercadier, the commander of King Richard’s mercenary forces. Roget was a brutal and vicious man, but he was extremely capable and usually loyal to his current paymaster, a trait not always found in hired soldiers. Tall, black-visaged and rangily built with the scar of an old sword slash running from brow to chin, he nodded to Bascot in recognition and moved back so that the Templar could see the body of the priest more clearly. Kneeling on the far side of Father Anselm was another priest, murmuring prayers and robed in readiness to give extreme unction. Beside him was a short rotund man, a fine gold chain strung with extracted human teeth hanging around his neck. This must be the leech that Ernulf had mentioned, a barber- surgeon. His neatly trimmed grey hair and clean-shaven chin gleamed with oil as he looked up at Bascot, round face shiny with excitement.
“I am sure he will live. And it is God’s own hand twice over that has willed it so. Firstly, in that the saintly man was wearing a hair shirt beneath his garments, which served to deflect the blow, and secondly, in that it was I who found him. My skill in staunching blood was sore needed this night.”
It was plain that the man spoke the truth for blood had spread in a dark viscous pool below the altar step on which Father Anselm was lying and his garments were soaked with it.
“Never in all my years of letting a patron’s blood have I failed to stem it at the right moment,” the barber said, displaying with pride where he had ripped apart the priest’s robe and the inverted shirt of bull’s hide, then wadded material from Father Anselm’s own vestments over the lips of the wound. The priest, his body on one side and head cradled in the barber’s lap, was unconscious and deathly pale but as the slow pulse at the side of his neck indicated, still breathing.
Bascot motioned to Roget and they moved aside. “I take it you did not catch the assailant?” he asked.
“No,” Roget replied. “Nor was anyone seen or any weapon found. The barber and his wife, along with a couple of neighbours, came for Mass. They were a little early and the first to enter. They saw the priest’s feet sticking out from behind the altar and the barber attended the wound. A few minutes more and the priest would have bled to death. No one else was about until the rest of the congregation began to arrive.”
Roget glanced at Bascot shrewdly, the dim light in the church accentuating the hollows of puckered skin where the scar on his face pulled at the flesh around his eyes, and sending points of brilliance sparkling from the rings of gold threaded through his earlobes. “Nothing was stolen. The poor box is intact and nothing of value among the communion vessels appears to be missing. Do you think this assault is connected with the murders in the alehouse across the street?”
Bascot nodded. “It has to be. So near in time and so close in proximity. The priest must have been a threat to the murderer in some way. If Father Anselm recovers, and can identify his attacker, we may learn not only why the murders were committed, but who did them.”
A few feet away Ernulf stood with Agnes, her arm firmly in the serjeant’s grasp. She had ceased to sob and was watching Bascot and Roget with wide eyes, her body trembling with fear. Ernulf was leaning down, speaking to her, and suddenly she nodded, hands pressed to her lips.
The serjeant approached Bascot. “The alewife says she wishes to speak to you.”
“The sight of the priest has shocked her into telling the truth, has it?” Bascot asked.
Ernulf gave a snort of laughter. “No. I told her that if she did not, we would give her over to Roget for questioning.” He looked at the mercenary captain, eyes alight with mirth. “Seems the threat has loosened her tongue. Do you always have that effect on women?”
Roget threw his head back and laughed, showing teeth that were still strong and white but gapped in many places. “My mother was a scold, always berating me. I swore when I left her tender care at the age of nine that I would never let another woman lash me with her tongue. And I never have. Perhaps your Agnes can sense my remarkable intolerance with wailing women and has chosen the wiser course of tormenting you instead.”
