As Bascot took Agnes into a corner of the nave, Jennet, along with her husband and son, were admitted by the guard. They came hurriedly to the alewife’s side. Agnes, shocked by the brutal attack on the priest and fearful of being handed over to the intimidating Roget, was now eager to talk. Her voice came rushing in a tumble as she told that she had not been in bed at all the night before, but had gone down into the yard while her husband was occupied elsewhere and had hidden behind the privy.
“I wanted to see what Wat was up to, sir,” she said. “I thought maybe he was going to have a woman in there, or another of his dice games. So I hid and waited.”
She looked up in earnest supplication at Bascot. “I didn’t know them bodies was in the barrels until I saw Wat lifting them out. Truly I didn’t. The barrels they were in were at the back, where I put ones waiting to be rinsed out and dried. I’d just made a new brew. Wat knew I wouldn’t be using any of those for a day or two. I swear, sir, in the name of the Blessed Virgin, I didn’t know those bodies were there.”
“What else did you see?” Bascot asked impatiently.
Agnes’ hands clutched nervously at the folds in the front of her gown as she answered him. “I saw a man-I think it was a man-at the door into the yard. He was standing there, watching, as Wat carried those poor dead souls inside. I couldn’t see his face, he was wearing a cloak with a hood, and the candlelight was dim and behind him. There was little light from the moon. But it was him that shut the door after Wat had finished and then I didn’t see either of them anymore.”
“How long did you stay hidden?”
“Until the morning light came, sir.” The tears on Agnes’ face had dried, leaving her face flushed. “I waited all night watching for some sign that the stranger had left. He must have come in at the front and left the same way. It wasn’t until it was light that I was bold enough to go inside and, then… you know what I found.”
“There must have been some noise from inside-when your husband was killed.”
“No, sir, there wasn’t. Not that I heard anyway. The only other thing I saw was some candlelight from our bed chamber above. Just glimmed briefly at the open casement, then it was gone.” She looked up at him hopefully. “You was right, sir. If I’d been up there, I’d of been dead, too. That was why I was frightened to tell the truth. I thought if the murderer knew I had been there, seen him-well, he might come back again and do me in to be along with my Wat.”
“Did you tell the priest what you just told me?” Bascot asked.
“No, sir. I didn’t tell anyone, not even Jennet. I didn’t even show her this.” She thrust a hand in the voluminous folds of her skirt and pulled out a small shiny object and handed it to him. “I found it, in the morning, just as the sun came up. I saw it glinting on the ground, beside one of the barrels that Wat took, took… one of them that had a body in it,” she finished lamely.
Bascot examined the object she handed him. It was a small silver brooch, too tiny to be of use for a cloak, probably intended for pinning a woman’s garment of light weight. It was fashioned in a circle, formed by a pair of clasping hands, and with the letter M-most likely for the Virgin Mary-scrolled on the top. The design was not unusual, betrothal rings were often made so, but uncommon in a brooch. The pin was bent, but still held in the clasp, as though it had been pulled from the material it held. It was not particularly valuable, but to Agnes it was worth quite a few of the pennies she charged for stoups of her ale. The fact that she had produced it meant that it was probable she was finally telling the truth.
He put the brooch into the purse at his belt, to keep company with the scrap of material Gianni had found. “Yesterday-you did your business as usual? You tended to your ale, served customers-all as on any other day?” Bascot asked Agnes.
She nodded. “It were busy, what with all the people come from other parts of the country for the fair. I served in the taproom. I barely had time to set out my malt for the next mash, or prepare my gruit.” Bascot knew that gruit was the flavouring for the ale, and that Agnes would have used the herbs he had found in the cubbyhole upstairs in the alehouse. “I uses a special mixture for gruit that my mam taught me, bog myrtle and honey. That’s what makes my ale so good.”
“The Jew and the two strangers-they were never in the taproom?”
“No, sir,” she denied positively. “I never have Jews in my house-and they wouldn’t come in neither-and the other two I never saw before, before…” She faltered to a stop.
“Then they must have been brought to your yard and put in the barrels, or brought to the yard already inside them.” Agnes looked at Bascot in confusion as he went on. “Your husband, Wat-did he leave the premises at all yesterday?”
“Only to do deliveries,” Agnes said.
“What deliveries?” Bascot asked with more patience than he felt for the woman’s slow thinking processes.
“There were three. Master Ivo the Goldsmith-he took two kegs; Mistress Downy, the widow-she took one ’cause she has her son and his wife coming to stay for the fair; and the steward of Sir Roger de Kyme, he took two for his master’s house in town.”
“And how did Wat go about these deliveries-what was his routine?”
At Agnes’ look of bewilderment, her sister Jennet, who had seen the purpose of his questions, gave the answer. “He would put the kegs full of ale on the cart, get the cart-horse from its stable at the end of the lane and deliver them. If there were any old kegs that were empty, he would bring them back and put them aside for cleansing and reusing. That’s how the bodies were brought back, sir. In the empty kegs.”
“Thank you, mistress,” Bascot said gratefully. “Then Wat must either have killed them himself, or have knowledge of who did.”
“Oh no, sir,” Agnes protested. “My Wat would never have killed anybody. I know he wouldn’t.”
“Seems he knew somebody else had, at least,” Jennet remarked to her sister dryly. “If they had died natural- like he wouldn’t have been stuffing them in ale kegs and lifting them out after dark, would he?”
Bascot felt satisfied that it was now known how the bodies had arrived at their final destination, and that Wat had been an accomplice in their deaths, if not the actual murderer. But he was already dead when the priest had been stabbed, so the person Agnes had seen in the yard last night must have been responsible for the attack in the church.
The noise of the rain pelting down outside was louder now, and Bascot looked to where the carpenter and young boy were respectfully standing a short distance away. He beckoned for them to come forward.
“This is your son?” he asked Jennet. She nodded and told Bascot his name was Will. He looked strong, with the big bones and wide frame of his aunt, rather than the slight ones of his mother and father. The boy stood uncertainly before Bascot, awed by his presence and that of the sheriff’s guard, and looked anxious at being singled out for attention.
Bascot pointed to the hammer tucked into the belt of the lad’s leather apron. “You know how to use that, Will, do you?”
“Aye, sir. I helps me da in the yard,” the boy answered. Behind him his father nodded.
“Then keep it with you, and stay by your aunt for the next few days. If anyone threatens her, use it on them as you use it on the wood in your father’s yard. Do you understand me?”
Will nodded his head in a determined fashion. “Aye, sir. I’ll not let anyone harm her.”
Bascot looked down at the drained face of the alewife. “If you recall any more of what you saw last night, send a message to Ernulf at the castle. He will see that I am informed.”
Relieved that she was not to be taken to the castle for questioning, the alewife left the church with her sister and family. Bascot waited until the priest, still unconscious but with his wound now neatly bandaged by the barber with strips torn from an altar cloth, had been removed on a hastily constructed stretcher before he called to Gianni and Ernulf and they rode slowly back through the downpour of rain to the castle keep.
Nine
“You believe, then, that the victims were killed elsewhere and their bodies transported to the ale house in empty casks? The obvious question is: why?”
Bascot was once again ensconced with Nicolaa de la Haye and Gerard Camville in the small chamber where
