someone had taken a birch rod to her back and legs. She was cut from neck to ankle. Been one of Brunner’s wenches we were told, but he swore he hadn’t seen her for a week or more before we found her and, although we tried, we couldn’t prove different. But I know he did it. Beat her so badly she committed the sin of killing herself rather than face him again. Poor soul was probably too afraid to go to the bailiff, so she took the only way out left to her.”
“What did you say his name is?” Bascot asked. “Brunner?”
“That’s right, but he should be named Devil’s Backside, for that’s what he is.”
When Ernulf knocked on the door and the stewe-holder opened it, the serjeant did not enter into any good- natured banter the way he had at the other stewes. He pushed Brunner roughly aside and told him to call his women down, and to be quick about it. When the harlots were all roused and standing downstairs, Ernulf asked them the same questions he had asked at all the other houses along the street. Did they recognise the clothes? Did they know of any harlot that had pale brown hair, was about midway in her term with an unborn child and had not been seen lately?
Most of the women shook their head but one of them, a blond-haired wench who called herself Gillie, had looked startled when Ernulf had said they were looking for a woman who was pregnant. She had then hesitantly said she had met a girl like that the week before, when she was travelling the road to Lincoln.
“Where were you coming from?” Bascot asked, the first question he had personally put to any of the prostitutes.
“From near Nottingham, sir,” she said. “But I’ll not tell you the name of my village. I run away and I don’t want my kinfolk to find me. Especially here.”
She kept looking nervously at Brunner until Ernulf, a scowl on his face, said to her, “If you want to leave, you have only to walk out of that door with us when we go. No one shall stop you.”
For a moment the girl faltered, then she glanced once more at Brunner and, curling her arm so that it crossed her stomach, murmured, “I thank you, sir, for your offer. But there’s no need. I’ll stay where I am.”
“Are you free born?” Bascot asked. If she was a villein and tied to the land, she was committing a crime against her family’s lord by running away.
“I am, sir. That I promise you. I ran away because my mam died and my father married again. His new wife don’t like me and she beats me all the time. A week ago when she took a rod to me, I struck back at her and when my father came home he gave me the brunt of his fist for giving her an injury. So I left and joined up with a party of travellers coming to Lincoln for the fair.”
The girl’s attitude throughout had been one of extreme nervousness, but this last sounded like the truth and Bascot let it go. “This girl you met on the way here, was she with the other travellers?” The girl nodded. “Did she tell you her name or say where she was from?”
“No, sir, she did not. She said she was coming to meet her husband, that he was a mason and had sent for her to come and enjoy the fair with him. But I didn’t believe her. She didn’t look like a goodwife.”
“Why?” Bascot asked.
The girl looked down. “It were her clothes, sir,” she said, her voice so low Bascot had to ask her to repeat herself. “It were her gown, sir. That one you’ve got there. She had a light summer cloak over it, but I seen it plain and clear. No decent man would want his wife dressed in colours like those. It looks like a harlot’s gown and I reckon that’s what she was. Like I am now.” She lifted her shoulders and dropped them as though she had been defeated.
“When was the last time you saw her?” Bascot asked.
“The day we got to Lincoln, sir. About a week ago now. We all came through Stonebow gate, then each of us that were in the party went their own ways. The last I saw of her she was going up Mikelgate towards the upper part of the city.”
“Did she mention to you the name of anyone she knew? What her husband was called, perhaps, or on what building he was working?” The story could be true. Masonry was an itinerant trade and those who plied it had to travel to whatever town had need of them.
“No, sir. Like I said, I didn’t believe her anyway, so if she did say his name I didn’t hear it for I wasn’t paying much attention. I didn’t talk to her much. I fell into company with another girl who was more to my liking.”
“And you’re sure she didn’t say where she was from?” Bascot asked again.
Gillie shook her head. “I’m sure, sir.”
Bascot looked at the other girls, who had been listening to Gillie’s story with curiosity and awe. Even though she didn’t look very happy as she had spun her tale, this new girl in their midst would now enjoy the fame that went with having actually spoken to the young woman who had been found murdered. It might even earn her a few extra pennies from customers who had a grisly interest in her tale.
The Templar nodded to Ernulf, and they started to leave. Before they went through the door, however, the serjeant turned and spoke to the girl again. “If you find yourself ill-treated here or”-he paused to gaze at each of the harlots in turn-“if any of you others have cause to complain, send for me at the castle. My name is Ernulf.”
Turning towards Brunner he said, “And I’ll be telling the bailiff to have an extra sharp inspection here next week, so there better not be anything amiss, either with your premises, or your wenches.”
Brunner made no reply but once the Templar and Ernulf had disappeared through the door, he sank onto a stool and called to one of the women to bring him a full measure of wine.
Thirteen
The people of Lincoln town were enjoying the entertainments of the fair to the full, and trade was brisk in the cloth markets, on the stalls and outside the walls where sheep and cattle were being sold. Pedlars of pies, bread rolls and savoury jellied meats were everywhere, their boards balanced on top of their heads or held in front of them by means of a strap around their necks. Women sold trinkets and ribbons from baskets held on their hip, tinkers offered cheap pots and mended spoons from the selections dangled about their bodies on lengths of twine, and beggars covered with sores or having some disability such as a withered arm or a crippled leg-some real, some faked-importuned passersby for alms. Among the throng walked the sheriff’s guards, while town officials bustled to-and-fro, checking that every stallholder had paid the fee for keeping it and watching to see that no unwary customer was cheated by short weight or measure. There were bearbaitings and dog fights, wrestling matches and strolling players, each contending with the others to win a fourthing or half-part of the silver penny pieces thrown by the spectators. Near the end of the afternoon, the prostitutes joined the crowd; green sleeves attached to their gowns and dyed horsehair wigs on their heads.
As day drew into evening, the selling halls and vendor’s stalls closed, but still the fair went on, the entertainment now of a different nature. Mugs of ale purchased at the packed alehouses were carried into the streets and young men and women danced to the music of wandering troubadours, the girls’ skirts twirling in gay abandon and hair tumbling unheeded from discarded coifs. Their partners lifted them high and swung them about, faces sweating from exertion and excitement. Tonight, and for all the next ten nights of the fair, there would be no curfew, and torches would be kept burning all night along the main thoroughfares so that the revellers could enjoy themselves in safety.
In the keep of Lincoln castle, there were far fewer to sit down to the evening meal than there had been the night before. Only those members of the castle garrison who would be on duty that evening were eating the cold viands and cheeses that had been laid out by a depleted staff of servants and, at the high table, the company was diminished to the relatives and personal guests of the sheriff and his wife.
Bascot sat at a lower table, alone except for an older knight who was attacking his trencher with vigour. Below the salt sat a few clerics and a couple of squires. Gianni, after serving his master, had retired with his own food to his favourite spot in a corner of the hall with the dogs, and Ernulf had gone to ensure that the castle had been made secure for the night.
As he ate, Bascot ruminated on his visit to Brunner’s establishment and the tour he had made of the cloth halls afterwards. What he had learned had not aided him much and, as to the young harlot’s protestation that she had seen the dead girl on the way to Lincoln, he was uncertain as to how truthful she had been. The elderly knight beside him kept up a steady flow of conversation, mostly about previous fairs that had been held in Lincoln and of
