“That’s enough, boy,” the cobbler said sternly. “My aids are between me and my customers, not to be spoken of lightly by the likes of you. Be careful that God, for your impertinence, does not strike you with some affliction my skill cannot help.”
The threat subdued the boy and he stopped speaking, hanging his head in a sullen manner. Bascot, however, was interested in what he had said before he had been chastened into silence.
“Is it true that you have fitted priests with hair shirts, shoemaker?” he asked.
“Aye, one or two. Men’s chests and shoulders come in all sizes, just like feet. It would not be proper for the hair shirt to be seen, since its exposure would defeat the spirit of humility in which it is worn. So I make them to fit snug under a priest’s vestments.”
Bascot acknowledged the sentiment, then said, “There was a priest in town that was attacked with a dagger and almost killed only a few short days ago. Father Anselm. Do you know him?”
“Aye, I do,” was the reply.
“He was wearing a hair shirt when he was attacked. It is thought the shirt saved him from death. Was it one of yours?”
“Since you already know of its existence, it cannot be wrong of me to tell you about it. Yes, I made it for Father Anselm. Just a week before the fair began. And I thank God that I did so, for if it helped to deflect the dagger that struck him, then it was God’s hand that guided mine in the making.”
Bascot took a deep breath. Here was the possibility of more information, connected perhaps not only with the attack on the priest, but also with the murders. But he had to be careful how he asked for it. The shoemaker was a simple man, honest and truthful-and frightened of committing a sin. “Father Anselm is near death. The monks at the priory fear that he will leave this world without regaining consciousness and never be able to tell who it was that assaulted him. A person that would strike a priest must be caught. The crime is repugnant and calls out for punishment. If you know of anyone that might have wanted to harm the priest…”
“He spoke no word to me of enemies,” the cobbler replied. “Indeed, he spoke little at all when he was here.”
“You have no knowledge, then, of the reason he wanted the shirt?” Bascot had tried to avoid the direct question, but could find no way around it.
The cobbler looked at him with a shocked expression. “No, sir, I do not. It would not have been fitting for him to tell of it to any except his confessor.”
The shoemaker’s son burst out in a new fit of giggles. “ ’Twas for lechery, Da. Everyone knows that, even if you don’t…”
“Silence!” The shoemaker rose to his full height, which was still a good half-head shorter than his son. His rage, however, made him seem taller. “Hold your tongue unless you can find a better use for it than to slander a priest. Go! Go out of my sight, and beg God for forgiveness.”
The boy slunk out and the cobbler turned to Bascot with an apologetic air. “I am sorry, sir. The boy forgets himself, and also that you, too, are a man who has sworn himself to God’s service. I beg your pardon for his behaviour.”
Bascot made light of the boy’s remark. “I am not so old that I forget on what a young lad’s mind constantly dwells. Were we not all once enthralled with the tumbling of a lass and could think of nothing else?”
The shoemaker shook his head. “What you say is true, but in my youth I would not have dared to speak so in front of my elders. The young today have no thought for any but themselves. It is a sad statement, but a true one.”
Bascot changed the subject, paying the cobbler for the boots and complimenting him once again on their making. As he left the shop he saw the shoemaker’s son standing over to one side, still punching holes in a piece of leather, but with anger this time. Bascot walked over to him.
“Did another speak of Father Anselm being lustful, or is it only your own imagination at work?” he said to the boy harshly.
Now fear replaced resentment in the boy’s eyes. His answer came out in a rush. “ ’Tis the truth, I swear it. Da will not listen to what he says is evil gossip, but a friend of mine told me his sister complained to him of the priest, said that Father Anselm was always touching her when he got the chance. And not only her, but some of her friends. Accidentally brush their titties, or stand so close behind they could feel his member pushing into their bottoms, that sort of thing. We reckon that’s why he got the hair shirt, and that it was some angry father or husband that stabbed him, after finding out he had been lecherous with one of their womenfolk.”
The boy looked down at the piece of leather in his hands, now almost in shreds. “I wouldn’t of said it if I hadn’t been sure it was true. Da’s always telling me I’m insolent, but even so I wouldn’t make up a story about a priest, as well he should know.”
“Perhaps you’ll find it easier to get on with your father when you have gained a few more years,” Bascot said, not unkindly. “It may surprise you to find that the older one gets the more we appreciate the wisdom of those we did not think possessed it.”
As Bascot walked back up to the castle, marvelling at how easily his ankle bore his weight, he turned over in his mind what the boy had said. Had the stabbing of Father Anselm been nothing more than an outraged parishioner’s revenge for liberties that no priest should take, or was it somehow involved with the deaths of the people in the alehouse? It seemed the more he delved into these murders, the more lust played a part-that of de Kyme and the paramour of his youth, Hilde’s suggestion that Hugh Bardolf’s daughter was unchaste, and now Father Anselm and his hair shirt. Was there a link between one deadly sin and another?
The midday meal was already in progress when Bascot arrived back at the castle. The fair was almost half- over and its momentum had slowed somewhat, as though taking a breath, readying itself to pick up the pace again as the final days approached. Nicolaa had obtained permission from the king to hold a tournament on the last day and now most of the conversation around the crowded tables was of the merits of one knight or another.
As Gianni came up silently beside him, Bascot pushed his way through to a seat next to the elderly knight he had been in conversation with on the evening that William Scothern had come to tell him of his suspicion of the identities of the slain young couple. As Gianni ran to fetch wine for his master’s cup, the old man glanced at Bascot, wiped his straggly moustache free of gravy, then said, “Found out if it was young Conal who did ’em in yet?”
Bascot shook his head, taking a long draught of wine from his freshly filled cup as the old knight went on. “Look for a woman, that’s what I say. Always a woman mixed up in secret murders. Bound to be. Especially where there’s poison.” He shot a quick look at Bascot from under his bushy eyebrows. “Was poison that killed ’em, wasn’t it?”
“It is believed so. They were stabbed as well, but that was after they were dead.”
“Aye, just as I said. Look for a woman. Though any female would need a man’s help to kill four. Unless she were a witch, of course. Then she’d have demons to help her. I mind me of one time, back in ’76 it was, when the old king was still alive, found six bodies, all laid out in a circle around an oak tree by the king’s hunting lodge. Not a mark on ’em. That was a witch. Found her in a hut nearby. Had her familiar with her. A black dog it was…”
Bascot let the old knight’s voice drift out of his consciousness and surveyed the company in the hall. On the dais Lady Nicolaa presided with her husband beside her. Tonight the sheriff was attired more resplendently than Bascot had ever seen him before, in a pale grey tunic with embroidered silver sleeves and a matching cap. In his hand was the familiar cup of wine. On his right sat Conal’s uncles Ailwin and Magnus, while Nicolaa had her sisters Petronille and Ermingard to her left. Farther down the board sat Richard Camville, between Conal and Lady Sybil, and near the end sat Hilde, strategically placed between Hugh Bardolf and his daughter. Bascot could see her smiling and chatting with good humour and saw that her amiability had not passed unnoticed by Ailwin and Magnus, for occasionally one or the other of the brothers would glance down at her with a look of perplexity on their faces.
Gianni piled Bascot’s trencher with the remnants of the stew that was left in the large bowl in the middle of the table. It was mostly root vegetables and gravy, for all of the choice pieces of meat had already been consumed, but it was tasty and Bascot ate it with relish, finding that he was unusually hungry. As he started on the next course-spiced eels simmered in their own juice-he felt a movement beside him and looked up to find Ermingard’s husband, William de Rollos, beside him.
“I have been looking for you, Templar,” de Rollos said, wearing an embarrassed look on his heavy-jowled face. “I thought to tell you that Bardolf did not have my support in his baiting of you yesterday at de Kyme’s manor.
