The older catcher’s words prodded Dido into continuing his tale, albeit in a resigned fashion. “It is said that Rosamunde was enamoured of Rivelar’s son, the man that became a brigand and was taken by the sheriff and hanged. His name was Drue. I saw him with her myself once, in the woods near Wragby when I was out looking for a rat’s nest near an old well there. They were lying in the grass entwined together-nearly stepped on them I did, but saw them just in time-and she didn’t give no appearance of being there against her will. If anyone’s the father of that babe, it’s Drue Rivelar, not Ivor Severtsson.”
“Did you know this Drue well? He must have been on the property at Wragby before he became an outlaw, while he was growing up.”
“Aye. He was just a young lad when I went there about six years ago. He was a bit of a hellion and didn’t take kindly to his father’s harsh ways. Many a time I saw Rivelar give his son a thrashing for some wrongdoing, but the boy took all his father gave without so much as a whimper and then went out and did what he’d just been told not to do all over again. He was a merry lad, and, I suppose, well-favoured to a woman’s eyes. Seems to me that he and Rosamunde were two of a kind, both wayward, but with a joy in them that no amount of punishment would ever quench.”
“And yet Wilkin insists that it is Severtsson who impregnated his daughter-was he not aware of her liaison with Rivelar’s son?”
Dido wrinkled up his face in thought. “Wilkin may not have known about Drue. All of us at Wragby did, but the potter never had no cause to come there and the villagers in Nettleham may not have felt easy with telling him about his daughter’s love games in the greenwood. And Severtsson would have taken Drue’s place if he could. I used to see him look at his master’s son with envy in his eyes.” He shrugged his shoulders. “That’s all I know of the matter, lord. As I said, there were many men for Rosamunde to choose from. Only she knows who she gave her favours to, or how many.”
Bascot mused over what he had just been told. The potter had good reason to hate the bailiff, and it was entirely possible he would wish to harm him, deeming it a justifiable retribution for the shame he believed Severtsson had inflicted on his daughter.
He asked Dido if he knew whether any rat poison was kept at the Nettleham apiary. Dido had shaken his head. “Not the poison itself, lord. I asked special before I turned my ferrets loose in case my little creatures should eat some of the stuff by mistake. Old Adam told me his bees wouldn’t stand for such a substance being kept where they lived, and he was so upset at the notion that I believed him.
“But,” he added, “despite the old man’s words, he did allow Margot to keep some of the root of that there hell herb to treat their cow in case it should be taken with a cough. She cuts a little slit in the dewlap of the beast and pushes a bit of the root through and leaves it for a day or two. It’s an old remedy and works right well. When I asked about the poison, she showed me the pot where she kept the roots. It was tightly sealed and I knew I needn’t have any fear that my beauties would get near it.”
Dido again patted one of the pockets on his coat and the ferret, as before, popped its head out. Gianni was entranced with the inquisitive little creature, and the catcher took it out and gave it to the boy to hold. The ferret immediately dived inside Gianni’s tunic, causing the boy to jump in alarm, but Dido laughed and reached inside the garment to retrieve the tiny animal. “He won’t hurt you, boy, not unless you hurts him,” he said, stroking the ferret. “Just likes to be where it’s dark and secret, same as the rats he hunts.”
What Bascot had learned seemed to point to Wilkin as a most likely suspect for putting the pot of poisoned honey in the merchant’s house, since he not only had a reason to hate Reinbald’s nephew but also had access to the herb that was used to make the poison. But Bascot had still not discovered a reason for the potter to have adulterated the pot that was found in the castle kitchen. The Templar felt his frustration mount as he and Gianni left the rat catcher’s home.
Thirteen
As the hours of the day crept forward, it soon became apparent that Nicolaa de la Haye’s prediction would prove true: the deaths of three of Lincoln’s citizens would provoke an outcry among the townspeople. The news of what had befallen le Breve and his family was passed along with the speed of a raging conflagration. The deaths in the castle had not concerned them greatly, for all considered them to be in retaliation for a grudge against the sheriff, Gerard Camville. He was an uncompromising and brutal man, and there were many who had reason to resent his harsh administration. Most of the townspeople had shrugged their shoulders in dismissal when they had heard about the poisoning of the clerk and the knight, and there had even been a few who had quietly whispered that it was a shame that Camville had been away when the deaths had taken place, for if he had not been, he might have been one of the fatalities. It would have made the passage of many lives a little easier.
But now the poisoner had struck at a family in the town, and one of them had been a young child who could not have been anything but innocent of injury or unkindness to others. As the story of the murders passed from one person to the next, not only fear but outrage rose to the surface. Soon other recent fatalities were recalled, ones where the cause of death had been obscure. It did not take long for such speculation to give rise to the certainty that these other deaths were the result of the poisoner’s machinations.
The first to be remembered had occurred about two months before when the wife of a prominent baker had died. She had been ailing for many months, complaining of pains in her stomach. The baker had obtained the services of a leech, but the numerous bloodlettings he administered did not ease her complaint, and so the baker had asked Alaric, as a physician reputed for his learning, to attend her. After Alaric had checked her blood for its viscosity and inspected her feces and urine for the balance of the humours within her body, the physician had cast her horoscope and shaken his head; there had been a malign conjunction of planets on her natal day, he told the woman’s husband. He would do his best to cure her, but she would need a lengthy treatment and it would be costly. The baker, a moderately wealthy man, gave his assent, and Alaric prescribed the use of several medicines, including feeding her on a diet of roasted mice and applying a paste made from pulverised laurel leaves to her abdomen. None of his remedies prevailed, however, and the woman finally died after a great outpouring of blood from her mouth. There was now no doubt in the retrospective minds of the townspeople that she had been a victim of the poisoner.
Another case that, with hindsight, was viewed with suspicion was the death of a tanner who practiced his trade near the banks of the Witham River. He had been strong and fit one day, and dropped down dead the next, seemingly taken by a stoppage of his heart. Only his wife knew that he had, for some time, been drinking a pint of bull’s urine every day, hoping that the potency of the animal from which it came would prove to be an antidote for his own sad lack of performance. She never considered that the urine had been in any way connected with his death, for it had been recommended by a local apothecary who had sworn that many of his clients had benefited greatly from drinking it. After the death of le Breve and his family, however, and since her husband had complained of a stomachache a few days before he died, she began to wonder if the poisoner had somehow adulterated the honey her spouse had mixed with the urine to make it palatable. She did not hesitate to voice her opinion to her neighbours, and this story, too, soon became fact instead of conjecture.
The most recent fatality, and perhaps the one that most convinced the people of Lincoln that the poisoner had been killing victims over the last few weeks, was the death of a boy of about sixteen years. The young man had suffered almost identical symptoms to that of all of the recent victims, for he had been taken with great bouts of vomiting and a looseness in his bowels, but unlike in the others, these had been milder and had lasted for two days before he finally succumbed. It had been thought at the time that his illness had been due to eating an eel pie he had bought from a roving vendor. The pie seller had suffered great damage to his reputation and much loss of trade from the accusation and, as soon as he heard the news of the poisoning of le Breve’s family, quickly claimed that his young customer’s death had not been due to the staleness of his pie, but that the boy had, instead, been a victim of the villain that was murdering the people of Lincoln.
As morning crept towards afternoon, suspicion, like a malignant condiment, was mixed into the brew of rising terror, and fingers were pointed in accusation. Neighbour turned on neighbour, some out of spite for an old dispute, a few out of envy for another’s more lavish possessions and even a couple out of resentment because a would-be lover had spurned his or her amorous advances. Little knots of people began to gather along the streets in the town, and not a few arguments broke out, many of which ended in physical violence. The worst were outside the
