“Rather you than me,” Ernulf snorted. “If I was left alone with that cowson for more than a few moments, the sheriff would be relieved of his task of bringing him to trial. When I think that it could have been milady that was lying dead instead of the clerk…”
The serjeant’s rage made him choke on his words, and Bascot was sure that if Ernulf were given the opportunity he would, as he had said, despatch Wilkin to hell without a second’s thought.
Bascot spoke to Gianni. “I may be some time. Go with Ernulf and get yourself something to eat. I will come to the hall once I am finished with the potter.”
The boy nodded, and as Bascot watched him walk away, he wished he could do something to alleviate his despondency. Now not only those directly connected to the victims but Wilkin’s own innocent family would be affected by his vile actions. The old beekeeper and his daughter, as well as Young Adam, Rosamunde and her little child, would all suffer in their turn for the crimes he had committed. He felt the taste of gall rise into his throat and strode swiftly to the door of the holding cell. The man-at-arms on guard saw the black look on his countenance and swiftly unlocked the door, privately hoping the Templar would use his sword on the man inside.
When Bascot entered, Wilkin was sitting crouched in the corner, one of his ankles secured by a manacle to the wall. The bandage on his injured arm was bloodstained, and there were some new bruises on his face. It would appear that the soldiers who had attached his chains had been none too gentle while carrying out their task.
The potter looked up at his visitor, fear in his eyes. He struggled to a sitting position, cradling his bandaged arm with the other hand. As Bascot approached him, he cowered.
The Templar knew the potter’s hatred for the bailiff was real, and there must be a reason. Had Rosamunde, as Dido had said was possible, given her favours willingly to both Severtsson and the dead brigand? If she had, could it be that Wilkin, driven by shame for his daughter’s wanton ways, had blindly fixated on the bailiff as the cause of her downfall? He decided to test the theory on the man in front of him.
“I have been to Nettleham and spoken to your wife and her father,” Bascot said to him roughly. “They both tell me that your daughter was the paramour of a brigand and it is he who was the father of her child, not Severtsson. Your tale of the bailiff raping her is false. Why did you invent such a charge? Is it because Rosamunde also lay with Severtsson and you were enraged by her lechery?”
“I did not invent it, lord,” Wilkin replied shakily. The icy intensity of the gaze in the eye of the knight looming over him chilled his bones, and he had difficulty in keeping his voice steady. “My daughter is not a jade, even though there are those who would name her one. I did not lie when I said the bailiff took her against her will.”
“Did you see him do so?” Bascot demanded.
Wilkin shook his head. “No. But I saw him just a few minutes before I found her, coming from the place where she was laying.”
The potter swallowed hard before continuing. “Her clothes were all flung up, lord, and… and… her woman’s parts uncovered. She had bruises on her arms and her mouth was swollen. I asked her what had happened, but she didn’t speak, didn’t even look at me, and she’s been that way ever since.”
Wilkin looked up at Bascot, almost defiantly. “What else could have happened to her, lord, but that she’d been raped? Margot and Adam tried to tell me that it was grief for the brigand that made her lose her senses, and they said I was imagining the rest, but they didn’t see her like that, lord, and I did.”
Bascot turned from the prisoner and walked a few paces away. Once again, the potter’s words had a ring of truth in them. But he had lied before and could easily be doing so again.
Bascot turned back and strode over to where Wilkin crouched on the floor of the cell. “I am going to look into this matter further, potter, and if I find that you are lying, I will see to it that you suffer the torments of hell before you hang.”
Eighteen
After Bascot left the holding cell, he decided to go down into the town and call at the house of the merchant Reinbald. Nicolaa de la Haye had said there was a need to warn all of the people involved in the murders that they would be called as witnesses at Wilkin’s trial. Using that as a pretext to visit them would give him an opportunity to find out, from Reinbald’s family, more about Ivor Severtsson’s character. He went to where Gianni was sitting with Ernulf in the hall and told the boy he would be gone for a short time.
Gianni gave him a solemn nod, and Bascot, his concern for the boy deepening, left the hall and made his way down into the town.
The mood among the townspeople was more subdued than it had been the day before. The flesh markets were busy as goodwives bought meat, poultry or fish, and pedlars were once again hawking their wares among the throng. Some of the men, however, were still clustered in groups of two or three outside many of the alehouses and were speaking in angry tones together. The few snatches of conversation that Bascot overheard were of Wilkin and the need to bring him to a swift justice.
As he reached the end of Hungate Street, where Reinbald lived, he saw a horse tied to a hitching post near the merchant’s house. It seemed familiar to him, and after a moment or two he realised it was the one that Ivor Severtsson had been riding when he and Hamo had met the bailiff in Nettleham village.
He was admitted to the house by a young woman servant and was shown into the large room that served as the merchant’s hall. It was well appointed, with an ample fireplace, two oaken settles with padded tops and a large table around which were placed chairs with ladder backs. Reinbald was sitting in one of these, his younger nephew, Harald, beside him, while his wife was standing in front of the fireplace, speaking in soothing tones to Ivor. The bailiff’s face was sullen, and when he turned along with the others to see who was entering the room, Bascot saw that his mouth was set in lines of peevish irritation.
Reinbald rose immediately as the maid announced their visitor, and he offered Bascot a cup of wine from the flagon that was standing on the table. Bascot refused the merchant politely, saying his visit would not be a lengthy one, and that he had merely come to enquire if they had heard of the potter’s arrest. When Reinbald confirmed that they had, Bascot told them about the need for their attendance when Wilkin was brought to trial and that detailed evidence of the potter’s grievance against Ivor would be required.
His words brought an immediate outburst of speech from Helge, in which was mixed a word here and there of her native tongue. She was a large woman, heavy of frame and with thick hands that she waved angrily as she spoke. When the Templar had met her on the morning of her neighbours’ deaths, she had been distraught, her fair hair in disarray and tears streaming down her cheeks. Now she seemed recovered from her grief, and her manner was indignant. Her fat fingers moved in a cadence of angry punctuation as she spoke.
“That man,” she said, “he is not only a murderer but a logner, a liar. Only this morning Ivor was taken to task by Preceptor d’Arderon about the terrible falsehood that djevel spread and now you tell us that it must be repeated again before all those who attend the sheriff’s court. It is not to be borne, I tell you. It cannot be done.”
Reinbald reproved his wife. “It must be, Helge. The court will enquire if we know of any reason for the potter’s hatred of Ivor, and if we do not speak of it, we will be forsworn.”
“But it is not true,” Helge burst out.
“The potter believes it is,” Reinbald replied, “and that is why it must be told.”
Bascot studied the merchant’s wife for a moment; her ample bosom was heaving with outrage, and her fair skin, so like that of her two nephews, was covered in red blotches. “I was told by the potter, Mistress Helge, that nearly two years ago, after he made his allegation about your nephew, you refused Wilkin your custom and encouraged those who live nearby to do the same. What reason did you give your neighbours for your sudden disinclination to buy his wares?”
Her pale blue eyes flickered with sudden misgiving as she replied evasively, “I did not tell them of the lies he was spreading.”
“You must have given them a reason. What was it?”
She pursed her lips and glanced first at Ivor and then at her husband before she answered. “I told them he had tried to be familiar with my maidservant,” she said defiantly, “and that when I reprimanded him on her behalf, he had been insolent to me. I said that if they did not take care, he might take the same liberties in their households.”
Silence followed her words, and she immediately made an attempt to justify her actions. “I could not tell
