If only he had returned a scant few weeks earlier he might have been able to save his little brother from the sheriff’s noose, but he had been too entranced with the charms of a compliant widow in Grimsby to come as quickly as he had intended. He had not heard of his brother’s and father’s fate until he was finally on his way back to Lincoln in the company of a party of travellers going in the same direction. Shortly after he joined the group, one of them, a cordwainer returning to Lincoln after collecting a shipment of Spanish leather at Grimsby, and not aware of Mauger’s identity, had told his companions about a band of brigands that had recently been hanged by the sheriff in his hometown, and how the father of one of them, a bailiff by the name of John Rivelar, had died shortly afterwards from the shock of his son’s death. Mauger had been horror-struck. He had kept a grim silence as the cordwainer embellished his tale with details of his brother’s hanging, wishing he could tear the man’s tongue out so that he could speak no more. When the travellers reached Louth he made an excuse to part from the others and took a private room in an alehouse. Only when he was finally alone did he allow his grief to engulf him.
At first he had tried to deny the truth of what he had heard, but he soon realised there could be no mistake. His father had been the last living member of his family, and there had never been any other people bearing the name of Rivelar in the Lincoln area. Besides, the cordwainer had said that the father of the boy who had been hanged was a Templar bailiff. He must have been speaking of Mauger’s father; it could be no other man. But how had it come about that Drue had turned to brigandage? John Rivelar had been a difficult man to live with, but he had never stinted on the comforts of a pint of ale or suitable clothing for either himself or his sons. What had made Drue join a band of outlaws?
It was then that he had decided to go to Lincoln and find out the truth of the matter, and realising that it would be easier to get the townspeople to speak more freely if they were not aware of his connection to John Rivelar and his son, he had taken a false name and identity. He had assumed, and rightly, that he would not be expected to be in the town, or recognised, after so many years away. It had not taken long for him to learn how his father had vehemently denied Drue’s guilt and had been thrown out of the sheriff’s keep for his protestations. Mauger knew that although his father had been a hard man, he had also been an honest one. If his father had insisted Drue was innocent, it must have been the truth. All of them-Severtsson, Gerard Camville and the prior of All Saints-had conspired to bring his brother and father to unjust and untimely deaths. They must all be made to pay for their actions.
It had taken him a long time to formulate a plan that would enable him to extract a suitable vengeance from those who had betrayed his family, but when he had done so, he found that the taste of retribution was sweeter than untainted honey.
Thirty-one
The next morning dawned with gloomy weather and a drop in temperature, as though nature had changed her mind and decided to revert to the months of winter. As Bascot and Gianni came down from their chamber in the old keep and entered the bail, a heavy rain drummed about their heads, striking their faces like needles of ice. A shipment of cages containing live geese was being unloaded from a heavy dray, and as Bascot and Gianni were threading their way through the tangle of servants attending to the task, Ernulf came hurrying up to them.
“Milady and Sir Richard request that you attend them as soon as you are able,” he told the Templar. “I’ve just been trying to help them with a list they’re making of men in the town that might be this damned Mauger Rivelar.” He shrugged regretfully. “I wasn’t much help, I fear.”
When he reached Nicolaa’s chamber, Richard was with her, discussing each of the names on the list they had compiled. As Bascot entered, the castellan looked at him expectantly. “Was the potter able to give you any additional details about Mauger’s appearance?”
“Only that he might have blue eyes,” Bascot replied. “That is all.”
Nicolaa sat back in her chair, disappointed. “We have been trying to recall John Rivelar’s appearance in more detail,” she said, “but our memories contain nothing remarkable.” She tapped the piece of parchment on the table in front of her. “Many of the men on this list could be his son, but lacking some definitive feature to set one apart from the others, it is impossible to tell which of them it could be.”
Bascot picked up the list and scanned it. It was separated into three parts-castle, town and priory. The listing for the castle household had just over half a dozen names with Gosbert’s assistant, Eric, at the top followed by six more, and ending with the name of Gilles de Laubrec, the marshal. Bascot was surprised at the knight’s inclusion.
“I had not expected to see de Laubrec’s name here,” he said.
Richard gave a nod of reluctance. “He took up his post in my father’s retinue just before you came yourself, de Marins, and so his arrival is within the two-year space of time during which Mauger could have returned to Lincoln. De Laubrec told us that he was formerly in the retinue of a lord in Normandy, but…” Richard rubbed a hand over his mouth as though to stop himself from voicing his misgivings, “if Mauger gained some skill at arms during the ten years he was absent, the pretence of being a landless knight in a distant demesne would not be difficult to assume. We can send a messenger to Normandy, of course, and ask the baron if de Laubrec is telling the truth, but it would take many weeks before we knew the answer. We do not have that much time.”
“The same can be said of most of the others on the list,” Nicolaa added. “Eric came to me saying he had been in the employ of a woman with whom I am acquainted but have not seen for many years. He gave me details of her household and the manor house in which she lives. I did not question his veracity.” She pointed to some of the other names. “You will also see that Martin, the castle leech, is here, along with Lambert, John Blund’s clerk. Martin told us he served his apprenticeship for leechcraft in the company of a physician from London while they were both in the retinue of one of the Marcher lords on the Welsh border. Lambert says he comes from Exeter, in Devon, and claims he was taught to scribe at a schola there. Their bona fides, like the marshal’s, can all be checked but, as Richard says, it will take a long while to do so.”
Bascot pointed to the second category on the list, that of the priory, where the names of Brother Andrew and two other monks were written down. “It should not be as difficult with these men. The church is scrupulous in investigating the backgrounds of any men requesting admission to their ranks.”
Richard got up and began to pace. “You would think so, de Marins,” he said, “but I have been to All Saints and spoken in confidence to the prior, and that is not always so. Andrew claims to come from the land of the Scots, and to have been a member of a Benedictine monastery on one of the many small and remote islands off the northern coast of Scotland. He brought with him a letter from the abbot there, saying Andrew wished to extend his knowledge by studying under Brother Jehan, whose renown as an herbalist is well-known.”
He gave Bascot a look of irritation. “Unless we send an enquiry to the Scottish monastery, how are we to know that Mauger did not adopt the guise of Andrew to gain access to the priory? In the ten years he has been away, he could easily have become skilled in scribing and written the letter himself. The prior seems to think he is sincere.”
“Andrew, by his own admission, had easy access to the shelf where the pot was kept in the priory,” Bascot mused, “but so do the many people of the town who come to the infirmary for aid when they are ill.”
“Exactly,” Richard replied.
“I have asked Roget to enquire discreetly about those who live in the town,” Nicolaa said, pointing to the section where ten names were recorded, “but it will not be easy to ask their neighbours for information without revealing the purpose for it.”
“We seem to be at a standstill,” Bascot said.
Their frustration was like a physical presence in the room, as though a fog had descended and engulfed them. Nicolaa stood up, breaking the tension. “We must press onwards, regardless of how hopeless it seems, until we find some way to uncover Mauger’s false identity. There is no other option left open to us.”
That evening, Bascot sat with Ernulf in the small cubicle in the barracks that the serjeant used for a sleeping place, sharing a pot of ale. Even though the room was screened off by a leather curtain from the large open space that housed the soldiers of the garrison, they were talking quietly lest they be overheard. In a corner, Gianni sat listening to their conversation while he used the wax tablet to practice his competence with Latin phrases.
The Templar and the serjeant were discussing the names on the list Nicolaa and Richard had prepared.
