Nicolaa nodded and, at that moment, a servant came into the solar and told the castellan that the furrier and his wife had arrived and were downstairs in the hall. “Send the woman up first,” she instructed the servant. “And tell the husband he is to wait below until he is called.”
A few minutes later Clarice Adgate came hesitantly into the room. She was dressed in a sober gown of dark grey and her coif was of plain white linen. The only ornamentation on her person was a simple gold chain about her neck bearing a small pendant etched with the image of the Virgin Mary. She fingered this nervously as she gave a small curtsey of deference to Lady Nicolaa and the other nobles. Her eyes flicked from one to the other in apprehension.
By unspoken agreement, the castellan began the questioning. The management of her huge demesne had given her years of experience in dealing with situations similar to this one, when it often became necessary to ferret out the truth between the conflicting claims of tenants and villeins.
“Mistress Adgate,” she said in a deceptively kind tone, “you have come here to answer further questions about the night my sister’s retainer was killed. Previously you stated that you retired early because you were feeling unwell. What was the nature of your indisposition?”
“My head was aching dreadfully, lady,” Clarice replied, relieved at the innocuous nature of the question. “It was the excitement of the day, I think, that brought it on.”
“And you went to the room you had been assigned, got into bed and immediately fell asleep?” Nicolaa went on.
“I did,” Clarice replied.
The castellan leaned slightly forward as she posed her next question. “I am surprised that slumber came so quickly when you were suffering such pain. Did you take a medicament to ease it?”
The question took Clarice by surprise and she stumbled over the answer. “A medicament? I… I… yes, I did. I had a potion with me, a draught of poppy juice.”
Nicolaa leaned back in her chair, seemingly satisfied with the answer. “I thought you must have done; that is what made you sleep so soundly. If you will give us the name of the apothecary from which you obtained it, we will have no further questions for you.”
Clarice’s face went white as she realised the trap into which she had been led. She was, as Nicolaa had said previously, a rather foolish woman. It had not taken a great deal of expertise on the castellan’s part to lead her in the direction they wanted her to go. “I do not know which apothecary it was, lady,” she replied, her lower lip beginning to tremble. “My… my husband got it for me.”
“Then I will send for your husband and ask him where he bought it. I am sure he will be able to provide us with the answer,” Nicolaa replied, raising her hand to motion to the servant standing at the door.
“No, lady, please!” Clarice burst out, her agitation increasing. “Simon will not know… I was mistaken… It was my maidservant that got it, not my husband…”
“I do not understand your confusion, mistress,” Nicolaa said sternly. “Juice of poppy is a powerful sedative; surely you can remember how you came by it. Or is it, perhaps, that you did not have any? That you did not go to the bedchamber because you were ill and needed to rest, but for some other purpose?”
Clarice burst into tears and the castellan pressed her advantage. “Aubrey Tercel was your lover, was he not?” Nicolaa charged ruthlessly. When the furrier’s wife nodded her head in a forlorn fashion, Nicolaa sought to confirm the details of their suspicions. “And the reason you left the hall early was not because you were ill, but to engage in dalliance in the very bed you were later to share with your husband?”
Clarice’s answer took them by surprise. “No, we did not meet in the guest chamber,” she said miserably. “Aubrey told me to come to another room, one at the top of the tower. He said it was safer there and that if my husband should decide to retire beforetime, he would not discover us together.”
Gianni and Bascot glanced at each other. There was only one chamber large enough to be used for such a purpose and it was one that the Templar and the boy had shared while Bascot had been staying in the castle before his return to the Order. And it was located just a few steps below the walkway that led to the ramparts.
Richard now took charge of the interrogation and spoke in harsh tones to the furrier’s wife. “You have lied to us, mistress, and I do not take it kindly. If you value your freedom, and your life, you had best tell us the truth.”
Clarice nodded and slowly the whole story came out. She had, she said, formed a friendship with Tercel shortly after Christ’s Mass when he had come to her husband’s shop to purchase furs on Lady Petronille’s behalf. Simon Adgate was often away from his premises while he went to the tanning pit he owned in the lower part of the town and it was at those times that Tercel had come to the shop and engaged her in conversation and, finally, enticed her to meet him in a room he had rented above an alehouse in the town. When the feast was proposed, her paramour had suggested Clarice take advantage of her husband’s preoccupation with the celebrations to join him in the old tower and she had agreed.
“But when I left him, he was alive,” she said tearfully. “Truly, I did not know he was dead until the next morning.”
“And where did you leave him, mistress?” Bascot asked. “Was he still in the chamber where you had met, the one at the top of the tower?”
“No,” Clarice replied. “He was standing outside the door. He thought he heard a noise while we were… while we were inside the room, and feared it might be my husband. He bade me go down to the bedchamber below and stood at the top of the stairs while I descended.”
“And was it your husband?” Bascot asked.
“No, there was no one there; at least, I don’t think there was anyone. Aubrey did not light a candle. I went down the stairs in the darkness, feeling along the wall to guide my steps. After I entered the bedchamber, I got into bed. A few minutes later I heard footsteps pass the door and thought it was Aubrey returning to the hall.”
“By that time, mistress, he was dead,” Bascot said harshly. “And the footsteps you heard belonged to his killer.”
“I know,” Clarice replied miserably. She lifted her tear-stained eyes to the company. “That is what I realised when I learned that Aubrey had been murdered-that I could just as easily have been killed as well.”
They asked her a few more questions and when Alinor suggested the murderer had been her husband, Clarice startled them all with a flash of hitherto unseen insight. “But it could not have been Simon,” she said. “My husband is lame-he broke his leg as a child and it never mended properly-and the footsteps that went by my door were unfaltering. He would be incapable of making such a swift passage.”
That, at least, explained Adgate’s limp and further negated him as a suspect. When the suggestion was made that Adgate had hired someone to carry out the deed for him, she again shook her head. “My husband was not aware that I had taken a lover until after Aubrey was found dead,” she said miserably, her tears welling anew, “so he would have had no reason to do so.”
Bascot asked her if Tercel had, during their times together, spoken of any enemies he had made in Lincoln and Clarice shook her head. “None that he mentioned. We did not… did not have time for much casual conversation together.”
Finally, Nicolaa dismissed her and told the servant to admit her husband into their presence.
Twelve
When the furrier saw Clarice walking across the hall to where he was seated, he knew by the look on her face that she had admitted her adultery. Not for the first time in the last few days, he asked himself why he had chosen to marry such a vacuous young woman. And again, the answer echoed hollowly in his head-vanity. He had watched Clarice grow up in the tanner’s yard he owned, and where her father was employed, and had seen her beauty develop from the time she had been a small child. When she had reached the age of maturity, he knew it had been no coincidence that he had suddenly convinced himself that he should marry again and try, before death overtook him, to beget an heir to inherit his prosperous business. There were other women in Lincoln that he could have offered for, and would have suited him admirably for his purpose-young daughters of other merchants and tradesmen-but he had not taken the time to give any of them consideration; he had taken notice only of Clarice and her lovely green eyes, dwelling on the facade of her beauty and dismissing the emptiness that he had, even then,
