child, Mark, also said that Willi told him his father was over-fond of ale, so visit the alehouses in the area and see if he has been in any of them. And go out to the suburb of Butwerk, too, it is close by and many of the town’s poor seek refuge in the hovels there; it may be that he has joined them. Be discreet, do not tell anyone the reason we are searching for the boy; if one of those you speak to is the person he saw in the bail that night, you could place the lad in danger. Simply say you are looking for the boy because he is ill and may be infectious. That should put the fear of God into any that are sheltering him and induce them to reveal his whereabouts.”
As the serjeant and groom rode out of the bail, Petronille, who was standing nearby, said, “I pray they find him, and speedily. If the murderer saw Willi looking at him, he will be aware the boy can identify him. If their paths should cross while the child is searching for his father, then…”
“He will kill him,” Nicolaa finished grimly. “Let us hope Willi is found before that happens.”
The subject of their search was, at that moment, peering out from behind an old ale cask that was being used as a water barrel. It was behind a house in a street not far from Pottergate, the town gate which led out into the suburb of Butwerk. Willi was not aware that anyone was looking for him, for he had been outside the walls of Lincoln by the time Bruet and Ernulf had begun their search of the woods. He had not gone into the town through Newport Arch as he had intended, but skirted the walls that encircled Lincoln and slipped into the town through Pottergate on the eastern side, his first intention to look in the sheltered nook down one of the backstreets where he and his father had been accustomed to spend their nights. The lane was rarely used by any of the people that lived nearby; it led only to a high fence that backed onto a yard where a carter kept his old horse and there were no doorways in the walls of the houses on either side. Willi and his father had gathered a pile of old rags in the corner that abutted the wall to keep them warm throughout the night and the boy believed that was where his da, if he had returned, would have looked for him. But when Willi had gone down into the alley, it was deserted and the rags lay in an undisturbed heap, crusty with a rime of unmelted frost.
Willi had then gone into two of the nearby alehouses, covertly peering at the faces of each customer, hoping to find the familiar visage of his father. But none of them had been his da and, when Willi asked the keeper in the second alehouse if he had seen his father recently, the man had shaken his head and gruffly told the boy to leave.
It had been as he was leaving the alehouse that Willi had seen two mounted men coming towards him. One of them he recognised as the grizzled serjeant from the castle and the other was the groom that had driven the small party of foundlings to Riseholme. Sheltering in a doorway, he heard the serjeant ask a passerby if he had seen a boy of Willi’s description, mentioning that he had a head of carrot-coloured hair. The boy had not waited to hear the man’s reply; he scooted as fast as he could down the street away from the alehouse and, seeing the water barrel down a side turning, had hidden behind it. Now he watched anxiously to see if either the serjeant or the groom had spotted him.
They must be looking for him because he had stolen the blanket, he decided, clutching the rolled up swathe of rough wool closer to his chest. He had carried it all the way from Riseholme for use when night fell, but now he cursed the fact that he had taken it. If he had not, they wouldn’t be trying to find him. He shivered as he thought of what might happen if they caught him. Thieves were often punished by having their noses slit or one of their fingers cut off. His lip began to tremble as he thought of the pain he would endure. He didn’t know what to do. If he left the town, he would never find his da but, if he did not, it was certain the castellan’s servants would eventually find him.
Then he saw Ernulf and the groom ride their horses past the end of the turning and continue on down the street. He gave a sigh of relief and, unrolling the blanket, draped a fold of it over the brightness of hair and wrapped the rest around his body, tying the corners at his waist. The food he had brought with him from Riseholme was already gone; the walk into town had made him hungry and he had eaten it on the way but, with good fortune, he would find his da soon and was, for the moment at least, safe from discovery.
It was almost time for the midday meal when Bascot and Gianni returned to the ward. When they went into the hall, tables were being set up and they threaded their way through the servants engaged in the task, making their way to the corner tower of the keep where Nicolaa’s solar was located. There they found Petronille, Richard and Alinor with the castellan, sharing a flagon of wine as they discussed Willi’s disappearance and the dire consequences that could befall him. At the far end of the chamber, Alinor’s maid, Elise, sat with Margaret, Petronille’s sempstress, engaged in repairing a tear in one of her mistress’ kirtles. For once Elise’s merry smile was absent and Margaret’s countenance was even more sober than usual.
Bascot was offered a cup of wine and, while he drank it, was quickly brought up to date on how Willi had run away from the foundling home and that one of the other children said the boy had seen the person who murdered Aubrey Tercel. “Did he recognise him?” the Templar asked.
“Of that we are not certain,” Nicolaa replied. “Willi told the other boy very little beyond claiming he had seen him, not even whether the villain was a man or a woman-I wish he had. At least then we would know the gender of the person. As it is, we can only hope that we find Willi first, or that the boy did not, in fact, see the murderer but allowed his childish imagination to manufacture a killer from a brief glimpse of a servant innocently crossing the ward.”
After Bascot told her of his visit to the two barber-surgeons and added that, according to Gildas, it did not seem possible that Simon Adgate’s first wife had been Tercel’s mother, Alinor’s face fell and she reluctantly admitted she might be wrong about the furrier.
“If Ernulf finds the boy, and the child can identify the person that murdered the cofferer, further enquiries will be unnecessary,” Nicolaa said.
“Let us hope that turns out to be so, lady,” Bascot replied and stood up. After thanking her for the wine, he said he would not return to the preceptory until the morrow. “There is not much more that can be done until Ernulf has completed his search for the boy.”
Nicolaa nodded. “We must pray he will be successful,” she said.
When Bascot returned to the preceptory, dusk was closing in and it was almost time for the service at Compline. He went into the office where he was accustomed to do the Order’s paperwork and found Everard d’Arderon seated at the desk, poring over an inventory of weapons in the armoury.
When the preceptor saw the disheartened look on Bascot’s face, he laid the list aside and asked what was amiss. “A boy we believe can identify the person who murdered Tercel has gone missing,” Bascot replied. “If the lad is not found, it is feared he might be the next victim.”
D’Arderon listened with grave attention as Bascot explained the details of Willi’s flight from Riseholme and how attempts were being made to find him. The preceptor was well aware of Bascot’s strong propensity for protecting those less fortunate than himself; it was an admirable trait and one of the prime directives of the Order, but d’Arderon also knew, from his long experience of the evils of mankind, that such an aim could often be unattainable. He cast about in his mind for some way to ease Bascot’s apprehension.
“There is nothing more distressing than fearing that a child’s life may be in danger,” he said finally. “I remember a similar situation once, when I was with a cohort of brothers travelling from Jaffa to Arsuf in the Holy Land, and we stopped to make camp at a native village near an oasis. The little daughter of one of the villagers had gone missing and we offered to help search for her, for it was thought that she might have wandered out into the desert and been taken by a jackal or some other predator. With the men from the village, we combed the area all around, but there was no sign of her. Just as it was coming up to nightfall, and the worst was feared, she was discovered, not by one of those who had been searching for her, but by her older sister. It seems the little girl had stolen some honey from her mother’s kitchen and, fearing to be punished, had hidden underneath a pile of wicker baskets. All the time we had been looking for her, she had been only a few feet away from the center of the village. The older sister, who was not much more than a child herself, had remembered how she and her younger sibling had often played a game of hiding and seeking, and that the spot under the baskets was one of the missing child’s favourite places to hide.”
D’Arderon smiled ruefully. “I can still remember the relief we all felt to find that she was safe. Even though the child and her parents were unknown to us, there is something about the vulnerability of the young that strikes a common chord in all men and women. I hope, de Marins, that there will be a similar success with the missing boy.”
It was not often that the preceptor spoke of any of his personal experiences, usually confining conversations to talk of military situations or the daily routine, and Bascot knew that d’Arderon had done so in this instance to
