seem to be friends who are the enemy.”
For a moment Camville glared at his wife, and then he nodded, recognising the truth of her words. It had not been so long ago that a member of their household had been guilty of secret murder and had, for a long time, screened his evil nature behind a mask of genial bonhomie. The lives of both Nicolaa and their son, Richard, had been placed in jeopardy before Bascot de Marins had finally tracked down the culprit.
Seeing her husband’s agreement, Nicolaa leaned back in her chair and extrapolated on the thought that had come to her. “A life of chastity is not easy for some men, even though they have given their sacred word to be continent. Supposing, as you suspect, one of the Templar brothers is guilty of consorting with prostitutes, and while his transgression is not known to the preceptor, there is one other in the preceptory that is aware of it. Would not most men find it difficult to battle with their own sexual frustration while watching another break his vow with impunity?”
“The solution would be to report the erring brother to d’Arderon or Draper Emilius.”
“But what if it is one of the lay brothers, or a lay servant?” Nicolaa persisted. “The former have sworn, as do lay brothers in other monastic institutions, to devote their life to Christ, but they are not fully fledged monks of the Templar brotherhood. They give the gift of their labour so that the Templar brothers can devote their energies to the ongoing battle against Christ’s enemies. To witness the transgression of a monk betraying his vow of chastity would not be easy to swallow and yet, because of their lower station, any protest they made might be disregarded; and if there was no proof of the charge, might even earn punishment for the sin of bearing false witness.”
She paused for a moment, and then continued, “And if one of the lay servants is privy to such a secret and could not corroborate his claim, he would have even more to lose, for his livelihood would be at risk. Even though the lay servants have not taken a vow of chastity, they are expected to comport themselves with circumspection, and so must eschew the pleasure of a woman’s company. The knowledge that one of the brothers was enjoying what was denied to them could easily cause a rancorous burn in the gut.”
Camville took a few moments to carefully consider his wife’s words and found they had merit. John Blund, the secretary, had kept silent during the exchange, but it was obvious from the look on his face and the slight nodding of his head while Nicolaa had been speaking that he found her premise worthy of consideration.
“I hope you are wrong,” Camville finally said. “My writ has no authority over any member of the clergy and even less within the Templar Order.”
His statement brought to their minds the struggle that the late King Henry II had waged with Thomas a Beckett, when the king and the archbishop had come into violent disagreement over the church’s autonomy in matters relating to crimes committed by those in clerical orders. Even though Beckett was now dead, murdered by a few of Henry’s loyal, but rash, knights, the issue had not been resolved. Gerard faced a similar problem to the one that had plagued the late king; if the murderer belonged to the Templar Order, he could not lay a charge against the killer. Only the pope, or a Master Templar, could take action against the guilty party.
“I think d’Arderon will cooperate to the fullest extent he is allowed,” Gerard said slowly. “But if the murderer is a man under his command, he has no choice but to obey the dictates of the Order.”
“Then we must hope that my postulation is an erroneous one,” Nicolaa said.
“Just so, Wife,” Camville replied with a concerned look on his face.
The dwelling where Terese, the older woman who looked after the children of prostitutes, lived was in a row of houses even more shabby that the ones in Whore’s Alley. The stench from the Werkdyke was almost overpowering; the ditch contained all of the refuse collected from the streets of the town and, in the increasing heat brought by the spring sunshine, had begun to renew decomposition. The house they were seeking had only two floors, but the doorsill had been swept and the iron knocker rubbed free of rust. Terese had once been a prostitute herself, Verlain told them, and now that she was too old to entice customers to her bed, earned the few pennies she needed to live by caring for children that younger and more attractive harlots had the misfortune to accidentally produce.
When Roget knocked on the door of the hovel, the former bawd opened the door. She was not the old crone that both men had expected. About fifty years of age, she was extremely thin, but upright in her bearing and even though her face was marked with old scars of some disease, probably the pox, a trace of lingering beauty could be seen in her dark eyes and high cheekbones. Her clothing was shabby, but clean, and the coif she wore over her greying hair was whiter than some of those worn by affluent goodwives in the town.
When Roget told her of Elfreda’s death, tears sprung into her eyes, but she kept her composure and asked them to come in.
Her dwelling place was comprised of only one room on the lower floor of the tumbledown house with a small scullery at the back. The sounds of tapping could be heard coming from above and Terese explained that the noise was being made by a tinker who lived upstairs. “His work consists mainly of repairing household vessels from goodwives in the town,” she said. “Thankfully, he does not labour at night.”
In the chamber were half a dozen children, all female, and ranging in age from about a year old to a child of around nine. Terese pointed to one of the smaller ones, a little girl just past the toddling stage, and told them she was Elfie’s daughter, and was called Ducette. The child was a pretty little thing, her hair startlingly blond, and there were two large dimples in her cheeks.
“She looks just like her mother,” Terese said with a catch in her voice. “I don’t know what will happen to the child now that Elfie is dead. As far as I know, Elfie had no family, not hereabouts, anyway. I can keep Ducette for a little while, but I am not a rich woman, as you can see.”
She gestured around the room, which was sparsely furnished with a pile of skimpy straw pallets and a few wooden bowls and spoons lying on the surface of a rickety table.
“Did Elfie ever mention to you that she knew one of the men from the Templar enclave, mistress?” Bascot asked. “Or that she had any intention of going there?”
Terese shook her head. “I cannot recall her ever speaking about your Order, Sir Bascot, even in passing. But if it was a recent notion, she would not have done so, for I have not seen Elfie since a week past, when she came to pay me the four pennies I charge each mother for the children’s keep. She said nothing to me then that was out of the usual. She played with Ducette for a while and gave her a kiss before she left.”
“One of the women who worked with Elfreda told us that she was expecting to earn a substantial sum of money for her services on the night she left,” Bascot said. “And a well-filled purse was found alongside her body, so we believe it was the promise of monetary reward that lured her to her death.”
“I am sure that is so,” Terese agreed. “The mothers of every one of these children are desperate for money. Harlots do not willingly have babies. It only happens when the medicants we use to prevent such an occurrence fail. We know the fate that awaits our offspring-especially the girls. Most of them will end up in the same trade as their dams. I do my best to keep the little ones clean and fed, and teach them what manners I can, but their destiny, unless there is enough money to save them, is to be harlots. There are a few foundling homes available for such children, but not nearly enough.”
She looked towards the little girls. The eldest was keeping a couple of the younger ones amused by throwing a small coloured ball back and forth, another was drawing in the hard-packed dirt of the floor with a stick while the other two-aged about three or four-were clapping their hands as they repeated a nonsense rhyme in a singsong fashion.
“I do not tend any male children here. All these little ones will have more than enough congress with men once they are past childhood,” Terese said with a catch in her voice. “For a short time, I save them from that fate.”
One of the younger children began to cry and Terese picked her up and soothed her. Her world-weary eyes looked straight into Bascot’s blue one as she held the child against her withered breast. “I am sorry I do not have any knowledge that will help you, lord, but there is only one thing I can tell you for certain, and that is Elfreda would not have been tempted to go into the preceptory for love of a man.”
Bascot and Roget parted outside the former prostitute’s house, the captain to go to the castle and give his report to the sheriff, and the Templar to return to the preceptory. As Bascot rode up the track outside the city walls, he pondered on the motivation for the murder. On the surface, it appeared that it was an attack on the Templar Order, and intended to expose hidden vices. But his thoughts, although he was not aware of it, soon began to echo those of Nicolaa de la Haye. Reluctant as he was to consider it, he came to the realisation that it could
