Maureen Ash: Shroud of Dishonour

“Sir Bascot!” the baseborn Roulan brother said, his impassive features registering surprise. “What do you here?”

“We have come to take Jacques into custody,” Bascot replied. “We know he is the one who murdered the harlots.”

Savaric faltered for a moment, and then set his mouth in the stern lines that Bascot remembered from his visit to Ingham. “As I told you, my half brother is dead. Your purpose here is pointless.”

“A leper may be considered dead to society, but is not truly so until he has been buried,” Bascot replied sternly. “Where is he?”

Savaric reeled back a step and glanced at the short sword that lay in its sheath beside his bed.

“Do not be foolish,” Bascot warned. “You and the rest of your family can no longer protect him. He must answer for his crimes.”

“It is not his fault,” Savaric protested. “His brain-it has been turned by the disease. He does not know…”

His words were cut off as the inner door that led to the wing on the end of the building crashed open. Through it leapt a figure swinging a double-headed flail. So abrupt was his entrance that all of them were caught off guard. Emilius was nearest and, as he turned and raised his mace in a defensive movement, the chain of the flail caught the draper about the head, one of the wickedly spiked balls smashing into his cheek, the other catching him in the neck, just above the rim of the leather gambeson he wore. Blood spurted like water from a geyser and he dropped to his knees. His attacker pulled the flail free and charged at Bascot, swinging the weapon over his head.

“Filthy whoremongers!” he yelled. “You don’t deserve to live!”

Bascot leapt to the side, bringing up his sword and dodging out of the way of the needle-sharp spikes. There could be no doubt that this was Jacques Roulan. Although his eyes were wild and staring above his unkempt beard, he had the same beaklike nose that the Templar had seen on Gilbert and Herve’s visages. Bascot’s glance flicked to the handle of the flail, which Jacques was gripping with both hands. He must have chosen the weapon because it was easier to control with fingers that had lost the sense of feeling. But it was just as deadly an instrument as a sword, especially in the hands of a man who had been trained to its use, as Jacques would have been.

As Jacques’ wild charge carried him past, Bascot noticed a rough bandage wrapped about the thigh of the leper’s right leg and guessed that this was where Terese had stabbed him with her knife. The Templar aimed his sword at the same spot and felt the blade bite into muscle just above the strips of linen. The Templar did not want to kill the diseased man if he could help it; if at all possible, he should be taken into custody alive and pay the ultimate penalty of being hanged for his crimes.

Jacques stumbled on his injured leg and blood poured from the fresh wound. Bascot glanced in Savaric’s direction to see if he intended to come to his half brother’s aid, but the former squire was kneeling on the floor by Emilius, trying to bind the draper’s terrible injury with a piece of old blanket.

Once again, Jacques charged at Bascot, and even though his gait was lopsided still managed to land a blow on the circular helm the Templar wore, causing sparks to fly. Only the nasal bar stopped it from catching Bascot in the face. Without a shield, a double-headed flail was a difficult weapon to defend oneself against. The possible loss of the sight in his remaining eye lessened the Templar’s resolve to try and take Jacques alive. Even if it meant killing the leprous knight, he had to be disarmed.

Jacques spun around, using his sound leg as a pivot, and once again lifted the flail, swinging it above his head with furious intent. Stepping forward, Bascot thrust underneath the upraised arms, seeking the vulnerable point below the chest bone. The point of his sword struck true, plunging deep into vital organs and Jacques fell back onto the stone flags of the floor, the flail landing on the floor with a metallic clatter as it dropped from his hands.

Bascot picked the weapon up and, after ensuring that Jacques’ wound was severe enough to incapacitate him, ran to Emilius and dropped to his knees. Savaric, with a stifled sob, backed away from the stricken Templar and went to crouch beside his half brother. With one glance, Bascot realised that the draper’s wounds were mortal. The flesh of one cheek had been torn away and hung in a flap, the bone beneath it crushed. One of the spikes in the ball of the flail had sliced a deep gash across the side of Emilius’s throat, severing the main arteries. Blood from the wound had formed a large puddle on the floor beneath the draper, but the pulsating flow was ebbing as the life essence became depleted. Emilius would not live for much longer than a few more minutes.

Gently removing the draper’s helm, Bascot lifted the dying man’s head and rested it in the crook of his arm. Emilius’s eyelids fluttered as he did so, but it was plain his vision was beginning to dim. The draper muttered something faintly and Bascot leaned close to hear. He only caught the last few words before Emilius, with a sigh, expelled his final breath, but Bascot knew well what the draper had said. “Non nobis, Domine, non nobis, sed Tuo Nomini da gloriam.” Not to us, O Lord, not to us, but to Thy Name give the glory. It was the battle cry of the Templar Order.

With great care Bascot laid Emilius’s head back on the floor, and then rose and strode over to where Savaric was slumped on his knees by his half brother. Hauling the squire to his feet, the Templar shoved him roughly back against the wall and told him to stay there. Then, sword in hand, he knelt beside the rogue Templar. A quick glance told him the man responsible for so many deaths was now, himself, dead.

Bascot scanned the features of the leper, taking in his visage more closely than he had been able to when Jacques had come charging through the doorway. The knight had once been a handsome man; white even teeth, dark curling hair and a generous curve to the mouth beneath the hereditary aquiline nose. In life, it was easy to imagine his head thrown back with laughter and a rakish glint in his eye. There was no doubt women would have found him attractive. But now the disease had taken hold. Patches of scaly skin could be seen in small bare patches beneath the curls of his beard and on the lobes of his ears and, when Bascot lifted with the point of his sword the cuff of one of the heavy gloves Jacques wore, a dark circle of lesions around the wrist was revealed. No doubt other parts of his body, underneath his clothing, were scarred in a similar fashion.

From across the room, Savaric spoke, his attitude no longer impassive, but wrought with emotion. “Jacques was not always an evil man, Sir Bascot,” he sobbed. “The disease-it turned his brain. Once he knew he had leprosy, he became a man completely unlike his former self.”

“Whatever the reason, four people are now dead because of it,” Bascot replied bluntly.

Motioning for Savaric to go outside, the Templar followed him out of the building and told him to sit on the ground. Using a length of rope hanging from the gate of the pigsty, he bound the squire’s hands behind him. By now, Gerard Camville would have responded to the message sent to him by d’Arderon and it would not be long before the sheriff’s men-at-arms arrived.

As they waited, Bascot tried to stem the tide of angry sorrow that threatened to engulf him. Emilius’s murmuring of the battle cry had been a correct judgement although when he and Bascot had left the preceptory they had not expected to engage in a confrontation with the leper. If they had, they would have taken the time to don complete armour, along with mailed hoods, and Emilius’s neck would have been protected from the spikes of the flail. But both Bascot and d’Arderon had surmised there would be no more than token resistance from a fatally ill man who had, so far, attacked only helpless women. How wrong they had been. And Emilius lay dead because of that error.