Maureen Ash - Shroud of Dishonour

“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 have been someone in the Templar enclave who had murdered the harlot, and also desecrated the chapel, in retaliation for what he saw as an unacceptable sin on the part of one of his brethren.

Viewing the situation dispassionately, he had to admit that there were some in the Order that found the strict dictates of the Rule difficult to obey. Brothers inclined to garrulousness found keeping the Grand Silence during meals irksome; others thought the stricture against hunting a deprivation almost beyond bearing, while some of the knights complained of the forbiddance of adding ornate bridles or reins to the accoutrements of their destriers.

But most of these were viewed as minor inconveniences; it was the need to be chaste, in accordance with the vow they had taken, that a few of the lustier men found extremely difficult to cope with. For that reason, the punishment for this particular transgression was harsh and every care was taken that none of the brothers, denied access to female flesh, lapsed into the sin of sodomy. Every Templar, of whatever rank, was forbidden to disrobe completely, even when he lay down for his night’s rest. Lights were kept burning all night in dormitories, and the lambskin girdle of chastity, which was donned at the time of initiation, must not be removed.

From d’Arderon’s assurance to the sheriff, it was apparent that none of the brothers under the preceptor’s regular command had been punished for such a transgression, but that did not mean that the sin had not been committed and kept hidden, at least from the preceptor.

He considered the characters of the men who lived in the enclave on a regular basis, not even pausing to include d’Arderon, Hamo, Emilius or the priest, Brother John, in his reflections. The preceptor was a man of strict honour and the serjeant the same. Both would rather sacrifice their lives than betray the brotherhood. As for Draper Emilius, even though Bascot felt his probity, too, was beyond question, his withered arm precluded him from suspicion. It would have taken two strong hands to overcome and strangle the young prostitute, a physical ability that Emilius did not have. And it was most unlikely that Brother John, a devout and elderly priest, had gone publicly into town to lure a harlot to her death.