MAureen Ash - A Deadly Penance

For a moment, the ghost of a smile appeared on Alinor’s face. “I think Nicholas has taken quite a fancy to Elise. If she returns his affection, I may still yet lose her company but, thankfully, it will only be to a husband and not because of her death.”

Willi remained standing quietly beside Ernulf at the back of the room as Lady Nicolaa spoke to the young noblewoman who had just come in about the girl that had been stabbed. The young lady had blood spatters on the front of her gown that he supposed must have come from the victim and he stared at them in growing fear until, after she left, Lady Nicolaa began to discuss with her sister and son the ways in which they could manage for him to see the faces of all of the women who had been in the hall on the night of the feast. Then he began to wish he had lied and told the castellan that he hadn’t seen the murderer. If he had, they might have let him go. He felt unsafe here in the castle, even with the serjeant standing by his side. What would happen when he went to sleep? Even if they put him in the barracks with all the men-at-arms to keep watch, that murdering woman had managed to slip past everyone in the castle to kill that man up on the ramparts, hadn’t she? And it must have been her that stabbed that girl in the town. What was to stop her from creeping past the soldiers and sticking a knife in him in just the same way?

He waited with seeming patience while the lord and the two ladies talked, but his thoughts were whirling. He had felt much safer on the streets of the town and knew he had to get away from the castle. He didn’t know where he would go, but his guts had been churning ever since Ernulf had brought him into the ward. He must look for a way to escape. He knew the gates on the eastern side of the bail were left open during the day; if he got a chance, he could dart through them and run across the Minster and out one of the gates in the town wall into the countryside. He didn’t know where he would go once he reached there, but he knew he had to get away from here.

As Bascot rode away from Adgate’s shop, he pondered on whether or not he should visit Gildas on the way back to the castle and ask the barber if he knew the names of the furrier’s cousins. The story of how Tercel had been conceived had saddened him; the dead man’s mother must surely have suffered great anguish during that terrible experience, and it would be a calamity if now, after all these years, her secret was exposed for no other purpose than to eliminate her from the suspicion. Although it was commonly believed that women who had been sexually assaulted were the cause of their own misfortune, Bascot had seen the aftermath of many such incidents during the time he had been on crusade in the Holy Land with the Templars, and knew that conviction to be a falsehood. After a battle, there were always a few men in a victorious army, both Christian and infidel, who violated the unprotected women belonging to the foe they had vanquished. And he was well aware that the men who perpetrated such bestiality in war had their counterparts among a peaceful populace, and were entirely capable of inflicting their unnatural lust, by stealth, on an unwary maid. He could not, in all conscience, take the risk of betraying Tercel’s mother by openly enquiring about her and decided he would first discuss what he had learned with Lady Nicolaa and Sir Richard. If they felt it necessary to continue the investigation into her identity, perhaps a way could be found to do so discreetly, at least until they could be assured she bore no fault for her son’s death.

Perhaps, he reflected, Ernulf and Gianni had found the missing boy and he would be able to tell them the identity of the murderer. The Templar fervently hoped that was so. It would save any more painful delving into the past of the people who had been connected to the dead man and, even if one of them was found to be guilty it would, at least, make the judgement a certain one.

His course settled in his mind, he turned onto the main thoroughfare of Mikelgate and saw, a little way farther along, the figure of Hugh Bruet standing beside his horse with one of the de Humez men-at-arms, engaged in conversation with a small group of townspeople. As the Templar approached, Bruet hailed him and, when Bascot drew near, the knight told him of the attack on Elise.

“This is the spot where she was stabbed, and I hoped I might be able to find someone who saw the person that did it,” he said to Bascot, “but, so far, I’ve not been successful. Everyone had their eyes fixed on the talking bird and saw nothing untoward before Margaret screamed. I’ve asked all of the shopkeepers along this stretch and a few of the roving vendors that were nearby, as well as some of the goodwives that were on the street, but they all claim they didn’t see anyone with a knife approach the girl. If I didn’t know better, I’d say Elise’s attacker was a wraith.”

The Templar commiserated with the knight, and Bruet, deciding he could do no more, mounted his horse and said he would return to the castle as well. “I am reluctant to admit to Lady Petronille that I found nothing that could help us catch the villain who wounded the maid,” he said. “And I do not relish having to face de Humez when we go back to Stamford. I was sent to protect his lady and her household; now one of them is dead and another sorely hurt. Margaret was right when she said that Lincoln has changed since the days of her youth. Even with Sheriff Camville’s heavy hand upon it, the town abounds with thieves and murderers.”

Bascot had forgotten that the sempstress was from Lincoln, but now recalled that Petronille had previously mentioned that Margaret had been in her retinue at the time of her marriage to Richard de Humez and had later accompanied her mistress to Stamford. “There are far more people within the town walls than were here so many years ago,” Bascot opined in response to Bruet’s statement. “As a population increases, the incidence of crime swells in proportion.”

Bruet gave a grunt of agreement. “You are right. And I must admit that it is little better in Stamford. Thankfully, the de Humez manor house is some distance from the town and not so much bothered with the criminal activity that takes place there. I pity the townsmen who have wives and children to protect. Sometimes they must regret ever having been wed.”

As they reached the top of Mikelgate, and neared the turning of Danesgate, Bruet’s words echoed in Bascot’s mind and, his thoughts still partially on the woman who was Tercel’s mother and the ordeal she had undergone, his perspective of her suddenly shifted. Throughout the investigation they had been looking for a married woman or one that had been widowed. They had also considered the possibility that she had died, but never once had they entertained the notion that she may have remained unwed. And therein they might have made an error. The trauma of her experience could well have made her eschew marriage and the only implication that she had not done so was entirely due to Lionel Wharton’s letter, and the passage where he stated that such was her intention. But the knight would not have known whether or not she had actually done so, for he had no knowledge of her fate once she left the convent. Suppose she had refused to wed her intended bridegroom and had retained her spinster status? This was a likelihood for which no allowance had been made, mainly because there were few women in society that, unless they entered a convent, remained unmarried-the practise of forming useful alliances through females relative was just as common in the merchant class as in those of noble status-but, nonetheless, there were some females who chose this path in life, and it was entirely possible, nay, even probable when one took into account her devastating experience, that Tercel’s mother was one of them.