Maureen Ash: Death of a Squire

The girl looked up to where Melisande still sat captive on her horse, frozen into place as she watched her daughter cry over the woodsman.

“It was you, Mother, who caused all this. You, and your love of gold and position.” Joanna threw back her head and laughed, a bitter sound that died in her throat and became a sob. “It would not have been seemly, would it Mother, for your daughter to marry a common woodsman? You wanted a rich merchant, at the very least. And all the while you were more base than the lowest serf, stealing the very revenues that the king pays you to protect. Well, Mother, now you shall have a just reward for your treachery, and so shall I. But I, at least, shall feel that my pain was worth it. Will yours be?”

The sheriff had reached Tostig as Joanna was speaking and, calling for a measure of wine, he knelt beside the dying man and held the cup to his lips. Tostig tried to drink, but it ran out of the corner of his mouth, mixing with the blood that had begun to flow in a heavy stream. He coughed, and looked up at Gerard. “I am sorry, my lord, for failing you.”

“You did not fail me, Tostig,” Gerard Camville said gently, and Bascot was surprised to hear the compassion in his tone. “You have served me well and faithfully all these years. I will not forget that.”

“Thank you, my lord.” The words came with effort from Tostig’s lips as, with a shudder and a great outpouring of blood from his mouth, he died.

Bascot felt the tiredness in his bones as he made his way up the stairs to Nicolaa’s chamber. It had been a long day, and an even longer evening. It was an hour past Compline and he had yet to give his report to the castellan. After sending Gianni to bed in the barracks, he and Ernulf had taken Joanna to a room off the armoury and questioned her. Anger had pushed through her tears as she had told them all of the tale, of her mother’s cupidity and intransigence, of Hubert’s demands and, finally, of her love for Tostig.

“We knew it was only a matter of time before my mother found out about us, Tostig and me,” she had said, her mouth quivering as she fought the urge to sob, “but we had thought to force her acceptance of our union. Tostig knew of her theft of the king’s revenues and of Copley’s traffic with the outlaws. He was going to threaten to reveal it to Sir Gerard unless she gave us her blessing.”

Joanna shook her head and then bowed it in her hands. When she lifted it her face was full of misery. “We needed only a few days, until King John should be here. Tostig said that would be the best time to do it, for my mother was all agog to please the king. She would have been too fearful of his displeasure to have done other than as we asked.”

“And Hubert found out about you and Tostig before you could carry out your plan?” Bascot had prompted.

“That maggot!” Joanna’s vehemence was plain. “We made certain he would regain his senses before we hanged him,” she said with bitter satisfaction, “and know the fate that awaited him. I watched Tostig kill him with pleasure.”

“And the charcoal burner and his family, did you watch their deaths with pleasure, too?” Bascot could not hide his anger.

Joanna’s shoulders slumped. “No,” she whispered. “Neither Tostig nor I had any joy in that.” She had lifted her head defiantly. “But that was your fault, Templar. If you had left well enough alone and not gone chasing into the forest with your questions…”

These last words kept ringing in Bascot’s mind as he reached the top of the stairs and tapped lightly on the door of Nicolaa’s chamber. When he went in he found the castellan seated, as usual, at her desk, and Gerard’s brother, William, standing by the fireplace with a cup of wine. Two torches flared in wall sconces, giving the room a bright illumination.

“My husband has gone to keep vigil at Tostig’s bier,” Nicolaa said by way of explaining the sheriff’s absence. Bascot nodded. He was not surprised. The evidence that Gerard Camville felt genuine grief for the death of his servant had been plain when he had overridden the castle priest’s protests and ordered that the body of the dead forester be placed in the castle chapel to await burial. “He may be a murderer,” he had said to the shocked cleric, “but he was my loyal servant. If I show God how much I valued him in life then perhaps our Good Lord will be compassionate when Tostig stands before him at death. Now, get out of my way, priest.”

William offered Bascot the wine jug as Nicolaa invited him to be seated. “I gave orders for Melisande and Copley to be detained at her home under guard until I should know the king’s pleasure in the matter,” she said. “You have left Joanna under lock and key?”

Bascot nodded. “Ernulf has her secured.”

Nicolaa stood up from her seat but motioned for Bascot to keep to his when he would have risen. “I need to move,” she said with a small smile. “My limbs are so weary that if I do not stir them, my feet will take root in the floorboards.”

She took a few steps to the end of the room, then paced back. “What did the girl Joanna tell you, de Marins? Did she confirm the dairymaid’s tale?”

“For the most part. Hubert did proposition Bettina and threaten her with ravishment if she did not comply…”

“So the little maker of buttermilk was telling the truth?” William said.

“Yes, she was,” Bascot replied, “except she, and the other villagers, omitted to tell us that it was two nights before Hubert was killed that he first demanded she meet him.”

At William’s look of confusion, Nicolaa interrupted. “I have not told William all of the tangle, de Marins. I thought it best to wait until it was confirmed by Tostig’s paramour. He does not yet know how all of this began.”

Bascot took a sip of his wine and spoke directly to the sheriff’s brother. “According to Joanna, she and the forester took advantage of any occasion that Melisande was absent from her home or early abed to spend the night together in the hunting lodge. On the night that Hubert waited in vain for the dairymaid, he saw them together in the forest. The next day he got Bettina alone in one of the castle cowsheds and berated her for not coming to meet him, demanding that she turn up the next night or he would take her then and there on the bare boards of the floor. Frightened, she promised she would do as he asked. Then Hubert asked her the identity of the girl he had seen with Tostig the night before and Bettina told him she was the daughter of a wealthy widow in Lincoln. Hubert laughed and said she was a toothsome piece and he had a fancy to have a turn with her himself. He told Bettina to tell Tostig of his desire and, if the forester proved unwilling to share his bawd, then he, Hubert, would apprise the sheriff of the use to which his servant was putting the hunting lodge.”

Bascot shrugged. “Whether the squire was serious about carrying out his threat we will never know, but both Bettina and Tostig had no cause to doubt it, if only because Hubert had shown himself relentless in his pursuit of the dairymaid.”

“I knew he was a singularly unpleasant boy, but I never suspected he was capable of such villainy,” William said.

Bascot nodded. “He was sly enough not to reveal his true nature to his elders, but your other squires and pages knew of it and had good reason to hate him. He seems to have been a boy who had never learned to keep his appetites under control. And he had become so accustomed to exploiting any weakness he found in others, or in gaining an advantage by threatening to reveal a secret they nurtured, that he had come to believe that he would never come to any harm by doing so. And that is why he failed to recognize the danger of trying to use Tostig in such a manner.”