Maureen Ash: The Alehouse Murders

Bascot judged the last second of safety, hoped it was enough, and rolled, pushing out with his good leg to give himself purchase on the stone of the floor, presenting his blind side to the blade that swept down in an arc above his head. He threw up an arm to protect himself, drawing the blade from his belt at the same time. From the direction of the sacristy, he could hear d’Arderon and the priest burst through the door, their shouts of warning, the ring of their mail-shod feet on stone. Steeling himself for the slice of the blade, he turned his sighted side towards his attacker and readied his own knife to thrust, just as the preceptor’s fist crashed into the jaw of the person above him.

“By God,” he heard d’Arderon shout in disbelief. “It is not a man. It is a woman.”

Bascot pulled himself to his feet and bent over the figure that lay unconscious on the floor, the hand the knife had held thrown out to one side, the sharp wicked blade glittering in the candlelight a few feet away. Silently he pulled back the hood that covered the face of his assailant to reveal a mass of dark russet-coloured hair.

“I thought you said it was the secretarius, William Scothern, that you suspected?” d’Arderon demanded.

“It was,” Bascot replied.

“Then who is this?” the preceptor asked.

“It is his sister,” Bascot answered. “Isobel.”

“So that little lass murdered them all,”Ernulf said, disbelief on his weathered countenance. “Seems hard to credit.”

He and Bascot were standing outside the door of the holding cell, where Isobel had been taken after she had been revived. Dawn was near to breaking and the castle servants were beginning to stir. From the direction of the poultry sheds a rooster let out a call warning of the imminence of daylight.

“That little lass, as you call her, serjeant, killed six people. After stealing the key to the chest where her brother kept de Kyme’s private correspondence, and discovering that Sir Philip was sending for his illegitimate son, she calmly wrote and instructed Hugo and his wife to come to Newark, where she told them they would be met. She then hired Wat, and his boat, and had him ferry the couple up the river just past Torksey. It was her that went to meet the alekeeper there, and gave the boy and his wife a draught of ale with a potion in it that would render them unconscious. She then smothered them with a piece of sacking.”

“That was where she met the Jew? On the Torksey road?” Ernulf asked.

“Yes. It was Samuel’s misfortune that he had stopped there, perhaps to take a break in his journey before going on to Alan de Kyme’s. He must have seen her making her way to the river. Since she could not let her presence be noted, she persuaded him she needed assistance and took him to the river and onto the barge with Hugo and his wife. Samuel was given the same adulterated ale as the others and suffered the same fate.”

“You said she claims her brother had nothing to do with the business. How did she explain her absence that day to him? If I remember aright, it was originally claimed that she and him had kept company together at the fair. That was why she wasn’t there to give Lady Sybil a witness to being sick in bed all day.”

“She told Scothern she was going to Parchmingate, to see a new Psalter at one of the parchment makers, and would meet him later. Scothern was not averse to leaving her to her own company. It seems he has been visiting the pretty young widow of a cloth merchant, and used the time to spend with her.”

“And Brunner?”

“Isobel tracked him down much as we did. Remember, she was in the castle. She not only had the advantage of knowing what we were going to do, and when, by observing our movements, she also could glean information from her brother. She was clever, and careful. It is only by God’s grace she did not get away with it.”

“It is hard to believe she killed the priest. That takes an evil heart.” Ernulf said the words with distaste. “It’s like that verse in the Bible, about what is an abomination to our Lord.”

“ ‘A proud look, a lying tongue and hands that will shed innocent blood.’ ”

“Aye, that’s the one. Well, she had all of those, I reckon.”

Bascot thought of the serene look of hatred that Isobel had given him when she had come to her senses on the floor of St. Clement’s nave. There had been no sign of remorse in her eyes, nor a trace of guilt. She had calmly risen, rubbed the bruise that was swelling on her chin and said, “Well, Templar, you have found me out. I hope you burn in hell.”

In the holding cell he and d’Arderon had questioned her. She had told them all she had done, hiding nothing. She had found herself pregnant, she had said, and not wanting her child to be born a bastard had decided that she would gull Philip de Kyme into thinking the child was his and then would persuade him to marry her.

“First I had to get rid of the boy that my spineless brother had helped de Kyme to find. Then I needed a way to make the baron set Lady Sybil aside.” She had shrugged, the heavy fall of her dark auburn hair spilling around her shoulders, her graceful hands folded and still in her lap. D’Arderon and the Templar priest had stared at her. She was beautiful, with alabaster skin and eyes the colour of burnt honey. It seemed impossible to believe she was so evil.

“It seemed to me that the easiest way to accomplish both aims was to use one end to achieve the other. And it would have worked, but for the alewife. Had she left their scrips in place, they would have been identified immediately and Sybil and Conal charged straight away.”

For the first time she showed tension. Her fingers tightened one around the other until her knuckles turned white. “Damn the alewife. Wat said she was upstairs, in bed, but she wasn’t. If she had been I would have killed her, like the others.” Her eyes met Bascot’s, glittering with intensity. “Just as I would have killed you.”

Bascot had pointed out that even had Hugo and his wife been identified at once, it would have made no difference. Nicolaa de la Haye would still have ordered an investigation to either substantiate Sybil and Conal’s guilt, or clear them of culpability.

Isobel had looked at him scornfully. “Yes, but such an enquiry would have been only cursory. There would have been no need for you or any other to pry and dig. She had no witness to attest to her presence elsewhere when the murders were done. I saw to that by putting a little of the juice of the same plant I used on Hugo and the others into her food. And her precious son was off to visit his crippled paramour, as usual. He thinks it is a great secret, but it was not difficult to discover why he goes to Newark, as that simpering bitch Matilda could have done if she had thought to lift her jealous eyes from my face for a moment. Conal and his mother would have been able to bring no defence to the charge against them.”

“And you would have seen your mistress and her son accused and found guilty, knowing that they were innocent?” Bascot had asked incredulously.

“Of course,” Isobel had responded. “Why not? We are all at the mercy of fate. My grandfather might have given preference to a male bastard, but my mother suffered the ill chance of being born female, and so was relegated to a life of low station. As, in turn, have I. I should be the daughter of a baron, not merely a companion to the unwanted wife of one.”

Her composure slipped slightly and there was a tremor of passion in her voice as she added, “My mother should have been born male, and so should I. My brother is weak, satisfied to pander to the whims of a wine-sop. Were I a man, I would have used my sword to carve a fortune, not wasted my life scratching messages on pieces of parchment.”