Death of a Squire

Seven

Bascot started early for his meeting with Tostig. It had rained the night before, but the sun was now trying to penetrate the cloud cover and it promised to be a fair day for the lateness of the year. The ground smelled fresh and clean, heavy with the scent of moisture and vegetation. It was an odour that pleased Bascot, one he had often dreamed of during his imprisonment in the arid terrain of the Holy Land, permeating his dreams and waking him with a fitful start of pleasure in a remembrance of home before the reality of his surroundings impinged on his consciousness. Behind him Gianni rode pillion, swathed in a warm cloak and with the hat Ernulf had given him pulled firmly down over his head.

As they descended from the high knoll on which Lincoln was situated Bascot took in the surrounding countryside. It was sparsely wooded until they reached the edge of the chase, and the ground was marshy in places and crisscrossed with rivulets, firming up only when they reached the shelter of the forest.

Bascot found his way to the place that Tostig had taken him the previous afternoon with little difficulty and the forester was waiting, as arranged, at the spot where the body of the poached deer had been found. With him were two other men whom he introduced as the agister, Copley, and Eadric, the woodward who lived in the village on the southern boundary of Gerard Camville’s chase. Eadric worked with Tostig, and was paid his salary by the sheriff, but his chief responsibility lay to the crown. Since it was part of his duty to oversee any licences issued for industry within the forest, such as charcoal burning, Tostig had asked him to attend the meeting that morning, in case he should be able to help Bascot with his enquiries.

The agister, Copley, was a short stout man, with a florid face and breath reeking of the stale fumes of last night’s wine. He was dressed more richly than the other two, with a thick cloak wrapped over the good wool of his tunic and a flat cap decorated with silver thread set atop his sparse hair. His mood was disgruntled and he was obviously annoyed at being asked to rise so early in the morning, but showed his discontent only in his manner towards Tostig and Eadric. To Bascot he was carefully deferential, mindful perhaps of de Marins’s rank and the small Templar badge worn on the shoulder of his tunic.

Eadric, a young fresh-faced man of unmistakable Saxon heritage with pale hair and deep blue eyes, looked uncomfortable, and kept to the rear of the company as they travelled the short distance to the village. Bascot was aware of the complex hierarchy of forest officials, both royal and private, and of the jostling for power that occurred within its ranks. A chase-or forest, as it was often called-brought in a good amount of revenue to those who owned the rights, be they king or noble. Such areas were jealously guarded against offences by those who oversaw its management. It was likely the young woodward was fearful of reprisal from Copley if he was found to have been lax in his duties. Or, since its officials were notably disliked by the general populace for their arbitrary enforcement of the rights they protected, perhaps he was just reluctant to be included in the enquiry Bascot intended to make of the villagers.

The village was, as Tostig had said, a small one, with perhaps ten families within the fence of hurdles that bounded the compound. The reeve, headman for the village, had been apprised by the forester of Bascot’s intended visit and he, along with the village priest and two others, was waiting for the Templar just inside the gate. Nearby, clustered in a silent watching group, were the other men of the hamlet, while their womenfolk huddled in twos and threes at the entrances to the small thatched cots that straggled around the perimeter of the enclosed space. Children played at the edge of a shallow pond amongst a scattering of geese, chickens and ducks. At the far end of the dirt track that bisected the compound were some storage buildings constructed of rough-hewn timber. Beyond them, over the wall of hurdles, the village fields stretched to the north, empty of grain since harvest time.

The priest, an elderly man with a completely bald head and few teeth, stepped forward as Bascot and the forest officials came through the gate.

“Greetings, Sir Bascot. I am Samson, God’s shepherd to this small flock.” His lined, gentle face attempted a smile as he turned and gestured to the man beside him. “This is Alwin, the reeve, and these others”-the priest’s hand waved at the reeve’s companions-“are Leofric, Alwin’s son, and Edward, his nephew.”

The three villagers looked balefully at Bascot, their manner subservient but wary. Plainly they regarded the presence of Bascot and the forest officials as an intrusion and were resentful.

Copley spoke up, his tone impatient. “Sir Bascot is not interested in the names of the reeve or his kinfolk, priest. He just wants some truthful answers to his questions. Let us get on with it.”

The reeve gave Copley a sullen glare as he spoke and the priest, flustered by the sharpness in the agister’s voice, made haste to invite them into a small half-timbered edifice that served as a church. The reeve and his two kinsmen followed behind.

“I have no wine to offer, good sirs,” Samson said, “but there is ale, if you wish…?”

“Better than nothing. Bring us some,” Copley ordered before sitting down heavily on a stool placed just beside the door. The only other furniture in the one small room they had entered was a tiny altar at the far end and a wooden box used to house the priest’s vestments and vessels for the celebration of Mass. On the limewashed walls crude pictures of biblical scenes had been painted, mainly from stories the villagers would most easily understand, those of shepherds tending their flocks and Jesus feeding the multitude from a basket containing only five loaves and two fishes.

As the priest turned to hurry away for the ale, Bascot stopped him. “No, thank you, Father, we do not require any of your ale. Our visit is to be but a brief one. It will not require that you deplete your small store for our benefit.”

The Templar turned angrily to the agister, who was looking at him with stupefaction. “You will stay on your feet, Copley, out of respect for the good Father’s office and his age. If any here should be accorded the comfort of sitting, it is he, not you, who should receive it.”

Disregarding the look of outrage that settled on Copley’s face, Bascot spoke to the villagers, who were now regarding him with a little less hostility and barely concealed glee at the reprimand he had given the agister. Behind them Tostig was grinning, while Eadric ducked his head to hide a smile. Gianni, who had not come in after them, stood in the open doorway, fondling one of the village dogs. The animal had declawed toes, a hobbling demanded by law to prevent any dog not belonging to a lord or forest official from hunting animals that were the sole province of the king.

Bascot addressed the reeve. “Alwin, you will know that I am here to try and discover how the squire Hubert de Tournay came to be found murdered nearby in the forest. Did any of you see him on the day he was killed?”

“No, lord,” Alwin answered. “Neither did we know of his death until Sir Gerard came yesterday and told us.”

“Did anyone of his age and rank ever come to the village-apart from those in the company of the sheriff?”

Again the reeve shook his head. “Only the bailiff ever comes here. And he is a man of an age with my own years.”

“The boy must have come to where he was killed late in the evening of the day before or perhaps during that same night. Did you hear anything-voices or horses-out in the woods at that time?”

Again the stubborn shake of denial. Then the priest spoke up. “There are always some sounds in the forest after darkness has fallen, Sir Bascot. Once daylight has gone many creatures-foxes, owls and the like-come out to seek their prey. Unless a great disturbance was made, any slight noise would be thought just the sounds of their foraging.”

Bascot sighed and stood up. “If anyone remembers anything, Father, I would be pleased if you would let me know. Tostig will get a message to me.”

They all went back outside and Bascot looked around for Gianni, who had disappeared, along with the dog, from the doorway of the church. The villagers were still clustered about in clumps of two or three, watching silently as their priest led the visitors back in the direction of the gate. Suddenly there was the crash of splintering wood and the bellow of an animal; then a girl came running from one of the buildings near the pond. She was young and buxom, her fair hair streaming down her back like a ribbon of amber and, as she ran, she sobbed, stuffing her fist in her mouth to stifle the sound. She came straight towards Bascot and, when she reached him, threw herself down on the ground at his feet.

“It’s my fault, lord. My fault that the squire is dead. I said…I said I would meet him, but I didn’t go. He must have been waiting for me and…and got himself murdered by poachers or some other outlaws.” She hung her head down, pushing her hands into the muddy earth at her knees. “It’s all my fault,” she said again.

Alwin went over to the girl and wrenched her roughly to her feet. “Slut,” he mouthed at her. “You’ll get us all in trouble with your wanton fancies. I told you to stay hidden and keep your lips sealed.”

“I couldn’t, Uncle.” She turned and pointed in the direction of the shed, from which could still be heard an agitated lowing, multiplied now by the din of all the village dogs barking in chorus. From the shed strode Gianni, a grin on his face and a sharp pointed stick in his hand.

“That boy, the Templar’s servant, he found me hiding in the cowshed. He tried to pull me out and when I wouldn’t come he poked our milch cow so hard she tried to kick herself out of her box. If I hadn’t of come out she’d of kicked me as well.” The girl’s mouth drooped in resignation. “’Sides, the boy recognised me. If not today, I’d of been found out soon enough. Someone at the castle would have remembered me talking to the squire.”

Bascot looked more closely at the girl. She seemed vaguely familiar but he could not recall where he had seen her before. As Gianni came up, the boy made a series of quick hand gestures to his master, conveying that the girl had been at Lincoln castle, then hunched his shoulders and mimed a straddle-footed walk to suggest carrying a yoke laden with a heavy burden.

The girl sighed heavily. “That’s right, sir. I help the milkmaids up at the castle to make buttermilk for the sheriff’s table.” Just for a second, pride gleamed in her eyes and her prettiness was plain. “I make good buttermilk, lord. Lady Nicolaa asks for me special to come on the two days of service our village owes each week.”

“How is it that you became acquainted with the squire?” Bascot asked her.

“He saw me, sir, coming from the dairy. He kept pesterin’ me and…”

“And you, slut, fell in with his lewdity,” Alwin shouted, giving her an open-handed slap across the back of her head. The girl began crying again, tears spilling down her face and her nose beginning to run as she squirmed away from her uncle.

“Enough,” Bascot said as Alwin moved to give his niece another blow. Tostig stepped forward and caught hold of the reeve’s upraised arm.

“I don’t think you’d be wise to do that, Alwin. Leave the girl be,” the forester said. Alwin gave Tostig a look of surprise, then glanced at Bascot and, seeing his anger, reluctantly dropped his hand.

Bascot turned his attention to the girl. “What is your name?”

“Bettina, lord,” she answered fearfully.

“You will come with me, and Father Samson, into the church and tell me what you know of this matter.” He swung towards Alwin. “You, and the rest of the villagers, will stay here. All of you have contrived to hide information about the murder of Sir William’s squire. If you do not wish to increase the sheriff’s choler when he learns of your deception, you will cease this pretense. Otherwise, the consequences will be your own fault.”

As Father Samson helped the sobbing Bettina to her feet and led her towards the church, Bascot stopped to speak quietly to Gianni. “Well done. Now, watch them. And watch Copley and Eadric, too. The agister is a sight too complacent with his power here not to have some knowledge of this matter. I would know more of him.”

Bascot followed the priest and the girl into the church and gently shut the door behind them.

“So you think it possible that Hubert may have gone out to meet the girl and been set upon by the poachers that were roaming the woods?” Nicolaa de la Haye’s mouth set in a moue as she asked the question.

Bascot nodded. “It is possible, certainly. Whether it is probable, I am not sure.”

After the Templar had returned to the castle later that day he had gone to the castellan’s private chamber to give his report. Nicolaa had offered him a glass of wine and set out a dish of candi, boiled lumps of sugar made from sweet canes in the Holy Land and transported to England by the Templar Order. A store had been put by for the guests that would soon flood the castle but, knowing how fond Bascot was of them, Nicolaa had ordered a few sent to her room. Now, seated across from her at a broad oak table, he savoured the sweet taste of the candi, called al-Kandiq by the Arabs, as it mingled with the sharp bite of the wine. The sensation of pleasure was well worth the ache he knew would settle in his back teeth later on.

“You think, then, that the girl is not telling the truth?” Nicolaa asked.

“It is not that I am questioning. Her tale seems honest enough-up to a point. She is to be married soon, to the son of a villein from another village. She is happy with her groom-to-be and did not welcome Hubert’s advances, but he threatened to have her anyway, whether she was willing or no, and told her that it would be better for her to give him what he wanted without a struggle, rather than otherwise. Frightened of Hubert, and of her uncle, she said she would do as he wished and arranged to meet him at the ruins of the old hunting lodge late that evening. Then she went home and told Alwin’s wife, her aunt, what had happened. The aunt told Alwin and, after conferring with a couple of other villagers, it was decided that they would keep Bettina inside and close the gates to the compound early. This they claim they did, keeping the whole matter from the priest, who is elderly and always early abed. The villagers also insist that they heard nothing from the woods that night that was unusual.”

“But you think they may have decided to solve the problem another way?” Nicolaa helped herself to more wine and pushed the flagon across to Bascot.

The Templar shrugged. “It would have been a simple matter for two or three men from the village to wait for Hubert as he made his way through the woods, overpower him and string him up on the tree. They would have known that the problem he presented was not going to go away, that if Bettina did not meet him that night, he would either pressure her for another tryst, or rape her as he had threatened to do. If he had done the latter, there was nothing they could have done; he was a knight’s son, she a simple village girl, a maker of buttermilk. No one would have believed her if Hubert had denied it.”

“If the men from the village did murder Hubert, the poacher’s presence there that same night, or early morning, was a gift of God, or the Devil, for them. It would give more credence to their story, and make it believable that he had been waylaid by outlaws. Much as Gerard supposed it to be.” Nicolaa shook her head. “Is it too credible? Or just credible enough to be true?”

“I do not know, but according to one of William Camville’s pages Hubert often boasted of his prowess in bedding wenches. Perhaps the only way he could sustain such a reputation was by threatening women into compliance. If that is so, then Bettina may be telling the truth.”

He took another sip of wine. “But, if we take it that she is, then it tells us that Hubert was of a nature that was not above using menace to get whatever he desired. And it may not have been only women’s bodies that he lusted after.”

“You are suggesting that he used the threat of revealing secrets he was privy to as a means of extorting favours or possessions?”

“Yes.” Bascot nodded his head slowly. “Alain, Renault and the other squires and pages did not hide their dislike of him, but when I asked them why, they became vague, saying only it was because he was disagreeable and pompous. I came away from their company feeling there was much about Hubert de Tournay they had not told me.

“And these rumours that Hubert was intimate with a faction favouring the overthrow of King John in order to put his nephew Arthur on the throne,” he continued. “It may be possible there is more to this murder than a simple tale of unwanted lust and retribution.”

“It could be so, de Marins,” Nicolaa said, rising from her chair as she spoke. “The girl’s tale will satisfy my husband, but I am in agreement with you. It does not satisfy me.” She began to walk towards the door, saying as she did so, “I am afraid I must leave the matter for the moment. There are some guests recently arrived that I must make welcome.”

“Do you wish me to do anything more with regard to the matter, lady?” Bascot asked, getting to his feet.

Nicolaa paused, her hand on the leather pull strap that served as a handle. “Yes, but do it discreetly. If the murderer is not of the village or to be found amongst the outlaws in Sherwood, it will do no harm to let him believe we do not intend to look further afield. Confidence often brings a loose tongue; such a false supposition may prompt someone’s to wag with a freedom that has been guarded up until now.”

Bascot nodded his assent, then followed her through the door and down into the hall.