Death of a Squire

Eight

The evening meal in the castle hall that night was not an elaborate affair even though there were many guests present. Entertainments and all the special viands and dainties that had been, and were in the process of being, prepared would be kept for the king’s arrival. Bascot sat at the table reserved for the household knights, just a little below the dais, and studied the guests. Gerard’s brother William was seated on the sheriff’s right hand, with Nicolaa and de Humez on his left. De Humez’s wife, Nicolaa’s sister Petronille, had not accompanied her husband to Lincoln for the festivities, having been confined to bed with a painful ulcer on her leg. Farther down the table were de Humez’s daughter Alinor and his son’s betrothed, Alys. The boy himself, Baldwin, had retired to bed early. He was of a sickly disposition and needed constant bed rest to maintain his strength.

The high table was being waited on by William Camville’s squires, since many of those belonging to the Haye household had been sent some days before to accompany Gerard and Nicolaa’s son, Richard, on his journey to meet King John and form part of the entourage that the king would bring with him to Lincoln. Bascot noted that the two eldest of William’s squires, Alain and Renault, had been given the privilege of serving their master and the sheriff, and both young men were performing their tasks with considerable attention to detail. Alain, especially, took great care to move forward at the correct moment from his place at his lord’s elbow to remove William Camville’s empty trencher and replace it with another for the next course, while Renault, serving Gerard, ensured that the sheriff’s wine cup was constantly refilled. At the farther ends of the table the two younger squires, Rufus and Hugo, were serving the rest of the company, including the ladies. Osbert and the other pages, along with the few that still remained in the Haye household, were kept busy bringing the various dishes and flagons of wine to the board for the elder boys to serve. All of them seemed to be well trained in their duties and the meal flowed smoothly through the various dishes of spiced herring, coney pottage and roast venison. Broth containing onions, garlic and peas was ladled out with correctness, as was the final course of stewed plums, platters laid with segments of cheese and dishes of the recently gathered nuts. Once the spiced wine was served, the boys could relax a little, but not leave their post. They would stay until dismissed and only then could they go and satisfy their own hunger.

Bascot, as he ate the meal Gianni served him, took the opportunity to study the young people at the table above him. Hubert, had he been alive, would have been up there tonight, taking his place alongside the others of William Camville’s retinue. Was he missed, or did his absence bring relief to the young men who had been so outspoken of their dislike of him? Did the other squires and pages, as Bascot had felt, know more of his death than they had told, or was it merely his own fancy that they were keeping something back? Perhaps he and Nicolaa were wrong; perhaps the boy had been led to his death by his inclination for lechery alone and not for any other reason. He returned his attention to his trencher, trying to quell the anger that rose whenever he thought of the outrage of secret murder. To take another’s life by stealth was an abomination, an affront to heaven. Death, when it came, should come cleanly, at the behest of God, not man. With a sudden surge of distaste, he motioned for Gianni to remove his platter and refill his wine cup.

In a fine stone house fronting on Mikelgate, Melisande Fleming sat in front of a fire, sipping from a chased silver goblet. She was a woman of middle years, well fleshed, with heavy dark brows and an inordinate pride in the beauty of her hands, which she kept white and supple by the application of an unguent obtained from a local apothecary. Now, she moved these expressively as she spoke to the man seated on a stool opposite her.

“You are sure, Copley, that the Templar will look no further into the death of the squire?”

Copley, the agister, shook his head with certainty. “No, he will not, cousin. He seemed satisfied with the tale of the village girl. Whether he believes Alwin killed the boy himself, or locked the gates and let outlaws take the lad’s life, I do not know, but I am sure that he thinks it to be one or the other.”

Melisande nodded in satisfaction. She had been in some disquiet about the matter for she held the post of chief forester over the royal chase that lay to the west of Lincoln, and within which the private chase of Gerard Camville was enclosed. She had purchased the appointment after the death of her husband two years before. It was a lucrative office, one that her husband, a goldsmith, had retained for some years, and she was loath to put the security of it in jeopardy. It was not unusual for a woman to hold the position, but she had needed to employ a deputy for the actual work and Copley, a distant relative by marriage on her mother’s side, was the one she had chosen. He was a pliable man, fearful of losing her favour-and the generous supply of wine she granted him as part of his remuneration-and was ever amenable to do her bidding, especially in the matter of extracting extra fees from the hamlets in her jurisdiction. She did not want the sheriff’s attention drawn to affairs that were within her writ.

“You must ensure that the matter stays as it has been left, Copley,” Melisande said firmly to the agister. “Keep the villagers in their place and let them know that any further speech with the Templar would be unwise. Remind them of the need for pasture and pannage for their beasts-and so for their own bellies-and that the rights to these can be granted or taken away.”

She made a graceful gesture of smoothing her skirt of heavy velvet with the tips of her fingers, then gave her kinsman a smile that barely curved her lips. “Hunger is not a pleasant thing, Copley. Nor is thirst. I am sure that by threatening the villagers with the former, you will ensure that you need never experience the discomfort of the latter.”

The agister ducked his head miserably in compliance and drank deeply from his wine cup.

Bascot did not sleep well that night. The temperature had dropped at nightfall and the small chamber he shared at the top of the old keep with Gianni was frigid, despite the brazier that burned in one corner. The Templar had seen the boy well wrapped in his blankets and Ernulf’s hat before snuffing the candle, but while Gianni’s breathing soon dropped into the gentle regular sound of sleep, Bascot found himself still wide awake.

He had removed his eyepatch as soon as the chamber was in darkness and now he rubbed the empty socket, a habit he had acquired when alone and tired. The movement gave some lessening of the tension he felt and allowed a light slumber to overtake him, but it was filled with disturbing dreams and he awoke in moments, feeling the sweat that had broken out on his body chill like ice inside his clothes.

He knew the reason for his wakefulness. After the evening meal in the hall was over, he had paid a visit to the castle chapel where Hubert’s body was laid out to rest until a relative should come to claim it. Nicolaa de la Haye had told him that a messenger had been sent to the squire’s mother-his father was dead-and the mother had sent the envoy back with news that the boy’s uncle would be coming to take her son’s body home.

Bascot had expected to find someone, one of the other squires or a priest, keeping vigil beside the body, but the space around the bier was empty, although candles had been lit at either end only recently. Their flickering light illuminated the chamber with an eerie glow. A cloth of dark velvet had been laid over the coffin, leaving only the boy’s head and shoulders open to view, with a square of white linen spread over the face to hide the ravages of the crows. Around his neck another length of linen was loosely wound, presumably to conceal the mark of the rope that had been the instrument of his death. Against the wall, on the far side of the bier, stood a box containing the boy’s clothing, boots and dagger. Bascot lifted the items out and scrutinised them. The material of both hose and tunic was expensive, marked with stains and scrapings that could have come from rough handling before the boy was dead, or on the journey back to Lincoln slung over Tostig’s horse. His boots were in the same condition. The cloak was wool, a dark brown in colour, and was shredded at collar and hem. The fastening had been a simple silver gilt clasp and was still pinned to the fabric near the shoulder. The dagger was a well-made one, not ornate, but of good tempered steel. Surely, Bascot mused, if outlaws had been the cause of the boy’s death they would at least have taken the pin and dagger, even if they had not had time to remove his clothes.

Finally the Templar examined Hubert’s body. The squire seemed to have been sturdily built, judging by the breadth of his shoulders and the muscles that swelled in his neck. It seemed strange that, with such strength, he had not fought his attacker. Reluctantly, Bascot removed the protective cover from the face, standing for some moments looking at what was left of Hubert’s visage. Someone, probably the castle leech, had sewn up the worst of the damage, but little was left to indicate what the boy had looked like. A soft ribbon had been bound under the jawbone and up over the top of the head to keep the mouth closed and hide the remnants of the lad’s tongue, which, Bascot guessed, the crows would have found particularly delectable. Soft circles of lead had been laid over the eyeless sockets and his hair, a vivid chestnut in colour, had been pulled down low over his forehead to hide more of the birds’ relentless feeding. Altogether there was not much left to indicate the appearance of the boy whose soul had been prematurely forced from its earthly home.

Muttering a brief prayer and asking heaven’s forgiveness for his intrusion, Bascot gently moved aside the linen around Hubert’s neck. The rope and the boy’s clothing had been of some protection against the birds and, beneath the cloth, the mark of the rope was clear, still angry and showing starkly against the bleached hue of the surrounding flesh. The abrasion was rough and deep, running from beneath the chin and up behind his ears, ending in a large contusion on the left-hand side, which must have been made by the knot in the noose. Bascot wondered again how the boy had been taken without a struggle. Had he been threatened with a knife or a sword? Or perhaps surreptitiously given a potion that would render him senseless? Gently he ran his hands over the squire’s head. There seemed to be no swellings that would indicate he had been knocked unconscious before being hanged. Again the Templar examined the rope burn, pushing the cloth a little lower. Just faintly he could see another mark almost parallel with the deeper one. It ran around the neck, from back to front, more of an indentation than an abrasion. Bascot laid his fingers in it, felt it run across the boy’s larynx and, at the nape of the neck, his searching fingertips found a tiny raising of the flesh, as though it had been pinched. He pondered for some moments, then gently raised Hubert’s head, searching in the dim light of the candles for visual confirmation of what he had found. The mark was there, consistent with something thin having been wrapped around the boy’s neck and twisted tight, not enough perhaps to kill him, but certainly with enough force to take him out of his senses. But why? Why leave the deed half done? The murder could surely have been completed then and there without the additional need of a rope. Why this throttling twice over, when the intent, all along, must have been to kill? Perhaps the murderer had been interrupted during his grisly act and forced to delay its completion. But, if that was so, why was the garrotte not used to finish the task? What had been the need to use both cord and rope? To have done so seemed excessive and bothersome.

He examined the mark again. It would have passed unnoticed when the sheriff and his brother had stripped him and looked for some sign of a wound, missed as being part of the deeper mark left by the hanging. Hubert had certainly gone to his death without protest, but only because someone had slipped up behind him and reduced him to a state that made him unable to fight for his life.

It was this thought that kept Bascot awake that night, bringing with it an outrage at the stealth of the crime, the cowardice of it. He had spent long years in captivity, knew the helplessness that came with being a slave, unable to defend oneself from physical harm or mental torture, and he felt a strange empathy with the dead squire, losing his life without being able to put up the least resistance.

He lay awake for the rest of the night, listening to the slow tramp of the men-at-arms on night duty as they passed along the wall connected to the tower he was in, and the quiet murmur of their conversation as they stopped for a few moments’ rest and a little gossip. From the bailey came only silence, broken intermittently by the lowing of a restless cow or the squawk of a goose. As he lay he wondered if he had missed anything else when he had examined Hubert’s body and belongings. He would not get another opportunity to view the corpse, for soon it would be gone to its final resting place.

Sleep was just beginning to invade his restless mind when, towards dawn, the noise of men and horses stirring in the bailey awoke him. Bascot remembered that Gerard Camville had arranged for a hunt that morning. Meat was always needed for the table but, even with the annual late autumn slaughter of cattle that were too old or infirm to be fed through the winter, and the killing of deer trapped in the sheriff’s buckstalls, feeding King John and all the attendant guests would demand an additional supply.

Just as dawn was about to break, Bascot heard the yelping of hounds and the strident tones of the kennel master as he called his charges to order. The Templar got up from his pallet and pushed his eyepatch back into place. Soon the horn would blow to signal for the gate to be opened and the sheriff and his hunting party would leave. Quietly Bascot slipped on an extra padded tunic over the one he was wearing, then threw his cloak around his shoulders before bending down to place a hand on Gianni’s shoulder. The boy was fast in slumber, only his nose peeping out from beneath the mound of covers in which he was ensconced. Bascot hated to wake him but Gianni became alarmed if he found his master absent and did not know where he was. A fear of vulnerability left over, no doubt, from the time Bascot had found him begging for food on a wharf in Palermo.

Gianni came awake instantly at Bascot’s touch, his eyes looking the question his tongue could not ask.

“It’s alright, Gianni. I am going to follow the hunt. You may go back to sleep or break your fast, if you wish. I will be back by midday.”

It was a measure of the boy’s growing confidence that he nodded quickly in agreement and did not show any distress at being left alone. A few months before he had dogged Bascot’s footsteps like a shadow and was only comfortable out of his master’s presence when he was in the protective company of Ernulf or in the midst of the pack of hounds in the castle hall.

Bascot slipped out of the room and made a slow passage down the stairs, being careful of his ankle which, despite the support of his new boots, seemed more fractious in cold weather. At the stables he ordered one of the grooms to saddle the even-tempered grey gelding he had used the day before and then he left the bailey, slowly following the hunting party as it made its way in the direction of the sheriff’s chase.