A Holy Vengeance (14 page)

Bascot and Gianni immediately went to get their mounts and, with Ernulf and two of the castle men-at-arms, sped through Newport Arch and along the path that led east to the little village of Greetwell. The site of the murder was not more than two miles distant and, as they rode, the Templar asked Ernulf about the place where the murder had been committed.

“’Tis a site dedicated to St. Mary,” the serjeant replied. “There’s a spring there and in the past, so it’s said, many ailing children have been cured after being anointed with the water.”

“Who found the slain woman?” Bascot asked.

“A chapman travelling to Lincoln. He went to Greetwell and told the reeve, who sent one of the villagers to the castle to report it.”

They soon arrived at the spot. It was a pretty place; a simple stone cross stood alongside a small pool formed by the bubbling spring, and the water was encircled by an abundant growth of reeds and rushes amidst which a few ducks were bobbing.

In front of the cross lay the body of the murdered woman. Close by her side, a man was kneeling, sobbing in anguish. Bascot’s view of the victim was partly obscured by the grieving man so that all he could see were the back of her head rail, which was stained red with blood, and her feet, which were shoeless. She appeared to be lying facedown next to a large stone beside which a small clay pot lay toppled on its side.

Behind the distraught man was a crowd of villagers—men, women and children of varying ages—with two little toddlers of no more than three and four years at the front. They were weeping and struggling as they tried to escape the restraining grasp of an elderly woman. Next to them was a younger female, crying copiously as she gently rocked a grizzling baby she was holding in her arms. The rest of the villagers were equally horror-stricken, some weeping, others down on their knees praying, and one or two moaning with distress. A little apart from the crowd stood a man with a large leather satchel slung on his shoulder, his face white with shock. Bascot surmised this must be the chapman that had discovered the body. About half a mile down the track that led past the pool could be seen the wooden palisade enclosing the hamlet of Greetwell.

The Templar, anger rising hot and heavy in his heart at the distress caused by this second murder, reined his mount to a halt and dismounted, as did Gianni, Ernulf and the soldiers. As they did so, an older man who had been standing near the front of the group of villagers came running forward, made a bob of his head in deference to Bascot and said he was the reeve of the village and the one who had sent the message to the castle for help.

“’Tis a terrible day for us, lord,” he said, wringing his hands together, “and none of us have a mind as to what to do next. God be praised you have arrived so quickly.”

The Templar spoke to him gently. “Lady Nicolaa sends her condolences for the tragedy that has befallen your village, and I add mine to them,” he said, “and also our assurances that every effort will be made to find and punish the man who committed this crime.”

“All of us gives thanks for your kind words and Lady Nicolaa’s promise, lord, but I fear ’tis beyond the means of mortal man to catch this murderer,” the reeve replied, his countenance drawn with dread, “for ’twas the Devil that slew her, just like that other poor woman at St. Dunstan’s shrine.”

Bascot had fully expected this fear would be aroused because of the rumours that had circulated after Emma Ferroner’s death and made an effort to dispel it. “There is no proof as yet that Satan was involved in the other murder,” he said, “and so it would be unwise to leap to the conclusion that He is also responsible for this one.”

But the reeve was not to be shaken in his conviction, and shook his head firmly. “We knows the Devil did the killing, lord, for He left His mark for us to see.”

“How so?” Bascot asked.

“He stabbed her to death with His horns, lord, and one of them is still sticking out of her back.”

* * *

The Templar sensed Gianni, along with Ernulf and the two men-at-arms, stiffen at the reeve’s statement. “Show me,” he ordered tersely.

The reeve made no movement, just ducked his head and said fearfully, “I daresn’t go no closer to the body, lord, lest I get touched by the evil.”

The Templar walked over to the corpse and, as he came near, his step faltered for a moment. The dead woman’s body was a gruesome sight, the back of her gown all torn and bloody and there, just as the reeve had said, and with the tip still shallowly inserted in one of the many wounds in the posterior of her torso, lay a sinister-looking horn. As it lay there, the tip covered with gore, it did indeed seem the personification of evil. Had his assurance to the reeve been premature? Was the Evil One truly, and in fact, responsible for this murder? From the significance of the weapon that had been used, it seemed as though it could be so. Steeling himself, and murmuring an invocation to Christ for protection, he strode purposely forward, knelt down by the woman and carefully regarded the horn. It was, in shape and colour, identical to that of a goat—an animal associated with the Devil—and of a size consistent with a fully grown buck. The larger end was facing towards him and as he peered at it closely he could see that the interior was hollow, and the edges had been smoothed in a similar fashion to those used for drinking vessels.

A strong suspicion crossed his mind as he remembered how he and Lady Nicolaa had wondered whether or not the killer had been a hired assassin or an amateur, but to confirm it he would need to examine the wounds more closely. He glanced up at the man kneeling on the other side of the body. His eyes were distended with horror and he kept reaching out a hand towards the victim and then pulling it back as though frightened to make contact, all the while keeping his gaze fearfully on Bascot.

“Are you the husband of this woman?” Bascot asked.

The man nodded with an almost imperceptible movement of his head.

“What is your name?”

“I be Thomas Hurdler, lord.”

“And your wife’s name?”

“Gwen,” he whispered.

“And are those your children over there?” The Templar gestured towards the two wailing youngsters being restrained by one of the village women.

“Yes, lord,” the man croaked, “and the babby, too.”

“I want you to go and give your children comfort,” Bascot said kindly. “It will ease their distress if you are with them while I make a closer examination of your wife’s body.”

As though he was in a daze, it took the bereaved husband a moment or two to comprehend the order, but finally he got to his feet and went over to the tots and took them in his arms. With heartrending sobs they clung to him and hid their faces in the breast of his rough woollen smock.

Bascot turned his attention back to the victim. Slowly, and with a silent prayer for heaven’s aid, he removed the horn, eliciting a collective gasp from the watching villagers as he did so. Holding it in one hand, he reached forward with the other and, pushing aside the edges of the rents in the woman’s gown, carefully scrutinised each of the gashes on her back. There were five altogether, two on the left shoulder blade, one on the spine, another on the back of a rib and a slightly deeper one just above her waist. This last was the wound from which the horn had been protruding. All were narrow slits, the edges straight and clean, consistent with lacerations made by a knife, and none severe enough to cause death. They were definitely not puncture wounds such as a horn would make.

He passed his gaze over the rest of the body. Both of the woman’s hands were curled into fists close alongside her, and there was dirt embedded beneath each of her short, stubby nails as though she had dug her fingers into the ground beneath her to try to stand upright. This impression was confirmed by her shoes, rough wooden clogs protruding from under the hem of her garment and both embedded in a deep runnel where they must have fallen off as she scored the ground with her feet as she struggled to get free of her attacker.

Next he examined her rough linen head rail. It was, as he had noticed earlier, soaked with blood, far more than was on her kirtle, and slightly askew. Picking up the stone that lay near the woman’s head, he saw that one side was jagged and had flecks of sticky blood on it that were not yet quite dry. Reaching forward, he pushed aside her head covering. Beneath it was a welter of bloody hair and brain matter mixed with shards of shattered skull. His suspicion was confirmed. It had been a violent blow to the head with the stone that had killed her, not the stabbings.

Bascot sat back on his haunches, his earlier fear that the Devil had committed this murder now completely allayed. This death had not been brought about by the Evil One, nor even a seasoned assassin, but by an inexperienced killer who had made a bungling attempt to cover his tracks.

Bascot looked up at the watching villagers. Before he could search for evidence that would aid the investigation, he must first find a way to convince them that the murderer had not been the Devil, not only for their own well-being but so they would not be averse to giving information. There had been no sign of a priest among the crowd that might lend him support, but the village appeared to be a very small one—no more than a half-dozen families judging by the number of people gathered before him—and because of that was probably one of those tiny hamlets where the spiritual needs of the inhabitants were met by the priest of a neighbouring, and larger, settlement. He would have to attend to the matter on his own.

He laid the horn aside and carefully turned the body over. Gwen Hurdler had been a young woman of about twenty-two or three years of age, with a fresh complexion, blonde hair and pale blue eyes. The latter were wide-open, as though the shock of the attack had frozen her features into an expression of surprise. Gently the Templar closed her eyelids and straightened her limbs so that it looked as though she were only sleeping. Murmuring a prayer for heaven’s aid, he rose to his feet.

Holding the goat’s horn high, he addressed the villagers. “This horn is not from the Devil, but has been taken from an ordinary goat after it was butchered. I am sure many of you have similar ones in your possession, taken from a goat or other kine and used as drinking vessels.”

A fleeting look of amazement crossed the faces of most of the villagers, followed by some tentative nods from one or two, so he pressed on. “The murderer of Mistress Hurdler is evil, of that there can be no doubt, but I promise you he is a mortal man. The wounds in the victim’s back were made by a knife and then the tip of the horn placed inside one of them with the purpose of gulling you into believing she was killed by Satan. His reason for doing this was to prevent a search being made for him.”

Glimmers of hope appeared on the faces of some of the men and women and Bascot gave thanks that the logic of his argument seemed to be making sense to them. “I am going to take this horn back to Lady Nicolaa to be used as evidence in the investigation into Mistress Hurdler’s death,” he added, “and I swear to you, on my oath as a servant of Christ, that it was not the Devil, or one of His minions, who is responsible for the murder committed here this day.”

With that he stooped and wiped the blood from the horn on the grass at his feet and then, wrapping it in a couple of large dock leaves torn from a nearby plant, placed it in his scrip. When the task was accomplished, he was gratified to see expressions of relief on the faces of the villagers and knew that his reasoning had been accepted.

Thomas Hurdler was the first to move. Handing his two eldest children again into the care of his elderly neighbour, he moved swiftly to kneel again by the body of his wife but, this time, he gathered her up into his arms and held her close. As he did so, he spoke aloud his thanks to God that, although he had lost his wife, her soul had not been tainted by the Devil. The tension was broken by his action and the villagers came forward to crowd around him. His children were brought forward to say goodbye to their mother and words of solace were offered to the bereaved husband along with promises of help in the difficult days ahead.

The reeve walked over to where Bascot stood and, in a sincere voice, expressed his humble thanks that the Templar had exposed the murderer’s deception. “We would have believed it, lord, had it not been for you, and there would have been a blight on our lives that would most like have destroyed every one of us, especially poor Thomas.”

He then asked Bascot’s permission to remove the victim’s corpse to the village so it could be cleansed and wrapped in a shroud to await the attention of a cleric. The Templar assented but said that, before everyone dispersed, there were some questions that needed to be asked of all those who lived in the hamlet. As the reeve was calling for the villagers’ attention, Bascot turned to Ernulf and told him to send the men-at-arms to search the nearby woods for any sign of the killer. “There is only a slim chance that he has remained in the area, but it is wise to make certain.”

Once the soldiers had drawn their short swords and ran off into the greenwood, the Templar turned to the assembled villagers and asked them to tell what they knew of the dead woman’s movements that morning.

“If it is known, I would like to determine what time she left your village, and also if anyone saw her, or any other person, on the path that leads to the spring.”

It was the reeve who answered him. “Thomas told me that Gwen rose just before dawn to come here to pray and collect some water in a pot to anoint their ailing babby,” the reeve said, motioning towards the fretful infant in the arms of the young woman. “As to anyone seeing her, lord, none of us did ’cause we wus all still in our beds at the time.”

“And it was you, chapman, who discovered her?” Bascot asked the man with the pack, motioning him to come forward.

“Aye, lord, I did,” the chapman responded. “’Twas not long after first light when I saw her layin’ there.” The itinerant pedlar was a man of middle years, sturdy of frame and with a face that was heavily weathered. Even though he, along with all the villagers, now believed that there had been no involvement of the Devil in the crime, he still appeared shaken by his grisly discovery.

“So she must have been slain very shortly after she arrived at the spring,” Bascot said. “Tell me from which direction you came.”

The chapman pointed to the west, back towards Lincoln. “I usually comes this way when I’m leaving town to go on my travels, and I likes to leave early so’s I can take a rest before the noonday heat.”

“And you saw no one on the path as you approached the spring?”

“Not that I noticed, lord,” the chapman replied. “But it’s usually a quiet place round about here with no danger of being robbed by thieves, so I’ll admit I wasn’t looking about me too careful.”

Bascot nodded and then asked the reeve to step apart with him a few paces. Gianni came with them. After his former master had assured everyone that the murderer had not been the Devil, he had begun taking notes of any pertinent information and would add this conversation to the rest.

The reeve, in response to the Templar’s query of whether the murdered woman had any enemies, gave a definite shake of his head. “She were a good woman, lord, and has never, to my certain knowledge, given offence to anyone.”

“And she and her husband were satisfied in their marriage?” the Templar asked. “No arguments, jealousies or anything of that nature?”

After the reeve assured him most positively that they had been a happy couple, Bascot walked back and again addressed the villagers, asking if they had seen any strangers in the area lately.

All of them shook their heads and the Templar was about to tell them they could take the victim’s body back to the village when a little voice piped up from within the crowd.

“I see’d a stranger,” a young girl said. She was about seven or eight years old, with bright blue eyes and frizzy hair trussed up in disorderly plaits.

A woman standing beside the child immediately tried to hush her. “Be quiet, Letty. This is not a time for you to be telling silly tales.”

“But I did see a stranger, mammy,” the little girl insisted, “early this morning. And I saw him kill Mistress Hurdler, too. He stabbed at her over and over again with a knife just like Da does when he’s clubbin’ a rat with his cudgel and she was screechin’ somethin’ terrible. Then he took up a stone and bashed her on the head and she went quiet.”

The Templar glanced up at the reeve and he gave a silent shake of his head. The murder had taken place too far from the village for anyone to hear the victim’s screams.

As the little girl’s mother lifted a hand to administer the child a smack for telling an invented tale, Bascot stopped her. “Let her speak,” he ordered and motioned for the little girl to come closer.

She did so shyly and the Templar hunkered down so he was at her eye level. As she looked wonderingly at the leather patch on his right eye, she picked up the end of one of her plaits and began to chew on it.

“Tell me how it was that you came to see the man, Letty,” Bascot said to her softly, hoping she hadn’t been too traumatized by witness of the dreadful scene to remember any details.

Taking her hair from her mouth, the little girl thought for a moment and the Templar could see that, although young, she was clearheaded and made of firm mettle. If she had been distressed by the morning’s events, it had not affected her wits.

Pointing towards one of the thick clumps of tall reeds growing at the edge of the pond, she said, “I wus over there lookin’ for duck eggs,” she said, “and Mistress Hurdler was kneelin’ down prayin’ when the murderer cum out of the greenwood and run over and killed her.”

“Did Mistress Hurdler know you were there?”

Letty shook her head. “I wus here afore her and hid in the reeds so’s she wouldn’t see me, ’cos I’m not s’posed to go outside the vill on my own.”

This last was said with a fearful glance at her mother, but before the woman could admonish her child, Bascot held up his hand to forestall her.

“It’s alright, Letty,” he said to the child. “Just this once you are forgiven, but you must promise me you will never do it again.”

The girl gave a solemn nod of future obedience and, just then, the two men-at-arms appeared from amongst the trees, shaking their heads to indicate they had not found anyone.

Bascot turned back to the child. “Did you see the face of the man who attacked Mistress Hurdler?” he asked her. “Or the colour of his hair?”

“I couldn’t see his face ’cos he had a piece of cloth over it like this”—she demonstrated by covering her nose, mouth and chin with her hand—“but his hood fell down when he was killing her, so’s I did see his hair. It was the same colour as Tildy’s.”

As she said this she pointed to another young girl nearby whose auburn hair, in the early morning sun, showed glints of dark red. It was the same colour as the strands snagged in the material the ravens had given him.

Gratified at the girl’s witness, and delighted to have confirmation that the murderer of Gwen Hurdler must have been the same man that killed Emma Ferroner, Bascot asked her if she had noticed anything else about him.

“Yus,” she replied, more confident now that she knew her mother would not mete out punishment for her earlier misbehaviour. “I could smell him. He smelt just like them nuts the chapman’s got in his bag.”

Confused, everyone, including Bascot, looked at the chapman. Alarmed, the pedlar, who had been listening to Letty’s witness along with the rest of the villagers, took a step back. “I don’t have any nuts in my bag, child,” he said shakily. “Only needles, balls of twine and the like.”

“Yus, you does,” Letty insisted. “They’ve got little stems on ’em and you said they wus called ’pices.”

After a few moments of puzzlement, the chapman relaxed and took a relieved breath. “She means spices, lord. I carry a few for those customers that can afford to buy them and the only one that looks like she said is cloves. She must have seen and smelt them during one of the times I’ve emptied out my bag for the women here in the village to look at my wares.”

He swung his satchel from his shoulder, opened it and carefully removed the contents. There were bits and pieces of household necessities—bone needles and iron pins, balls of string, candles, a few nails, some cheap spindles and, last of all, a small bag from which he drew forth little packets of spices, all meticulously wrapped in waxed cloth to protect them from damp. Selecting one, he opened it to reveal a small handful of cloves, and proffered them for Letty’s inspection. They did, indeed, look like little nuts with stems on.

As the pungent smell wafted up, the child nodded. “That’s what that man smelt like, them ’pices.”

The Templar pondered the information. He recalled smelling that same pungent aroma recently, but where? Cloves were used for a variety of things—in cooking, to flavour mulled wine, for freshening breath, and to ease toothache. But he knew that his memory of the scent had not been due to any of these circumstances so he cast his mind back to the places he had been recently. Suddenly the instance when he had noticed the aroma came to him. It had been at the shrine of St. Dunstan, but it had not been cloves that had given off the piquant fragrance but rather some gilliflowers that were growing in profusion near the saint’s statue. The two scents were almost identical. He recalled Constance Turner mentioning the gilliflowers when he had spoken to her, how she had said she had intended, before her friend was murdered, to pick some to make perfume. He looked back at Letty, and then around the ground near the stone cross. A few wildflowers were growing there, but no gilliflowers—only buttercups, forget-me-nots and the like.

If the scent had emanated from the murderer at the time he had killed the armourer’s daughter, Constance Turner would not have noticed it because of the similar perfume of the flowers growing near her feet, but here, where there were no gilliflowers to mask the scent, the child’s sharp young nose had detected the aroma on his person. Bowing his head he gave thanks for Letty’s witness. Not only had she confirmed the colour of the murderer’s hair, signifying he was the same man that had slain Emma Ferroner, but she had also given another clue to his identity in that the scent of cloves was constant on his person. Small details, perhaps, but he was thankful for them all the same.

After a few further words with the reeve, Bascot left the village with his companions, eager to return to the castle and relate this new information to Lady Nicolaa.