D’Arderon smiled ruefully. “I can still remember the relief we all felt to find that she was safe. Even though the child and her parents were unknown to us, there is something about the vulnerability of the young that strikes a common chord in all men and women. I hope, de Marins, that there will be a similar success with the missing boy.”
It was not often that the preceptor spoke of any of his personal experiences, usually confining conversations to talk of military situations or the daily routine, and Bascot knew that d’Arderon had done so in this instance to hearten him. The preceptor’s description of the search for the missing girl had, however, given him a notion of a way in which, if Willi had still not been found by the time he went to the castle in the morning, the boy might be located.
Twenty-two
When Bascot arrived at the castle the next morning, he saw Ernulf coming towards the gate, the groom who had been aiding him in the search for the boy trailing behind, leading two horses. The serjeant’s stocky shoulders were slumped in dejection and, without even needing to ask, the Templar knew Willi had not been found.
With a shake of his grizzled head, Ernulf said, “We searched the town high and low and, except for an alehouse keeper who said the boy had been in earlier in the day asking for his father, there was nary sight nor sound of him. We looked last night until it was almost time for curfew, but wherever the little scamp is, he’s found himself a good hiding place.”
Ernulf’s face was laden with worry. “The more time goes by, the more I fear that when we do find him, it’ll be his corpse instead of his living body.”
At that moment the Templar saw Gianni running across the bail. After greeting his former servant, Bascot asked the boy if he had seen Willi while the foundling had been in the castle.
Gianni responded by pointing to his eyes and then making a scissor of his first two fingers and moving them to simulate walking and motioned to the keep, meaning he had seen Willi and the other children when they had been brought into the hall on the night of the feast.
“Would you know him if you saw him again?” the Templar asked and the boy responded with a vigorous nod.
Bascot turned to Ernulf. “Take Gianni with you on your search today,” he said, his advice prompted by what d’Arderon had told him the night before about how the little girl in the Holy Land had been found by her sister. “If anyone can ferret out the places where Willi is hiding, it will be someone who has been in a similar situation and Gianni, as you know, was living on the streets when I found him.”
Ernulf brightened at the notion, and saw the sense in it. “Aye, I reckon you’re right,” he replied.
After Gianni had clambered up to ride pillion behind the serjeant and they had clattered out of the ward, Bascot remounted his own horse and followed them, guiding his mount along Ermine Street, through Bailgate and down Steep Hill into the town. Last night, after he had lain down on his pallet in the enclave’s dormitory, he had reviewed the few facts that had been unearthed about the murdered man. They were scant. No other lover except for Clarice Adgate had been located and it did not seem likely that any of the women who had attended the feast could be his mother. The only tiny clue left was the cofferer’s mention of wine to both Clarice Adgate and the barber, Hacher. And it was just possible, if only barely so, that Tercel’s love of wine, and the purchase of it, had led him into a liaison with another woman besides Clarice Adgate, perhaps the wife or daughter of a wine merchant. Alternatively, there was even a chance that he may have asked questions about his missing mother during a visit to a wine shop and alerted her, or her family, to his search. The Templar knew he was stretching credulity in posing such possibilities, but he had learned, in the course of investigations into previous cases of secret murder, that it is often the trail that seems most obscure that leads to the quarry. Until the boy was found, he could do no worse that follow it and, as it happened, Bascot had been closely involved with one of the more influential wine merchants in Lincoln when a poisoner that had been plaguing the citizens of the town had attempted to kill the merchant and his family. If there was any link between Tercel’s death and his penchant for fine wine, Reinbald of Hungate might be able to help discover it.
In the castle keep, Elise was humming an air she had heard played by the jongleur Lady Nicolaa had hired on the night of the feast as she placed a couvre-chef over her head and threw a cloak about her shoulders. She had been given permission by Lady Alinor to accompany Margaret into Lincoln while the sempstress went to purchase a supply of thread. She would be glad to get away from the castle for, since Margaret had voiced her warning that she might be in danger, Elise had not been easy inside the walls of the keep. Even though she had taken the precaution of moving her pallet to lay across the inside of the door leading into the bedchamber she shared with her mistress, and slept with her small eating knife secreted under her pillow, her rest had been disturbed and filled with nightmares. And, during her waking hours, she found she had fallen into the habit of avoiding close contact with the women on Lady Nicolaa’s staff, lest one of them be the jealous lover Margaret had warned her about. It had all been very unsettling and the thought of a few hours in the town promised to be distracting. Adding to her anticipation was the fact that one of the grooms from the castle stable was to accompany her and the sempstress as an escort. His name was Nicholas and he was a young man about her own age with a handsome ruddy face and a gentle manner. They had spoken once or twice since she had first arrived in the castle and Elise had found him both courteous and attractive. She picked up a small polished silver mirror that Alinor used and regarded her reflection in the surface. She had braided her thick hair and fastened it into two coils over her ears and, even though her head was completely covered by the couvre-chef, it was made of a gauze so filmy that the outline of her plaits could be seen through the material. She knew she had lovely hair and was satisfied that the manner in which she had dressed it made her look attractive. She hoped Nicholas would think so, too, and was looking forward to spending the morning in his company.
When Gianni and Ernulf reached the lower part of the town, the serjeant pointed out the alehouse where Willi had been seen the day before. Gianni glanced at it for a moment and then let his sharp young eyes roam over the surrounding shops and cross streets that led off the thoroughfare where they were standing. Slipping down from his seat on the horse, he motioned to the serjeant to leave him and indicated, by pointing at himself and circling his fingers, that he would like to search for Willi on his own.
Ernulf was not sure if this was a wise idea. “With a murderer on the loose, I don’t reckon the Templar would be any too pleased if I was to let you roam around unprotected,” he said doubtfully. But Gianni forestalled his objections by raising his finger to where a weak winter sun was shining in the sky and then moving it a little to indicate it would only be for a short while. With a shrug he spread his arms out towards all the people that were on the street-women with shopping baskets over their arms, carters driving wagons laden with vegetables and other foodstuffs, and tradesmen walking hurriedly by with bags of tools over their arms-as if to say, “What could happen to me here among so many people?”
After some musing, Ernulf finally gave in, but before he rode away he gave Gianni an admonition. “I don’t want to have to search for two missing boys, so you be right careful, do you hear? I’ll meet you back here in an hour.”
Gianni nodded and gave the serjeant a grin and, as Ernulf and the groom rode off down the street, he strolled along the roadway, seemingly looking at the wares displayed on counters protruding from the bottom stories of the houses he passed but, in reality, searching for any dark corners that were hidden from the general view. He went up one side of the street and then turned and ambled back down the other until he was again standing near the alehouse where Willi had gone to ask after his father, passing the mouth of a narrow alley that he had noticed on his earlier perambulation. It was situated alongside the alehouse premises and its width was no more than the span of a thin man’s shoulders. The interior was in a dark shadow with only a small glimmer of light at the far end giving evidence that it debouched into an adjoining street.