“No, I am not. No one knew who he was.”
At Bascot’s uncomprehending look, the furrier added, “My cousin was raped, Sir Bascot. The assault took place in the darkness of evening and she was attacked from behind. She never saw the face of her assailant.”
The Templar finally began to understand Adgate’s reticence. To have borne a child as the result of an illicit liaison would certainly cause damage to a woman’s reputation, but it was a sin that, although frowned upon, would have been understood and perhaps forgotten with the passage of time. But to have conceived a child due to a sexual assault would tarnish the mother, and the babe, with a stigma that could never be erased. Any woman defiled in such a fashion would be thought to have attracted her attacker due to her lewd nature, and so it would be she, and not the rapist, who was blamed for her misfortune. She would be considered on a level with a harlot, and her child no better than those born to the women in that profession. It could not be wondered at that she had hidden her condition and was willing to give up the babe after it was born. It was the only means she had of hiding her shame and, at the same time, protecting the child from a life filled with the scorn of others.
“Did you tell Tercel the truth of his paternity?” Bascot asked.
“What would have been the purpose in that?” Adgate said resignedly. “He seemed to have formed the impression that his father was of royal blood. Even though he angered me with the haughtiness of his demand, so much so that I felt like striking him, I could not bring myself to tell him what had happened to his mother, for he was, after all, related to me by blood.” The furrier looked at Bascot with a plea for understanding in his eyes. “Surely it was better for him to believe that a royal prince had been his father than to be told that his sire was a nameless villain who had violated a defenceless young girl.”
In the castle solar, Nicolaa and Petronille sat with Richard discussing what Willi had told them. The boy was still in the chamber, standing a little apart from the group, huddled close to the protective presence of Ernulf at the far end of the room. Richard had returned to his mother and aunt after Elise had been removed from the hall and had told them that the leech and Alinor were watching over the wounded maid.
Once assured that no more could be done at the moment for the unfortunate girl, Nicolaa told her son what Willi had related about his sighting of the person near the old tower.
“The boy says he saw a figure coming through the door of the armoury while he and the other children were being taken to the stables. It would have been about the time we assume that Tercel was killed; just as the meal for the guild leaders was about to be served and a little while after Clarice Adgate had left to meet him.”
“Could he see the person clearly?” Richard asked.
“Well enough to say it was a woman. Although her head was covered by the hood of a cloak, the edges of a coif showed beneath it and there was a trail of skirts below the hem of her mantle.”
Richard considered the information. “There would be no reason for a woman to be in the armoury, so that fact in itself is suspicious, and makes me inclined to believe the boy. Now we have only to find the woman and have him identify her.”
“Yes,” Nicolaa said, “but therein lies the difficulty. Willi is not familiar with any of the guild leaders’ wives or, beyond the two or three maidservants he has come into contact with, any of the females in my household. Neither is he acquainted with many of the women in the town. He says he believes he would know her if he saw her again, but we can hardly take him by the hand and traipse him through the bail and the streets of the town so he can search the faces of all the women who live here.”
“And while she remains undiscovered, the boy is in danger,” Petronille interjected. “It will not take long for the real reason the boy was brought here to become common knowledge. Even though his sighting of the murderer was never told to anyone directly and is, so far, known only to us few, such information has an insidious way of being ferreted out and then travelling from one person to another as though it was borne on the wind.”
“We must contrive a means of keeping him safe and yet, at the same time, seek an opportunity for him to regard the faces of any of the women who might be deemed culpable,” Nicolaa said. “We could start with the wives of the guild leaders. If I ask them all to come here under the pretext of discussing further candidates for the foundling home, Willi could be in the hall when they arrive…”
As the castellan was speaking, Alinor came into the room. Her gown was splattered with bloodstains, but there was a smile of relief on her face. “The leech thinks that, with careful nursing, Elise will recover,” she said. “She came to her senses for a few moments and although she is in pain, seemed rational. Hedgset says that her humours are weak, but appear to be in balance, and he has given her more juice of poppy to help her sleep. I have told him to remain with her until I return and that I will personally keep watch over her. I have also asked your steward, Aunt, to arrange for one of your men-at-arms to stand guard at the door.”
“Was the girl able to tell you who attacked her?” Richard asked.
Alinor shook her head. “She remembers little; only craning her head to see the talking bird and then a sharp pain in her side.”
“Thanks be to God that she was not killed,” Petronille exclaimed. “What of Margaret? She, too, must be sore distressed.”
“She stayed with me while Hedgset attended Elise and, like myself, is relieved to hear that the leech thinks she is out of danger. I have sent her to the stables to tell the groom, Nicholas, that, as far as Hedgset can determine, Elise is not mortally wounded. I thought it only right that the groom should be reassured, for if it had not been for his valiant effort, Elise could have bled to death in the street.”
For a moment, the ghost of a smile appeared on Alinor’s face. “I think Nicholas has taken quite a fancy to Elise. If she returns his affection, I may still yet lose her company but, thankfully, it will only be to a husband and not because of her death.”
Twenty-six
Willi remained standing quietly beside Ernulf at the back of the room as Lady Nicolaa spoke to the young noblewoman who had just come in about the girl that had been stabbed. The young lady had blood spatters on the front of her gown that he supposed must have come from the victim and he stared at them in growing fear until, after she left, Lady Nicolaa began to discuss with her sister and son the ways in which they could manage for him to see the faces of all of the women who had been in the hall on the night of the feast. Then he began to wish he had lied and told the castellan that he hadn’t seen the murderer. If he had, they might have let him go. He felt unsafe here in the castle, even with the serjeant standing by his side. What would happen when he went to sleep? Even if they put him in the barracks with all the men-at-arms to keep watch, that murdering woman had managed to slip past everyone in the castle to kill that man up on the ramparts, hadn’t she? And it must have been her that stabbed that girl in the town. What was to stop her from creeping past the soldiers and sticking a knife in him in just the same way?
He waited with seeming patience while the lord and the two ladies talked, but his thoughts were whirling. He had felt much safer on the streets of the town and knew he had to get away from the castle. He didn’t know where he would go, but his guts had been churning ever since Ernulf had brought him into the ward. He must look for a way to escape. He knew the gates on the eastern side of the bail were left open during the day; if he got a chance, he could dart through them and run across the Minster and out one of the gates in the town wall into the countryside. He didn’t know where he would go once he reached there, but he knew he had to get away from here.