“But,” he added, “despite the old man’s words, he did allow Margot to keep some of the root of that there hell herb to treat their cow in case it should be taken with a cough. She cuts a little slit in the dewlap of the beast and pushes a bit of the root through and leaves it for a day or two. It’s an old remedy and works right well. When I asked about the poison, she showed me the pot where she kept the roots. It was tightly sealed and I knew I needn’t have any fear that my beauties would get near it.”
Dido again patted one of the pockets on his coat and the ferret, as before, popped its head out. Gianni was entranced with the inquisitive little creature, and the catcher took it out and gave it to the boy to hold. The ferret immediately dived inside Gianni’s tunic, causing the boy to jump in alarm, but Dido laughed and reached inside the garment to retrieve the tiny animal. “He won’t hurt you, boy, not unless you hurts him,” he said, stroking the ferret. “Just likes to be where it’s dark and secret, same as the rats he hunts.”
What Bascot had learned seemed to point to Wilkin as a most likely suspect for putting the pot of poisoned honey in the merchant’s house, since he not only had a reason to hate Reinbald’s nephew but also had access to the herb that was used to make the poison. But Bascot had still not discovered a reason for the potter to have adulterated the pot that was found in the castle kitchen. The Templar felt his frustration mount as he and Gianni left the rat catcher’s home.
Thirteen
As the hours of the day crept forward, it soon became apparent that Nicolaa de la Haye’s prediction would prove true: the deaths of three of Lincoln’s citizens would provoke an outcry among the townspeople. The news of what had befallen le Breve and his family was passed along with the speed of a raging conflagration. The deaths in the castle had not concerned them greatly, for all considered them to be in retaliation for a grudge against the sheriff, Gerard Camville. He was an uncompromising and brutal man, and there were many who had reason to resent his harsh administration. Most of the townspeople had shrugged their shoulders in dismissal when they had heard about the poisoning of the clerk and the knight, and there had even been a few who had quietly whispered that it was a shame that Camville had been away when the deaths had taken place, for if he had not been, he might have been one of the fatalities. It would have made the passage of many lives a little easier.
But now the poisoner had struck at a family in the town, and one of them had been a young child who could not have been anything but innocent of injury or unkindness to others. As the story of the murders passed from one person to the next, not only fear but outrage rose to the surface. Soon other recent fatalities were recalled, ones where the cause of death had been obscure. It did not take long for such speculation to give rise to the certainty that these other deaths were the result of the poisoner’s machinations.
The first to be remembered had occurred about two months before when the wife of a prominent baker had died. She had been ailing for many months, complaining of pains in her stomach. The baker had obtained the services of a leech, but the numerous bloodlettings he administered did not ease her complaint, and so the baker had asked Alaric, as a physician reputed for his learning, to attend her. After Alaric had checked her blood for its viscosity and inspected her feces and urine for the balance of the humours within her body, the physician had cast her horoscope and shaken his head; there had been a malign conjunction of planets on her natal day, he told the woman’s husband. He would do his best to cure her, but she would need a lengthy treatment and it would be costly. The baker, a moderately wealthy man, gave his assent, and Alaric prescribed the use of several medicines, including feeding her on a diet of roasted mice and applying a paste made from pulverised laurel leaves to her abdomen. None of his remedies prevailed, however, and the woman finally died after a great outpouring of blood from her mouth. There was now no doubt in the retrospective minds of the townspeople that she had been a victim of the poisoner.
Another case that, with hindsight, was viewed with suspicion was the death of a tanner who practiced his trade near the banks of the Witham River. He had been strong and fit one day, and dropped down dead the next, seemingly taken by a stoppage of his heart. Only his wife knew that he had, for some time, been drinking a pint of bull’s urine every day, hoping that the potency of the animal from which it came would prove to be an antidote for his own sad lack of performance. She never considered that the urine had been in any way connected with his death, for it had been recommended by a local apothecary who had sworn that many of his clients had benefited greatly from drinking it. After the death of le Breve and his family, however, and since her husband had complained of a stomachache a few days before he died, she began to wonder if the poisoner had somehow adulterated the honey her spouse had mixed with the urine to make it palatable. She did not hesitate to voice her opinion to her neighbours, and this story, too, soon became fact instead of conjecture.
The most recent fatality, and perhaps the one that most convinced the people of Lincoln that the poisoner had been killing victims over the last few weeks, was the death of a boy of about sixteen years. The young man had suffered almost identical symptoms to that of all of the recent victims, for he had been taken with great bouts of vomiting and a looseness in his bowels, but unlike in the others, these had been milder and had lasted for two days before he finally succumbed. It had been thought at the time that his illness had been due to eating an eel pie he had bought from a roving vendor. The pie seller had suffered great damage to his reputation and much loss of trade from the accusation and, as soon as he heard the news of the poisoning of le Breve’s family, quickly claimed that his young customer’s death had not been due to the staleness of his pie, but that the boy had, instead, been a victim of the villain that was murdering the people of Lincoln.
As morning crept towards afternoon, suspicion, like a malignant condiment, was mixed into the brew of rising terror, and fingers were pointed in accusation. Neighbour turned on neighbour, some out of spite for an old dispute, a few out of envy for another’s more lavish possessions and even a couple out of resentment because a would-be lover had spurned his or her amorous advances. Little knots of people began to gather along the streets in the town, and not a few arguments broke out, many of which ended in physical violence. The worst were outside the alehouses, where drink had loosened tongues and made people reckless. Roget and his men were finding it difficult to comply with Nicolaa de la Haye’s directive to treat the townspeople gently and had no choice but to incarcerate some of the worst offenders in the town gaol.
A few citizens believed that the safety of themselves and their families could only be ensured by leaving the confines of the town, and within hours, wains laden with household goods began to trundle their way through the streets towards the exits of Newport Arch at the north end of Lincoln, and Stonebow in the south.
As the day progressed, Roget found himself more weary than he could recall having ever been before, even on those many occasions when it had been necessary to fight all day long on a bloody battlefield. As he paced the streets in an attempt to maintain order, he promised himself that never again would he drink wine flavoured with honey, even if he was sure it was untainted. The remembrance of this day would make its sweetness turn sour in his mouth.
By the time Bascot and Gianni left Germagan’s house, it was almost midday and they were both getting hungry. The Templar purchased a loaf of bread from one of the bakers in Baxtergate, and they munched on pieces of it as they walked back into the town, passing through Stonebow Gate and going up Mikelgate Street in the direction of the castle. As earlier in the day, people were still gathered in the streets, and some of the groups Bascot and Gianni passed were engaged in passionate argument. A few of those who had decided to leave Lincoln had wains or packhorses outside their doors and were in the process of piling them high with panniers containing clothing and other personal possessions.