Next, Bascot asked the beekeeper and Margot what they remembered of Mauger’s appearance. Both gave the same vague description as Wilkin-he was bigger than his brother and had hair that was lighter in colour. Margot thought his eyes were a pale colour, maybe green or blue.
“You told me your granddaughter had mistakenly thought she had seen Drue Rivelar once before,” the Templar said to Adam. “Who was with her on that day that happened?”
“I was, lord,” Margot replied.
“Were you near enough to the man to see his face?”
Margot shook her head. “No. We were in the village and he was riding a horse when he went by where we were standing. By the time I caught ahold of Rosa and calmed her he had gone a long way down the road. And he never turned round when she called. I don’t think he heard her.”
Feeling that he had exhausted any help they could give him about details of Mauger’s description, he then tried to corroborate what Wilkin had told him when he had said the bailiff’s elder son had enjoyed his father’s harsh treatment of the Order’s tenants. “The man who was murdered in Lincoln was killed in a most savage way. I have been told that John Rivelar could be violent at times. Do you think it likely that his son would be the same?”
“Aye, I reckon so,” Adam said sadly. “He was very like his father was Mauger, a rare one for lashing out at any he thought had wronged him. ’Tis said that’s why he left-him and his father had an argument that turned into a right battle and the old man bested him, so he ran away. I reckon if Mauger had been here when his brother was taken by the sheriff he would have been just as angry as his father, and just as mettlesome in defendin’ him.”
Bascot paused at the beekeeper’s statement. Here, perhaps, could be a hint that Mauger was possessed of a personality that was cruel enough to enjoy inflicting the pain that had been visited on Fland Cooper and on the poisoning victims as well. “Why was John Rivelar so convinced of Drue’s innocence?” Bascot asked. “I have been told there was a witness who swore Drue was part of the captured outlaw band.”
Adam looked uncomfortable, and when he finally spoke, it was reluctantly. “The old bailiff said his son just happened to be nearby the place where the outlaws were that day. He said Drue came forward to help the travellers and was accused by mistake.”
“Do you believe that is so?” he asked, and seeing Adam’s discomfiture grow, he added, “Whatever you tell me, I will keep in confidence. The crime is an old one and there is no benefit in pursuing the question of whether justice was ill served.”
Reassured, Adam nodded. “There’s some of us here in Nettleham that reckons John Rivelar could of been right about the boy. Drue wasn’t like his father and brother. He could be sly at times, but he wasn’t wilful like them, nor did he ever get so angry he would of hurt anyone. Rosamunde swore to us that he would never of done such a thing; that if he’d been robbin’ travellers of their silver, she and Drue would have had the money they needed to run away long before he was caught. Made sense to me, and I reckoned that if the boy did come forward to help like Rivelar said, and got mixed up in the fray, ’twould explain why t’others thought he was one of the brigands, even if he weren’t.”
Bascot wondered if Mauger, supposing he had returned, had heard this explanation. If so, it would have confirmed his father’s belief in Drue’s innocence. “You are aware that it was Ivor Severtsson who told the sheriff about the attack that was planned on the merchant’s party, and that he also said Drue was one of the wolf’s heads?” Bascot said to Adam.
“Aye, lord, we are,” the beekeeper replied. “And that’s what’s so flummoxin’ about it all. With Master Severtsson being a bailiff an’ all, it don’t seem likely he would lie, so if he said Drue was a brigand, it must be true. Somehow it don’t all tally up quite right.”
Not unless, Bascot thought, Drue ran out of patience for his brother’s return and decided to throw in his lot with the outlaws he met at Cooper’s alehouse. It may have been the first time he had done such a thing but done it he had, for the prior was a witness to his act. Severtsson, probably in Drue’s company much of the time, must have learned of his intention and informed the sheriff, thereby ridding himself of the man he believed to be a rival for Rosamunde’s affections. It was a cowardly act on Severtsson’s part, but since Roget had told him about the bailiff’s treatment of the bawd, it did not surprise him. It was more than likely that the man had, as Wilkin claimed, raped Rosamunde, perhaps out of anger for a rebuff of his attentions or simply because, as had been shown by his treatment of the harlot, his pleasure was enhanced by forcing a woman to his will. If Mauger had learned of Severtsson’s betrayal of his brother, and of his jealousy, it would have been logical for him to assume that the bailiff had lied about Drue’s involvement with the outlaw band. And would have made Severtsson his prime target for revenge.
Twenty-seven
When Bascot and Gianni returned to the castle, the Templar took the boy to the barracks and left him in Ernulf’s care. Then he crossed the ward and went up the tower stairs, going past the chamber that he and Gianni shared and up onto the roof and through the arch that led out to the walkway encircling the parapet. It was a place he often sought when he needed to be alone to measure his thoughts, and he hoped that the solitude would enable him to consider all that he had learned about Mauger with clearness and detachment.
He leaned into one of the crenellations in the battlement and was assailed by the dizziness that the loss of his right eye caused whenever he was in a high place. Breathing deeply, he waited for the sensation to pass and then looked out over the town of Lincoln spread out below, washed in the brightness of the spring sun. Houses spilled down the side of the hill on which the castle and Minster stood, scattered like rows of small pebbles caught inside the protective walls that marked the edge of the city. The figures of the townspeople moving about the streets seemed tiny when viewed from such a high elevation, and the occasional bright colour of a cloak or hat bobbed like flotsam on the tidal swell of their passage. He concentrated on the panorama for a few moments until he felt the final remnants of his dizziness leave him and, with it, the cluttered state of his mind.
As a likely suspect for the murder of Fland Cooper, and taking into consideration what the fishmonger’s assistant had told Mistress Marchand, it was reasonable to assume that his killer had been someone from the dead man’s childhood. With the exception of the last few months, Cooper had lived all of his life in the vicinity of his parents’ alehouse on the Wragby road, so it was more than likely he was referring to someone he had met in that area many years ago. Wilkin had said that most of the customers in those days had been travellers; the only ones he remembered as having been regular patrons were John Rivelar and his sons, who lived in the area and whose horses he had seen tied to the hitching post outside the alehouse door on more than one occasion. Both the former bailiff and his younger son were dead; that left the elder, Mauger.
If Bascot accepted Gianni’s premise that the person responsible for the poisoning deaths in the town was not Wilkin-and the Templar was now inclined to do so-but was instead the man who had murdered Cooper, then a motive linking the former crimes to the latter must be found. Since the people who lived in all of the places where the poison had been found were connected in some way to the capture and subsequent hanging of Drue Rivelar, Bascot could think of no greater motivation than that of a man who was taking revenge on all of those who had been instrumental in bringing about his brother’s death. If Cooper had recognised Mauger, and connected his presence in the vicinity of Reinbald’s house with the poisonings, then his possession of that knowledge could be the reason that the fishmonger’s assistant had been killed.