“There are weavers and cloth mercers aplenty in Lincoln now, and will be for the next week,” Nicolaa said. She picked up the scrap of material and held it in her hand. “It looks like the red Greyne that is made here in Lincoln, but…” She rubbed it gently between thumb and forefinger. “It seems a little too fine, too loosely woven.” She sighed and replaced it on the table. “I have no doubt Rolf the Draper could tell you, although I fear his mood is somewhat truculent at the moment.” She added this last with a smile. “He and his fellow townsmen were not best pleased with their reception tonight, or the rain that most probably drenched them as they left in hasty retreat for their homes.”
“Bloody merchants,” Gerard said, stopping his pacing to refill his goblet with wine from a leather bottle on the table. “Whatever ails them they bleat and cry like lost lambs, pleading poverty while they count their silver in secret.”
Bascot made no remark; neither did the sheriff’s wife. Camville resumed his pacing. Bascot could not ever recall him being still, except when he was eating. It was said the old king, Henry, father to both Richard and John, had been the same, forever moving. Gerard Camville had been familiare to King Henry, one of a coterie of young knights that the old king had kept about him and to whom he had shown much favour. Perhaps that was the key to the sheriff’s fractiousness, the losing of a lord who had been a just and fair monarch, as well as a friend. King Richard, against whom Camville had rebelled while the king was in the Holy Land on crusade, had fought with his father and, the rumour-mongers said, had caused King Henry’s death through heart-break at his son’s treachery. Even John, the present king, had failed his father in the end, siding with his older brother and King Louis of France to bring about Henry’s downfall. Now Camville was in the position of having to trust his wife’s friendship with one of Henry’s traitorous sons in order to retain the royal favour that he had once held so firmly from the father. It was not surprising that he was often in an ill temper.
“I will also ask about the brooch, lady,” Bascot said, attempting to divert the sheriff from his train of thought. “It is not valuable, but it may be remembered, if only because it is so small and the design unusual for a brooch, rather than a ring.”
Nicolaa picked up the tiny piece of jewellery and held it against her clothes. “Too small to be of any use except for the flimsiest of gowns,” she said, “almost as though it were to be worn under the outer clothing, hidden from view and unremarked except for the knowledge of the wearer. It looks familiar to me, but… it is probably only because it is a common design.” She laid it back on the table.
“Are you sure the alewife has no part in this coil?” Camville asked suddenly. “If these people were given a sleeping potion first, then it could be that she did it. She would have a knowledge of the properties of herbs by reason of her trade, those both beneficial or poisonous.”
“I think she is innocent of any complicity in the deaths,” Bascot replied. “She has not the wits for such scheming and is of too hysterical a nature for her husband to have trusted her with any secrets. And I took the herbs I found in the alehouse to the castle cook. They are harmless. Mistress Agnes is nothing more than she appears to be-a competent brewer of ale.”
“It might prove worthwhile to question the harlots in Butwerk,” Nicolaa said. “They will know if one of their number is missing.”
“I will do that,” Bascot assured her, “but I have some doubts that the girl was a bawd. Rather, I think, she was made to look like one.”
“What makes you think that?” Nicolaa asked.
“Her outer clothing was too big for her and was of cheap stuff, not like the undergarments from which I think that scrap was torn. Once I have all of the clothing from the nunnery, I will be sure of that assumption but, if I am right, it was put on her, along with the face paint, to give the impression that she was from the stewes in the lower part of town.”
“And you say she was with child?” Nicolaa asked.
“So Sister Bridget told me.”
“Another life for which damned compensation can be claimed,” Camville said angrily.
A flicker of irritation crossed Nicolaa’s face, so subtle that if Bascot had not been looking straight at her with his one good eye, he would have missed it.
“You have done well, de Marins,” she said, rising from her seat. “Learn what you can about the cloth and the brooch. It may be the merchants of the town will be too busy to attend closely to your questions. You have permission to use my authority if you have need of it.
“We best return to our guests, husband,” she said to Camville. “Tomorrow will be a busy day, even if this rain continues to fall.”
As they prepared to depart Bascot thanked her and said, “I intend to visit the family of the dead Jew, as well.”
Camville snorted. “At least I will not have to pay compensation for that death. Any property he owns will come to the crown, and I can claim a fee for collection. The shame is that all of the dead are not Jews. Then there would be no cause for concern, only profit.”
This time Nicolaa did not veil her annoyance. “The king is careful of the Jewish community, as you well know, Gerard. He would rather have them alive and lending him money than being killed and losing silver they could bring to him in the future.”
Camville made no reply and Bascot remembered that there had been some talk that it had been the sheriff who had instigated the raid on the Jewry of Stamford some years before. Now Gerard let his wife’s words slide off him, and turned to the Templar.
“Bring me the murderer, de Marins, and I promise you I will hang him high enough that his feet will kick the heavens. If you can prove these people earned their death through their own fault rather than any lack of mine, I will be doubly grateful. You will not lack for a reward.”
With that the sheriff left the room, his girth filling the door frame for a moment before he pushed through. Bascot followed Nicolaa out of the chamber and, once they were down the winding stairs of the tower, opened the door for her to pass through into the hall. As she returned to her place on the dais, he felt a sudden desire for a candi and, taking one from the scrip at his belt, put it in his mouth and savoured it as his eye searched the crowd for Gianni.
Nicolaa resumed her seat with a feeling of resignation. The hall was packed to its farthest walls tonight. With easy capacity for perhaps a hundred souls, now there were nearer two hundred crammed into its large space-visiting nobility and their servants, prominent merchants from outside Lincoln who needed to be shown a welcome from the castellan of the castle, a troupe of travelling musicians and acrobats, and the additional men Gerard had hired to swell the ranks of his guard. All sat in their various places, the nobility and knights above the salt, merchants a little lower, with the visiting nobles’ servants and men-at-arms crowded against the rear wall. The storm-laden air was close in the press, with smoke from the myriad wall torches and candles making it into a murky eye-watering haze. Dogs barked, servants rushed and hurried with wine ewers and plates of sweetmeats and, in the midst of all this chattering humanity the musicians strolled, adding to the din with the screech of viol or rebec. The tumblers thrust their bodies through the aisles between the tables, turning somersaults and tossing brightly coloured balls as they whirled, the red and blue hues of their tunics and the spinning orbs making a kaleidoscopic pattern that hurt the eyes if one stared too long.
Nicolaa sighed and signalled for a page to refill her goblet. This was a feast that had been expected of her and Gerard, she owed it as a contribution to the success of the fair, but she would be glad when it was over. Once, long ago, when she had been but a girl and her father had still been alive, she had revelled in such gaiety, laughed at the antics of the acrobats, sang with the musicians, eaten marchpane until her stomach rebelled. Now, she thought, she was growing old, for she longed only for it all to be over and to escape for a week or two to her small manor house at Brattleby, relishing a stay in its quiet confines while Lincoln castle was cleansed of the collected rubbish of the year and prepared for the onset of winter.