“Was he carrying a large sum?” Bascot asked.
“No. Samuel was allowed to deal only in some of the smaller transactions of my business. My cousin was… a simple man, Sir Bascot. He did not have great intelligence, but he was willing and honest. I cannot think why anyone would want to kill him.”
“But someone did,” Bascot replied, “and there must be a reason why.” He pondered for a moment. “If the two young people were making their way to de Kyme’s manor, it may be that they travelled on the same route, and at the same time, as your cousin. The Torksey road is not the only way to de Kyme’s demesne, but it would be the most direct for travellers coming from the south. I suppose the boy and his wife could have been abducted as they neared their destination but there are no marks on either of their bodies that would indicate a struggle and, if they were taken against their will, it is most certain that they would have made some resistance. And how did your cousin come to be with them when they met their deaths? It is most unlikely that he knew them.”
“I would not have thought so,” Isaac agreed. “Neither I nor any member of my family has any connection with Maine and, to the best of my knowledge, Samuel had never been farther from Lincoln than a solitary trip to London many years ago. But it is unlikely that they met with abduction on the Torksey road. It is well travelled and patrolled by the sheriff’s guard. Samuel would never have been sent on his errand alone if there had been any danger to his safety.”
“It is thought that poison was the means of death for both the Christian couple and your cousin.”
“So I have been told,” Isaac informed him. “Our own physician has examined Samuel’s body and he agrees with that opinion and also that the stab wounds were made after death.”
The usurer gave Bascot an oblique look. “I have also been informed that the bodies were secreted in ale barrels before being placed on the taproom floor. I presume that the alehouse keeper must have been in collusion with the murderer?”
“It would seem so,” Bascot answered. “It is possible that the bodies were kept, for a few hours at least, at the house of Roger de Kyme in Lincoln. Both Lady Sybil and Conal were staying there for a time and neither can prove their actions on that day. Lady Sybil says that she was in bed suffering from sickness and Conal claims he was in Newark. Both were alone and have no one to vouch for their honesty.”
Both men fell silent for a moment, each collecting his thoughts. Then Isaac said, “If Samuel was persuaded by another party to accompany the couple from Maine, it would have to have been by someone he knew. A Jew does not lightly fall into the company of Christians, especially strangers.”
“Did he know either Lady de Kyme or her son?” Bascot asked.
“Yes,” Isaac replied solemnly. “Since you have assured me you will hold any knowledge I may have in confidence and since the debt is in the past, I can tell you that Sybil de Kyme had occasion to borrow money from me once, using some of her personal jewellery as surety. She paid the debt promptly. It was her son who handled the transaction. The sum was not large and it was Samuel who was entrusted with the commission of picking up the payment of the loan.”
And Newark, where Conal had professed to spend the day, was to the southwest of Lincoln. A destination that was reached by leaving through the same gate as dead Samuel. Had Conal turned north onto the Torksey road instead of turning south to Newark, as he had said? Had he known Hugo and his wife were near to arriving at their destination and had set out to forestall them, perhaps under the guise of welcoming them in his stepfather’s stead, then luring them into the forest where he offered his wine flask with a vintage that was deadly? Had the Jew seen and recognised him when he was in their company so that it was necessary to include him among the victims? But even if this were so, the one main question still remained-why had Conal not simply left the bodies in the greenwood? It was the question Richard Camville had asked, and also Conal himself, and it was a valid one. There could be no advantage to having the bodies discovered in Lincoln and run the risk, as had happened, of their being identified. In the summer heat, and with the help of foraging wild animals, the bodies would most probably have either decomposed or been devoured. Surely a conclusion a murderer would see as preferable, enabling the crime to remain hidden and not brought out into the light of investigation.
“My information has confused rather than enlightened you, has it not, Templar?” Isaac asked softly.
“Yes. It helps to bolster the sheriff’s charge against Lady Sybil and Conal, but it still does not convince me of their guilt and I do not doubt it will fail to convince the justices either. There are still too many questions without an answer.”
Isaac leaned back in his chair, taking a sip of his wine. He gave Bascot a wry glance. “The answers must surely be there. It remains only to find them.”
Eighteen
Bascot set out early the next morning along the Torksey road, to carry out his intention to visit Philip de Kyme at his fortified manor house near Stow. Accompanying the Templar were Ernulf and two men-at-arms from the castle garrison. All were armed and Bascot wore a hip-length coat of mail over a lightly padded gambeson. The frustration the Templar had felt the morning before had returned during a long night in which he had slept badly. He recognised the cause as being rooted in the disillusionments he had experienced from a very young age but, even so, could not eradicate it.
His thoughts roved back to his childhood. The youngest of three sons, his father had decided to give him as an oblate-an offering-to the church, where he would be trained for life as a monk. At first he had been frightened, had felt all the aloneness of a seven-year-old boy amongst strangers. But the kindness of the monks and serenity of the abbey soon caused this strangeness to pass and he had come to enjoy the regularity of his day and the security of the stout walls that surrounded the enclave. He had excelled at his lessons and been praised for his industry. He had been happy. Then, a few short years later, the brother next to him in age had died in a hunting accident and his father had come to remove him from his new life, citing the need for the security of a younger son against the chance that some mishap should befall his eldest. That was when Bascot’s deep-seated anger had begun. He had resented his father’s decision but, cautioned by the monk who had been his tutor that duty to a parent was an obligation he must not deny, he had done as he was bidden and taken up training for arms. Translating his anger into energy he quickly learned how to wield a sword and mace and was barely eighteen when he won the spurs of knighthood at his father’s side in battle.
That had been in the last days of the reign of King Henry, during one of the many skirmishes that the king had engaged in with his recalcitrant son, Richard. But throughout all the glory of battle and the attendant dangers of injury or death, Bascot had still yearned for his boyhood days in the cloister. When Henry had died and Richard had succeeded to the throne, the new king’s obsession to mount a Crusade to the Holy Land had seemed to Bascot to provide a way to satisfy both his own desires and those of his father. With his eldest brother now married and a new heir on the way, Bascot had begged to be allowed to combine his yearning for the life of a monk with his military skills and join the Knights Templar.
For Bascot, his first months as a warrior monk had lived up to his expectations. He had been attached to a Templar contingent that had accompanied King Richard to the Holy Land, and the battles along the way, at Sicily and Cyprus, had satisfied his conviction of the rightness of his decision. He had still felt this way when the army had reached their destination and had begun the tremendous task of trying to retrieve Jerusalem from the infidels. This ebullience had carried him along until the siege of Acre. There, on a hot August day, on the plains outside the conquered city, he had watched in horrified amazement as King Richard had ordered the slaughter of nearly three thousand prisoners taken as hostage. Bascot had felt his stomach churn with a sickness that had never before assailed him, not even on the day he had first plied his sword and drawn the life’s blood of an armed enemy. Amongst the prisoners were many women and children and they were slain as mercilessly as their men folk. He had finally fled the bloody scene when the lifeless bodies were being methodically gutted in a search for gold that the victims may have swallowed in an attempt to hide it. Others in the Templar contingent had been as shocked as he but, although the Templars were not under the king’s command and were answerable only to the head of their own order, their master, Robert de Sable, was a friend of King Richard’s and they had continued, despite the stigma of the massacre, to accompany the king on his mission. It was about that time that Bascot had begun to question the depth of his devotion to the Order, and his subsequent capture and imprisonment had done nothing to help him find any answers.