“De Kyme is not literate. Someone else must have written the replies supposed to come from the boy’s mother.”
Lady Hilde shrugged. “Not very difficult to find a clerk in any town hereabouts to write a letter. He would not be interested in the contents, only his fee.”
Bascot pondered for a moment. “It could be as you say. I must find out if the boy that was killed was actually Hugo. If, indeed, such a person as Hugo ever existed.”
“A difficult task, Templar. The lands in Maine are in turmoil at the moment, what with our new king’s continental subjects rebelling at every turn. And did you not say that the last letter claimed that the boy’s mother was intending to embark on a pilgrimage? If the missives were falsified, this is a convenient ploy to cover her absence in La Lune. On the other hand, if the story is true, it is possible she may not be there to confirm or deny the truth of the matter.”
“Yes,” he said slowly, pondering. “Perhaps I can persuade the Templars to help. They have stations in nearly every large town in Christendom. I will ask the local master to send an enquiry on my behalf. To Compostella, if necessary. The Templar resources are large and efficient. If a deception has been carried out as to the boy’s identity, it may be that they will be able to discover it, or even prove that the dead boy was genuinely de Kyme’s son.”
“A slim hope, and one that will take some time to uncover, even with the Order’s help,” Hilde replied.
“You mentioned two suspects, Lady Hilde. Who is the other?”
Hilde took some time to answer. When she did, her response surprised Bascot. “The other is Hugh Bardolf,” she said.
At her companion’s look of disbelief, she added, “You are a newcomer here, Templar. I have known these people a long time. Bardolf is a greedy man, greedy for power. He has a daughter, Matilda, and is touting for a husband for her with all the voracity of a ribbon seller hawking a tray of shoddy goods. She is not an unattractive girl, but spiteful by nature and, rumour has it, not above giving her favours lightly. But her father is an ambitious man. Whether he is aware of his daughter’s unchaste behaviour I do not know, but even if he is, it would not deter him. He already has much land and wants more. De Kyme wants an heir and Matilda needs a husband. Bardolf would see such a match as a gift from God. And I do not think he would be averse to enlisting the devil’s aid in helping him to accomplish it.”
“It seems an extreme length to go to on the hope of a liaison that could only be a tenuous promise at best,” Bascot remarked.
“Ah, but is it, Templar? Has the fair Matilda already warmed de Kyme in his bed? That she is rumoured to have done the same with others might suggest that she has. And she is young, and of a good family, if not as high-placed as his own. She would be an ideal wife for de Kyme in her father’s eyes and I am sure Bardolf could be persuasive enough to make Philip see it that way. But he would need to be free of Sybil first.”
Bascot leaned back and drained the final dregs of wine in his cup. “You have given me much to think of, lady. And there is much that must be done, if I am to ascertain the whereabouts of all these people on the day the murders were committed.”
“If you are agreeable, Templar, I would like to aid you in this matter. I am not as mobile as you are, even with your injured leg, but I am privy to one place that you are not. The solar. Women love to prattle and so do their servants. Between myself and Freyda there”-she gestured to the maidservant-“we could glean much from any tongues that can be encouraged to wag.”
Bascot laughed despite himself. He could not imagine Lady Hilde engaging in cosy idle conversation with anyone. She was too intimidating. The old woman laughed with him. “I know your thoughts, Templar, but I can be amiable-if I wish. Will you accept my offer?”
Bascot told her he would and, as he bid her goodnight, found himself in a more hopeful frame of mind than he had been since the whole devil’s brew had begun.
Twenty
The Templar Lincoln Headquarters, or Preceptory, was situated in an enclave just north of Eastgate, near the Priory of All Saints. Behind a high wall with a stout gate lay a chapel, dormitory, stable, storehouse, armoury and a square patch of ground used for exercise. Early the next morning Bascot presented himself at the gate and, after being admitted with a friendly wave by the guard on duty, went through to the outer yard. The familiar stench of horse dung and human sweat gave him a wrench of nostalgia and took him back to the day he had taken his vows to join the Order. How happy he had been then, looking forward to the joy of using his strength and skill to fight for Christ while at the same time satisfying his own longing for the inner peace of a monk’s life. Disillusionment had been slow to come, but come it had, already setting in before he had been captured by the Saracens. Now he wished he could return to that time of his youth and feel again the sweet savour of promise.
On the practice ground two Templar men-at-arms, in long tunics of brown, were putting a pair of new recruits through a drill with short sword and shield under the watchful eye of a black-robed serjeant. Two Templar knights, clad in the white surcoats that denoted their higher rank, stood watching. Of the third rank of the Order, that of chaplain, identified by tunics of green, only one was to be seen, hurrying towards the round stone building that was the chapel, glancing as he went at the top layer of a sheaf of parchment held between his gloved hands. Even though the day was hot, the gloves could never be removed, except to don a clean replacement, for the hands of the priests must always be kept in a pristine condition to serve Holy Communion.
From the stables came the shrill sound of a horse neighing in anger, followed by the thud of shod hooves hitting solid timber. Bascot went towards the sound. He was looking for the officer in charge, the preceptor, and if he was to find him anywhere it would be in the stable.
At the end of a row of horse stalls, illuminated dimly in the gloom, stood a group of men. Two were grooms, holding with difficulty the reins of a wild-eyed grey stallion. A Templar serjeant was trying to get a saddle on the animal’s back, dodging to and fro in an effort to escape flying hooves and bared teeth. Watching the spectacle and, from the grin on his face, enjoying it mightily, was the preceptor, Everard d’Arderon.
“Come on, Hamo, get that saddle on his back,” he yelled to the red-faced serjeant. “Not going to let a horse win a battle, are you? Get on with it, man.”
The serjeant, as angry as the horse now, wrenched the reins from the frantic clutch of the groom and pulled the animal’s head down cruelly, forcing it onto its forelegs. As the stallion let out his breath in a whuff of defeat, the serjeant threw the saddle on its back, gave his captive a savage kick in the testicles and pulled the straps into position, securing them before the horse could recover. Handing the reins to one of the grooms, he stepped back and watched with a satisfied smile as the stallion regained its feet and stood on wobbly legs, breathing hard.
“Well done, Hamo,” d’Arderon said. “That will be a good piece of horseflesh once it’s trained to use its temper against the infidel and not honest Christians.”
Noticing Bascot’s arrival, he gave a nod of greeting and walked over to where he stood. “Come to get a supply of candi, have you?” he asked with a grin. “I’ve just received a new batch, covered in marchpane. Come into the storehouse and I’ll let you sample a piece.”
Without waiting for Bascot’s reply, the preceptor walked out of the stable and into the bright sunshine of the yard, not stopping until he reached the long low building that housed supplies of all sorts of commodities, from sacks of grain to piles of well-seasoned timber. The odours here were sweet, a pungent mixture of resin, spices and beeswax. As the preceptor rummaged about amongst a pile of hide-bound bundles, Bascot rested his aching leg by sitting on a tun of wine and watched, with something like affection, the man who had, under orders from the Templar Master in London, placed him in the household of Nicolaa de la Haye nearly a year before.