Bascot used the time while he waited for Ernulf to return to think. When Ernulf finally ushered Jennet in before him, Bascot was ready for her.
“You have been told your sister is being kept confined?” he asked.
Jennet nodded. “What is it that she has done, sir? I thought you were satisfied she had no involvement in those… those deaths.”
“I was. Now I am not.” Bascot walked to where shirts of mail hung on their crucifix-shaped holders. Beside them dangled the complicated trappings of a score of arbalests, the metal quarrels used to load them resting neatly on shelves nearby, well greased as preservation against rust. Lances were stacked in a corner, lengths of chain were coiled on the floor and a mound of leather wrist guards spilled from an open sack. Bascot picked up a sharpening stone from a pile that lay there and, taking his dagger from his belt, began to hone the blade, glancing at Jennet as he did so.
“Your sister has consistently lied to me. First about where she was on the night the bodies were left in the alehouse and then about the fact that she had nothing to do with the slayings.”
“I know she lied in the first instance, my lord,” Jennet said nervously, eyeing the dagger. “She was frightened, that is all. But she told the truth in the end, I am sure. Just as I am sure that she could not have had a hand in the murders. It is not in her nature, my lord…”
“Her nature, woman, is to lie.” Bascot tested the edge of his blade with the ball of his thumb and replaced it in its scabbard, throwing the sharpening stone back onto the pile of others as he did so. “The dead Jew’s scrip was found on the alehouse premises. It was in a place that she claimed to have overlooked the whole night long, so no one-neither her dead husband, nor the man she claimed killed him-could have put it there without her seeing it done. Does not that, along with all her other lies, suggest to you that she was involved in these murders?”
Jennet looked at him grimly. “If I were you, my lord, I would believe that it did. May I ask what you are going to do with her?” Her voice quavered slightly as she asked the question.
“For the moment, mistress, that depends on you,” Bascot said. “I have no more use for your sister’s caterwauling and pretense of grief. You will go to her directly and get the truth out of her. If what she tells you does not satisfy me I shall turn her over to Roget, who will, in turn, hold her for trial at the assizes. Until that time she will be held in the sheriff’s gaol in the town, along with any other prisoners he may have there. I will give Roget leave to try any method he desires to persuade her to tell what really happened to her husband and the others. Do you understand me, mistress?”
Jennet’s pale complexion turned ashen. “I do, my lord.”
“Ernulf will take you to your sister and leave you alone with her for the time it takes him to drink a sup of ale. You will get this one opportunity, and this one only, to speak to her. If you value your sister’s comfort, I suggest you use it wisely.”
“I will, my lord.” She turned to go but Bascot stopped her. “What was the alekeeper’s trade before your sister married him?”
Jennet looked at him in surprise. “Wat? He were a wherry man, sir. Had an old boat he used to hire himself out on to haul goods for a short distance. That’s how Agnes met him. She had some kegs of ale to be taken up the Fossdyke to a customer who lived on the other side. Wat didn’t make much of a living out of it. Reckon when he met Agnes he saw a good chance to improve himself, and have all the ale he wanted into the bargain. She always was foolish about men,” she added bitterly.
“This boat-where is it now?”
Jennet shook her head. “I wouldn’t know, sir. He had a place for it somewhere on the river, t’other side of the stone bridge. Agnes did tell me that they still used it sometimes, to carry her ale, but not so much lately since she had made herself such good customers in the town. Is it important, sir? Should I ask Agnes about it as well as.. . as well as about the other, sir?”
“Not yet,” Bascot said. “If I fail to be satisfied with what she tells you, there will be time enough to ask her about the boat when she is in Roget’s care.”
Jennet suppressed a shudder, then went to where Ernulf was waiting by the door, squaring her shoulders as she came up to him. “Take me to my sister, if you please, serjeant. And you don’t have to take overlong with your ale while you wait. I will make it clear to Agnes that there is no more time left to waste.”
“Apparently, when the alewife found the three dead strangers on her taproom floor, she took the scrips of each one, removed what was valuable and burned or buried the rest,” Bascot told Hilde later that morning. “There was some silver in the Jew’s purse, a few coins in Hugo’s and a comb made from bone along with a pot of unguent and the little brooch in the girl’s. There was also a piece of parchment in the purse of de Kyme’s son, with some writing on it, but Agnes cannot read, so she burnt it.”
“Are you sure she is now telling the truth?” Hilde asked.
“I think so.” Bascot smiled. “Ernulf waited outside while Jennet went in to Agnes. He said there was no crying or wailing from the alewife this time, just the sound of two or three hefty slaps being administered, and then she told her tale to her sister as meekly as a babe.”
“So we now know it was intended that the bodies be identified as soon as they were found. The parchment was most likely one of de Kyme’s letters inviting the boy to Lincoln.”
As Bascot nodded in agreement, Hilde called to her maid, Freyda. They were sitting in the privacy of Hilde’s chamber, with only the maid and Gianni in attendance. On the floor was a basket of plums which the boy was rapidly popping, one after another, into his mouth.
“Some wine, Freyda,” Hilde ordered. “And some of those cakes you brought up from the kitchens this morning.
When the refreshments had been served, Hilde leaned back in her chair. “You have done well, Templar. Now, I would like to hear about the boat.”
Bascot told her that the boat that had belonged to Wat had been found at a mooring near the Lincoln end of the Fossdyke. “It had empty ale barrels fore and aft, and a canopy under which it would have been possible to secrete three people, unseen by any passerby or the occupant of another boat.”
“And you think that was how Hugo and his wife were brought to Lincoln? By boat?”
Bascot nodded. “I think they were brought upriver alive-probably willingly and thinking themselves making the last stage of their journey-then given a potion that either rendered them unconscious or killed them. They were then put into barrels on the boat which the alekeeper offloaded onto his wagon before driving into town.”
“Then the bodies were never at Roger de Kyme’s town house?”
Bascot shrugged. “Perhaps, or not, it makes no matter. Wat may have left them there while he made his other deliveries to prevent them being discovered on his premises. Or he may simply have left them on the wagon until night fell.”
“But what about the Jew? It is certain he was never on a boat.”
“No, but he was on the Torksey road, and close to the river. Whoever hired Wat needed to meet the alekeeper at some point, either to carry out the killing, or to help convince the victims that they were being taken to de Kyme’s residence. If Samuel saw that person, or persons, making their way down to the river by one of the paths from the Torksey road, he would have been a witness as to their whereabouts at the crucial time. He could not be left alive to recall their presence later, and tell of it.”
“Yes, it all fits,” Hilde remarked. “What about the harlot’s gown, and the stabbings? I can see no reason for either. Why not simply leave the bodies in the alehouse and the girl in her own clothing?”