“But I must. She lied, I keep telling you,” Ermingard wailed.
“Perhaps if you tell us who it is you are speaking of we could help you,” Petronille suggested, trying to calm her sister’s rising terror. But the only answer Ermingard gave was to shake her head and begin to weep.
“She will not tell you, Petra. She never does, no matter how many times we ask,” Nicolaa said. “It is these murders,” she murmured to Bascot. “That is what has unsettled her mind.
“Take her inside, Petra,” Nicolaa said to her sister. “We should not have discussed the matter in front of her. I had forgotten she was there, how it might affect her.”
Petronille persuaded the confused Ermingard to her feet, began to lead her towards the gate, but her sister balked a little. “It is not my imagination. She did lie. It was her cloak. And she is pregnant.” With this last statement Ermingard’s voice became sly, like a child trying to divert punishment by revealing a playmate’s wrongdoing. “I saw her, winding strips of linen about her waist under her gown to hide the thickening of her flesh. She thinks no one knows. But I know. And I know what it will be like when she has the baby. There will be blood. Just like there was when I had Ivo…”
Ermingard’s voice had begun to rise, the note of hysteria increasing. Petronille became a little more forceful, pressing her sister towards the opening in the wall, but with little success. Nicolaa rose and went to the pair. When she spoke, her voice was low and sharp, the same tone that Bascot had heard her use to a servant that had been slip-shod. “Mina! You will be quiet and go with Petra and do as she tells you. Do you understand?”
Ermingard recoiled, as though Nicolaa had slapped her, but she calmed and slowly nodded her head. “Yes, Nicolaa,” she said obediently, but then added in a low voice with a touch of her former defiance. “But I still say it was the wrong colour.”
Nicolaa relented and patted her youngest sister on the shoulder. “We believe you, Mina. But now you must forget about it all and put your mind to something else. Petra will get you some camomile posset and read to you. You will like that, won’t you?”
Ermingard nodded and finally allowed herself to be led away. Nicolaa returned to her seat by Bascot. “I love my sister, but I pity poor de Rollos. She is so confused. First the murders, then we learned that the dead girl in the alehouse was pregnant. It has brought Ivo’s birthing back to her, and the attendant shedding of her own blood.” She shook her head sadly. “It may be she picked up a cloak of such a colour as she describes and it was wet, and now she has muddled that and the birthing in her mind, believing it to be blood. Poor Mina. It cannot be easy for a husband to have such a one for a wife.”
Bascot made no comment. The incident had deepened the lines of strain on Nicolaa’s face. She rose and walked a pace or two, then turned to him. “Go on with your enquiries, de Marins. And let us pray to God most fervently that there are no more murders.”
Bascot left, his head and eye socket still aching, wanting only the privacy of his chamber. With Gianni in tow he went back to the old tower and they climbed the stairs to their room. There he lay down on the narrow mattress of his bed while Gianni plopped down on the floor, taking from under his own pallet a small store of scraps of old parchment on which he practised his letters, along with a quill and pot of ink kept in a small wooden box. The parchment was much used, its surface scraped bare of ink at least two or three times and very thin. Gianni contemplated his last efforts, a copy of three verses from one of the Psalms, slowly tracing the words with his forefinger, brows furrowed in concentration, before putting the parchment down beside him and picking up the pen and beginning slowly and carefully to copy the words once more. Bascot felt the ache in his eye socket easing and enjoyed the cool breeze that was coming through the high slit window above him. Slowly his good eye closed and he felt himself slipping into a light doze.
This state of sleep he found enjoyable. In it the dreams that appeared in his mind were seen with two good eyes, not just the half-view of one. For a time the scenes were a jumble, a nonsense of pictures-the mane of a horse, the long face of the cobbler’s son superimposed over that of the elderly knight he had dined with in the hall, a notion of the smell of the sea and the heaving of waves-all accompanied by an awareness of the light scratching of Gianni’s pen. In his mind he saw the boy’s hand as he played his stone game, the pebbles going up in the air, Gianni’s hand palm side up, then palm side down, the constant reversing and turning as the pebbles were caught and thrown, balanced and then thrown yet again, over and over, the fingers young and supple, flexing and straightening. The motion mesmerized him and he felt himself slipping deeper and deeper into sleep…
Bascot was not sure how long he dozed, but felt himself dragged up from a deep slumber by the sound of footsteps on the stone of the landing outside the door and then a voice speaking to Gianni. Bascot opened his eye. It was Ernulf.
“Sorry to disturb you,” the serjeant said. “Sheriff Camville sent me. He wants to know if you will consent to be one of the judges at the tourney tomorrow. Since most of the barons will have a son or some other relative in the melee, he cannot ask any of them for fear of bias. The winner’s purse is a good size, and he must have men of experience and impartial judgement to fill the posts. As a Templar, your decision would be respected. He also intends to ask d’Arderon.”
Bascot got up from his bed, his head still half muzzy from sleep. “Tell Sir Gerard I will be honoured to assist him, Ernulf. And grateful. It will be a welcome diversion for my disordered mind.”
Ernulf grinned in response and left the chamber. Suddenly the room felt hot and airless to Bascot. Motioning to Gianni to continue with the practice of forming his letters, Bascot went out and up onto the roof. On the top of the tower the air was clearer and the sun beat down strongly. Although the breeze was fresh, it was warm, almost humid. Bascot limped over to the edge of the parapet, and leaned into the gap of the crenel, breathing deeply to steady the familiar dizziness that assailed him. He thought of the men that would be fighting tomorrow, young men, whole in limb and sound of faculties. He did not begrudge them their vitality for once he had been such as they, but he suddenly felt old, and it unsettled him.
He should not have slept in the afternoon. It had made him discomfited. The thought of disrupted sleep returned his mind to Ermingard. Her fear of blood, the nightmares she must endure, fuelled by the murderer abroad in Lincoln. He could feel empathy for her. Many times he had been near the edge of madness himself during the long years of his imprisonment by the Saracens. Slivers of his dreams intruded on his train of thought, disjointed now that he was awake. Again the water, but this time accompanied by the sound of rain, swirling in muddy pools. The glisten of a knife blade.
Bascot stood at the parapet, forcing himself to focus his attention on the panorama of Lincoln stretched out below him on the southern sweep of the hill. A flock of starlings swooped and wheeled above the buildings. He could make out the broad arc of Danesgate as it went down the slope past the small bell tower of the church where Anselm had officiated. Unbidden, his mind returned to contemplation of how to find the malefactor who was responsible for the murders. Somehow, he was sure, the priest had been connected to the deaths in the alehouse. But how? Somewhere there was a connection, some fact he had missed, or not taken note of. But what?
Bascot closed his sighted eye against the dizziness that resurged with the focusing of his thoughts, absently rubbing the leather patch that covered his empty eye socket. A red glow from the bright sunlight beating against the lid of his good eye suffused his inner vision, merging with the constant blackness of the unsighted side as he struggled to bring some order to his speculations.