A Holy Vengeance

by Maureen Ash

  “Yes, lord,” the man croaked, “and the babby, too.”

  “I want you to go and give your children comfort,” Bascot said kindly. “It will ease their distress if you are with them while I make a closer examination of your wife’s body.”

  As though he was in a daze, it took the bereaved husband a moment or two to comprehend the order, but finally he got to his feet and went over to the tots and took them in his arms. With heartrending sobs they clung to him and hid their faces in the breast of his rough woollen smock.

  Bascot turned his attention back to the victim. Slowly, and with a silent prayer for heaven’s aid, he removed the horn, eliciting a collective gasp from the watching villagers as he did so. Holding it in one hand, he reached forward with the other and, pushing aside the edges of the rents in the woman’s gown, carefully scrutinised each of the gashes on her back. There were five altogether, two on the left shoulder blade, one on the spine, another on the back of a rib and a slightly deeper one just above her waist. This last was the wound from which the horn had been protruding. All were narrow slits, the edges straight and clean, consistent with lacerations made by a knife, and none severe enough to cause death. They were definitely not puncture wounds such as a horn would make.

  He passed his gaze over the rest of the body. Both of the woman’s hands were curled into fists close alongside her, and there was dirt embedded beneath each of her short, stubby nails as though she had dug her fingers into the ground beneath her to try to stand upright. This impression was confirmed by her shoes, rough wooden clogs protruding from under the hem of her garment and both embedded in a deep runnel where they must have fallen off as she scored the ground with her feet as she struggled to get free of her attacker.

  Next he examined her rough linen head rail. It was, as he had noticed earlier, soaked with blood, far more than was on her kirtle, and slightly askew. Picking up the stone that lay near the woman’s head, he saw that one side was jagged and had flecks of sticky blood on it that were not yet quite dry. Reaching forward, he pushed aside her head covering. Beneath it was a welter of bloody hair and brain matter mixed with shards of shattered skull. His suspicion was confirmed. It had been a violent blow to the head with the stone that had killed her, not the stabbings.

  Bascot sat back on his haunches, his earlier fear that the Devil had committed this murder now completely allayed. This death had not been brought about by the Evil One, nor even a seasoned assassin, but by an inexperienced killer who had made a bungling attempt to cover his tracks.

  Chapter 24

  Bascot looked up at the watching villagers. Before he could search for evidence that would aid the investigation, he must first find a way to convince them that the murderer had not been the Devil, not only for their own well-being but so they would not be averse to giving information. There had been no sign of a priest among the crowd that might lend him support, but the village appeared to be a very small one—no more than a half-dozen families judging by the number of people gathered before him—and because of that was probably one of those tiny hamlets where the spiritual needs of the inhabitants were met by the priest of a neighbouring, and larger, settlement. He would have to attend to the matter on his own.

  He laid the horn aside and carefully turned the body over. Gwen Hurdler had been a young woman of about twenty-two or three years of age, with a fresh complexion, blonde hair and pale blue eyes. The latter were wide-open, as though the shock of the attack had frozen her features into an expression of surprise. Gently the Templar closed her eyelids and straightened her limbs so that it looked as though she were only sleeping. Murmuring a prayer for heaven’s aid, he rose to his feet.

  Holding the goat’s horn high, he addressed the villagers. “This horn is not from the Devil, but has been taken from an ordinary goat after it was butchered. I am sure many of you have similar ones in your possession, taken from a goat or other kine and used as drinking vessels.”

  A fleeting look of amazement crossed the faces of most of the villagers, followed by some tentative nods from one or two, so he pressed on. “The murderer of Mistress Hurdler is evil, of that there can be no doubt, but I promise you he is a mortal man. The wounds in the victim’s back were made by a knife and then the tip of the horn placed inside one of them with the purpose of gulling you into believing she was killed by Satan. His reason for doing this was to prevent a search being made for him.”

  Glimmers of hope appeared on the faces of some of the men and women and Bascot gave thanks that the logic of his argument seemed to be making sense to them. “I am going to take this horn back to Lady Nicolaa to be used as evidence in the investigation into Mistress Hurdler’s death,” he added, “and I swear to you, on my oath as a servant of Christ, that it was not the Devil, or one of His minions, who is responsible for the murder committed here this day.”

  With that he stooped and wiped the blood from the horn on the grass at his feet and then, wrapping it in a couple of large dock leaves torn from a nearby plant, placed it in his scrip. When the task was accomplished, he was gratified to see expressions of relief on the faces of the villagers and knew that his reasoning had been accepted.

  Thomas Hurdler was the first to move. Handing his two eldest children again into the care of his elderly neighbour, he moved swiftly to kneel again by the body of his wife but, this time, he gathered her up into his arms and held her close. As he did so, he spoke aloud his thanks to God that, although he had lost his wife, her soul had not been tainted by the Devil. The tension was broken by his action and the villagers came forward to crowd around him. His children were brought forward to say goodbye to their mother and words of solace were offered to the bereaved husband along with promises of help in the difficult days ahead.

  The reeve walked over to where Bascot stood and, in a sincere voice, expressed his humble thanks that the Templar had exposed the murderer’s deception. “We would have believed it, lord, had it not been for you, and there would have been a blight on our lives that would most like have destroyed every one of us, especially poor Thomas.”

  He then asked Bascot’s permission to remove the victim’s corpse to the village so it could be cleansed and wrapped in a shroud to await the attention of a cleric. The Templar assented but said that, before everyone dispersed, there were some questions that needed to be asked of all those who lived in the hamlet. As the reeve was calling for the villagers’ attention, Bascot turned to Ernulf and told him to send the men-at-arms to search the nearby woods for any sign of the killer. “There is only a slim chance that he has remained in the area, but it is wise to make certain.”

  Once the soldiers had drawn their short swords and ran off into the greenwood, the Templar turned to the assembled villagers and asked them to tell what they knew of the dead woman’s movements that morning.

  “If it is known, I would like to determine what time she left your village, and also if anyone saw her, or any other person, on the path that leads to the spring.”

  It was the reeve who answered him. “Thomas told me that Gwen rose just before dawn to come here to pray and collect some water in a pot to anoint their ailing babby,” the reeve said, motioning towards the fretful infant in the arms of the young woman. “As to anyone seeing her, lord, none of us did ’cause we wus all still in our beds at the time.”

  “And it was you, chapman, who discovered her?” Bascot asked the man with the pack, motioning him to come forward.

  “Aye, lord, I did,” the chapman responded. “’Twas not long after first light when I saw her layin’ there.” The itinerant pedlar was a man of middle years, sturdy of frame and with a face that was heavily weathered. Even though he, along with all the villagers, now believed that there had been no involvement of the Devil in the crime, he still appeared shaken by his grisly discovery.

  “So she must have been slain very shortly after she arrived at the spring,” Bascot said. “Tell me from which direction you
came.”

  The chapman pointed to the west, back towards Lincoln. “I usually comes this way when I’m leaving town to go on my travels, and I likes to leave early so’s I can take a rest before the noonday heat.”

  “And you saw no one on the path as you approached the spring?”

  “Not that I noticed, lord,” the chapman replied. “But it’s usually a quiet place round about here with no danger of being robbed by thieves, so I’ll admit I wasn’t looking about me too careful.”

  Bascot nodded and then asked the reeve to step apart with him a few paces. Gianni came with them. After his former master had assured everyone that the murderer had not been the Devil, he had begun taking notes of any pertinent information and would add this conversation to the rest.

  The reeve, in response to the Templar’s query of whether the murdered woman had any enemies, gave a definite shake of his head. “She were a good woman, lord, and has never, to my certain knowledge, given offence to anyone.”

  “And she and her husband were satisfied in their marriage?” the Templar asked. “No arguments, jealousies or anything of that nature?”

  After the reeve assured him most positively that they had been a happy couple, Bascot walked back and again addressed the villagers, asking if they had seen any strangers in the area lately.

  All of them shook their heads and the Templar was about to tell them they could take the victim’s body back to the village when a little voice piped up from within the crowd.

  “I see’d a stranger,” a young girl said. She was about seven or eight years old, with bright blue eyes and frizzy hair trussed up in disorderly plaits.

  A woman standing beside the child immediately tried to hush her. “Be quiet, Letty. This is not a time for you to be telling silly tales.”

  “But I did see a stranger, mammy,” the little girl insisted, “early this morning. And I saw him kill Mistress Hurdler, too. He stabbed at her over and over again with a knife just like Da does when he’s clubbin’ a rat with his cudgel and she was screechin’ somethin’ terrible. Then he took up a stone and bashed her on the head and she went quiet.”

  The Templar glanced up at the reeve and he gave a silent shake of his head. The murder had taken place too far from the village for anyone to hear the victim’s screams.

  As the little girl’s mother lifted a hand to administer the child a smack for telling an invented tale, Bascot stopped her. “Let her speak,” he ordered and motioned for the little girl to come closer.

  She did so shyly and the Templar hunkered down so he was at her eye level. As she looked wonderingly at the leather patch on his right eye, she picked up the end of one of her plaits and began to chew on it.

  “Tell me how it was that you came to see the man, Letty,” Bascot said to her softly, hoping she hadn’t been too traumatized by witness of the dreadful scene to remember any details.

  Taking her hair from her mouth, the little girl thought for a moment and the Templar could see that, although young, she was clearheaded and made of firm mettle. If she had been distressed by the morning’s events, it had not affected her wits.

  Pointing towards one of the thick clumps of tall reeds growing at the edge of the pond, she said, “I wus over there lookin’ for duck eggs,” she said, “and Mistress Hurdler was kneelin’ down prayin’ when the murderer cum out of the greenwood and run over and killed her.”

  “Did Mistress Hurdler know you were there?”

  Letty shook her head. “I wus here afore her and hid in the reeds so’s she wouldn’t see me, ’cos I’m not s’posed to go outside the vill on my own.”

  This last was said with a fearful glance at her mother, but before the woman could admonish her child, Bascot held up his hand to forestall her.

  “It’s alright, Letty,” he said to the child. “Just this once you are forgiven, but you must promise me you will never do it again.”

  The girl gave a solemn nod of future obedience and, just then, the two men-at-arms appeared from amongst the trees, shaking their heads to indicate they had not found anyone.

  Bascot turned back to the child. “Did you see the face of the man who attacked Mistress Hurdler?” he asked her. “Or the colour of his hair?”

  “I couldn’t see his face ’cos he had a piece of cloth over it like this”—she demonstrated by covering her nose, mouth and chin with her hand—“but his hood fell down when he was killing her, so’s I did see his hair. It was the same colour as Tildy’s.”

  As she said this she pointed to another young girl nearby whose auburn hair, in the early morning sun, showed glints of dark red. It was the same colour as the strands snagged in the material the ravens had given him.

  Gratified at the girl’s witness, and delighted to have confirmation that the murderer of Gwen Hurdler must have been the same man that killed Emma Ferroner, Bascot asked her if she had noticed anything else about him.

  “Yus,” she replied, more confident now that she knew her mother would not mete out punishment for her earlier misbehaviour. “I could smell him. He smelt just like them nuts the chapman’s got in his bag.”

  Confused, everyone, including Bascot, looked at the chapman. Alarmed, the pedlar, who had been listening to Letty’s witness along with the rest of the villagers, took a step back. “I don’t have any nuts in my bag, child,” he said shakily. “Only needles, balls of twine and the like.”

  “Yus, you does,” Letty insisted. “They’ve got little stems on ’em and you said they wus called ’pices.”

  After a few moments of puzzlement, the chapman relaxed and took a relieved breath. “She means spices, lord. I carry a few for those customers that can afford to buy them and the only one that looks like she said is cloves. She must have seen and smelt them during one of the times I’ve emptied out my bag for the women here in the village to look at my wares.”

  He swung his satchel from his shoulder, opened it and carefully removed the contents. There were bits and pieces of household necessities—bone needles and iron pins, balls of string, candles, a few nails, some cheap spindles and, last of all, a small bag from which he drew forth little packets of spices, all meticulously wrapped in waxed cloth to protect them from damp. Selecting one, he opened it to reveal a small handful of cloves, and proffered them for Letty’s inspection. They did, indeed, look like little nuts with stems on.

  As the pungent smell wafted up, the child nodded. “That’s what that man smelt like, them ’pices.”

  The Templar pondered the information. He recalled smelling that same pungent aroma recently, but where? Cloves were used for a variety of things—in cooking, to flavour mulled wine, for freshening breath, and to ease toothache. But he knew that his memory of the scent had not been due to any of these circumstances so he cast his mind back to the places he had been recently. Suddenly the instance when he had noticed the aroma came to him. It had been at the shrine of St. Dunstan, but it had not been cloves that had given off the piquant fragrance but rather some gilliflowers that were growing in profusion near the saint’s statue. The two scents were almost identical. He recalled Constance Turner mentioning the gilliflowers when he had spoken to her, how she had said she had intended, before her friend was murdered, to pick some to make perfume. He looked back at Letty, and then around the ground near the stone cross. A few wildflowers were growing there, but no gilliflowers—only buttercups, forget-me-nots and the like.

  If the scent had emanated from the murderer at the time he had killed the armourer’s daughter, Constance Turner would not have noticed it because of the similar perfume of the flowers growing near her feet, but here, where there were no gilliflowers to mask the scent, the child’s sharp young nose had detected the aroma on his person. Bowing his head he gave thanks for Letty’s witness. Not only had she confirmed the colour of the murderer’s hair, signifying he was the same man that had slain Emma Ferroner, but she had also given another clue
to his identity in that the scent of cloves was constant on his person. Small details, perhaps, but he was thankful for them all the same.

  After a few further words with the reeve, Bascot left the village with his companions, eager to return to the castle and relate this new information to Lady Nicolaa.

  Chapter 25

  A short time later Bascot was in the castellan’s private chamber with Gianni, telling her what had taken place at the holy spring. When he took the goat’s horn from his scrip and told her of the attempt the murderer had made to give the impression it had been used by the Devil as a weapon on the victim’s body, she made a moue of repugnance.

  “This miscreant’s stratagem may have been wickedly inventive, but it was a foolish one all the same,” she declared.

  “Just so, lady,” Bascot agreed. “He tried to kill the village woman in the same manner as Emma Ferroner, by stabbing her in the back, and must have intended to insert the goat’s horn into one of the wounds to make it look as though Satan had killed her. But fortune did not hold with him this time; his knife struck bone with every thrust and he was forced to bludgeon his victim to death with a rock. This most certainly confirms that the killer is not a man accustomed to wielding arms. If he was hired to commit the deed, then he is a tyro.”

  After instructing Gianni to place the horn in a box for safekeeping, the castellan asked Bascot if he had found any connection at all between the two victims.

  “They appear to have nothing in common, lady, or have even known of the existence of one another. Before we left Greetwell, I asked the reeve if he or any of the villagers were acquainted with Emma Ferroner and he said that they had never heard of her until the chapman, while they were waiting this morning for help to arrive from the castle, told them about her murder. Nor did there seem to be any accidental link tying them together—Mistress Hurdler, along with the rest of the village women, hardly ever made the journey into Lincoln. The only connection between them appears to be that they were both killed by the same man, which leads me to believe that this second murder was committed in order to promote the assumption that the Devil was responsible for both. If his ruse had prevailed, our investigation would have been misled, which was exactly what he wanted.”