by Maureen Ash
The lump in her throat, which had first made its appearance on the outside of her neck and then slowly grown within, made her breathless from the slightest exertion, so she walked slowly, and with her hands, which had developed a tremor, clasped tightly together in front of her to still their shaking. As she passed through Claxledgate and into the confines of the town, her thoughts focused bitterly, as they so often had during the last twenty-five years, and especially recently, on Robert Ferroner. One of her incursions into the town after her return had been down to the banks of the Witham, and from there she had walked up to the armoury and peered in through the open shutters to see if she could catch a glimpse of her former paramour. He had, indeed, been working inside and, had it not been for his height and girth, she would not have recognised him. A straggle of greying strands below a bald pate was all that was left of his mane of golden hair and his face was lined with age.
How much more handsome he had been on the day she had first met him at the summer fayre. She had been immediately smitten. And so, she had believed, had he with her. Within a few minutes of their introduction to each other by a girl of Lorinda’s acquaintance in the town, they had been strolling together amongst the stalls, drinking mead and eating honeyed plums while listening to the lilting airs played on citoles and shawms by a band of roving minstrels. Only an hour had passed before Robert had kissed her and their lips had melted together with a taste sweeter than fine wine. It was by mutual and eager consent that, before the day had ended, they had gone out into the greenwood and there, on a bed of soft moss in a leafy bower, had their first coupling. How delightful the future had seemed on that day and the ones that followed; he had been the first, and only, man she had ever loved and she had been certain he would marry her. What other meaning could she have construed from the loving words he had whispered to her when they bedded? But it had not been long before her entrancement had come to a brutal end. Just a bare month later the same friend that had introduced her to Robert had said she had heard he had asked another woman to be his wife. His betrayal had wounded Lorinda deeply.
Throughout the years she had been away she had kept track of him through itinerant chapmen, merchants and carters whose trade often took them to Lincoln. He came to be a man well-known for his talent as an armourer and, as his business became more and more successful, there was always gossip about him. She had rejoiced when she had learned of the death of his wife shortly after their only child had been born and then, later, when she heard news that his daughter had been taken seriously ill. But, to her chagrin, the girl had survived and there had been no more hearsay about him until, a few months ago, she had learned that his daughter was married and that he was impatiently awaiting the birth of his first grandchild.
How different her life would have been if he had honoured his pledge to marry her. Down through the years that had elapsed, she would have had comfort, security and respect and not been forced to travel the highways and byways in search of a lecherous man willing to provide food and shelter in exchange for her body. And now, in her illness, she would have been cosseted, attended by a leech and prescribed a medicine that might have eased her distress.
Her musings had taken her to the bottom of Steep Hill. The town had not much changed in her long absence, and there was still a marketplace there with stalls selling meat, fish and poultry. She mingled with the goodwives gathered around the mongers and stood quietly on the fringe of the crowd so she could listen to any gossip being exchanged.
The first bit of information came not from one of the women but from a stall-holder, who had his customers riveted with his eyewitness testimony of the arrest of the alekeep and his jade.
“I see’d the captain and his men comin’ up the street dragging that pair along with ’em,” he exclaimed. “And they had one of the little girls Dern was usin’ as a harlot as well, holding on right tightly to the captain’s hand she wus, near scared to death, poor little thing. She were no more than a babby, I tell you, and painted just as though she was a jezebel. Dern and that harlot he calls sister deserve to swing for what they’ve done to her.”
The crowd of women nodded as they gave voice to their agreement, and then one of them said, “My husband says he heard that one of the captain’s men nigh on killed the man he found layin’ with the child. Well done, I says, the dog deserved all he got.”
Again there were murmurs of concordance and one after another bystander chimed in with further details that had been learned, such as that the alehouse had been smashed to pieces and that Roget had given all of the customers that were in there a stern warning that if he should learn that any of them had been guilty of swiving a child they would be treated just as harshly as the miscreant that had bedded the little girl.
Lorinda was uneasy at the turn events had taken. Slowly she turned away and directed her steps back towards the hostel. She tried to hurry, even though her breathing became more laboured when she did so. She was expecting a visitor this afternoon, the only person left to her that she could trust, and did not want to be late. There was a desperate need for them to discuss what effect Dern’s arrest would have on their plans.
* * *
As Bascot and his companions, having pressed their mounts as hard as they dared after leaving Newark, were approaching Lincoln, John Glover, Mabel’s husband, had finished his day’s work and was on his way home.
A tall, sandy-haired man of a usually pleasant demeanour, he walked through Stonebow with his brow furrowed. His life had changed dramatically since he had married Mabel, and not for the better. When he had first met her last year while attending a meeting of the soap-maker’s guild in Nottingham, he had been immediately attracted to her and quickly determined that he wished to make her his wife. In accordance with that intention, he had approached her father, a man of excellent reputation, to ask if his suit would be acceptable, and her sire had reluctantly revealed that although he had raised Mabel as if she were his legitimate daughter, she had not been born in wedlock, but to a woman that had, for a while, been his leman.
“I do not know the whereabouts of Mabel’s mother,” he had added, “and nor, as far as I am aware, does my daughter. All I can tell you is that her dam, Lorinda, had another illegitimate daughter as well, an older girl, the result of her dalliance with a paramour she was involved with before I met her, and that I have seen neither of them since the day many years ago when Lorinda left me. The only other information I can give you is that Mabel came to live with me because she found the company her mother was keeping distasteful and wanted no part of it, which spoke well for her moral sense. Nonetheless, I will understand if you find Mabel’s background unsuitable. If, however, you feel you can withstand it, you have my willing permission to court her.”
John, with hindsight, now wished he had considered the older man’s words more carefully but, at the time, he had been very enamoured of Mabel and had cast any doubts he may have had aside. Later, after she had accepted his proposal and they were wed, he had asked Mabel for, and had been given, more details about where her mother had taken her after she had left Nottingham.
It was a shocking tale and had filled John with disquietude. His new wife had told him that after Lorinda had left Mabel’s father, she and her older half-sister had been taken by their mother to live with their great-grandmother, Granny Willow, near the village of Coleby.
“Although Granny was very poor, I must admit I was happy living with her,” she had said with a small smile of gratified remembrance. “She was kind to both myself and my half-sister but unfortunately, she was very old and before too many years had passed, became ill and died. It was then that my life took a turn for the worse. After Granny was buried, my mother took us to live with a man she had taken up with—an old acquaintance from her younger days, I think—and by whom she had just borne a son. The man’s name was Gar and he ran an alehouse near the village where we lived.
“It was a terrible plac
e,” Mabel had added tearfully. “Full of drunkards and thieves. My half-sister, Aliz, did not seem to mind it as much as I for she was greatly attracted to Gar’s eldest son, Dern, calling him brother even though he was none. But I hated it and wanted to leave. Our mother would never tell either Aliz or myself the identity of our fathers—I could barely remember mine, let alone recall his name—but before Granny Willow died, I overheard her and my mother speaking about the man who had sired me, mentioning his name and where he lived, so I ran away to see if I could find him, and I did.”
She had looked up at him with her dark soulful eyes and begged him to understand her dilemma. “I have never seen or spoken to my mother or either of my half-siblings from the day that I left and I promise you, have no intention of ever seeking them out.”
John, believing that the sins of a mother should not be laid on a child, had given Mabel his assurance that her past made no difference and, in accordance with her wishes, had sworn he would never reveal what she had told him to anyone else, even his mother.
And so things had stood until Mabel had, soon after their marriage, come to take up residence with him in Lincoln. A couple of weeks after they arrived, he had taken her down to the banks of the Witham to show her the soap manufactory he owned and it had been after they had left the building and were returning home that a young woman who was walking towards them on the path they were taking had given a start of recognition and hailed Mabel by name. His wife had jumped like a frightened hare and tried to run back into the manufactory, but she was not quick enough, and the woman had caught up with them.
Nervously, Mabel had told him that the stranger was her half-sister, Aliz, and John was horrified. The woman who was now related to him through his marriage was dressed, and comported herself, like a prostitute. She was wearing a tight gown of gaudy yellow silk, her hair was uncovered and her face painted. She was the very image of a harlot. As she gave Mabel a merry greeting and said how pleased she was to see her, asking where she had been since she had run away from Coleby, John felt his heart sink with shame.
Not wishing any passersby to see either him or his new wife in the company of a bawd, John had ushered them back into the manufactory and taken them into the room he used as his office, so that Mabel could give her half-sister some sort of response to her enquiry. Mabel had stammered out a reply to Aliz’s question, giving only a scant few details, saying simply that the reason she had fled all those years ago was to try to find her father, which she had accomplished, and he had kindly given her a home. She then told her half-sister that John was her husband, that they were newly married and she was now living in Lincoln.
After listening intently to the brief tale, Aliz had given a rueful laugh and said, “Well, you fared better than I, Mabel. If I had known the identity of my father when we were both young I might have done the same thing as you and gone to throw myself on his mercy.”
She then told Mabel that Gar, her mother’s lover, had died a couple of years after Mabel had left and that she and his eldest son, Dern, had come to Lincoln and opened up an alehouse. It was, she said, not far from where they were now standing, being in close proximity to the manufactory. As she spoke, a shiver of shame passed through John as he realised that the alehouse she had spoken of was one that he sometimes frequented. Although he knew there were prostitutes for hire on the premises, he gave thanks to God that he had never been tempted to avail himself of their services. If he had, it was quite possible that he would have lain with Aliz, which would have made him uncomfortably close to the sin of committing incest through bedding a close female relation of the woman he later made his wife.
Then Mabel had asked Aliz if she knew what had become of their mother and her half-sister replied that she, too, had passed away, just a short time earlier. “When Gar died, she and Garson, our half-brother, disappeared, but recently a chapman who had been in Gainsborough came to the alehouse saying he had been paid to bring me the news that our mother was dead. He said he was approached by a man in Gainsborough and asked if he would be going anywhere near Lincoln this summer and, when he said he was, asked if he would be willing, for a small payment, to deliver the message. The pedlar knew no more than that; not how she died or when, or even the name of the man who gave him the commission. It might have been Garson, but if it was, he did not tell the chapman his name.”
Aliz did not seem much grieved that their dam was dead, and neither did Mabel, who now changed the course of the conversation, saying to her half-sister that although she was very glad to see her, she would rather their relationship to each other was kept between themselves. “Old secrets are best left unshared,” she had said confidingly. “There might be unpleasant repercussions if they are repeated to all and sundry.”
Aliz’s eyes, so chillingly similar to his wife’s, had narrowed in response to Mabel’s statement and then she had given a mirthless laugh. “You have not changed, Mabel, since you were a child. You were insufferably arrogant then, and still are. But do not worry, I will not tell anyone you are kin to a prostitute—at least not yet. And never will, unless I find there is no profit in keeping it to myself.”
Her words had brought a ripple of foreboding to John that had soon proved true, for Aliz had not waited long to claim a reward for her silence and, just recently, had increased her demands to an unacceptable level. Now, as he plodded miserably up Mikelgate towards home, he rued the day he had so foolishly asked Mabel to be his wife.
Chapter 32
Bascot, Gianni and Ernulf reached the castle gate just after the evening meal had been served. Leaving their tired mounts in the hands of the grooms in the stables, they hurried into the keep.
Lady Nicolaa was seated alone on the dais—the big chamber seemed empty without the presence of her husband and the contingent of household knights he had taken with him on his hunting trip—and, having finished eating, was about to rise from her seat and retire to the solar. Roget was there, too, at one of the lower tables, and quickly followed the Templar and his companions as they hurried up to the dais to speak to the castellan.
“I can tell by the expression on your faces that the trip to Newark proved worthwhile,” Nicolaa said when they stood before her. “There has been a development here, too. Come, let us go up to the solar where we can discuss these matters in private. Roget, you will attend me as well.”
As they all followed her up the stairs in a corner turret, Roget quickly told Bascot and the others of the child prostitute he had found in the alehouse and how he had arrested Dern and the jade he called sister. “Even if they aren’t involved in these murders,” he said, “they are a pair of filthy cochons that merit a punishment très sévère.”
When they entered the solar Nicolaa invited the Templar to take a seat beside her. Once Gianni had taken out his tablet and seated himself on a stool, and Roget and Ernulf were standing in front of their mistress, Bascot related what had been discovered in Newark.
“Mabel Glover has kept her relationship to Lorinda hidden, I am certain, from her husband’s mother, Nan, and possibly from her husband as well. That in itself arouses suspicion, so we need to question Mabel as to why she has been reticent.”
Roget, at mention of John Glover, gave an exclamation of surprise. “But he was there in Dern’s alehouse, de Marins, on the evening that we went there. I know him well from seeing him about the town.”
After Roget had given a description of Glover, Bascot recalled noticing him amongst the patrons in the alehouse. The principal reason he had done so was because of a light sprinkling of ash on the customer’s tunic that suggested he was a soap-maker. At the time, the Templar had wondered, in passing, if the man might, in fact, be Nan Glover’s son. But he also remembered that the strands of hair showing beneath the rim of Glover’s velvet hat had been light in colour, a sandy hue that was nearer to blonde than auburn.
“He is too fair-haired to be the murderer, lady,” the Templar said. “Bu
t even so, it seems he has a connection with Dern. He should be interrogated along with his wife.”
The castellan issued her orders quickly. “I tire of this coil and the lies that have been told by all and sundry. Ernulf, take two men-at-arms and fetch the soap-maker and his wife back here immediately and place them in a separate cell alongside Dern and the prostitute. Roget, find Wiger and bring him in and incarcerate him as well—we are still not certain his testimony has been truthful. Keep them all apart until I instruct you as to the order in which I wish to question them. If at all possible, I intend to get to the heart of this mystery before another day has dawned.”
* * *
After some discussion Nicolaa and Bascot decided that they would interrogate John Glover first. Accordingly, when Ernulf reported that all of the suspects had been arrested and incarcerated, the castellan directed that the soap-maker be brought before her.
The serjeant escorted Glover up directly and, when he came in, his appearance was haggard; his spare frame sagged dejectedly and his complexion was pasty white.
“Do you know why you have been arrested, Master Glover?” Nicolaa asked.
“No, I do not, lady,” he responded.
“Then I will tell you. We have been searching for a woman named Lorinda in the course of our investigation into the two murders that have recently been committed, and have only just discovered that she is your wife’s mother. Are you aware of this relationship?”
“I am,” Glover said. “Mabel told me about her shortly after our marriage.”
“Since it was your own mother who gave us information enabling us to locate this woman, I am surprised that she did not seem to know of this.”
“Mabel was ashamed of her bastardy, and of the woman who bore her, so she asked me to keep it a secret, even from my own dam,” he explained.
