A Deadly Penance tk-6

by Maureen Ash

  Richard leaned back in his chair. “As interesting as all this is, Wharton, I cannot see what connection it has to his murder.”

  “The tale, in itself, would have none,” Wharton said. “It is what Aubrey made of it that has brought me here. I wish now that I had kept the secret hidden from him. He made much of the ring and the mention of Winchester in the letter, for around the date of his conception, which would have been during the month of April, 1176, the late King Richard, then a prince, was in the town at a meeting with his father, King Henry.”

  Wharton paused to allow everyone to cast their minds back to that year and remember how King Henry had, in response to the constant plotting of rebellion by his wife and recalcitrant sons, imprisoned his queen, Eleanor, at Salisbury in 1174. Although she had been kept in close confinement by her gaolers, her incarceration was not unduly harsh and, two years later, in 1176-the year of which Wharton was speaking-she had been taken to Winchester at Eastertide for a reconciliatory meeting between the son and his father. Prince Richard had been amenable to the conclave, for he hoped, with his mother’s help, to persuade his father to give him assistance in controlling the rebellious nobles in his duchy of Aquitaine, a part of the territory Eleanor had inherited from her own father and which she had persuaded Henry to cede to their son a few years before.

  Once assured that all of his listeners recalled the circumstances of which he was speaking, Wharton continued his tale. “Aubrey cobbled the information together in a most unlikely fashion. He said the coincidence of the prince being in Winchester at the time of his conception, coupled with the fact that my brother had been in his service, could lead to no other conclusion than that his father had been Lionheart himself. The ring, he said, confirmed this because it bore a design that was often used on his badge, both while he was a prince and when he later became king.”

  “A rather dramatic summation,” Richard opined sceptically. “The ring could have belonged to any of the nobles in Lionheart’s retinue. Even when a prince, he was known to be generous in rewarding his followers, and remained so after he took the throne. To give such a token would not have been unusual. And your brother’s mention of loyalty could have meant that due to friendship with a fellow knight.”

  “That is exactly what I tried to explain to Aubrey,” Wharton agreed eagerly, “but he would not listen. Although he was intelligent, he could be rather inflexible in his opinions.”

  Alinor gave a snort of derision. “You understate it, Wharton. Tercel was smug and self-opinionated.” The knight looked abashed and made no comment in response.

  “How long was your brother in Lionheart’s service?” Richard asked.

  “Almost three years,” Wharton replied, “and had accompanied the prince to Winchester in 1176. I was surprised to see my brother when he turned up with Aubrey, for I had believed him to have returned to Aquitaine, but he said he had been sent to England with messages for Queen Eleanor and was due to return to his duties across the Narrow Sea, hence the urgent need for my help.”

  The knight leaned forward now, his reticence forgotten. “When I saw how Aubrey reacted to the information contained in Lionel’s letter, I tried to dissuade him from his notion. I told him that his father was most likely another knight, like my brother, in Lionheart’s service, one who was my brother’s friend and had asked for his help, but Aubrey would have none of it. His father must have been the prince, he said, of that he was certain, and the only way he could prove it was to find the woman who had been his mother. When I taxed him with how he proposed to do that, he said he would go to Lincoln as soon as opportunity provided and seek her out. I thought he would have no chance to do so while in Dickon’s service and would soon forget his ridiculous notion, but I did not foresee that Lady Petronille would subsequently decide to travel to Lincoln and that Aubrey would be included in her retinue.”

  “He practically begged my father to come with us,” Alinor said angrily. “Now we know the reason why.”

  Richard shrugged. “Well, I cannot see what Tercel hoped to gain by proving the prince was his sire or how he would be considered a threat if he managed to do so. Lionheart acknowledged a couple of bastard sons, both of them in lands he held on the continent, but only one of them, Philip of Cognac, benefitted by his acknowledgement, for he was given an heiress to wed. Even so, all Cognac received on the death of his father was one mark, which King John, in accordance with his brother’s will, awarded him. Tercel could hardly have expected any financial reward.”

  “I think his interest was more in confirming that he was of royal blood than in the expectation of material gain,” Wharton said. “He became obsessed with the idea and believed it would enhance his stature in society. That aim, even though self-serving, would have been innocent enough, but in order to achieve his goal, he would need

  …” Wharton, reluctant to speak aloud the implication, let his words trail off.

  “To discover the identity of his mother and, in so doing, reveal the fact that she had borne an illegitimate child before her marriage,” Bascot finished for him.

  Nicolaa nodded in agreement as the Templar continued. “Whoever Tercel’s father was, his mother has now been married-if she still lives-for twenty-six years, her shameful secret hidden from all the world. No matter whether her former lover was king, merchant or peasant, to have such knowledge bruited abroad would create a terrible scandal, one that would affect not only her, but those with whom she has since become closely connected, such as her husband and any legitimate children she has borne since her marriage. Such a revelation would be disastrous.”

  A silence fell over the company as they realised the import of Bascot’s words, all of them reluctant to speak aloud the inescapable conclusion they led to. Filicide-to kill one’s own child-was the most dreadful of crimes, and none of them wished to admit that such a thing could have happened within Lincoln’s society.

  It was Petronille who, as understanding came to her, broke the silence. Her voice trembling with disbelief, the words burst from her, “Surely you are not insinuating that his mother is responsible for Tercel’s death? Such an evil is impossible to contemplate.”

  Wharton was abashed by her obvious distress. He had not wanted to speak of his fear in front of a woman still grieving for her recently dead son, but there had been no other recourse.

  Nicolaa leaned forward and laid a hand on her sister’s arm. “Please do not upset yourself, Petra. It may not have been the mother herself who committed the murder, but someone who wishes to protect her. A family member who was privy to her secret, perhaps, and did not wish to see her good name sullied, or even her husband who, for all we know, could have later discovered her transgression.”

  “Even so,” Petronille said, her face ashen, “the mother would have to be complicit. I cannot believe there exists any woman who would willingly countenance such a terrible act.”

  “I agree, Petra; most women would not,” Nicolaa said softy, “but not all females are imbued with a maternal instinct, as history tells us well enough. Did not Medea and Jocasta in Ancient Greece consent to the slaying of their offspring? And the women of Rome, in bygone days, allow unwanted babies to be left on the hillside to die of exposure?”

  “But those were not Christian women,” Petronille objected fiercely.

  “Nonetheless, they were mothers,” Nicolaa reminded her gently. “If we are to apprehend the murderer, we must give due consideration to every possible motive, no matter how distasteful.”

  A tear rolled down Petronille’s cheek and she bowed her head. Finally, with some reluctance, she made a response. “I suppose you are right, sister. The devil lurks in the most unexpected of places. He can taint even a love that should be sacrosanct, that of a mother for her child.”

  Rising from her chair, she dashed the tears from her eyes, and then faced the others. “I do not think my continued presence here will be of assistance to the investigation,” she said, her voice unsteady. “Indeed, at the moment, I thi
nk it would be detrimental. If you will excuse me, Nicolaa, I will go to the chapel and offer up prayers for the soul of my dead servant. Alinor may remain if she so wishes and, if there are any decisions to be made, can make them on my behalf.”

  Silently, Richard rose and accompanied his aunt to the door. Once Petronille had left the room, he returned to his seat, his face like a thundercloud. “I hope, for my aunt’s sake, that the mother was not involved in the death but, if she was, I will do my utmost to see her punished to the fullest extent of the law.”

  Fifteen

  At Richard’s angry pronouncement, Wharton was contrite. “Dickon was right. I should have told him of Aubrey’s delusion. None of this would have happened if I had done so.”

  “That is not necessarily so,” Nicolaa said tartly. “If he was as adamant as you say about finding his mother, it would not have been long before he found a way to come to Lincoln and look for her. And if that search was the cause of his murder, then he would still be dead, whether he was Dickon’s retainer or not. If any blame can be attached to you, Wharton, it is for telling him the contents of your brother’s letter in the first place. It would have been far better to have left him in ignorance, content with the fictitious mother and father you provided him with so many years ago.”

  It was unlike the castellan to express herself in such a harsh manner. Bascot thought Petronille’s distress had probably fuelled her angry words. Even though their natures were diverse, the two sisters were close and, he surmised, had been so ever since their mother had died when they were both quite young. None of the company made any response to Nicolaa’s acerbic observation. Stephen Wharton, chastened, looked down into the depths of his wine cup in embarrassment and Alinor, for once, was silent, her lips compressed together as she nodded in agreement with her aunt.

  Richard was the first to move. He leaned forward and replenished his mother’s wine cup and Nicolaa, after taking a brief sip and setting her mouth in a determined line, said, “Tercel’s quest would have been a monumental one. There are above seven thousand people in Lincoln, and over a third of them are women. If we are to consider only those of the correct age, that still leaves approximately a thousand who could be considered suitable.”

  She looked around the company. “That is a formidable number among which to search for a woman whose name and appearance are not known, and it is highly unlikely that my sister’s servant-who was unfamiliar with Lincoln and had been here only a few weeks-would have been successful. I think we must ask ourselves if there is any merit in following this trail, or if it may prove to be merely a waste of time.”

  “I agree that Tercel’s enquiries might have been futile, lady,” Bascot said, “but there is always the chance that the very act of his asking questions about his mother may have stirred up alarm in someone who knew her identity. Even if he did not find her, his searching may have precipitated his murder.”

  Nicolaa regarded the Templar for a moment and then said, “You could be right, de Marins. But to try and trace his movements and see if we can discover, among the many people he must have spoken to, which conversation prompted his death, will surely prove impossible.”

  “Such a detailed search might not be necessary, lady,” Bascot said, “if we limit the parameters within which we make it, and we can do that by taking into consideration why it was that he was killed here in the bail and, more specifically, on a night when you had a large number of guests in the hall. Unless it was to take advantage of the distraction your visitors provided, it must have been because this was the only occasion when the murderer was in close enough proximity to Tercel to slay him. Should that be so, we can exclude your retainers, and those of Lady Petronille. All of them are normally in the ward and could have killed him at any time during his stay in the castle. We are then left with the visitors who were here throughout that evening. Were there any females among the guests that are of the right age to be his mother?”

  Nicolaa took a sip of her wine and mentally reviewed the women who had been in the hall on that night. “There were a dozen guild leaders in the company and, with the exception of Thomas Wickson, all were accompanied by their wives. Over the last few months, and through encouraging them to contribute to the foundling home, I have come to know all of them more familiarly than would be my normal custom. Discounting Clarice Adgate because of her youth, the other ten are all of mature years. Five of them, to my certain knowledge, have either been married to their spouses far too long to be considered a candidate, or are widows who have married for a second time but were wed to their first husbands some time before the date of Tercel’s conception. Of the remaining five, two of these, during the course of conversation, told me they were born and bred in Lincoln, so they could not have come from Winchester. We are then left with three whose backgrounds I am not aware of-one is the wife of the head of the goldsmith’s guild, the second that of the draper’s and the last, the sealsmith’s.”

  “Tercel’s mother may have died in the interim since his birth,” Bascot said. “But that does not mean that her husband, if he knew the secret, would not want to protect her memory and, in doing so, his own reputation. You mentioned that some of the guild leaders have been married twice-what of their first wives? Could any of them have come from the south of England?”

  “A good point,” Richard conceded. “Adgate was married before. He told me so when I was questioning him about his current wife’s infidelity.”

  “And at least two of the others were, the guild leader of the wine merchants and the man who is head of the baker’s league,” Nicolaa confirmed, and then paused. She shook her head at the proliferation of daunting possibilities but, as the Templar had said, they had decided to investigate only a small number of people. Good fortune may be with them. She turned to Wharton. “Tercel was, according to you, Stephen, born in January of 1177?”

  “That is so,” the knight confirmed. “He was only a few weeks old when he was brought to me a few weeks after Christ’s Mass exactly twenty-six years ago.”

  “Then we are looking for a marriage that must have taken place later in that year or possibly the one after. And for a bride that came from Winchester. But if I summon all of the likely candidates to the castle and the guilty party is among them, our questions about the date of their marriage and the place from whence the wife came will give alert to our suspicions.”

  “I agree, lady,” Bascot said. “It is a task that must be undertaken very carefully and not in a confrontational manner.”

  “Ernulf may be able to help,” Nicolaa said musingly. “He was born in Lincoln and knows most of the townsfolk. He also has a prodigious memory. It is quite possible he will know the details we seek.”

  Bascot nodded. “He has helped me before with his knowledge. I shall speak to him directly. If there are any of whom he is not certain, we can look more closely into their background.”

  Alinor now leaned forward with a suggestion of her own. “It might be helpful if one of us had another word with Mistress Adgate,” she said. “It is possible that Tercel, during his trysts with her, may have asked about, or mentioned, Adgate’s first wife, or one of the other women at the feast, especially if he was trying to garner information about a particular individual. If he did, it might point our way more quickly.”

  As the others considered her proposal, Alinor added, “I would be more than willing to interview her, Aunt, and…” She paused and gave her cousin a measuring glance. “… perhaps it might be just as well if Richard were present. The furrier’s wife appears receptive to a handsome face and figure; mayhap his company will prove an aid to her memory.”

  Alinor’s jocular remark lifted, if only by a fraction, the gloom that had spread over them all since the body had been found. Although the castellan’s handsome son was to be wed in a few months time, Richard had long had the reputation of being a womanizer and, as his mother and cousin were only too well aware, was a consistently successful one.

  “I agree with Alino
r’s suggestion, Mother,” Richard proclaimed and then added with mock seriousness, “and, in the hope that my capabilities will fulfill her high expectations, will gladly give her any assistance she requires in her interview with Mistress Adgate.”

  “I am quite certain your charm will not fail me, Cousin,” Alinor replied dryly, “for if she should prove impervious to it, she will be the first woman who has ever done so.”

  After the company left to pursue their various lines of enquiry and Stephen Wharton went to make arrangements for his return to Stamford the next day, Nicolaa was left alone in the solar. After a few moments’ reflection, she sent a servant to summon her secretary and went to her private chamber to await his arrival. Pouring herself a cup of cider, she paced the length of the room with the goblet in her hand, pondering whether or not to apprise King John of the possibility that his deceased brother might have spawned another bastard son. John, since his coronation, had been plagued by the rebellious actions of a legitimate nephew, Arthur of Brittany, the posthumous son of another Plantagenet brother, Geoffrey. Many of the king’s subjects felt that Arthur should have been given the crown instead of John, and the dissention had been a thorn in his side for some time, especially since Philip, the king of France, had espoused Arthur’s cause and encouraged him to take up arms against his royal uncle. Only last year, Arthur had attempted to seize his grandmother, the widowed Queen Eleanor, from her castle at Mirabeau and, had John not ridden valiantly to his mother’s rescue, would have held Eleanor as a hostage against his claim for the English crown. To advise the king that he may have had yet another close relative, albeit an illegitimate one, and that he had been murdered, might not be welcome news to John, but given the monarch’s suspicious nature, may be the most advisable course of action.

  Nicolaa had always been open and honest with the king and she knew that he had never doubted her loyalty. But her husband, Gerard, on the other hand, was not viewed in such a favourable light. Many years ago, while Lionheart was on the throne, Gerard had formed an alliance with John in an act of rebellion against the monarch but, once the brief insurgence was over, their reluctant friendship had turned rancorous. If she did not apprise John of this latest development and he heard of it from another source, it could be that he would view the matter as an aborted attempt at subversion by Gerard. She decided that candour, as it had always been, would be prudent, and when her secretary entered the chamber a few moments later, told him that she wished to dictate a letter that was to be despatched to the monarch at his castle in Falaise, Normandy, where Arthur was being held prisoner. After that, she told him, she would also compose one for him to send to Gerard in London. Just in case there were any repercussions from the king, it was best that her husband be forewarned.