Sins of Inheritance (Templar Knight Mysteries Book 9) Page 2

  She looked up at him with pleading eyes. “A neighbour came and told me that my husband is dead, but it cannot be so, captain. He only left a few hours ago to go on pilgrimage. God would not be so unkind as to allow him to be murdered on such a holy journey. There must be some mistake.”

  “I fear your neighbour told you true, Mistress Tisser,” Roget told her quietly and the Italian was surprised to see an expression of compassion etched on the captain’s fearsome countenance. “Au nom de Dieu, I tell you that the body on the wain is that of your husband.”

  “Then let me go to him, I beg of you,” the wife pleaded.

  “Not just yet,” Roget replied. “It will be better to wait until you can see him in a more private place,” he added, with a meaningful glance at the curious crowd.

  Resignedly accepting his advice, she asked tremulously how her husband had come to be dead.

  “He was arrowshot on the road south of town,” Roget told her, “most likely by outlaws.”

  As the newly-made widow broke into heart-rending sobs, Roget motioned for the young man who had been following her to come forward.

  “Take her home, Master Adam,” he instructed. “I must take your brother’s body to the castle and inform the sheriff of his death. As soon as Sir Gerard gives his permission for the remains to be removed to the death house of your parish church, I will send you word.”

  The young man nodded dumbly and led his sister-by-marriage away.

  Once they were gone, Roget signalled to the guard to drive the wain up Mikelgate towards the fortress that sat, alongside the Minster, at the top of the steep knoll on which Lincoln town was built.

  As he followed in their wake, Teramo took note of his surroundings. The buildings were all of sound structure; the people on the streets seemed content and the cobbled roadway in good repair. After mounting a sharp incline called

  Steep Street at the northern end of Mikelgate, they passed through another massive gate and then he and the men of his escort trailed behind Roget and the wain into the castle ward. The Italian looked around him, impressed with the strength and orderliness of the fortress. There were two keeps, one much older than the other, a large barracks for housing the garrison, a goodly sized stable, a blacksmith’s forge and various other buildings that would provide workplaces for craftsmen such as a blacksmith, fletchers, coopers and the like. In front of a walled area at the end which would most likely enclose a herb garden, washer-women were at work cleansing household linen in deep tubs of water. It would seem that Gerard Camville and his wife were careful taskmasters. Roget paused just inside the entrance and spoke to a grizzle-headed soldier he called Ernulf who, once he had listened to what the captain had to say, took charge of the wain and directed the guard to drive it towards a small building on the eastern side of the bail.

  Roget then turned to the emissary. “If you and you servants will dismount, a groom will attend to your horses. The sheriff is out hunting at the moment, but we will go into the hall and you can wait while I report your presence to Lady Nicolaa.”

  Teramo and his servants did as suggested and followed the captain up the steps of the forebuilding into the keep. As they entered the hall, a huge chamber with a dais at one end, a steward stepped forward.

  “I need to speak to the mistress, Eudo,” Roget told him. “There’s a dead body been found on

  Ermine Street and also there is this visitor who wishes to see her.” “Lady Nicolaa is working in her private chamber at the moment. I will send up a page to inform her of your request.”

  As Roget moved to follow the page across the hall, Eudo turned to Teramo and said, “Our midday meal is just over, but if you require it, there is ample food for your sustenance, and that of your servants.”

  At the Italian’s nod, the steward directed him to a table set on one side of the hall where food and drink would be served to him, and said that his men could help themselves to ale from one of the kegs standing at the back of the hall, and the bread and meat on platters alongside.

  ******************

  At that moment, Nicolaa de la Haye was dictating a letter to one of her clerks, a mute lad named Gianni. He had joined her household a few years before after being brought to Lincoln by a Templar knight, Bascot de Marins, who had found him in Sicily as the knight was travelling back to England after escaping imprisonment by Saracens in the Holy Land. When de Marins had come across him, Gianni had been begging on the wharves in Palermo, and suffering from severe malnutrition. The knight’s compassion had been deeply stirred by his plight and he had brought the lad, who had then been about twelve years of age, back to England with him. When de Marins had been sent to Lincoln by the Templar Order to recuperate from his ordeal, the boy was still in his company, and had remained in the castle when, some time later, Bascot resumed his duties with the Order. At that time, Gianni’s one great ambition had been to become a clerk and Nicolaa had taken him under her protection and arranged for his tutelage. To her gratification, he had applied himself assiduously and was now, almost six years later, a highly competent and valued clerk in her scriptorium.

  Both his mistress and Gianni were sad at the moment. A few weeks before, Lady Nicolaa’s elderly secretarius, John Blund, has passed away from a lingering illness that had lasted many months. His presence was sorely missed, not only for his talents, but because he had been well liked by all who knew him. Blund had been especially fond of Gianni, and had left the boy a small legacy of thirty pounds against the day, he had written in his will, ‘that the lad might have need of it’. Another experienced and more mature clerk, Lambert, had taken over Blund’s responsibilities, but he had done so with a heavy heart, for Blund’s passing had left him, as well as Nicolaa and Gianni, with a grief that was still sharp and sore.

  Nicolaa had just finished dictating the last missive when the page Eudo had sent knocked at the door, Roget close behind him. When she gave the command for the captain to enter, he went inside and told her briefly of how the body of Edward Tisser, a local draper, who had just left that morning to go on a pilgrimage to St. James of Compostela in Spain, had been found dead on Ermine Street a few miles south of Lincoln, and that a party of Italian travellers had discovered his body. The leader of the Italians, he added, was a man named Arrigo Teramo, who had been on his way to the castle to seek an audience with herself.

  “Tisser was murdered, lady, killed by arrowshot,” Roget told her.

  “Outlaws?” Nicolaa asked.

  The captain shrugged uncertainly. “Perhaps. The arrows are not finely hewn and very like the ones wolf’s heads make for themselves. But if it was outlaws then the Italian and his escort must have appeared before there was time for them to plunder his body. Tisser’s scrip was full of money, and still on his belt.”

  “What has been done with his corpse?”

  “Ernulf has taken charge of it,” Roget replied, “and will see it is placed in the empty shed alongside the cooper’s shack until Sir Gerard returns.”

  “And the relatives—they have been informed?”

  Roget nodded.

  Nicolaa took a moment to consider what she had been told. Not only was she the wife of the sheriff, but also the hereditary castellan of Lincoln castle, and the inheritor of a huge demesne left to her by her father. Diminutive and slightly plump, she was a woman of calm demeanour who oversaw all in her remit with a discerning eye. Although the murder of a townsman was properly within her husband’s bailiwick, she often deputised for him and would do so in this case until his return later that day.

  She turned to Gianni. He and the Templar knight, Bascot de Marins, had often been involved, at her behest, in seeking out the perpetrators of secret murder and the lad was no stranger to the grisly duties that must be performed whenever the corpse of a victim was found.

  “Go and examine the body, Gianni, and make note of anything you believe might be pertinent to his death. Since the traveller who found him wishes to have speech with me, I will grant his request and ask him if he has knowledge of any details he noticed at the place where Tisser was found that may also be relevant. If he does, you can add them to your record later.”

  As Gianni made haste to comply with her order, Nicolaa told the page who had come with Roget to bring Teramo to the solar. “I will see him there in a few moments,” she added.

  As the page ran off, she instructed Roget to attend her while she spoke to the Italian. “It is not likely he is involved in the draper’s death but, as a safeguard, I would have you with me while I am in his company.”

  CHAPTER 3

  When Nicolaa and Roget reached the solar, Teramo was waiting for her, the page who had brought him there still in attendance. The chamber was a large one in which the castellan usually received guests or simply retired to when she had some time for leisure; bright tapestries hung on the walls, settles, stools and small tables were scattered around the perimeter and a small fire burned in the grate at one end, for the day was not overly warm.

  Taking her usual chair—a padded one with straight back and arms—near the fire, she bid the Italian come forward and Roget took up a position beside his mistress.

  “I understand you have come to ask an audience of me,” she said to her visitor, “which I will grant, but first I would like to discuss how you came to find the dead body of one of our townsmen.”

  Teramo nodded and Nicolaa took a moment or two to regard him. He was about thirty years of age, she judged, of moderate height and build, with the fair hair of many of those from the north of his country. His features were well-favoured and he wore his chin shaven, his eyes were hazel and set under well-marked brows. He was also a man of substance, judging by the quality of his clothes. They were not ostentatious but of fine fabric and the only jewellery he wore was a
gold seal ring on the small finger of his right hand imprinted with a bar sinister and a stylised letter ‘M’.

  “I am told you came across the body just a short distance south of Lincoln. How far from town was it?” she asked.

  “About five miles, dama,” he said, “near an oak tree that appeared to have been split by lightening.” Although he used the Italian form of ‘lady’ in addressing her, his English was of almost perfect intonation.

  “I know the spot,” Nicolaa confirmed. “And you saw no one else in the vicinity?”

  “No,” he confirmed. “There was only a horse that appears to have belonged to the dead man and the woods along the road seemed empty.”

  “Were there any signs on the body, or on the ground around him, that he had been engaged in a struggle of some sort?”

  “Not a struggle, no. But there was a trail of disturbed earth and foliage leading into the trees from the road, from which I would gauge that he was arrowshot while travelling along it, whereupon his horse bolted towards the forest and he fell from the saddle near the tree. His body was still warm, so he must have been killed only a short time before we arrived.”

  “A strange occurrence it would seem,” Nicolaa opined, “for I am told that you brought in his scrip, which still contained money, so it seems unlikely outlaws were responsible for his death else they would have taken it.”

  “That would be my opinion also,” Teramo replied.

  Sensing that there was no more that the Italian could, or would tell, Nicolaa nodded. “You have my thanks for bringing the corpse to town.”

  “It was my Christian duty. I am pleased to have been of help.”

  Satisfied that any further questions that needed to be put to the visitor could wait until her husband’s return, she said, “Then we may now discuss the reason for your wish to have speech with me.”

  “I am here on behalf of Conti Berardo di Marsi, lord of Abruzzo in Italy” he said, “whom I have the honour to claim as my father, although I am only his bastardo. The mission is a matter of some delicacy,” he added, with a glance at Roget, “and I would ask if I may speak of it to you privately.”

  Nicolaa raised her eyebrows but, after a moment’s thought, nodded and motioned for Roget to retire to the back of the solar where he would be out of earshot.

  Once Roget had complied with the command, Teramo drew some papers from inside his tunic and handed them to her. “The count has been in correspondence with your king, and has obtained his permission for my journey. One of those documents is a letter from King John giving his sanction for my enquiry, the other is from the count to you, and is an authorisation of my credentials as his representative.”

  Nicolaa scanned both pieces of parchment, gritting her teeth as she did so. How like John to spring this on her without any word of warning. She had once been his staunch supporter but after recently becoming involved against her own will in one of his subversive machinations, relations between them had become strained. He had known this unannounced visit by an emissary representing a member of the Italian nobility would take her by surprise and it was his way of reminding her that he was displeased with her. Quelling the outrage that rose in her breast against the king, she nonetheless spoke curtly.

  “Although this letter from the count verifies your identity, it does not state the reason he has sent you. I have many matters demanding my attention and the time I can spare you is short. Will you please explain his intention without any further delay?”

  There was a note of steel in her voice that made the Italian aware she was angry and he knew he would have to tread carefully if he was to gain her sanction for his embassy.

  Making himself appear contrite, he apologized. “Mi dispiace, dama. I will try to be brief. My visit here concerns a five year old boy who went missing in Palermo in Sicily twelve years ago and was never found. His father, Rinaldo di Marsi, is the count’s cousin and recently information has surfaced indicating that the boy may have been brought to England and is now a servant in your household. If you will give your permission, I have been sent by the count to interview the boy and, if it proves he is indeed the child, whose name is Umberto, to take him back to the loving bosom of his family.”

  Startlement coursed through Nicolaa. There could be no doubt he was speaking of Gianni as being the missing boy. Palermo was the Sicilian port where the Templar knight, Bascot de Marins, had found Gianni begging on the wharves. The lad did not have any memory of his early years, or of any parent, not even a mother, nor did he recall if he had ever been christened with a name or how old he was, and they had assumed he had been born to a poor woman, or a prostitute, who had been forced to abandon him when he was very young. After he had learned to convey his speech by gestures, he had communicated to Bascot that all that he could recall of his early life was being among the other urchins on the wharves. A child’s memory of such early years is always sketchy, and the trauma of such a tragedy as being caught in a burning building might make it even more so. They had calculated Gianni’s age by the maturity of his body and estimated him to be about twelve years old at the time de Marins had rescued him, which would fit with the age that this missing son of this Italian noble would be now. If he was, in truth, of high birth, she would be pleased for him, but was not about to accept the possibility out of hand until she had proof, especially since the king seemed to be involved in the affair, if only peripherally. Gianni’s safekeeping had been in her trust since de Marins had left him in the castle when he rejoined the Templar Order and even though he was now nearly grown to manhood, she still took the responsibility seriously.

  She decided to make her response cautious. “An intriguing situation, and one of which I would like to hear more details.”

  “Which I am most willing to give you, dama,” Teramo replied, and Nicolaa did not fail to notice the triumphant gleam in his eye for having succeeded in gaining her undivided attention. She decided to ignore it, however, and gave him a nod to continue.

  “At the time of Umberto’s disappearance, his father Rinaldo, a widower, had recently remarried. His young bride was a Sicilian and had, as part of her marriage portion, brought Rinaldo some land in the interior of the island. Wishing to inspect the property and ensure it was being properly maintained, Rinaldo decided to take a trip to Sicily from his home in Italy for that purpose, taking his new wife and Umberto with him. The ship they travelled on docked at Palermo and it was Rinaldo’s intent, before continuing the journey inland, to spend a few days visiting a very good friend of his, whose residence was located in the town.

  “All went well for a day or two and then, unfortunately, a fire started in one of the rooms in the friend’s house, necessitating that everyone leave while it was extinguished. Once the building was made safe, Umberto was nowhere to be found. A search was made, of course, of the town and surrounding area, and throughout Sicily for a long time afterwards, but to no avail, and Rinaldo was heartbroken. He has never given up hope, however, that his son is still alive, so when he was told the information about your servant, he immediately contacted the count and asked for an emissary to be sent to England in order to determine the truth of the matter.”

  “And the information that led the boy’s father to believe his son is in England—what was it?” Nicolaa asked.

  “It came to Rinaldo purely by chance, dama, through the wife of another member of the di Marsi family. She has a daughter that was born deaf and was told of a book containing gestures that might be helpful for the girl to use to communicate with others and made a great effort to obtain a copy of it, which she eventually did. When she received the book she found that it was dedicated to yourself, and that it had been compiled by one of your clerks with the assistance of a servant in your retinue.”

  Nicolaa remembered the book. Lambert had been the compiler, under the direction of John Blund, who had, by means of drawings with written text underneath, recorded all of the gestures that the Templar and Gianni had devised to speak to each other before the boy had learned to read and write. The purpose of the book had been to aid the son of a relative of the wife of Nicolaa’s son, who had a harelip and could not speak clearly enough to communicate with other people. It had proved to be a useful guide, not only for those who suffered from muteness, as Gianni did, or deformities that inhibited speech, but also for those who were born deaf, a much more common disability. Once the existence of the book became known, a few copies had been requested by pedants and other nobles in the kingdom, to use for instruction in teaching either pupils or family members with similar problems. It was quite possible that a copy had made its way to Italy.