It was late in the evening by the time she was ready to retire, and she was exhausted. She thanked God that the Templar was there to give his assistance, for her ailment and the events of the day had drained much of her energy. But it was necessary that Gerard be informed of what had passed, and so before she went to her bedchamber, she penned a letter to her husband in London in order that it could be sent with a messenger early the following morning. She found that the words she needed to write did not come easily to her mind; she knew how much value Gerard had placed on Simon of Haukwell, both as a man and a knight, and that her husband’s explosive temper would erupt when he learned the manner of Simon’s death. It would be best for Gosbert if Gerard was many miles from Lincoln when he was given the sad news.
Five
Although the poisoner was elated by the successful effect of the poison, his excitement was tinged with disappointment. It had been a simple task to place the adulterated pot of honey in the kitchen, but the risk he had taken to ensure that Nicolaa de la Haye would be his first victim had failed.
He consoled himself with remembrance of the fearful agitation among the castle household after the discovery of the poison; the secret power he held over them all had given him a heady rush of exhilaration. It would be accelerated even further when the next victims fell prey to his venom. He looked forward to it with eager anticipation.
Six
The next morning Bascot was awake before Prime and lay on his pallet considering the events of the previous day. Before retiring to their chamber at the top of the old keep, he and Gianni had visited the kitchen, a long, cavernous building constructed mostly of stone and attached to the keep by a covered wooden walkway. The Templar had wanted to see for himself how easy it would be to access the shelf on which the poisoned honey pot had been placed. Even though it had been late in the day, the kitchen was full of activity as scullions scraped and scoured cooking utensils and pared and chopped vegetables in readiness for the next day. The air was redolent with the lingering aroma of roasting meat and the pungent tang of onion.
There were three large fireplaces set in one wall, their flames damped down to rest overnight, with vertical rows of ovens set in niches between each. Huge baskets of turnips, parsnips and carrots were piled on the floor, and bunches of herbs dangled from the ceiling. Deep shelves of considerable length lined almost every wall and were laid with bowls of eggs and grated cheese rinds as well as a number of earthenware jars filled with all manner of substances from grease drippings to leftover gravy. The room was brightly lit, not only by the radiance of the fires, but also by candles fitted into sconces fastened into the wall between the shelves.
Gosbert’s assistant, Eric, was making bread, kneading dough in a huge bowl, when Bascot and Gianni entered. Some loaves had already been laid out to rise overnight; a few were of fine white manchet bread, which was served to those of higher rank, while the rest, and the most numerous, were made from the coarse-grained flour of barley or rye. Eric quickly left his task when Bascot came in, and he asked the Templar how he could be of assistance.
The shelves that had held the honey pots before Lady Nicolaa had ordered them put into the locked storeroom were near the back, alongside a small cupboard that Eric told him was filled with spices. It was quickly apparent that, as Gosbert had said, access to the honey pots would have been relatively easy; the shelves were out in the open and within reach of all.
Bascot asked the assistant cook how many jars of honey the shelf had contained when the cook had made the marchpane. “Perhaps a dozen altogether,” Eric replied, “but I think there were only two of the finest sort.”
“And both of those came from the Nettleham apiary?”
“Yes. We have used up all of those from the Haye apiary and are awaiting a delivery of more,” Eric explained. “We use a great quantity of honey throughout the year, Sir Bascot. There is not enough room to store it all in the kitchen, so Lady Nicolaa’s beekeeper sends further supplies four or five times a year, as it is required.”
“But the Nettleham honey-it is delivered all at once, in the autumn?”
Eric nodded. Bascot went on to ask what was done with the pots once they were empty, and Eric told him that all that were not chipped or cracked were cleansed and placed in a shed in the bail for collection so they could be used for refilling. It would be a simple matter, Bascot thought, to extract one of the empty pots from the shed, fill it with tainted honey and then bring it into the kitchen and exchange it for a pot whose contents were pure.
As he lay in the darkness and reviewed all that he had seen, the Templar considered the likelihood of Eric being the one who had placed the poison in the jar. Was the assistant covetous of Gosbert’s position and, wishing to discredit the cook, had tainted the honey in order to pave the way for his own promotion? If so, it could be that Eric had not realised the strength of the poison and had thought it would only cause a slight illness and, as Martin had suggested, could imply that the cook’s management of the kitchen was so dilatory that food was becoming contaminated through slovenliness. Or was the assistant perhaps resentful of Gosbert’s overbearing manner and had he poisoned the honey in a malicious response to a reprimand he had received?
Bascot sighed and turned on his pallet. Such speculation was useless. There could be a myriad of reasons for this crime, ranging from a desire to extract vengeance for some unknown enmity to something as simple as finding enjoyment in malicious mischief, and a plenitude of people who had the opportunity to do it. He did not relish the thought of interrogating every one of the more than twenty scullions who worked in the kitchen, as well as all of the servants who waited on the tables in the hall, but it might prove to be the only way of finding out if any had seen or heard something that was pertinent.
He recalled the previous times he had been involved in discovering the identity of a secret murderer. As on those occasions, he was outraged by the cowardly stealth of the crime. Ralf, a young man joyfully anticipating marriage to his sweetheart, dead before he had been able to look on the face of the girl he loved one last time. And Haukwell, a knight deserving of meeting death cleanly, with a sword in his hand, taken from life by an enemy that did not have the courage to face him. Bascot knew that the anger he felt would be a detriment to clarity of thought and resolutely put his wrath aside, deciding to replace it with the solace of prayer.
He began a repetition of the prayer of a paternoster, holding the words steadily before him in his mind’s eye. It was a practice that all Templars were encouraged to follow as a means of strengthening their resolve, and it was one that Bascot had often used, especially when he had been a captive of the Saracens in the Holy Land. On the day that an infidel lord had ordered his eye to be put out with a hot poker, he had used the prayer to sustain him through the pain and humiliation of the ordeal, focusing especially on the passage that asked God for deliverance from evil. His supplication had been answered when he had been given the opportunity to escape from his heathen captors. Now he ended each repetition of the litany with a heartfelt plea for heavenly aid in discovering the identity of the poisoner and hoped that, once again, God would look on his appeal with favour. The exercise brought him comfort, and slowly he felt his tense muscles relax.
Sleep was just beginning to reclaim him when he heard Gianni stir on his pallet and the rustle that accompanied the boy as he rose and used the chamber pot in the corner of the room to relieve himself. Dawn was beginning to show its light through the one small casement the room possessed, and Bascot decided to get up. If he was going to get to the bottom of this matter, there was a lot of work ahead of him and no time for delay. Pushing into place the leather patch that covered his missing right eye, he pulled on his boots and shoved his arms into the padded gambeson he had discarded before retiring. Telling Gianni to follow him, he had just left the chamber and was standing at the top of the stairs leading down to the bail when he heard one of the gatewards blow his horn three times, the alarm that signalled an emergency.