Bascot allowed Freyda to refill his wine cup before answering. “I think it was done as part of the story that was told to Wat. He was a willing accomplice and expected to be alive the next morning when the bodies were found. He may have been told that the purpose of the slayings were for a different reason altogether-that the girl was a harlot, perhaps, and she and Hugo were, say, trying to extort money by threatening a person of importance with revelations of the baby’s true father. It might have been that Wat was going to explain their presence in the alehouse by saying that Hugo had hired the taproom for a private meeting, and Wat had come down in the morning to find them dead. Slain by a person whose identity he did not know and had never seen. That would explain the gown, to convince Wat of the girl’s calling. As for the stab wounds, just another piece of frippery to give weight to his story, and confuse him as to the real issue.”
Hilde thought over what he had said, absently holding out her own cup to Gianni for refilling. The boy responded quickly, staring at the silver raven’s head on her cane as he handed her the replenished cup. She noticed his look and laughed.
“Would you like to touch it, boy?” she asked.
Gianni nodded solemnly and went nearer, reaching out one forefinger to touch the gleaming metal reverently. Hilde placed her old hand, gnarled and bent with age, over his young one and gently curled his fingers around the beak. “You may hold it, boy. Keep it ready for me when I have need to use it.”
Bascot thought that even the new shoes with the red beads had not brought such a look of delight to Gianni’s face. Carefully he took up the cane and sat down on the floor beside Hilde’s chair, holding the raven’s head delicately between his hands, the staff of the cane lying across his knees. Hilde looked down at him indulgently, rewarded with a smile of such sweetness from Gianni that it took Bascot by surprise.
“You are the first person, lady,” he said, “that I have ever seen him so at ease with.”
“It is my age, and my sex, Templar. I am not a threat to him and so he is comfortable.”
She returned to the matter they had been discussing. “Then you know the manner of the deaths, and how they were accomplished. But that does not bring you closer to the knowledge of who is responsible.”
Bascot made his next observation carefully. “It is probable they came upriver from some town farther south-Grantham, perhaps, or Stamford, or… Newark.”
Hilde’s eyes flashed at him. “And Conal was in Newark on that day.” She made the statement sound like an accusation.
“He was, lady,” Bascot said gently. “And has yet to give an explanation as to what he was doing there.”
“No, he has not,” Hilde replied. “But I know where he was all the same.” Bascot looked at her attentively. “Richard Camville told me, in confidence.” She sighed. “And, if I am to share information with you, as you have done with me, I must reveal what I was told.”
Bascot waited for her to continue. “Conal was insistent that he was innocent, and I believed him, but I knew that he was keeping something back, something that may have implicated someone else-his mother, perhaps. I tackled young Richard and he told me where Conal was, where he goes rather often, it seems. It is to visit a young woman.”
As Bascot started to interrupt, she held up her hand. “No, Templar, it is innocent enough, and has no connection with the murders. It seems young Conal believes himself in love and, with the silly notions of chivalry that our king’s mother has made popular with her songs and courts of love, he believes he is protecting the girl by keeping her identity a secret.”
“Is she married?” Bascot asked.
“No, but she is a cripple,” Hilde replied. “Her foot, at birth, was thickened and twisted, so that one leg is shorter than the other and she can walk only with great difficulty. Her mother died giving her life, and her father, who is a prominent goldsmith in Newark, has kept her virtually imprisoned in his house since she was born for shame at her appearance. Richard tells me that Conal met her on a day when she was sitting in her garden and, from the other side of the wall, he heard her singing. Intrigued, he climbed up to find the owner of the voice and saw her. Since then he has been meeting her secretly. Her father does not know of his attentions, only one elderly servant who is the girl’s sole companion is privy to the liaison.
“Conal believes that if he tells of the girl, she may be forced to come and give witness before the justices. If that were necessary, she would be subjected not only to her father’s wrath but to the gawking and ridiculing eyes of the world. Conal has said he would rather be found guilty of the crime than force that upon her. Richard believes it is Conal’s intention to make the girl his wife, and that he would have done so before now but that he feared the scorn that would be heaped on his mother’s head by Philip de Kyme.”
Hilde leaned back in her chair. “What follies we commit when we are young. I have told Richard to let Conal know that if he wishes to marry the girl, he has my blessing. I do not doubt that Magnus and Ailwin will be swift to give theirs also, since the girl’s father is prosperous and would likely provide a rich dower for connection with a knight’s family. Once he has got over his anger at being deceived, that is.”
Bascot digested her words, then said slowly, “As wealthy as her father may be, it cannot compare with that of Philip de Kyme. Conal has, after all, only a young girl who loves him and her old servant to prove the truth of his claim. It will be said they are lying.”
Wearily Hilde nodded her head. “I know, Templar. I know. But for your purposes, at least, I implore you to believe him.”
Bascot smiled at her. He could see that the fear of her great-nephew’s involvement in this crime had taken its toll of the old lady’s meagre strength. “I think I must do, lady. If for no other reason than, as Conal himself said, that if it had been he that had done the deed he would have merely left the bodies to rot in the greenwood.”
Hilde’s spirits revived at her companion’s acceptance of Conal’s innocence. “That is the thing that puzzles me, Templar. If the young man was truly de Kyme’s bastard son, why the haste to kill him, and for his body to be quickly found? Such elaborate trappings to despatch him must have a reason. Even if he had arrived and been received with due honour by Philip, surely it would have been easier to let fly an arrow during a hunt, or slip some potion in his wine cup one evening. Why all the involvement of Wat and the alehouse? Why the need for such speed?”
As Hilde finished speaking, Gianni, from his position on the floor, tugged timidly at her skirts. She looked down and Gianni folded his arms and rocked them back and forth, as though he held a babe and were soothing it.
Hilde laughed. “Of course, lad. You are right. Hugo’s wife was pregnant. The child could not be allowed to be born. That would have provided another heir that needed to be disposed of.” Her cornflower blue eyes flashed at Bascot. “Or Philip de Kyme knew the dead pair for impostors and did not wish to be forced to have the child of a stranger declared his grandson.”
Bascot leaned back and rubbed the leather patch over his missing eye. The more he discovered about the murders, the more complicated the matter became. It made the empty socket where his eye had been ache with frustration.
Twenty-four
Bascot sat with Hilde for a short while longer. She told him of her suspicions of Sybil and that she could find no gossip of Philip de Kyme’s having a leman.
“Incidentally,” she added. “Philip is back in Lincoln. He is staying with his nephew, Roger, who is riding in the tourney. Philip intends to come and watch him. He will not, however, go to the castle, since Sybil and Conal are there, but I understand he allows Will Scothern to visit his sister.”