Michael Jecks - The Butcher of St Peter's

And a short time later prices started to rise. Food which had cost a penny rose to six, seven, even eight pennies. Just at the time when Emma needed it most, they found that food was growing too expensive for them to buy. Emma left the city each day to see what she could collect from the hedges, but that soon grew dangerous. Serfs from the vills disputed the rights of folk from the city to take from the countryside, and fights started. A man was stabbed in the early August of that year, and Emma was punched and hit across the head by a woman from a farm near Bishop’s Clyst. Estmund knew her; he’d dealt with her when she had a bullock to sell for market. She’d always been a pleasant, kindly woman, he’d thought.

There was little money coming in from his butchery, either. No money, no food, and Emma needed all she could get. The Church had helped at first. Alms were available for the needy, and Emma was plainly that, but soon even the Church had realized that it couldn’t stave off the hunger of a city on its own. And people started to die.

Emma tried to keep herself cheerful, but how can any young mother be hopeful after finding a corpse in the street? And there were so many. The elderly simply gave up, sat down and seemed to expire, like heifers struck with the poleaxe. One moment alive, the next dead. And others fell the same way. Children next, their parents last. No one was safe.

She had tried to keep her sanity. Christ’s bones, everyone had. But when all that is to be seen is the dead, anyone’s mind is affected. Bodies were everywhere. They said that half the city was dead by the end of it, and how can anybody cope with that? The cemetery couldn’t, so men, women and children were piled higgledy-piggledy in obscene heaps while the cathedral paid men to act as assistant fossors, digging pits and shoving in all the dead. Only the rats and the worms lived well.

When their child died, a little over thirteen months after the birth, it killed Emma. She died right then, in front of him. Her body still moved, her mouth opened and shut, but the light that had gleamed from her eyes … Christ Jesus, she had been so beautiful, it hurt, it hurt so much to think that she was gone! Emma just existed for the next two years. Nothing he did would bring her back. She was his own sweeting. The only woman he had ever loved, and she was snatched from him so cruelly. Just when he needed her , she was gone. Perhaps if they’d had more children, it would have given her something to live for, but they only had each other. And then, two years later, at the time which should have been Cissy’s third birthday, Est came home to find her hanging from the rafter because she couldn’t bear to live any longer, not without her child.

Why should she live when her baby was dead? She had asked him that often enough, and he never had an answer, except that God demanded lives when He was ready. Est had to believe that. Otherwise the whole city would have committed suicide just as she did.

At least Est had found a way to manage his own grief. Even after his darling Emma left him, he still had something he could do. And he would do it.

Cecily was playing with her rag doll in the yard behind the house when her father came home that day. She cocked her head to listen as he crashed angrily into the house, and she heard the plates and mugs rattling as he thumped his staff on the small sideboard and bellowed for wine.

She hunched her shoulders a little. He was cross again. He often was just now. It might mean he’d smack her if she misbehaved, and she didn’t want that again.

‘Wine! In God’s name what does a man have to do to get a little drink in this place?’

There was a hurried slap of sandalled feet through the hall, and Cecily heard the calmer tones of her mother. ‘What is it, husband?’

‘Don’t stare at me like that, woman. I’ve been working hard today, and don’t need your high-and-mighty manner. Fetch me a jug of wine.’

There was a muttered command and Cecily heard more feet. A moment later the maid appeared in the doorway, nodded to Cecily with a smile, and darted out to the little lean-to shed at the back. She reappeared carrying a leather jug filled with strong red wine and murmured, ‘Stay out here for a while; just play quietly,’ as she passed.

‘Well? What has happened today?’

‘More thefts from the cathedral, but when I try to pin it on that slippery bastard, there’s nothing I can do about it. He wasn’t there, he was playing knuckles at his house, he had witnesses to prove he was never near the cathedral … he makes me puke ! Always the first with the quick answer, always so sure of himself …’

‘Can you not accept you could be wrong? Agnes knows him and says he is a very pleasant man, and she-’

‘Tell her I’ll not have him in this house!’

‘Husband? I don’t-’

‘Never. I don’t care if Agnes is a friend of his. If she wants to entertain him, she can do so in her own house, not here.’

‘You would throw her from our home? Where would she live?’

There was a moment’s silence. ‘I would rent her a place somewhere. A decent little house.’

‘Why?’ Juliana’s voice was sharp now. Cecily was sure that she had turned her head to peer at her husband from the corner of her eye, as though her right ear was more reliable than the other. ‘Husband, why should you seek to exclude my sister from our home?’

‘It’s not her, woman! It’s him ! He’s a murderer and a thief! I’m sure of it.’

‘You have been for many years — what of it? You have never shown what he has done or how.’

‘Because-’ Daniel roared, and then his voice dropped as though he was too weary to continue this argument. ‘Because, wife, he threatened me today. He said if I didn’t leave him to continue his business, he would murder all of us: you, me, the children, all of us. I won’t have him in the house, because he could set a trap for us if he knew the place too well. Now do you understand why I don’t want him here? Do you think I’d put you and the others at risk?’

The knock at his door stirred Reginald, and he felt his face wreathe itself in a smile of delight. God’s ballocks, he’d thought she’d changed her mind! The vixen was here after all. Well, it was a relief. She had said her husband was going to be out for the night, so when she didn’t turn up Reg had assumed she was still angry with him because of the other evening. Well, he should have realized that the woman had too much of a tickle in her tail not to want him to scratch it!

His bottler had been sent away, and the other servants were in the main hall. Only a very few people knew of this other door at the back of the house, and he hurried to it before the quiet knock should disturb his son. The last thing he needed was for the lad to overhear them together, and then ask his mother what Father was doing … If Sabina ever got to hear of his nocturnal activities when she was away, all hell would break loose, and if it did, Reg didn’t want to be in the same city, let alone the same house.

It was with a feeling of satisfaction that he reached for the latch and opened the door, only to find that it was not his lover outside.

Instead her husband stood there smiling at him.

Henry winced as he shifted in his seat. The great gouge in his breast and shoulder where Daniel’s pickaxe had torn through him was always painful. Whether it was a sharp, stabbing sensation as when the wound had been inflicted, or had sunk to a dull throbbing, it was always there, and always in his mind.

Before that day, he’d been a fit, healthy man. Given a little money, he could have found a woman and married, maybe. No chance of that now, though. Daniel had robbed him of his future. All he was was a carter. A lonely, bitter carter.