Michael Jecks: The Butcher of St Peter's

He could not help himself. His gaze was drawn to Agnes, and he caught a glimpse of her curled lip just as she looked away. Hard-hearted bitch! Even today she had to watch and sneer. She had a heart frozen to ice.

Looking away, he found himself meeting the cynical stare of Jordan le Bolle, and he gritted his teeth. If he could, he would run up to the son of a hog and beat him. But today of all days he could do nothing. He must endure, while the priests mumbled their words over Jordan’s mother-in-law’s body in the hurried service that was so commonplace now, with so many dying of starvation. It was a disgrace that the priests should let le Bolle in before Juliana’s and Agnes’s father. He at least had been honourable.

Later, walking out through the doors, he felt contempt for all priests. Supercilious and smug, they never had to work. There was nothing that could worry them. Whatever happened, they took their money from rich and poor alike, and were never touched by the disasters which struck down others. Even now, when the folk here in Exeter were starving and the famine was starting to bite into even the wealthier families, the vicars and the canons in their cathedral close were safe enough. They had their massive grain stores outside the city, all of them with food enough to keep them alive for many long months. Not that there would be much point. Daniel gazed about him sombrely. What would be the purpose of St Peter’s Cathedral Church and all these canons, vicars, annuellars and servants if all the city’s souls were dead? There was little sense in having a massive new cathedral church erected if all the people for whom it had been designed, to entice them inside, were already buried out side.

The death rate was now massively greater than it had been at the start. God’s bones, but if more people started to die, Daniel would have to consider hiring another clerk to help him in his work. A part of his duties was to see to the wills of the dead and already he had run up a profit of eleven shillings in the last six weeks, a massive sum of money.

As he pulled his hat over his head, he noticed the cart before the entrance and scowled at it. Mazeline’s mother had given up a while ago. A little good broth and some pasties would have saved her, but of course Jordan le Bolle couldn’t provide them, could he? Daniel sneered to himself. No, the wealthiest thief in the city couldn’t provide the food which his mother-in-law desperately needed, because that would expose his life for the sham it was. He lived frugally as a lowly tavern-keeper, and now he had no guests people would soon start to comment if they found him with apparently more money than he should have. Since even bread had risen in price to six times its value at the start of the famine, all men were looking to their cash ever more carefully. This was the second year of hardship. Last year had seen the beginnings of the disaster, when the crops failed in the torrential downpours, but matters had grown much worse.

Everything was affected. Food cost so much that many were incapable of affording it. Although the King and others had tried to enforce a strict control on pricing, it was pointless and had to be dropped. It was contrary to all reason to enforce low prices. Every man knew food could only be grown when God willed it. He alone decided the fruitfulness of the earth and the quality of the returns, and if He decided to make men suffer because of the sterility of the harvest, that was His choice. And price depended upon that capricious will, not the will of an English king.

So many had died of starvation, it was a miracle that there were not more outbreaks of violence. The Trailbaston gangs were not so numerous as once they had been, and it appeared that the countryside was reverting to calmness. The peasants would sometimes plead for food at the wayside when there was nothing to fill their bellies, and the sight of the children at their sides was pitiable, but it was God’s way to remind men every so often of their feebleness compared with His power.

There had been cases of sporadic violence, mostly outside the city. Often it had been between the gangs of felons who brought food into the city slyly to avoid duties. They met on the highway and set about each other with enthusiasm, beating their rivals about the heads and causing several deaths. Others were killed, too; notably travellers wandering about the place with purses that bulged intriguingly. They were ripe for the plucking, and all too many of them were fleeced when they reached the city if they hadn’t been already. Several were murdered, especially if they had some spare food about them. Today food was more valuable than mere money.

Daniel hated such men with a vengeance. He had strong ideas who they were, too. It was obscene that a man like Jordan le Bolle should be treated as an equal. He should have been excluded from the cathedral church. A man like him, responsible for fleecing so many, robbing some, perhaps even killing them, and yet he could join a church ceremony like any decent man. It was revolting.

The funeral party was walking past to leave. He stood aside, one hand on his wife’s elbow, as they strode to the door. First to go was Mazeline with her husband and her cousin, all of them pulling their hoods over their heads in preparation. Then came the men with the body on its bier. As they did so, Daniel curled his lip.

‘They’ll never starve, those two.’

‘Still hunting that stag?’ Agnes said sweetly. ‘Brother, perhaps you should seek more certain quarry than one which may always outrun you.’

Daniel glanced at her briefly, and took delight in reflecting that he had married the other sister, but still, as he walked away with Juliana on his arm, he knew no ease or comfort.

The sight of that felon, le Bolle, had soured an already doleful day. The weather was the perfect match for his temper: grim, grey, and relentless. The rain fell in an unending downpour which, while not being so earnest as to justify the use of a word like ‘torrent’, was so unremitting that it seemed to scour the soul. One week — no, even a single day — of rain now was enough to turn a man’s mood to rage, but this, this was torment on a vast scale. It tortured everyone. When had he last witnessed a day without rain? Christ’s blood, he didn’t know. St Peter himself could hardly be expected to know. Had there been a dry day this year?

Later, after the old man had been buried and he was walking round the conduit, he saw the two shadowy figures. They were crouched low, and as he took in the scene he could see what was happening. Two men, a well-wrapped corpse at their side, the cheap fabric of the winding-sheet soaking up the red moisture from the soil on which it lay, were digging a fresh pit for the body.

‘Sweet Mother of God,’ he swore, and left his wife with the mourners as he made his way across the rough ground.

Every step seemed to dash water in every direction, much of it leaping up and splashing his shins. The red liquid, stained by the soil around here, dripped like diluted blood, and for an instant he was revolted by the fancy and stopped.

All this space about the cathedral was the cemetery for the people of this city, and he suddenly had a foul thought that this redness had not leached from the earth, but was in fact blood, the blood of all the dead bodies which lay beneath his feet. The grass was flattened, rough, chewed by a hundred horses; trampled by the traders who haggled here, the children who played hereabout, and the boots of the men and women who came to see their beloved relatives interred. He took another step, and the rich soil threw up another gout of the scarlet liquid.

He was an officer of the law, not some superstitious fool of a peasant from Exmouth, he told himself sternly, and continued.