Michael Jecks - The Butcher of St Peter's

‘What happened to the corpse?’ Sir Peregrine asked.

There was a sudden burst of noise. Two friars had entered, and now the older, thinner of the two was declaiming, telling some story about the canons stealing a corpse. Baldwin glanced at them, annoyed at the intrusion into his thoughts. The older man was declaring that canons were all thieves, or some such nonsense. Baldwin shook his head and listened to Saul again. The friars had best be careful, or the Dean would hear.

‘They were allowed to bury her there later,’ Saul continued. ‘The city didn’t want her corpse lying in the street for too long. And Est was digging legally, just outside the sacred space. It was the officer who was in the wrong. Silly arse. He often was.’

Baldwin noted the use of the past tense and suddenly had an insight. ‘You mean that the officer was Daniel?’

‘Of course he was. But Est wouldn’t hurt him. I doubt whether he could!’

‘Perhaps not,’ Baldwin said, but he was considering the other: the man called Henry Adyn, who had been ferociously attacked and was still crippled.

Juliana looked terrible, Agnes thought as she walked in with Cecily and Arthur later that evening. Usually so bright and fresh-faced, she averted her gaze as the three entered the little chamber, and it was only with an apparent effort that she could turn and face them. Holding out her arms, she beckoned her children to her with a sweet smile that somehow fractured into despair even as her lips broadened welcomingly.

Yet still she hardly looked at Agnes.

On occasion Agnes had been called many names. Selfish was one of Juliana’s favourites, especially when Agnes had tried to share her doubts or fears with her younger sister, but it was no surprise. Juliana had no idea what it was like to be left alone, unwanted, unloved, with no protector to guard her … Agnes had only once thought she had found such a man, and what had happened? He had been stolen from her. Snatched just when Agnes was beginning to feel that she might be able to love him. It had been a cruel, vicious thing for a sister to do. And then, more recently, Daniel had evicted her from the home he had created with Juliana. Once more Agnes had lost everything. All she had was her lover.

Well, if Juliana had not appreciated how hurtful it was to lose Daniel all those years ago, she knew what it was like now, Agnes thought to herself. Not with satisfaction, of course. No, she wouldn’t want to bring any suffering to her sister. But there was a divine aspect to this retribution.

And still Juliana avoided her eye. It was too much after spending all the long day looking after her brats!

Jordan entered his house like a storm. The door crashed behind him as he crossed through the passage to the comfortable parlour at the back where he sat on his favourite stool and gazed outside at the little garden.

This was a good house. Not too large, not pretentious, and certainly not eye-catching enough to attract unwelcome attention. Especially since that overblown bladder of shit, Daniel, was gone. Ironic that a man like him should be slaughtered in his own home, in front of his wife and children! If there had been justice, he would have died miserable and alone, a long way from comfort or compassion.

Ah, well. It had been a good few days. First he had had the fun of cutting that disloyal bitch Anne until there could be no doubt in any man’s mind that she would never again play the whore, not here in Exeter, nor anywhere else. She was damaged too badly for any pander to want to take her in; then he had had more fun with that prickle, Mick. Useless piece of bird dropping! He’d thought he could pull the wool over Jordan’s eyes? Take away one of his women and set up on his own account somewhere, would he? The devil take his soul! Jordan was no cretin; he wasn’t born yesterday! He could see when he was being lied to, and when he listened at the window and heard Mick telling her how they’d live more happily away from the life of whoring and bullying, without fear of Jordan … and they’d tried to tell him that it was her mother who was ill … fools!

And then the delight of knowing that Daniel, his most consistent and persistent enemy over all these years, was also dead.

Jordan didn’t kill wantonly, and when he did, he rarely targeted officers of the law. No, there was little point. Usually it was easier to pay them to keep them off his back — although in Daniel’s case that hadn’t worked. For some reason, he’d always been determined to get something on Jordan. He had known of Jordan’s little plans and games almost as soon as Jordan thought of them, and soon, Jordan was convinced, the bastard would have caught up with him. Having him out of the way meant that Jordan had a clear run at things now.

He heard a door-latch, and recognized his daughter Jane’s tread. Now this was what life was truly about. His little girl was his pride and his delight. It was entirely to his wife’s credit that she had helped create this child of Jordan’s seed. ‘I’m in here, sweeting!’

There was a slow, thoughtful tread in the passage, and then his little girl stood surveying him in the doorway.

It was something he never understood about women. Men and boys would look at him and see a threat, a physical danger, a man who would hurt them with as much ease as he might crush a fly; women and girls tended to look at him as though he was a large, ungainly bear, with few sensible ideas in his head, but somehow comforting for all that. And in his daughter’s face there was often an expression of calm exasperation, as though she could scarcely understand how someone so ridiculous and clumsy could have sired her.

‘Father, where have you been?’ she demanded with all the seriousness of her six years.

‘I have to earn a living, little heart,’ he said. ‘You know I have to go out on business.’

‘Do you want to know what I’ve been doing?’ she asked, and began to talk of the games she had been playing with her nurse.

There was no defence against a little girl who wanted to take her father’s time. He couldn’t quite understand the idea of men and women loving each other, but this, the affection for a child who had sprung from his own loins, was different. She was all his, and entirely perfect in this foul world. She took his hand, squirmed her way into his lap, and began to tell him, with expansive hand-movements, about her day. Her utter self-absorption was a source of amusement to him, but if she wished to describe her doings to him, that was fine so far as he was concerned.

However, while she talked, only a small part of his mind was engaged with her prattle. Most of his thoughts were fixed on the house where Daniel had died. The place where Daniel’s widow would now be living alone with her children. There was some satisfaction in knowing that the danger posed by Daniel was removed — and if Juliana threatened to accuse him, he could still kill her and her children. It would be a great deal easier to do so now that her husband was dead.

As Jordan listened with half an ear to his daughter’s chatter, Estmund was thinking of Emma.

Such a lovely smile. That was what everyone said about her when they first met her. She had that sort of childishness about her. Like a girl who was only just a woman, with the slight clumsiness that came with youth, and the beauty of that wide, appealing, open, innocent smile.

‘Oh, God! Why did You …’

No, he couldn’t frame the question. There was no justice in God’s stealing her away. The priest had tried to explain that her act was sinful, that she was forever damned for her criminal decision to take her own life, but while he spoke all Est could see was the way the smile had faded over time, just as their child faded and died in front of their eyes. Est had lost a piece of himself when his only babe had breathed her last. A scrawny little bundle of bone and tight, starved flesh, she was part of him, and when she was buried a part of Est had died at the same time. He had thought nothing could possibly be worse than that dreadful emptiness.