Michael Jecks - The Butcher of St Peter's

He could be followed. The first man the hue and cry had sought when Daniel was found in there had been Estmund. Whenever a man was found inside another’s house, everyone immediately thought of Estmund. Who else, when the poor devil was known to wander into other men’s homes all the time?

Nobody had ever felt threatened by the man. There was no need to persecute him further. Why hurt him? There was no evil in him. To think that he could have drawn a knife on Daniel was madness. It was as stupid as thinking that Henry himself could have overwhelmed the man.

But everyone wanted to find the felon quickly, and people remembered Est wandering in their homes. A man had to be sensible. That was why Henry had gone to Est first thing, as soon as news of Daniel’s death was spoken in the street. He had hidden his old friend in a small load of filth and taken him out of the city in his cart. No one was going to search for a man among the manure. Est had escaped, and hopefully even now he was secure up in the Duryard.

Henry missed him. Just now he could do with a friend to talk to, but there was no one else he wholly trusted. Ach! What was the point? He’d go home. He could take a cut through Barber’s Alley, a little passage that led behind Cook’s Row a couple of lanes behind Daniel’s old place, and get home to Pruste Street that way.

His legs felt a little wobbly. They often did, since the day of the attack, but today they were more so. Perhaps he’d had a little too much ale in the Rache. He wasn’t so young as he had been. The effect of the ale was to deaden the pain a little, though, and he was less aware of the dull aches in his shoulder and back than usual.

The alley was here, and he turned into it. Dark and dank, the walls rose up on either side, the upper storeys jettied so that they almost met overhead. Yes, he’d got a bit pissed. Too much ale, that was it. But what else could a man do when the enemy who had done so much harm was at last dead as he deserved? The evil devil would soon be in his grave, and the sooner he was there and dirt spread over his face, the better.

He felt something grab at his boot just as he was thinking this, and stumbled, almost falling. Looking down, he saw a filthy darkened bundle, a long stick wrapped in material protruding from it. Some idle sod had thrown trash down here where it could trip anyone walking by — not that it was likely to be much of a risk. This alley was hardly ever used, and the likelihood of someone’s strolling down here was remote in the extreme. Whoever threw that stuff away had probably assumed that it would lie there for weeks without anyone’s seeing it. Maybe it had been here for weeks already.

Idly, he prodded it with his staff. There was a strange softness about it, whatever it was, and then a fold of material moved and he saw an eye. Even then his mind refused to accept what he could see, and he assumed it was a dog’s or a cat’s, until the material moved further and he saw the nostrils, the nose chewed away by rats and insects, the vermin toothmarks at forehead and cheek, the missing eyeball, and then, last of all, the moving mass where the throat had been.

Sabina wiped the food from her son’s face and kissed his brow, then smacked him lightly on the breeches as he ran outside to play.

Other places were more worrying than this. In their house in Arches Lane a short distance from the priory of St Nicholas, there was never too much fast traffic. Elsewhere there were always the dangers of runaway carts, fools racing their horses or, God in Heaven forbid the thought, even occasional hazards from maddened hogs. One had entered a house in an alley behind St Martin’s Lane not long ago and eaten a baby lying in her cot. That must surely be the worst thing to happen to a mother, losing a child before her eyes, seeing it eaten by a ravening hog …

God be praised, but there were many dangers for a young child in a busy, go-ahead city like Exeter. Others had said sometimes that Exeter was only a rural backwater, that for men who wanted to get on Bristol or York offered far more, and that a man who wanted to be rich beyond his dreams couldn’t do better than to move to London, but that would never tempt her husband, and Sabina was glad of it.

Born in Bishop’s Clyst just outside the city, she had thought it a big move to come up to the city. As a child she had seen the smoke from all the fires over the hill, showing how huge the place was, and she could still remember how petrified she had been on the first day she was told to go with her father to help him in the market. It had seemed so vast, this great city with the red stone wall encircling it, and when she came closer and could appreciate the immensity of the gates, the astonishing complexity of the streets and alleys, she had been certain that she could never live in such a place. She had been delighted to return home to their tiny cottage at the end of the day. Exeter was too large, too fast-paced. Anybody living there must grow as intolerant, sharp and plain rude as all the people seemed to be. She wouldn’t want to become like them.

But as she grew older and began to search for a new life for herself, the attractions of the city began to make themselves felt. She wondered what it must be like to live safely behind those huge walls, where there were inns to visit, markets with fine silks and furs, the lure of dressmakers and cakemakers.

All through her childhood she would travel with her father to the city to sell their produce. He was a freeman, and maintained a small orchard with apples and some pears, which he would sell at the market, while sometimes taking the windfalls and pressing the juice from them to make scrumpy, which would often sell well at his door. It was good, he always said, to have his little Sabina with him, because she would help attract customers for him. A small girl’s voice, he had said, would carry better and sound sweeter than his harsh old growl. Now she knew that he had been pretending. It was helpful to have her there because the women browsing the market stalls would see a pretty little face peering up appealingly, and would buy at an inflated price ‘to keep the child happy’.

Many assumed she had met her Reginald that way. He lived in Exeter, of course, but she didn’t know him from there. She met him when he was passing by the farm gate one day and saw the bush tied over the door, the recognized symbol of the tavern-keeper all over the country. All families tended to brew their own ale every so often, and because ale would not keep well for any length of time the excess was sold off at the door. It so happened that Sabina’s mother had broached a barrel of scrumpy that morning, and her father had tied up the bush at midday. Early in the afternoon, Sabina heard the sound of hooves, and when she went to the door she saw the man who was to become her husband.

Tall and rangy, she had thought, at first with little interest, but then, when he started to chat to her and she saw how his eyes wrinkled at the corners when he laughed, and she found herself laughing with him, almost against her own wishes, she instinctively knew that she had found the man she would live with.

The wooing had been brief. In those days, people didn’t expect to hang about and consider different partners for long. It was too soon after the famine. That had killed off so many, and this was the first summer which appeared not to be disastrous. Yes, the harvests were poor through the following few years — in fact last year was pretty poor again — but at least people could eat. Sabina fell pregnant not long after the wedding, and their son was almost seven now. A rowdy little lad at the best of times, at least he was apparently unaffected by her moods.

They had been happy for most of the first few years, but then Reg’s attitude started to change. She wasn’t sure why it was at first. He’d been happy-go-lucky all the time until the famine was well behind them, but it seemed almost that as life grew less harsh, and people stopped dying, his easy-going nature faded.