Michael Jecks - The Butcher of St Peter's

‘What, even at night?’ he asked, frankly scandalized. It was a key element of the city’s defences that the gates should remain locked at night.

‘Three hard, two soft. If he hears that, he knows it’s us or one of our clients,’ she agreed lightly, but her expression didn’t relax. Usually to see his face register such alarm would make her laugh, but not tonight. Even while discussing the curfew, her eyes were fixed on the group of older buildings ahead.

The brothel was a scruffy old house, and although it was not the sort of place Ralph would want to live in, it was good enough for its job. Once it had been simply a large barn-like hall, open to the roof, with a large area where the women entertained their guests. Now it had been built up inside, so that there were a number of small chambers, with more on a second floor. Each had a palliasse or a cheap bed, except for a few rooms which possessed a decent wooden one with a rope mattress.

Betsy did not take him upstairs to one of those better rooms. Instead she took him through the screens passage and out to the yard at the back, where there were some storage rooms leaning against the main block. These were the rooms which had given the building its nickname of ‘the stews’.

Built along the rear of the main hall, these rooms were bathhouses, equipped with immense barrels. Men and women could sit in them and have warmed water tipped over them. To help them clean themselves, Betsy had collected quantities of fat and lye here, and she manufactured soap when she had spare time. Ralph considered he might want to have a bath with her later, but then scotched the idea. It was already late enough, and he didn’t have time to wait for the water to be heated.

‘She’s in here,’ Betsy said with an anxious softness.

It was one of the storage rooms, and as soon as Ralph’s eyes had adjusted to the dimness and he saw Anne’s face, he wanted to recoil and leave the room. ‘Sweet Jesus! This is a task for a seamstress, not a physician!’

‘What can you do for her?’

‘Sweet Christ,’ he said to himself. ‘Can I do anything ?’

He was professional. Untying the draw-strings at the neck of his bag, he sat on the bed to study her wounds. They had been inflicted with a knife, that much was certain. The scars at her brow and cheeks showed that much. Her nose was a blackened scab in which the air whistled like a demon’s breath. ‘Maid, you poor love,’ he said quietly. He had some ointments with him, arnica and lavender for bruises and scrapes, but this was more extreme than anything he had anticipated.

Still, she was his patient. He set to work, calling for warmed water and cloths, then stripping her and studying each of her wounds while she lay back, sobbing quietly, the sound muffled by the scabs at her nostrils and mouth. When he saw the punctures on her breasts, he felt sickened. This was no chastisement or revenge for favours poorly provided, such as he was used to seeing on the whores down here, this was a deliberate assault designed to ruin the girl. There could be no justification for this sacrilegious destruction of one of God’s creatures.

When he was finished, he brewed a mess of leaves in a pot. ‘This is a draught to help her sleep, Betsy,’ he said. ‘It’s a stupefactive, a dangerous drink, called dwale. It contains hemlock and poppy seed, and it is treacherous in any quantity, so only let her have a small cupful at a time. No more, you hear me? It will let her sleep, and just now uninterrupted sleep with no dreams will do her much more good than anything else.’

He glanced back into the room and saw Anne’s eyes on him. Smiling, he tried to give her a feeling of comfort. ‘Let the poor child sleep, dear God,’ he begged. For his part, he could not imagine that the girl could wish to live with such dreadful scars. ‘And for God’s sake, do not let anyone near her with a mirror,’ he added as he closed the door.

Baldwin was already contemplating his bed when he heard the door open. He smiled with relief to see his wife. ‘I was beginning to grow anxious lest you were in danger.’

‘No, not with Edgar at my side,’ she said calmly.

‘Did you learn anything about the widow?’

Jeanne sent for wine before attempting to collect her thoughts. The walk back in the gloom of early evening had unsettled her more than she wanted to think. And the story was all a little too close to her own concerns. So she sat and considered until the wine arrived, and when it did, she drank deeply and studied her husband awhile before beginning.

‘The woman is called Kate, Simon of Bristol’s widow. She lived a few doors from the house where Daniel and his woman lived for so long. Apparently Juliana and he were married at the height of the famine, and at the time Juliana’s family was rich. But her father died, and their savings went not very far at a time when prices kept rising. All their wealth was bound up in the merchant business the father had created, and with the famine there was no market for their expensive spices and fripperies. There was no profit for them. Their money was quickly used up and the family fell into poverty. Their house on Correstrete was sold off, but during the famine prices were very low, and that helped them only very little. The mother died, and the sister, Agnes, lived with Juliana and Daniel.

‘Juliana and Daniel always struck the people of the parish as being a happy enough couple. He was a very stern enforcer of the law, and she was a proud woman who never forgot that she had been born to money, so they had few friends in the neighbourhood, but that tended to make them more close, so people thought. And then there were rumours that Juliana was lonely. As Daniel’s job grew more demanding, so apparently she grew more desirous of attention. In the end she started seeing a man.’

‘Was this speculation, or malicious gossip, rather than actual observed fact?’ Baldwin asked.

She looked at him seriously. ‘Husband, you know full well that when a servant in your household makes eyes at a maid, it’s all over the place. He would only have to have been seen once.’

Edgar grinned. ‘The household usually knows before the wench.’

‘Yes,’ Jeanne continued. ‘There can be no secrets in a frankpledge. The only one who didn’t know in that area was probably Daniel himself, because no one thought it was their business to tell him what his wife was doing while he was away.’

‘If there was such certainty about it, who was this mysterious lover? I presume he has a name?’ Baldwin said.

‘That was the part that struck her neighbours as particularly disloyal. It was the man who had bought her family house. Taking him as a lover seemed especially treacherous since it was he who had partly helped to impoverish her own family.’

‘I can understand that some would think that wrong, although surely the fact that she was carrying on an adulterous affair was worse than the matter of the man with whom she conducted it?’ Baldwin asked.

‘There was one more fact. The man himself is called Jordan le Bolle. People about here think that he is involved in unsavoury businesses, especially prostitution. Juliana’s husband was trying to gather evidence to have him arrested.’

‘That’s not necessarily a crime,’ Baldwin noted. ‘Most of the bishops in the country own houses which are run as brothels.’

‘There are stories that he’s been involved in other businesses too. Most people do not want to cross him, because he can be dreadfully violent when the mood takes him. Baldwin, I got the impression that he could kill. The woman was very fearful of telling me any of this, and did not want to be overheard. I only hope she is not in danger herself now.’