Michael Jecks - The Butcher of St Peter's

She hoped that the children would carry on together when she was dead. She’d joked with them often enough that if she looked down from Heaven and saw them arguing or fighting, she’d come down and give them all such a ding over the ears … and they laughed, as good children should, but she wasn’t sure how seriously they treated her. She was always anxious that they might fall out over something, and that the family would split up. It happened so often nowadays. People argued with their brothers or sisters over the daftest things and then never spoke again. Not even when someone died. That was the worst thing to happen to a family, that was. Not to speak, as though there could be anything that justified such a falling apart.

Other families were prone to such disasters, but she hoped and prayed that hers would be safe. Soon be too late for her to do anything about it, though.

She had never had a sister or brother herself. No, well, her parents wanted another, but then Father died in the wars against the Welsh, and Mother never took another man. Used to say that she had no need of another, not when the first was such a useless bastard. He’d only two interests, fighting and … the other. With women. He had women all over the place, so Gwen’s mother had said, but she was never angry, never bitter. It was one of those things, she said. Men were men, and they had to go and find the next challenge, whether it was a battle or a maid, didn’t matter. They just didn’t have the same devotion that a woman learned. No, they were more prone to disappear when the woman had given birth. In Gwen’s father’s case, before even that.

There had been suitors, but Gwen’s mother wanted nothing of them. What was the point? she always said. When you’ve had one bad one, why take the risk of getting a worse next time round? Better to make a living on your own.

Gwen smiled now, her weight on the besom’s handle as she cast her mind back into the past. It was a welcome place to her nowadays, a period when she was very happy. Recalling her mother sitting outside the door on a summer’s evening, the bobbin spinning, she could remember the tones of her voice as clearly as the contours of her kindly old face. Lovely old maid she was.

Dead now, of course. Gwen sighed. And from the same thing she had. They all knew of it, because so many women got it, but somehow Gwen had thought herself too young still to have it. There were so many illnesses which only affected the old. She didn’t think that the disease that took away her mother could have come for her already … and then she realized that she was older than her mother had been when she died, probably.

It started the same way, with her left nipple retracting. But she knew it was all right because there was no pain. Her memory told her that her mother’s hadn’t hurt either, but Gwen didn’t listen to that sort of logic. No, it was just a bit of a change, that was all. Her whole body was sagging, swelling, or changing in some other way, so it was no surprise that her titties should alter. She kept telling herself that, even when the skin went all funny about the nipple. And when she first felt the large lump under her armpit and the second in her breast, she carried on telling herself that all would be well, she’d soon find them going down — in much the same way that her mother had, she supposed now.

But gradually, as the pain started, she knew the truth. She would soon be dead. It would be a rest, until the day of reckoning, when everyone would be raised again, like the priests said, and she would be able to see her boys again as well as her mother. That was a day to look forward to.

She hoped that the children would all remain friends, yes, but she wasn’t sure they would. The little devils were always at each other’s throats when they had a chance, and her lad Simon was a grasping little sod. Needed a clip round the head often enough. He might be ten years old, but he had no sense in his brain. All he saw was what he wanted the whole time. It was probably those sisters of his, she told herself affectionately. They’d indulged him from the day he was born, lazy little git! He didn’t even bother to learn to speak for an age because all he had to do was point and shriek and one of the girls would instantly run to fetch whatever it was he wanted. He needed no words; just the inflexion of his squeals would tell the girls what to bring.

Still, they must surely get on better than those two, she thought as she heard another bout of tears and screams from the room upstairs.

For a moment, as the pair of them shrieked at each other, she was tempted to go and tell them to be silent, if not for the sake of Gwen and her neighbours, then for the sake of the children. She came close to throwing down the besom and hurrying up there to shout at them herself, but then she sighed and continued brushing. It wasn’t her business. She was better off down here, working at the floor and enjoying her memories, rather than going up there to join in a spat between two sisters.

It was curious, though, she thought. At a time like this, with one of them so recently widowed, she would have expected the other to be kinder. Agnes was never one to hide her feelings, though, when she was angry or felt herself hard done by. Gwen wasn’t the only person in the parish to have noticed that. All about here knew full well that the older of the two sisters was the more spoiled by their parents. It was obvious. She always expected to get her way. No interest in other people or what they might think, only in what she wanted.

Little Juliana was different, though. Much quieter and calmer. Everyone thought that. It was just a shame that she had married that Daniel. He had grown into a brute, by all accounts. Violent in the street — it was him killed poor old Ham — and then he took his cruelty and his frustrations out on his wife, poor maid. And she, what could she do? It was no surprise that she found another man … perhaps she should have picked someone else, but what could a woman do when she found herself unloved and bullied by a man like Daniel? It was no surprise that she’d responded to the first man who showed an interest in her. Gwen herself had seen Jordan go in there, all preened and puffed up, the arrogant brute!

And that was the problem with the sister up there now. Just the same as two little girls, they were. Agnes was, anyway. She never grew up. Perhaps if she’d had children she’d have learned to be more mature, but as things were, she had not.

As far as Gwen was concerned it was clear as a boil on an arse that Agnes was jealous as a child without a toy watching a child who had one: she hadn’t ever snared a man, and she had a sister who’d had two. No surprise that Agnes was screaming fit to burst, when she couldn’t catch even one. And it wasn’t as though Agnes was an ugly maid, not by any means. She should have had her choice of men. Could have, too, if it hadn’t been for the fact that she was so shrewish. She wasn’t the sort of woman to suffer quietly, and her jealous nature meant that she didn’t really want to. In fact it wouldn’t surprise Gwen if-

The thought coincided with a sudden great resurgence of the pain, and she gasped with it, putting her hand to her breast, hunching over as the stabbing, grinding agony ripped into her. She clenched her teeth while the spasm lasted, then stood panting, eyes wide.

Yes, this was going to end her soon. It was like a birthing, but longer and so much more relentless. That was what her mother had said when she was struggling for breath herself in the dark in their room: that it was unrelenting. The pains just went on getting worse and worse all the time, and there was nothing to be done about it. A leech might be able to provide a potion to stupefy the senses, but then she’d be useless. At least like this, enduring the pain meant that she could still earn a little money to put food on the table.