Michael Jecks: The Butcher of St Peter's

The lad was nearly six years old, and he wore an expression of mildly pained enquiry on his sleeping face, one arm thrown up over his brow as though he was striking himself for a failed memory. He looked so perfect that Reg felt a pang of sadness to think that soon such beauty must pass. It would be no time before the boy was learning his arms, practising with bow and sword to the honour of his family and his king. God shield him!

Reg was about to return upstairs when he registered what had struck him already, that the window was open and the shutter wide. He shouldn’t have been able to see his son in that room, not at night, not with his determination that all should be secure against attack.

Turning, he glanced at the window, and his heart chilled again as he felt, rather than saw, the figure, grim, dark and menacing, standing at the opening. Reg gave a shrill cry, partly rage, mostly fear, and hurled his sword at the man. It missed, striking the wall and clattering with a ringing peal to the ground as the man slipped out through the window, and then fled over the rough patch of yard.

Henry heard about the man’s screams the next day. Although with his terrible, twisted shoulder it was hard for him to perform any manual labour of the type he had once found so easy, at least his natural affinity for horses meant he could earn a living as a carter. He’d been lucky to acquire the wagon and pony, and fortunately he was also blessed with the natural good humour of a man who had suffered through his life, and was able to find amusement in almost any tale.

That morning he had no business, and was sitting on a bench outside the tavern called the Blue Rache up near St Petroc’s, enjoying his early wet of a quart of middling strong ale, when he overheard two men discussing the affair. One of the men worked in Reginald Gylla’s household, and he appeared hugely amused by the whole incident. As, for that matter, was Henry.

‘He’s this big, bluff lad, the master. Well, you know him. Spit in the eye of the devil, he would usually, and not worry about it. Well, thing was, when I saw him after that, he was shaking so much, he could hardly pick up his sword again. Just stood there shouting for us to check the garden, saying there was an assassin out there or something, and holding his boy for all he was worth. Never seen nothing like it.’

‘Sounds like he’s daft.’

‘Huh! If you had the one son and you found a man in there …’

‘Or thought you had. How much’d he had to drink, eh?’

‘Enough,’ the first conceded. ‘But it wasn’t that. I thought he’d seen a ghost, when he said the fellow was a tall man, clad in black with a hood over his face and all … but it weren’t a ghost. It was that mad butcher again.’

‘Yeah? And how’d you know that?’

‘’Cos ghosts don’t leave muddy prints, do they? If you want to play the arse, that’s fine, but if you want to know what happened, stop bleeding interrupting.’

‘Sorry. What else then?’

Shamefacedly, the man admitted, ‘Well, that’s about it, really. Someone had been there, and we found prints on the floor to show where he’d been, but there was no sign of him outside. We all went round the place, grumbling a bit, ’cos, you know, we didn’t want to be out there. Christ’s pain, it was cold last night! Still, nothing to find, I reckon. But it shows how worried the master is. Just that, and he’s ordering us to keep a proper guard on the place. It’s like he’s got an enemy to guard against.’ He spat and added dismissively, ‘When everyone knows about the man who watches children.’

Henry smiled to himself and rose. It was always pleasant to know the truth behind a mystery. Still, he would have to go and speak to Est and tell him to be more careful. There was no need to risk a cut throat for no reason.

No reason! In an instant his light-hearted mood fled and he felt the grimness return. There was plenty of reason for it, even if it were to drive him mad. Poor Est.

Sir Peregrine de Barnstaple, clad in a new green tunic, walked off to church that morning to participate in the mass for St Giles. He felt no fondness towards the saint; he had been at the market at Tiverton, held during the vigil, feast and morrow of St Giles’s Day, when the woman he had wanted for his own had died in the attempt to give birth to his child. The double loss had been overwhelming for a while, and had been the cause of a great change in his own outlook on life.

It was quite strange, when he came to think about it. He had loved twice in his life, once a well-born woman in Barnstaple, and the second time poor Emily in Tiverton, and both were dead. It was as though any woman whom he ever grew to love would always be taken away from him … for a moment he hesitated in his striding towards the cathedral. Perhaps God Himself had marked him out for punishment, and this loneliness was a proof of His disapproval. God would not help a man like him.

For a man who prided himself on his integrity as a Christian first and as a knight second, this was a deeply alarming reflection, and he stood stock still for a while, his green eyes fixed intently on the horizon.

He was a good-looking man, Sir Peregrine. Tall, he had the build of a knight who had trained with his weapons every day since the age of five, with the powerful shoulders of a man who had used sword, lance and shield in battles. His neck was thick, as befitted a man who wore a helm at speed on a horse, but there the appearance of a warrior ended. Although his body was strong, he had the semblance of a man dedicated to God. His face was long, with a high brow like a cleric’s. He looked as though he had been tonsured expertly, leaving only a fringe of golden curls like a child’s all about his head, which seemed strangely out of place on a middle-aged man’s skull.

Many had been deceived by those bright green eyes and the mouth that smiled so easily, and many of those remained deceived, because Sir Peregrine believed in results. If he was forced to distort facts in the service of his master, he had always thought that such behaviour was best kept to himself. From his head to his toes, he was a very competent politician.

But the thought that he could have upset God was nonsense! There was no action he had undertaken in his life that was so heinous as to make him the target of God’s vengeful wrath. Rather, there was plenty to boast about. He tried to be honourable and chivalrous: it was a measure of his worth that he had been elevated to knight bannaret. For some while he had been the Keeper of Tiverton Castle for his lord — although more recently he had suffered a fall from grace.

Lord Hugh de Courtenay was a good lord and a fair and loyal man, but there were times when even the most reasonable master had to divest himself of devoted servants. That was particularly true when politics came to the fore, as they now had.

Nobody who knew the two men well could doubt that Sir Peregrine was as devoted to Lord Hugh as a hound to his master. For Sir Peregrine there was no concept of loyalty higher than that of a knight to his liege-lord. He was content, as he set off once more, that his own record was enough to justify a certain pride.

It was painful to accept that it must be a long while before he could return to his place at his lord’s side, but Peregrine knew the reason for his eviction from the castle, and he was content that his master had justification. In compensation, Lord Hugh had petitioned certain people and gained this new post for Sir Peregrine, so now he was the King’s Coroner to the City of Exeter and surrounding lands. A good position, certainly, although fraught with fresh dangers, for it meant that he was always under the eye of the King himself.

Not that he was just now. In the last few months, ever since the escape of Mortimer from the Tower, the King had had other matters on his mind.