Michael Jecks - The Butcher of St Peter's

She stood for a moment, and the urge to burst into tears was so overwhelming, she felt certain she must succumb, but the expression on his face stopped her. She recognized that look. He was waiting for her to react.

When they had first been married, each time he had lost his temper she had been sure that it was a brief aberration, not a proof of his true character. She knew now that she had been fooling herself. This man was not a kindly lover such as young maids dreamed of and hoped to marry. Mazeline had been unfortunate in her choice of husband.

She had realized that the first time she had provided him with a meal that was late. She had explained that it was not her fault, that the cook had bought some flesh that was already too old and that it was unfit for him, so she had gone to buy some fresh meat from the fleshfold.

He had listened, very calm and collected, and then he had explained coolly that he was providing money for her to feed him, and if she was unable to provide even that service, she had no use. And then he had gripped her wrists and held her while he took a rope and studied it carefully, weighing it in his hand. The hemp was heavy, almost an inch thick, and he beat her so violently that she had been sick on the floor in front of him. Although the rope had not cut her skin as badly as, later, the plaited leather switch would, the weight of the rope bruised her dreadfully, and she had been incapable of lying on her back. Later that night, her protests were ignored, though. A wife had two duties, he explained, to provide food and then to bed her man. She had failed in one, but she wouldn’t fail in the second. While she wept and groaned in pain, he thrust and moaned lustfully above her, and probably from that moment she had truly begun to hate him.

It was a strange feeling to give birth to this man’s offspring. At first the idea of a child was repulsive, as repellent as taking him between her thighs and permitting him to enter her, but then, when the child arrived, she realized that this little babe was part of her too, and as soon as Jane first opened her eyes and looked up at Mazeline she knew that she loved her. They would love each other, despite all that the world could throw at them; against her husband, Jane’s father, they would unite for each other’s support.

And so life had progressed, at first. Jane was entirely dependent upon her mother, as all children must be, and Mazeline was able to perform her duties to her husband’s satisfaction while still feeding and watching over this new life which was so entwined about her own. She adored their little baby, longing for those moments when the child would suckle. And as Jane grew larger and larger on her milk, so Mazeline looked forward more urgently to holding her to feed, up until the time when Jane was just over two years old, when she suddenly rejected the breast. Mazeline still looked on that date as the beginning of her misery, because it seemed to her that it was then that Jane first began to look to her father for everything, rather than Mazeline. Mazeline had never felt so lonely as she did in the days after that initial rejection.

But there was little she could do now to retrieve her daughter’s love. This man had stolen that, just as he had taken her pride. It was in order to gain some affection, to try to renew some confidence in herself, that she had allowed herself to be seduced by Reg. Not that she could ever tell Jordan that he was being cuckolded. Some men might flash into a rage and kill their spouse and her lover on hearing that she had been unfaithful, but Mazeline knew full well that her own man would not merely kill.

Taking a lover was dangerous, as she knew. But at least Reg faced the same danger in taking her. Either of them could be murdered by her man for their infidelity. With any luck, Jordan would never know of their secret trysts. Just now, with the ale dripping down her face and trickling from her nose and chin, mingling with the blood from her eyebrow, she didn’t care. It felt to her as though at least for the last few weeks she had been loved by a man for whom she could feel affection.

Poor Reg. In the street yesterday he had seemed so shocked to see the other bruises. She only hoped she could save him from seeing her like this: so forlorn and destroyed. There was nothing left of her self-respect. All her life was pointless, other than Reg’s love. And her hatred for her husband.

‘You should go and dress that scratch,’ he said.

She remained standing where she was a moment. There was no affection or shame in his tone. She had failed him, so he had corrected her. That was an end to the matter. He knew nothing of guilt. Guilt was for weaklings, he had once said.

It was the knock at the door that made her move at last. She drew her eyes from him and went to the door, ashamed to be seen like this, but knowing that she must go. He would not tolerate her leaving the door unanswered, and he wouldn’t go to it himself. That was a woman’s work when his bottler was away.

‘Mistress,’ Agnes said, looking her up and down with some surprise. ‘Is your husband here?’

Mazeline was so filled with hatred, she could not speak, but merely pointed, and then stood staring after this latest woman to have stolen her man’s love from her.

Baldwin had hardly left his hall when Ralph received the call from his neighbour.

It was some months since he had moved here, and in that time he had assiduously tried to foster good relations with the others not only in his own street, but in the castle and in Goldsmith’s Street too. In those three places was much of the secular wealth of the city, and it was crucial that he should be on favourable terms with all the people who lived there. After all, a physician might spend the same time and effort on a beggar as on a lord — the difference was, the lord could pay better.

At first, he wondered who she might be, and then, when she was announced, he immediately thought of the attractive woman who lived down the road. From memory, Mazeline le Bolle was delightful, with flashing eyes and high cheeks framed by very dark hair, but today she was all but unrecognizable. She stank of ale, and some still dripped from her sodden tunic, while her hair was bedraggled and matted, clinging to her face and throat. Blood was seeping thickly from a long cut over her right eye, and the left was coloured with the after-effects of a punch, easily identifiable by a physician who had experience of the stews. In the case of Betsy or one of the other girls he’d have assumed she had been attacked by a client; a charitable man might have thought that the wife of a notable member of the community had been assaulted by some felon in the street — but Ralph was not a charitable man. He had seen enough of violence to know that most married women who arrived at his door with cuts and bruises had not needed to leave their own houses to win them.

From the look of her, she was not yet recovered, and Ralph immediately set about putting her at her ease. He brought up a chair, muttering pompously about good-for-nothing servants who never bothered to help when an honoured guest arrived, and then called loudly for his bottler, hissing at him from the doorway to fetch a little of his burned wine. He bought this strange liquor especially for clients who needed refreshment to calm their nerves. It was rare and expensive, and he had to buy it from the monks at Buckfast, but it was worth its weight in gold.

It worked well this time. The bottler, who like most of Ralph’s servants was well acquainted with the specific requirements of the physician’s trade, waited at the door for Ralph to collect the tray, rather than entering immediately. Ralph put a large measure into a mazer for her, reckoning that a large sycamore bowl was safer in shaky hands than a gold or silver goblet. He passed it to her, and looked away while she sipped the warming drink. From experience he knew that it would take a few moments for the drink to take effect, and when he heard the first sniffle he turned to her and studied her again.