Michael Jecks - The Butcher of St Peter's

If he had never loved her, her entire existence lost all meaning. His indifference trivialized her.

‘You must have some idea, mistress!’ Sir Peregrine ground out.

His harsh voice drew her back to the present, but without fear. There could be no nervousness with this man. He could bluster and threaten her, but that was as nothing compared with the torment her husband had inflicted on her over years. She met his gaze levelly. ‘I told you I don’t know.’

The Keeper cleared his throat. ‘Lady, we have to speak to him. What time is he usually about in the morning?’

She gave him a faint smile. ‘My husband? That depends upon where he is now. If he has gone to his gambling rooms, he might be home again early in the morning, but if he’s gone to the brothel, he might be enjoying himself with one of his queans. He has any number of strumpets in that place.’

‘You knew of it?’ Baldwin asked gently.

She rather liked him of the three. He had kindly, gentle eyes that seemed to show that he had suffered in his life too, and knew what it was to be in pain because of another person’s actions. He had known hardship. ‘I guessed, although I only really found out … recently.’

‘What of his thefts from the cathedral?’ Simon asked.

She looked at him and shrugged. ‘I know nothing of that. You’d have to ask him.’

Sir Peregrine set his jaw. ‘I think I should wait here to speak to him when he returns.’

Baldwin shook his head. ‘We can easily have some men guard the door, Sir Peregrine. There is no need for us to take up any more of this lady’s time for now.’

She met his gaze and smiled at him, sadly, but with gratitude. ‘I have not had an enjoyable day. I would be grateful for the peace, were you to leave me alone. Do you wish me to tell my husband that you want to talk to him?’

‘I think,’ Baldwin said, ‘that it may be better if you do not. Either there will be men outside your door to speak to him when he comes home, in which case there will be no need for you to tell him anything, or we might decide to surprise him tomorrow. However, you are his wife, and we cannot force you to keep a secret like that.’

‘I am his wife,’ she agreed, ‘but that means that he owes me respect, as well as expecting his due from me in terms of obedience.’

Baldwin smiled again, and nodded, before leading the other two from the room.

Reg felt almost sick as he walked into the brothel that night. The smell from the lean-to at the back was foul. A mixture of fat and wood ash, the stench was cloying and repellent. It caught in his throat and nostrils, making him gag, and he stood in the corridor, leaning against the wall and choking.

He’d begun his association with Jordan because he’d needed food. There was no other motive: it was steal, rob, even kill, or die. There was no choice. Live or die.

Then, when he was riding back from Topsham after checking a small cargo they’d bought between them, he’d seen her: Sabina. It wasn’t that she was the most beautiful woman he’d ever known, nor that she was the richest, but there was something about her that had attracted him. Perhaps her liveliness, her spark of life, the thrill that there was about her, whatever she did. She served him some of her father’s scrumpy, and he felt before he’d finished the jug that this was the woman he wanted to marry. She’d be comfortable, kind, a good mother. Not a flighty strumpet from the stews, who’d flatter a man; this was a real woman. A real mother. Maybe that was it? His own mother had been dead a while by then. Maybe he just wanted a replacement.

And he wanted a son, of course. Michael. Sweet Jesus, Michael! His boy had gone.

In the time it had taken him to register what she was planning, they had gone. It hadn’t been an instantaneous thing. They’d all sat down to their supper, and he’d thought that she would come round, as she usually did when they had a dispute, but then after his meal he went up to the Boar, and when he returned, she’d gone. With Michael.

The loss of his boy was so overwhelming, he was distraught. If it was just Sabina, he could cope. She’d go, and maybe someday she’d return, but Michael … He knew that with Michael gone, his life was ending. There was nothing more to live for. Everything he’d done recently had been in order to make a good life for his boy. Michael was all that mattered to him.

It mattered not a whit what he wanted, though. His life was already too bound up in Jordan’s concerns. His existence depended on the regular acquisition of women to replace the stales who had to be thrown from the brothel because they were too old, too worn, too tired, or just because they had fled the place. Many did, and each time Jordan exerted himself to find them again. They should be made an example of, he said. They should be shown to have failed, so that others wouldn’t try the same trick.

That was the whole idea with Anne, of course. It still made him feel sick to think of it. Killing a man quickly and without fuss, that was one thing; torturing a girl like that was different. That night he’d seen more clearly than before just how different Jordan was from him. Some men had consciences, but Jordan certainly didn’t.

‘Glad you’re here, Reg,’ came a voice, and he stiffened as he recognized Jordan’s tone. There was an undercurrent of excitement in it, as though he was suppressing his exhilaration.

‘Jordan,’ he responded listlessly.

‘Christ’s nuts, Reg, you look as if the world’s shat on your head!’ Jordan said and laughed.

‘Sabina has run away. She took my boy with her.’

‘She took Michael?’ Jordan whistled through his front teeth. ‘That’s bad. Do you want me to find them and bring him back?’

‘I can do that myself,’ Reginald said. He knew full well what Jordan was offering.

‘Well, after what you did for me with Daniel, all you have to do is let me know,’ Jordan said with a smile, but then he closed his eyes.

‘What is it?’

‘My head. It hurts so much sometimes … just now it’s worse than ever … You remember that little maid who I was seeing to try to get at Daniel?’

Jordan put his arm about Reg’s shoulder and began to lead him out to the yard at the back. There was the sound of raucous singing from the hall, the rattling of knuckles in a back room, screeching from the cocks in the pits out at the back, and the ever-present chinking of money. Men and women rutted in corners, on the floor or in beds, according to their fancy, and the noise assailed Reg’s ears. He grew quite dizzy, as though he had been drinking strong wine all day.

They went out to the separate little house, just one room and a small chamber above, in which they conducted their business. Jordan went to the cupboard in which were several large pots of wine and selected one, pulling out the stopper and sniffing appreciatively.

‘What of her, Jordie? This wench?’

‘Daniel’s sister-in-law? She came to my house today and started acting like a wife! In front of Mazeline, too, as though the tart had some sort of claim on me!’

‘What did Maz say?’

‘She was a bit surprised, I think, but you know her. If she stood next to a statue of her in ice, you’d be hard pressed to tell which was real!’ He laughed and drank wine. ‘But the worrying thing is, Agnes made some comments a day or two back about Juliana knowing I’d killed her old man. Now we both know I didn’t, but that wouldn’t stop rumours. You know, I had a meeting a while back with the city receiver, and he didn’t come to greet me? Wouldn’t shake my hand or anything. Just a curt nod from the other side of the room. If Agnes or Juliana took it into their heads to accuse me, I could show I wasn’t anywhere near Daniel’s place, but it’d be embarrassing even so.’