Michael Jecks - The Butcher of St Peter's

It was not the most loyal emotion for a wife to feel at the thought of her husband’s death, but just now uppermost in her mind was only joy. She had no idea what the future might hold for her, especially since her man had made some powerful enemies in the cathedral and in the city, and several might seek to demand money from her. She could lose her house and all inside it, and yet she would remain alive, and free.

Freedom was a strange word. For years she had thought herself free enough; married to a wealthy man who was powerful and important, she had thought herself extremely fortunate, but since the revelation yesterday when he told her he didn’t love her, had never loved her, her mind had been in a turmoil. It was only as she slept that her brain and her heart were able to comprehend what had happened to her. The man who had bullied her had not done so in order to improve her, he’d done it because he liked to see her suffer. He’d beaten her for his own pleasure, no other reason. He had never loved her.

So now she was rid of him. She had no love for him either. Although she did feel something bright and sweet in her relationship with Reg.

If Jordan were to be arrested and executed, what would happen to Reg? Surely he was likely to be taken for the same crimes? They were both engaged on the same plots and stratagems … she must warn him!

She stood, and was about to pull on a warm cotte when there was an odd noise. It was a wet crunching — a strange sound that reminded her of a whole fresh, large cabbage being kicked: slightly damp, but crisp as well. She thought it came from the rear of the house, towards the buttery, and she turned her head to the buttery’s doorway, but saw nothing. She opened her mouth to call to the bottler, but no words came. Instead she found her heart filling with a terrible dread, and she started to walk backwards away from the door that led to the back of the house. Stumbling against a table, she recalled the two men outside even as she remembered the small window in the buttery. A man entering clandestinely might clamber in there and take a short cudgel to the dozing bottler’s head.

The window was near now. She could feel the draught against the nape of her neck, and she was about to turn her head to it, when she saw him in the doorway.

‘Hello, bitch! Didn’t expect to see me again, did you?’

Ralph was seeing another patient when the messenger arrived, and he finished the consultation as swiftly as possible without appearing to rush. He liked Betsy, but paying clients had to be treated with a little more respect than a simple turfing out. They were the ones who kept him in business, after all. Without them he wouldn’t be able to help her.

When he had his small bag filled, he threw it over his back and hurried to the South Gate.

‘Back again, leech?’ the porter asked from his doorway.

‘Another one is unwell,’ he acknowledged.

‘So long as it’s not the evil bastard who cut up Anne. I liked her.’

‘Many did,’ Ralph agreed.

‘Yes. You tell me who did it to her, and I’ll get any number of men’ll see to him.’

Ralph thanked the man, but as he walked out towards the quay and the brothel he wondered whether anyone would ever pay for that foul crime.

The door was wide, and as he entered he could hear the weeping and shrieking from the back. With an awful feeling of encroaching doom, he stepped quietly along the passage and out to the back of the building. The noise was coming from inside one of the little chambers, and he walked along the corridor towards a room whose door stood open. There were lights inside, and their flames cast a lurid glow out into the walkway, where he could see three of the younger whores, their faces orange and red in the flickering light. One turned to him as though in terror, but then her appalled gaze was dragged back to the room.

As he reached it, Betsy came out. Her forearms were bare, and looked like those of a battlefield physician’s, covered in blood. Her face was twisted with revulsion and self-loathing.

‘I could have saved her, I should have. But I was too scared ,’ she said, and began to sob.

There was little else to be done that day, other than command that the hue and cry search out Jordan le Bolle if he was not found within the city. Baldwin was loath to do that, at least until he had checked with the two men outside Jordan’s house again.

It was remarkable that the man had not yet appeared. Baldwin was quite sure that he would have returned to his house. Even a man who had need of a quick escape must first put together the means of survival. He would need food, money, some thick clothing in this miserable season. It was unlikely that he would have been carrying much about with him, surely.

Unless he had hurried away last night, perhaps to take cash from a strongbox in his gambling rooms or his brothel. If he had done so, they would have missed him. He could have boarded a ship at the quay and made his way down the river to the coast, there to disappear for ever.

From the end of the street they could see the two men at the house. They were standing and indulging in a close debate. As they watched, one of them lifted his tunic and directed a stream towards the road’s gutter.

Sir Peregrine swore at the sight. ‘Look at them! They’re supposed to be keeping a close watch on the damned house, not chatting about the ales they drank in the tavern last night. Worse than an old gossip from the market, those two!’

Baldwin smiled, but as he did so he saw both watchmen spin and stare at the house. A moment later, while the one was hobbled, trying to put his tarse back under his tunic, and the other was grabbing for the polearm he had dropped, Baldwin and his companions were sprinting along the roadway to the source of that scream.

Mazeline felt the table at the back of her thighs and had to stop. She wanted to get to the window, to call for help, but there was no hope now, with Jordan standing before her, as insouciant as ever.

‘Who were you expecting? Anyone?’

‘I was waiting for you, husband, but with the men outside, I thought that you’d be caught.’

‘I’m not so stupid that two watchmen like them can catch me out. I came in through the garden. From the castle’s gardens over our wall — it’s perfectly easy,’ he said, smiling. ‘Get me some ale, and meat. I am starved.’

She nodded and walked out to the buttery. The window was open, and she felt the breeze from the passageway, but then, as she entered the room, she felt the chamber start to spin about her, and as her nostrils caught the tang of salt on the air, the sweet, heavy odour that made her think of butchery and the slaughterhouse, she saw the body of the bottler with the head completely stove in and the brains spread over the floor.

It was the smell of blood and the sight of the corpse that made her start to faint, and it was the sensation of damp tackiness on her hands as she pitched forward that made her start to scream and scream …

Baldwin was at the door a moment behind Simon, and the two men thrust at it with their shoulders, but could achieve nothing against the solid timbers. Simon grabbed the polearm from one guard and thrust the point of it between the door and the lock, shoving hard. There was a cracking of timber, and Sir Peregrine took the other billhook and brought it down at the gap between the door and jamb, making it shudder.

As he brought it down again, Simon felt the door move. ‘Push!’ he yelled, and rammed his shoulder against it again. There was a definite shifting. The knight hammered with the bill’s butt and Baldwin and Simon threw themselves against the wood until there was a loud splintering crash and the door gave before them.