Michael Jecks - The Butcher of St Peter's

Simon fell inside, and Sir Peregrine leaped over him, while Baldwin more delicately stepped round him, his sword already out, his left arm down and before his belly in the defensive posture Simon had seen him adopt so often. Then Simon too was up.

‘He’s not here!’ Sir Peregrine called from the hall. He reappeared in the passageway.

‘His wife is here, though,’ Baldwin said from the buttery. He was crouched at her side. ‘Help me lift her up. I don’t think there’s any point worrying about the other poor devil.’

Betsy sat shivering with her hands cupping the mazer of burned wine Ralph had given her. He’d have to distil some more at this rate, he told himself morosely.

‘What happened to her?’ he asked.

‘It was him. Jordan. He came here last night with Reg as usual, and they had some sort of a row, and then Reg went off in a rare mood. I’ve never seen him look so grim. Don’t ask me what it was about, but Jordan was telling Reg he had to do something, and Reg was saying he wouldn’t. When he left the place, Jordan sort of laughed, and then he asked me for Mags, because he said she’d refused some punter the other day. I don’t know anything about that. Still, he said he wanted her for the night, and she seemed scared, but not overly, you know? I thought he was going to demand a good service from her just to make her pay for not doing what she’d been supposed to last week, that was all. And then this morning, I heard her crying, and I thought, Well, he’s hit her or something, and that’ll not make him any money for a while, because she’ll be too hurt and bruised to work, and I didn’t want to go in myself, because with his temper, if I’d interrupted him, God knows what he could do to me, so I left them … and when I came back, I found Mags like this …’

Ralph nodded understandingly. The cries and weeping from the room were still loud, even at the far end of the corridor. ‘She’s past worrying, Betsy. She’s gone to a better place than this, you can be sure. What happened to Jordan?’

‘He was already gone when I went in there and found her. He just expects us to clear up her body and throw it away, I suppose.’

‘You’ll have to call the Coroner to view her, Betsy,’ he said gently.

‘What can I do?’ she sobbed. ‘What’s a tart’s death to him? He won’t care that we’ll be thrown on the street.’

‘Why should that happen?’

‘You know why! Jordan owns this place. If he’s caught, we’ll be thrown out, and if he isn’t, we’ll still be thrown out. Can’t we hide her …’ She caught sight of his expression and was still.

‘Send for the Coroner and I’ll see what I can do to help you.’

‘You? What can you do to help us!’

Ralph smiled enigmatically. Even Coroners needed a leech sometimes, after all. Especially when the piles were biting.

Jordan ran over the grass with his mind in a torment. Again his hearing had gone peculiar, and he shook his head as he ran, a frown of pain twisting his features as the high whistling screeched through his head.

The high red sandstone walls of the castle stared down at him, and he gazed up at it bitterly. That building was the symbol of the Coroner’s power — of all official power in the city. Without it, he would have been able to continue his work happily, but no, that sodomite of a sergeant had decided to take an interest in his activities, and as a result he was brought to this low pass.

Perhaps he could recover his position. He had only killed the bottler when the fool stirred awake. It was Jordan’s own buttery, in Christ’s name. He could say he’d been expecting it to be empty, and finding a man in there he’d assumed the fellow was a thief. His wife would support him. She always did.

This morning had been good, though. Aah! She had behaved impeccably all night, the worry always in her face even as she simulated her moaning and lustful panting for him. Yes, she’d known what she was about. A good whore, that.

But Anne had been too, and Jordan had learned that there were more ways than one to enjoy a whore. He’d had fun with her today. First with his bare hands, almost killing her, and then the knife. It was as satisfying as the sex. Better than anything he’d known with his wife. Sweet Jesus, if those two hadn’t been at the front of his house, he could have tried the same with Mazeline. She’d have been good for that.

Yes, as she went out to the buttery to fetch him his ale, he had thought of pulling out his knife again, and perhaps taking it to her clothes first, stripping her naked, just as she had been when Jane was conceived in her womb … Jane, where was Jane?

The whistling and whirring was deafening now and he looked about him wildly. He could do nothing without his little girl. He loved her, he adored her, and she was all his. There was nothing he wouldn’t do for her. Where was she?

The noise grew until he was deafened. In his vision he thought he saw the bodies of the two whores, the bodies of Mick and his bottler, all laughing, mocking him. He had killed them as though he was all-powerful and could kill with impunity, but now they knew that they could conceal his daughter from him. They couldn’t. No, not them. Mazeline must have taken her away. Where? Where?

In an instant the sounds were gone and his face cleared. He knew exactly where Jane would be — surely at Mazeline’s cousins’ house. He could go there and rescue her. And then he would have to lie low somewhere until he could escape the city with her. Looking up at the bright sun, he changed his mind. He was exhausted after the excitement and thrills of the previous night. Better, surely, to go and hide somewhere now in the quiet, while it was daylight, and then come out again at night.

He knew the perfect place to hide, and then, later, he could maybe visit Agnes and Juliana. Reg had seemed so unwilling last night … perhaps this could be Jordan’s last job, then, before he fled the city. The thought of the two women before him, under him, his knife ready for them, was so entrancing that he almost stopped in the roadway. Then he noticed a man looking at him oddly, and he forced himself to smile and nod before hurrying on his way.

First hide. Pleasure later.

Ralph was relieved to see how the Coroner reacted. The man appeared to take the murder of the prostitute seriously, and immediately began barking orders, commanding messengers to fetch a clerk to help him, and blowing his own horn in the street and bellowing hoarsely, ‘Out, out, out,’ to raise the hue and cry. He sent the two watchmen, who had been muttering rebelliously about working all hours, off to the brothel to guard the dead woman’s body. When they complained, he fixed them with a basilisk stare.

‘During your watch here, a bottler was murdered and a woman could have died. Be glad you’re being given another job rather than thrown in the gaol yourselves for being no better than fools!’

In the meantime, Baldwin and Simon had helped Mazeline to a bench in the hall, and here Ralph tended to her. He bathed her face with fresh boiled water in which sweet herbs had been steeped, and washed her hands and arms to remove the clots of blood and yellow lumps of bone.

‘Ralph, you make a marvellous nurse,’ she whispered at one point.

‘Concentrate on being well again.’

‘I shall never be well again. I cannot be whole or well. Not after the last days. He has gone?’

Baldwin was at her side now. He looked down on her with compassion in his eyes. ‘He is gone, lady, and you are safe.’

‘This house is hateful to me, though. It is what he has made it: a charnel!’

Baldwin looked at Ralph, who nodded. ‘Is there somewhere else we could take you where you would feel more comfortable?’