Michael Jecks - The Butcher of St Peter's

Exeter, August 1317

In the grey light, the winding sheet looked thin, as though it had been stretched by the heavy deluge that fell all about. The shroud was so sodden that it lay tight across the flesh beneath, and Estmund could see every curve and projecting bone of the body it covered. Water pooled where it might: in the eye-sockets, between the breasts, in the soft hollow of her empty belly, her groin … This was his woman — and yet it wasn’t. Emma was dead, her soul was gone. Truly, this was a husk, nothing more.

The shame ! He was discarding her carcass with as much ceremony as a man throwing away some worthless trash. If she had died even a year ago, he could have afforded a coffin. It was wrong for her to be out here like this, on view to all passers-by, the thin cloth showing off her body as plainly as though she were naked. He wanted to cover her up, hide her from the people who wandered about the place, their dull, uninterested eyes glancing at him before surveying Emma’s corpse. Two urchins appeared and stood silent, staring fixedly. In the end he grabbed his cloak and threw it over her. It was wrong that she should be the subject of such attention here on the boundary of the cemetery.

He felt a sob start deep down in his belly, and closed his eyes. Yes, he should have provided a proper coffin for her, just as he should have given her a real funeral, but he could do neither. Coffins were all but unknown now. Already, just in the last three months, one twentieth part of the population of the city had died, so they said. There weren’t enough coffins for the bodies. And his job was unprofitable now. In the past it had been worthwhile to be a butcher. It meant sufficient money, good food … Good Christ, they had been happy on what he could earn, and her pregnancy had set the seal on their delight.

All Estmund had ever wanted was children of his own. Growing up with three younger sisters, he had been used to having babes and toddlers about him, and even when he went to be apprenticed he had gone to a master butcher who had a large family. Est had grown up with youngsters all around him, and the idea of fathering his own with his wife was wonderful.

He had wedded his beautiful Emma just four years ago, and it had seemed that soon all his hopes would be fulfilled. Shortly after their wedding, she fell pregnant and Cissy was born in August of 1314.

But even as she was brought struggling into the world by that incompetent bitch of a midwife, their lives were changing.

The winter after Cissy’s birth was cold, but not so much worse than many others — Est had filled their plates with whatever he could buy — but worse was to come. Throughout the summer the rain fell in torrents. At first all were stoical about it, laughing about the normal English summer; some made jokes about a new Noah. But as the summer progressed, their humour left them. Men could see the harvest was going to fail. The crops drowned in the fields. And soon the people began to die.

Theirs was not the only family to lose a child, but to lose Cissy so young, only one month over a year old, seemed to Estmund to be awful. He did not hear her call his name, nor see her stagger for her first steps. All was snatched from him when she died.

At the same time, when the cathedral refused to bury Cissy, Est saw his wife begin to slip away. It took her two years, but at last she had joined their baby.

He returned to the pit. As he dug, Estmund could hear the rattling thump of another cart moving along the way. Pausing, he straightened, a short, thickset figure with a stooped back, his face drawn and pale under a thinning cap of mousy hair. He peered with eyes that were raw with grief at the small party led by a gaunt pony straining at its harness.

‘Come on, Est,’ his friend said, shovelling aside dirt from the pit at his feet. Much of what he brought out was mud now. The hole filled with running rainwater as swiftly as they could clear it, an unwholesome red water like blood.

Estmund Webber remained standing staring at the cart. Its iron-shod wheels creaked as it lurched from side to side, crashing into a hole where a slab had been moved, then righting itself and continuing as the pony lumbered onwards. At the side were two carters holding the boards steady, so that the corpse resting on them mightn’t topple off and fall into the mud that lay all about. Behind them, through the greyness of the blanket of rain, came the grieving family. A woman first, only five-and-twenty or so, a pretty thing, with a man at her side. Est knew her and her husband: Jordan le Bolle and his woman, Mazeline. Behind them came their servants and a cousin of Mazeline’s.

It was too small for an entourage, not enough to remember the dead. Who was it? Est had been told, but things like that seemed unimportant now. The grief of others could not penetrate the scars of his misery. Vaguely he recalled hearing that Mazeline’s mother had died. Starved, of course. Just like all the others. So many …

Even before the wagon had gone, he could hear another making its way up from the Ercenesk Gate. There were so many deaths now. So much suffering.

That was the way people should go, he thought. Along that paved way that led up to the great west door of the cathedral, the last door on the road to God. The cart should stop before the door so that the men could carry the wrapped body inside, up to the altar where they could pray for the soul, make sure that she’d be accepted at the gates of Heaven.

‘Est?’

He was sobbing uncontrollably again. Pathetically, hunched over his spade, he tried to wipe the tears from his face, but only succeeded in smearing a thick plaster of reddish mud over his features. The rain was so heavy it didn’t really matter. It would soon be washed away. He closed his eyes and bent his head as the racking grief engulfed him again, remembering … remembering so much joy …

Young, gay, sweet, she had been all those things. His delight, his love, his darling, his sweeting … his beautiful wife. He took a deep, shuddering breath and thrust his shovel into the rough ground, leaning on it, face covered with a muddy hand.

‘Get a move on, Est. We need to finish up here.’

Now the memories flooded back, and the tide washed away the grief, if only for a moment.

His wedding had been the happiest day of his life. He had gone to the parish church with Emma, and they’d repeated their oaths in front of the priest there, a kindly old soul who had known them both all their lives — he’d baptized Emma when she was born, and would have buried her too, except of course none of the parish churches were allowed to bury anyone. All the city’s secular funerals must be conducted at the cathedral church, and the burials must take place in the massive cemetery that almost encircled it. Not that Emma could have been buried there anyway.

‘Est, come on, hurry up!’

The urgency of the words reached Estmund through the all-enveloping anguish that was now his life. He stared down at his friend, Henry, who reached out to him, his face torn with sympathy, and as his fingers touched the rough material of Estmund’s tunic Estmund began to sob again. His eyes rose once more to the cathedral, to the great edifice that stood to protect people like him, like his wife. It was there to save their souls.

But not his beloved. The Bishop had declared her excommunicate. Her soul was lost, just like Cissy’s.

A cathedral in such times must accommodate many funerals, of course, and far be it from Agnes to complain about that, but it was nevertheless upsetting to have to share it today of all days.

The rain was a constant blanket over the world. It wasn’t just that it lanced down, thick gobbets pounding into the already sodden ground, it was the way the light had changed.