Michael JECKS - The Sticklepath Strangler

‘Someone has accused me by leaving her body in our yard,’ he said, his voice muffled.

‘There is someone here who is mad. That is all. Soon he will be found and hanged.’

‘Nicky, you must be ready to leave,’ he said, withdrawing from her embrace and gazing up into her eyes.

‘Nonsense! We have friends here,’ she scolded mildly. ‘They would not let us down.’

‘This is England, Nick, not France. Here the powerful make the decisions and the peasants have to agree. If the Reeve decides it’s in his interests to convict me, I’m dead. You heard Batyn just now. He was warning us. We have to go.’

‘Perhaps your brother might help us?’

‘Him?’ Thomas gave a short laugh. ‘Nicky, if you think Ivo would lift a finger to help me, you’re mad.’

She frowned slightly at his words. ‘What do you mean?’

‘After he tried to tempt you from me last time, we argued. Well, we fought. I struck him down and told him that if I ever met him here in Sticklepath again, I’d kill him. There’s no possibility that he’d try to save me.’

It was fortunate that Thomas was staring out through the open doorway as he said this, for otherwise he must have seen her face. On it was printed a terrible resolution.

Ivo wouldn’t help them because he was jealous of Tom, mainly jealous of Tom owning her, she thought. But perhaps Ivo would help save him if Nicole was his reward. If she offered to sleep with him, Ivo might be willing to forget his enmity.

Prison was a terrible place. When her father was alive, she had visited gaols with him, and she had no illusions about them. Gaols were filthy, festering places, filled with rats, lice, fleas and death. Men who went inside hale and strong came out wizened, pale and bent, or dead. Thomas was a man who loved the elements. He worked hard in wind and rain, and enjoyed labour in the open air. To throw him into a cell beneath a castle would destroy him as surely as a knife-thrust in the heart.

Compared with his safety, nothing mattered. If it would save him from gaol, Nicole would even submit to Ivo.

Gervase returned, wiping his mouth with his sleeve. ‘I’m sorry, Lordings,’ he gulped. ‘I knew the poor child was dead, but to die and then be violated… and in such a way. My God! Only the arch-enemy of God could conceive of such a foul transgression. It’s appalling.’

Baldwin eyed his ravaged features dispassionately. ‘Perhaps, but I have less faith in human nature than you. I think that men are perfectly capable of such evil.’

‘The poor child.’

‘We have been told her father was Ansel de Hocsenham,’ Simon commented.

‘Yes,’ Gervase swallowed. ‘He’s dead. He was a local fellow, Ansel, from out beyond South Zeal. He was a King’s Purveyor, and often had to ride out over the country.’

‘What happened to him?’ Coroner Roger snapped.

‘He rode off one day during the famine, and that was that. It was the year before the death of Peter atte Moor’s daughter, Denise. Never turned up again.’ Gervase wiped at his brow with the palm of his hand and shook his head. He stood and motioned vaguely towards the house. ‘Would you care for some drink? I have some wine, a loaf. It would be sufficient for us, I am sure.’

‘It is most kind of you,’ Baldwin said with a gracious inclination of his head, ‘but I am neither hungry nor thirsty.’

‘I am,’ said the Coroner hurriedly.

Gervase gave him a pale grin, then wandered back inside his house.

‘Look at this place!’ Baldwin said. ‘What a miserable hovel. One room only, in which he must eat, work and sleep, and this little garden where he might be fortunate enough to grow some peas and beans, were he to bother trying.’

‘If the river hadn’t risen and washed them all away,’ Simon agreed, eyeing the few straggling plants which had survived. ‘But it’s no worse than thousands of other parsons’ dwellings up and down the country. And provided that he performs the daily Chantry, he will always have money and some food. Probably a new tunic each year, too.’

‘And yet he seems relatively well educated,’ Coroner Roger mused. ‘Why should a man with a brain wish to come to a dump like this?’

‘It isn’t that bad,’ Simon protested. ‘And there’s nothing wrong with a priest who wants to serve his community.’

‘No,’ the Coroner agreed, ‘but there’s something wrong with a man who invests all his wealth in wine and regularly drinks himself into a stupor.’

‘Perhaps last night was a rare occurrence.’

‘And perhaps I was born a Moor,’ Baldwin said. ‘Didn’t you see the state of his rushes, couldn’t you smell the vomit? It is days since he cleaned in there. No, this man has his own guilty secret.’

Gervase soon returned, bearing a jug in one fist, a platter with three irregular sized pots on it and a large loaf. He spoke a short prayer in thanks, then sat, pulling the loaf into chunks and pouring wine for them. Then he sat back, chewing and slurping.

‘This Ansel. His wife doesn’t live in the vill?’ Coroner Roger prompted.

Gervase felt the cold grip of fear grasp at his bowels. ‘They were not married. I fear he was one of those men who sought their pleasures here on earth instead of the enlightened attitude which looks to the life to come. No, he was not very religious.’

‘In out of the way places, not many are,’ Baldwin noted reasonably. ‘Where is the mother, then?’

‘Meg is touched, and more than a little insane since her brother died, God bless him, in a terrible fire in their cottage.’ He studied the bread in his hand and bit off a chunk, chewing it dry. ‘Meg saw him die and it addled her brains. People about here call her “Mad Meg” now.’

‘ Where? ’ Coroner Roger demanded, his patience run out.

‘She inhabits a place in the wood out to the west of the vill. A small assart, which her brother worked for her.’

‘She was local?’ Simon pressed.

‘Not really, no. She was from up aways, round Exbourne. She and her brother came here after he had fought with the King in France and made himself some money. When he came back, he used his money to buy the plot from Lord Hugh.’

‘When would all this have been?’ Baldwin enquired.

‘He died in the famine. Shortly after Denise had been found.’

‘After her man disappeared?’ Coroner Roger asked.

‘Yes. Ansel disappeared in 1315, while her brother died in 1316, just before Mary died.’

‘Ah, Mary!’ Simon said. ‘We have heard a little about her. She was an orphan?’

Gervase bent his head in assent.

‘Did she die the same way?’ Baldwin demanded. ‘Throttled and eaten?’

‘May God take her to His breast and comfort her, yes,’ the Parson said, closing his eyes as the vision rose before his eyes. ‘The little child had her legs cut away, as though someone had… as you would a haunch of venison. I can still see her poor little face. She was such a sweet, kindly little girl. No one deserves that sort of death. It was an obscene attack: a violation! Hideous.’

‘You buried her?’

‘Of course. And there is never a day I don’t go out there and pray for her. I love children, just as Our Lord did, if you know your Gospels, Sir Knight.’

‘Except you never reported her death, did you?’ Coroner Roger rumbled.

Gervase looked away, but Baldwin was frowning. ‘This brother. What was he named?’

Gervase felt the clamminess at his palms as he took up his cup and took a deep draught. It served to soothe his spirits, and as he put the cup back down, he could say without a tremor in his voice, ‘Just some fellow called Athelhard.’

‘And you say he too is dead? In a fire?’