Michael JECKS - The Sticklepath Strangler

It didn’t take long. Afterwards, he knew he was defiled and so was his hollow. She had been a virgin, that was obvious as he surveyed her immature, weeping form on the grass before him, and, realising what he had done, he was sick. The noise in his ears had gone, his lust had flown, and he was left appalled and terrified. A small, frightened man who had lost his life’s direction in a moment of passion.

Later, he heard that her body had been found by a lay brother from the convent. The girl had been a novice nun, and it was thought that she had slipped on a rock and knocked her head, falling unconscious and drowning. For all he knew it was true: he hadn’t killed her, and he felt sorrow that she had died. He prayed it hadn’t been suicide. He wanted to confess his sin to the Parson, but somehow didn’t feel he could. The rape of the novice was a crime which must wait to be confessed until he lay on his deathbed, begging Absolution before dying.

God’s punishment was dreadful. For his sins, his family were to pay with their lives. Within a year his wife died, leaving him to bring up their daughter Denise alone. And then she too died, murdered in the cruellest way. Never again could he know contentment. Now his only comfort was walking about his bailiwick; guilt his constant companion. He couldn’t even enjoy a whore! Not after Exeter.

Peter had ravished a Bride of Christ, and he must suffer the weight of God’s displeasure. All he could do to win favour from God was seek out other felons and make them pay for their sins. But although he found pleasure in seeing them destroyed, it wasn’t enough. It was never enough.

He turned restlessly. His body, his very soul, ached with exhaustion, but when he closed his eyes, his brain refused to shut off. And then he realised why – it was the noise from the blasted hounds of Samson.

He almost prayed that he might be finally punished and released from this hell. Death would be a reward he could embrace with thanks.

Baldwin stood staring at Drogo for a moment, then he looked down at Alexander. ‘Remember that, Reeve?’

‘I couldn’t give a tinker’s fart for all this,’ Sir Laurence said. ‘All that matters is that this man is accused of the murder of Ansel de Hocsenham. Is that correct?’

‘Yes,’ Nicole said. ‘He told me that he had control over the Reeve because he saw the Reeve burying the Purveyor’s body. The Reeve had killed him, and Ivo swore not to tell anyone, but the Reeve obeyed his whims, he said.’

‘Well, Alexander?’ Baldwin asked.

‘Jesus Christ! All right,’ Alexander sighed. ‘Yes, Ivo Bel found me out on the Oakhampton road with a shovel. Next day the Purveyor was missing, and yes, I had hidden him. But I didn’t kill him.’

‘Was he stabbed?’ Baldwin asked.

‘No. Strangled.’

‘Don’t interrupt, good Sir Baldwin,’ Sir Laurence said. ‘Let’s have the whole story, eh? From the beginning.’

Alexander ignored him and spoke to the Coroner. ‘It was the beginning of the famine. Ansel had been the Purveyor for years. He’d got Meg with pup two years before, but when the famine was really hurting, he arrived just when the harvest had failed, looking like a drowned kitten, bedraggled and soaked. I recall it was a Wednesday when he rode into the vill, and the rain was pouring down. It did every day that summer, or so it seemed, and the summer after. The weather didn’t settle down until this year.’

Baldwin grunted. ‘You reckon this year is settled?’ he said, as he remembered warm, balmy days in the Mediterranean.

Alexander wasn’t listening. ‘He demanded a vast amount of grain, although he knew full well that we couldn’t supply it, for he could see how poor our store was. I didn’t realise what he was up to at first, I thought he simply didn’t understand. My Christ, I even took him to the ovens to show him how poor the grain was, how water-sodden it was, and he nodded and said he understood.’

The bastard! He’d just stood there with that supercilious smile, agreeing that the harvest had been shite, and then he’d put his boot in, saying that the King still needed to feed his army, and it was the duty of all loyal subjects to supply his wants. As if the King could give a fig for the people of Sticklepath! Edward was too interested in his boyfriends to care about a vill collapsing and the people dying.

‘I explained, I reasoned, I pleaded and I begged. Christ! I all but crawled on my knees to him, but the Purveyor didn’t want to understand. I can see him right now. As I spoke, the shutters came across his eyes.

‘I told him: “Ansel, if you do this we’ll starve.”

‘He said, “That is a great shame.”

‘ “Look at the people here, you’re sentencing them to death, man! Can’t you see that?”

‘ “All I want is the grain, Reeve. And you must supply it.”

‘He was stiff and matter-of-fact, glancing casually at the people labouring out in the quagmire that had once been a field. He didn’t give a damn.

‘ “Ansel, please !” I said. “This is me – Alex – you’re talking to. Look at me! The folk here are already suffering from scurvy and starvation; you can see it in their faces, you can see the way the kids are becoming listless. We had two children die last month. Both of my sons are weak. Do you want to execute the whole vill?”

‘ “I’ve got nothing to do with it. If you’re hungry, you should improve your husbandry.”

‘ “Come on, Ansel! There’s nothing to eat. You take our food and we’ll die. And not just the folk here, either.”

‘ “What do you mean?”

‘I said, “It won’t only be the people of the vill who will suffer, it’s going to affect the folks in the assarts and all about here.”

‘ “You threaten me?”

‘ “I’m not threatening anyone! I’m telling you the facts, man. If you starve the vill, Meg and Emma will starve with the rest of us.”

‘And that was when Ansel’s face altered. His eyes lost their concentration and he looked quite blank for a moment. And then he roared with laughter.

‘ “So you are trying to threaten me? Oh Alex, I am sorry, but if you think you can save a mouth or two, go ahead and starve them. She was only ever a comfortable bed for me. Why do you think I never stayed at her assart when I came past here? No, you can starve her or kill her any way you wish, and you can drown her whelp at the same time. It will save me the embarrassment of having to explain them to my wife.”

‘ “You are already married? You can’t be! You told Meg you’d married her!”

‘ “Oh yes, I did, didn’t I?” he said. “Never mind. She’ll soon forget. She was never very bright, was she?”

‘He left me then, still chuckling. It was clear enough what he was after. He wanted the full quantity at a set rate per bushel, which was the same cost as the previous year before the prices all rose. That meant he would pay us between one sixth or one seventh of the actual value of the grain. The vill would never be able to replace it.

‘But he knew he could get more elsewhere. It was as plain as the nose on his face that what he really wanted was money. Purveyors always do. They prefer to line their pockets than do the King’s work.

‘In the end we settled on three shillings and tenpence. It was all I could promise to collect in a short time, and he gave me a few days to collect it. He said he would wait at the inn and rest until I found it. Afterwards I heard that he had spent much of his time with poor Meg. She can never have known how he spoke of her, prepared to see her starve, and her child, for his own profit, the bigamous son of a poxed ferret!

‘It took me almost a week to cajole, wheedle and threaten the money out of everyone. There were many who had nothing, but some of the locals had a few pennies stashed away, and generally I knew who they were, but it was hard. Very hard. No one had that much. This one man was taking another’s yearly income – more! – in a bribe. Extortion, that’s what it was. Give me all your money, or I’ll take all your food and leave you to starve. What a choice! But what choice do we have? We are serfs, villeins, peasants – call us what you will. Our lives are not our own. I once heard a smartly dressed Prior riding through the vill, and when he looked at us all, he overheard a man talking about the cattle we owned, this was before the murrain, of course, when we lost the herd, and this churl , this man of God! Do you know what he said?’