The Medieval Murderers - The Deadliest Sin

‘Get your arse out of my sight!’ Henry spat. ‘That is villeiny-saying of the worst sort, you-’

‘You accuse me of villeiny-saying?’ Janyn said mildly, but then he launched himself forward. Barda grabbed his arm as he flew past, and another vintener caught him by the shoulder and neck, keeping him back. ‘Get off me! Leave me alone! He’s safe enough from me – for now!’

‘You’re finished!’ Henry said. ‘I’ll see that you’re ruined, Hussett! You won’t fight here with the men ever again, you little shite!’

Janyn nodded. As he was released, he tugged his jack and hosen back where they had been jerked tight. ‘I will never fight for you again, Henry. I don’t mind a Frenchman killing me, but I won’t die from your bile.’

He stalked away, and Barda had to trot to keep up.

‘Do you really think he did that?’ he asked.

‘Who doubts me? Sir John told me as much. He wanted to see all of us die in a trap up there, Barda.’

‘He won’t do that again.’

‘No,’ Janyn said. The two glanced back over their shoulder to where the centener was expostulating with his other commanders. ‘No, he will not last long in the next fight.’

Janyn and Barda found Walter not far from the front line with the rest of the vintaine.

‘Have you heard about your brother?’

‘What, have you found him?’ Walter said.

‘Yes. He wasn’t far from her body.’

Walter nodded, his face empty, and then, very slowly, a tear formed. ‘I couldn’t let him. I’m sorry, but I couldn’t…’

‘She was going to marry him?’

‘I think she enjoyed the attention we both gave her. It gave her satisfaction to see men bickering over her, and when it was me and Bill, she was pleased to see how she could make us both suffer for love of her.’

‘It wasn’t love. Love doesn’t mean raping a woman and then killing her.’

‘I didn’t want to kill her! I didn’t mean to! I only wanted to keep her for my own! I thought if I took her, and showed her how much she meant to me, that maybe she’d marry me. I made her take me, but then, when I was spent, she looked at me like I was a turd, and told me she would enjoy telling Bill what I’d done. I saw her then for what she really was. It was your fault, Jan! You brought her with us – you should have let us leave her behind! Why did you bring her with us? It’s ruined us all!’

‘What will you do?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Your brother knows?’

‘When I took her, he saw us leave, and followed us. I had to strike him down before he could find her. I knocked him down, and covered her over. I hoped he wouldn’t realise it was me!’ He was sniffling now, snot gathering at the tip of his nose. He wiped it away angrily. ‘I didn’t want to hurt him. I was just desperate. And lonely.’

‘You did better than hurting him,’ Barda said. ‘You nearly had him killed. The Genoese found him up there and would have killed him. And when we found him, Jan nearly killed him, too.’

Janyn stopped. His eyes were fixed on the flames as though he could see the faces from long ago deep in the flickering light.

‘Well?’ Laurence asked quietly. ‘What happened? Did the two brothers forgive each other?’

‘Only one need forgive,’ the Austin canon said. ‘That was the point. His lust drew the man Walter into dishonour and deceit, and made him knock down his own flesh and blood.’

Janyn shut his eyes in disgust, then stared up at the friar. ‘Did you understand nothing of my story?’ he said harshly. ‘You think it was all that cut and dried? It was lust moved them all: simple, animal lust. Henry wanted the woman, and he was prepared to kill anyone to slake his desire. Bill wanted her too, and he would have killed anyone who threatened her. He would have taken her if he had the courage, but instead his brother decided to take her for himself. Not because he was worse than the others, but because his lust overwhelmed him sooner. And what else? Why were we all there in France? Because of the lust of two kings for the same city. We are all consumed by lust. Even Pelagia, who wanted revenge like Henry wanted her body! We were all consumed by lust. And then the plague came, and Calais was consumed. This plague, it is a proof of God’s displeasure with us. All of us!’

‘What happened to Henry?’ the landlord enquired after a moment’s thought.

‘He died a short time later. His centaine was in the thick of a battle, and he fell.’

‘From a blow before him or behind?’

Janyn curled his lip without humour. ‘If you were a man in his hundred, and you heard about him sending an entire vintaine to its doom just because he wanted a woman, would you want to fight with him?’

‘What happened to the brothers?’

‘What would you have done? Was there any purpose to be served in punishing one? I didn’t have to, in any case. Bill refused to speak to Walter, and a week or so later, Walter was found hanged in a barn near Calais. He couldn’t bear the guilt over what he had done. And then, he couldn’t bear his brother’s contempt either.’

‘Did his brother survive?’

‘Bill took his money when Calais fell, but when the peace was agreed, he went away. I heard he joined a fraternity of mercenaries. He didn’t feel there was a life for him back here.’

‘What happened to you?’

‘Me?’ Janyn stared into the flames. ‘I swore I wouldn’t fight any more after Calais. I took up a little alehouse in the town and built good custom with the English garrison. I promised myself I’d forget war, and for a year I was happy. I married Alice, my lovely Alice, and she bore me a son.’

‘Are they in Calais still?’

‘Oh, yes. They will always be there. Both perished when the plague came. So I came here on pilgrimage. To find peace.’

Aye, he said to himself: peace – calm after the fighting. A pilgrimage to beg forgiveness.

Forgiveness for slaying his own centener in the midst of a battle; forgiveness for all the Frenchmen he had killed, some in anger, some in cold blood; forgiveness for the rapes and tortures, for the abbeys and churches laid waste, for the nuns left raped and slain in the burning embers of their convents.

And for failing the young French woman who had sought his protection.

Every man in the party had at some point surreptitiously ogled the woman who now moved forward to offer her story. Her clothes were of the finest cloth, and their cut betrayed an origin in the Mediterranean. The south of France, perhaps or one of the northern Italian city-states. She was a mature woman without being matronly, for her waist had not grown thick, as did that of others of her age. Perhaps she had never had children. She was attended by a younger woman, but no one could say whether she was a servant or a daughter. The more discerning males amongst the gathering might have come to a consensus about her age, and supposed she was past her fortieth year, but only just. All would have been surprised to learn she was actually in the middle of her fifties. Her hair was blond with a hint of gold to it, but no white, and her face was healthily rosy and unlined. When she spoke, her voice rang like a small silver bell, and her Italian accent was obvious.

‘I want to tell you about the corrosive effects of that most deadly of the seven deadly sins – greed.’

Here she paused for effect, and cast her pale blue eyes around the gathering. No one challenged her contention that this particular sin was the most deadly. Not yet, anyway. They would reserve judgement until her story was told. Satisfied that she had their full attention, she went on.