The Medieval Murderers - The Deadliest Sin

‘I would hear it,’ Nicholas pressed him quietly. ‘Come, friend, we are all here together. You are a man of much experience, I’d wager. I would value your tale. Which sin do you think is the most terrible?’

‘Why do you ask me that?’ Janyn demanded. He was wound tight as a cog’s rigging as he leaned forward, his hand straying to the knife at his belt.

Laurence saw his hand’s movement and the innkeeper shook his head, smiling and holding his hands up pacifically, but stepping forward to prevent a fight. ‘Hoy, friend, he means nothing by it: nothing. But we were talking about the deadly sins. From the look of you, you must have a view on such things. Which would you say was the worst?’

‘I have seen all the sins imaginable committed while I was in France. There are men there who have sought to offend Christ and His saints every day with their debaucheries,’ Janyn said, grimacing. ‘Ach, no! Why do you want me to speak of them? I would forget them all.’

‘You were a fighter in France?’

This was the prior, the churchman with the sharp face. He sat at the other side of the fire, smugly arrogant as he eyed Janyn – like a judge presented with a felon of notorious fame.

Janyn sneered and turned his attention back to the flames. ‘A pox on your cockiness! If you were in France, you wouldn’t survive above a day,’ he muttered. Then he looked up, his dark brown eyes fixed on the rest of the group as he spoke, glowering with a fixed intensity that spoke of pain and anguish. ‘What can you know of the horror, the suffering of the men out there? How many of you have been told to slaughter prisoners? To butcher men and women, aye, and their wains? Not one. You cannot appreciate how war changes a man, how it twists him and torments him, until he is utterly broken.’

He was a grim-faced little man. Like many a peasant, his face was leathery and tanned from exposure, but there was a hard edginess to the lines on his face.

‘You want to know what I think, then? I’d say lust is the worst. Because it’s lust that leads to murder and slaughter. Lust for women, lust for gold, lust for power. All come to the same: lust! And one man felt sure that his own lust brought about the plague that hunts all men now.’ ‘Tell us your story, friend. Show us what you mean.’ He stood, caught between the urge to leave them there in the chamber – and the desire to tell them all. He was almost ready to flee the room but, just then, Laurence passed him a green-glazed drinking horn, and he took it and stared into the pale-coloured ale. There were bubbles and swirls in the drink, and suddenly, as clouds might form the appearance of a cog at sea or a man’s face, he saw her again: Pelagia, the Frenchwoman with the neck of a swan, the body of an angel. He saw her face as clearly as he saw the flames in the fire.

It decided him. With a gesture of defiance, he tossed his head back and drained the horn in one. He could tell them a tale to make them sit up and listen! A tale of…

Lust

War is evil for many, but most of all for the people who want no part in it – he began – the women and children. They suffer from the unwanted attentions of men; they are raped and slain by invaders, or they’re killed by their own because they can’t fight, or they starve because food is kept back for the men who will fight. That is what Calais was like. A foul city, full of scared, fretful people. When we got there, the place was already encircled by our King’s host, but the fear – you could taste it in the air.

Men react differently to things like that: the smell of fear. Some are like hounds. If a hound senses another is scared, it’ll push it around, snarl, growl… anything to make it know who is the master, who is the villein. Some men are the same: if they can tell another is petrified, it gives them a feeling of power. In the army, there were many men like that. Some beat their men, some would brawl and bellow, bragging about their conquests, while others would enjoy a man’s terror in silence. They would stand quietly and observe as a man shivered and shook. They are the ones to watch, the ones who will tease and torment, and twist the knife a little deeper, enjoying every squeal of terror, every rictus of agony.

I knew a man like that at Calais, a man called Henry the Tun. The centener.

At Crécy, I was a vintener myself, responsible for twelve men by the end of the campaign. They were all that was left of two vintaines of forty archers under our banneret, Sir John de Sully, but my boys were badly mauled during the flight to the north. We were harried all the way from Paris by the French King’s armies, and the people of the towns came out and attacked us as we drew near. There was never a spare yard that wasn’t fought for.

After Crécy, things eased a bit. We had destroyed the French on that battlefield, and when we finally left it we were filled with joy. The country was ours, with all the wealth. Even poor archers became rich. And we soon had more men arrive to fill the gaps. My own vintaine needed new blood more than most, and we had seven new fellows join us. But then I was struck down with a fever, and I had to take to a wagon. My men were sent on before me, and I rattled along in their wake like some kind of pathetic infant, with only a pair of brothers to help me: Bill and Walter from Southampton. They were recent recruits, sent to help win Calais after our losses on the long march. I didn’t know them, nor the men we travelled with, and, at the first opportunity, I left the wagon and took up a horse. I wanted to rejoin my men. With the brothers, I tagged along behind another vintaine that was passing, and soon I was introduced to their centener: Henry the Tun.

He was a short, thickset man, with a heavy belly that stuck over his belt like a sack of oats bound at the middle. His face was round and ruddy, with cheeks as red as the apples that made his favourite drink, cider. A nose like a plum, and jowls like a mastiff’s gave him a pleasing appearance. He looked jolly, a genial, jovial man like a Bacchus come to earth. His eyes were constantly creased as though in great humour – but when a man looked into them, it was clear that there was nothing there. No kindness, no humility, only an overweening greed and desire.

When we were within eyesight of the town, he sat back on his mount and breathed deeply, before pointing to it and grinning at me and his own vinteners. ‘There, boys, that’s where we’ll make our fortunes,’ he said.

One of his sergeants, a man called Weaver, looked over at the town. Most of us in that army were good at grumbling. We’d fought all the way from the coast down to Paris and, like I say, been chased away from there all the way to Crécy. There we won our famous victory, it is true, but the cost was high. We lost many friends, good friends, on that march homewards, so we felt entitled to grumble.

Anyway, Weaver was there at the front with Henry, and as he looked out over the town and the army, he drew his face into a sneer. ‘The King wants that? I wouldn’t pay a clipped penny for the whole place.’

‘Shows how much you know of things like that,’ Henry said. He sat back in his saddle, gazing ahead of him, that smile on his thick lips, like a glutton presented with a whole roasted suckling pig. ‘It’s the King’s delight, is Calais, and should be yours, too, Weaver. It’ll be an easy sail home from here. You can almost see England over there.’

Weaver, he just grunted. All we could see was a greyish mess. Could have been clouds, but more likely it was the thick smoke rising from all about the town. When you have a few thousand Englishmen in an army, you have a mess. Weaver wasn’t stupid enough to argue. We’d all seen others who’d argued with Henry. They hadn’t done so well.