The Medieval Murderers - The Deadliest Sin

Thomas Flytte had a companion with him, a kind of attendant. This wasn’t a student learning physic at the feet of the master but someone whose idea of an effective remedy was more likely to be the point of a dagger than a pestle full of simples. He was called Reeve, this companion. I do not know his given name. Thomas Flytte referred to him as Reeve and so everyone called him Reeve, if they wanted to call him anything at at all, which wasn’t often.

Whereas his master, Thomas Flytte, was a short man with a bit of plumpness to him, as if he was still living off the fat of the olden days, Reeve looked as though he’d always been as spare as a fence-post. He said very little. When he did speak, it was as if words were coins, he doled them out so grudgingly. He dressed in drab greens and browns, and I think it was so he could pass unnoticed. I saw him once emerging from the edge of a wood, ducking his head beneath the branches as though he was coming out of his house. He was carrying a rabbit, which he’d just caught, unlawfully, no doubt. It hung limp and blooded in his hand. He saw me looking at him and he smiled a little smile, and I turned cold all over. That was Reeve.

The fact that Flytte the Physician was a cousin of Joan Rath wouldn’t have been enough by itself for her to give him houseroom. She hadn’t seen him for many years, I believe. Besides, he was accompanied by the disagreeable Reeve and that was enough to put anybody off. Something more was needed. And something more was very soon provided. Almost immediately after he’d arrived in town, Flytte showed that he was more than talk. Joan had a daughter of twelve or so called Agnes, who was sick, almost on the point of death, it was feared. The apothecary from the next town had visited and then the cunning-woman, who lived in the woods nearby, and each of them suggested various remedies, to no avail. The family resigned themselves to Agnes’s death. No food had passed her lips, nor had any words, no, not for several days.

Then, as if guided by providence, Thomas Flytte turned up and, within a few hours of examining Joan’s daughter and drawing up his charts and grinding his herbs and powders and mixing them in solution and easing a little of it down her unwilling throat, the girl began to stir and to talk a little sense for the first time in days. By the next morning, she had risen from her sickbed and by the afternoon she was once more sitting down to eat with her family.

It was a miracle! Thomas Flytte was modest or clever enough to credit it not only to his own skill but also to some particular herbs, which he had brought back from the East, plants that were not known in Europe. Of course, this made his presence in the town even more interesting. If Joan Rath hadn’t offered him his own quarters someone else would probably have done. The fact that Reeve was with him was overlooked, since it was evident that if you took one man you had to take the other.

Mistress Rath was able to provide the physician and his man, Reeve, with a dilapidated cottage, which she had patched up at her own expense and furnished, too. All this was in gratitude for Flytte’s care of her daughter, even if it was understood that he’d stay in the place only for a while. He must surely be going somewhere more significant than the village of Wenham, an important man like Thomas Flytte who’d treated foreigners and royalty. Wenham was a very ordinary village with only a small handful of well-to-do inhabitants, apart from the folk up at the manor. And, having properties elsewhere, they spent little time in Wenham but left their business in the hands of a steward. Joan’s husband, Alfred Rath, didn’t seem quite so glad at the physician’s stay, though he had to acknowledge that the man had ability. Some of the villagers went to consult him and paid for it and, although he didn’t bring anyone back from the brink of death as he had with Agnes, he impressed them with his talk and his expertise.

Not everyone was happy with Flytte’s presence. Of course, William Carter and his family made insinuations about him and said he wasn’t what he appeared to be. If they’d dared to, they might have accused him of witchcraft. Even so, I saw William and Thomas talking together more than once, and I think that he too consulted the physician. Then there was the local priest, Master John. Maybe he didn’t like the fact that a few of the villagers went looking for help to Flytte instead of him, and he certainly didn’t like it that money that might have gone to the Church coffers was instead finding its way into a physician’s purse. In his sermons, he preached against Thomas Flytte, not directly at first, but with little digs and warnings against men of science. Parsons don’t like doctors of physic anyway, they shy away from ’em as if by instinct. I’ve been told that churchmen are convinced that doctors do not believe in Our Saviour. There’s some saying about it on the edge of my mind but I can’t quite recall it…

Laurence paused and took a sip from his bowl of wine. And from the circle of listeners a learned man threw in: ‘The proverb you are looking for, landlord, is, “ Ubi tres medici, duo athei ,” which means, “Where you get three physicians together, two will be atheists”. Because physicians sometimes search out natural causes for unexplained things, they also encourage people to mistrust miracles, you see.’

‘Thank you, sir,’ said Laurence. ‘What a wealth of learning and wisdom there is to be found among the visitors to a tavern!’

He paused again to allow his audience to reflect on the compliment before continuing with his story. The pause was interrupted by a cough from the landlord’s wife, who was sitting near the back of the audience. It was the kind of cough that meant: get on with it.

There were others apart from the priest who were suspicious or resentful of Thomas Flytte. I mentioned the cunning-woman a while ago. She’d been consulted about Agnes’s sickness, without result. While the land to the south of Wenham was mostly clear, the area to the north was wooded. This wood stretched so far and the trees in it were so dense that it was always called the Great Wood. Anyway, the cunning-woman lived in the Great Wood, and like most such women she was feared as much as she was tolerated. The children in the village wouldn’t go near her. But some of the farmers and shopkeepers used to visit her rain-sodden hut to get forecasts for the harvest or to find out which of their workers was thieving from them. She was a strange creature with straggling white hair and touches of a beard, and yet with a hint of breasts too. Though she spoke with a singsong voice, some said she was a man or a gelding. Others said she had been a nun and was a woman of learning and refinement. Her name was Mistress Travis.

Thomas Flytte was very dismissive of Mistress Travis and her kind. He said that such women – and the cunning-men who ply the same trade – were like the stale leftovers of more superstitious ages. Word of this certainly got back to her even as the villagers who considered themselves more up-to-date stopped consulting her, and so the little sums of money and offerings of food she received began to dry up. If Thomas Flytte was concerned about this, or afraid of her power to lay a curse on him, he never showed it. Like his cousin Joan Rath, he was someone who knew his own mind. Then there was the apothecary from the nearby town who’d also been called in to treat Agnes. His name was Abel. He might have been expected to be jealous of Flytte but, in truth, he seemed eager to learn from the much-travelled visitor, keen to pick up whatever titbits of knowledge were going spare.

There was one other individual whose path crossed with that of Flytte the Physician before the crime occurred… and before a very peculiar situation arose… This other person was a pedlar who passed through Wenham two or three times a year. Hugh Tanner sold saints’ relics – bits of bone, fragments of cloth – to ensure good health to your cattle and clean water in your well, and all the rest of it. Unlike a pardoner, he carried no papal bulls, he offered no pardon for your sins and he wasn’t extortionate in his demands. On the contrary, he sold his wares quite cheaply, without much bargaining, and people bought them for that reason and because they felt sorry for Hugh Tanner. They were probably thinking… you might as well buy one of these for you never know what’s going to bring you luck or protect you from misfortune in this life, do you?