The Medieval Murderers - The Deadliest Sin

If there was a shadow over the village there was a darker one over my own house. My mother grew quiet and no longer wanted to speak good of everybody. She seemed to be keeping separate from my father, and I thought she had been wounded by the death of her doctor cousin. She refused to do anything about the little cottage where the physician had lived with his son Reeve, but let it lie empty and my father did not seem inclined to contradict her. Perhaps she thought Reeve was going to return to Wenham even though he would have been seized by the villagers if he’d done so. But I don’t think my mother ever believed Reeve was guilty. Towards the autumn, she fell ill and grew weak. She spent long periods of every day in bed, so I had to take over many of the duties in the house. I am sure she wondered whether, had Thomas Flytte still been alive, he would have found a remedy for her affliction.

Perhaps it was to clear away those shadows that I wanted to find out what had happened. Or perhaps I felt I had an obligation to the physician who had saved me from death.

I had only two things to help me, and one of them was no more than a memory. There was the little talisman I’d picked up from the ground, the golden image of a lion in a wooden frame. And, though it no longer existed, clear in my mind’s eye I had the image of the shoe-marks in the wet earth of the spinney. From their size, I knew they were not the print of the physician’s shoes but belonged to whoever had been waiting in ambush for him, for surely no one would stand fixed in one spot under the trees unless they had a purpose. I struggled to see the scene through the eyes of that unknown man – for I was sure it was a man, from the size of the shoes and the violence of the attack – but I could see and understand nothing. Then I thought of the cunning-woman who lived in the woods, Mistress Travis. She had the gift, like Hugh Tanner. But, unlike him, she was prepared to use it. Many villagers went to her to find out things that they could not see for themselves, things happening just beyond the corner of their eyes and even things that would happen in the future. They paid these visits in an uneasy way, sometimes, and in defiance of Master John, but they paid them all the same.

At once, I was seized with the desire to go to the cunning-woman and show her the only thing which I had: the talisman. But I did not want to do this by myself. Laurence and I talked about it, of course. I think there were shadows over Laurence’s house too during that summer. His father was even more silent than usual while his mother would not stop talking, and they grated on each other like a knife against stone.

In the end, Laurence agreed to go with me. Perhaps he was as I was, half eager, half afraid to discover the truth.

Mistress Travis, the cunning-woman, was not so fearful to me as she was to some others in Wenham. As a child, I once got lost in the Great Wood and I ran into her, in my tears and panic not realising she was there. Though the first sight of her was terrifying, she spoke soothing words and took me by the hand and led me through a maze of over-grown paths until we reached the edge of the trees and when I saw the chimney-smoke from my home in the distance, I slipped out of her grasp and ran towards it without a backward glance. So I had no reason to be daunted by her. Even so, Laurence and I approached the hut in the woods in great trepidation. If we hadn’t been driven by our desire to find out the truth we would have turned and run back home.

It was a late afternoon in autumn and the trees were almost bare. The branches creaked. The way to the cunning-woman’s was not so hard to find, for other village folk apart from us were accustomed to beating a path to her door. As I walked, I clutched the talisman with the image of the gold lion. The hut was in a clearing where nothing seemed to grow, as though the ground immediately around it was blighted. The door of the hut was open, or perhaps it could never be properly closed since it hung drunkenly on a single hinge of rope. We came to a halt either side of the entrance. Mistress Travis was squatting on a low stool just inside. Her white hair curtained her face and the bedraggled smock she wore concealed the shape beneath like a tent.

‘You are too big to be lost in the woods now,’ she said in her singsong voice.

This was directed at me. I was surprised she remembered the frightened child.

‘I have my friend Laurence for company,’ I said.

The cunning-woman ducked her head slightly. She knew Laurence, of course, even if they’d never spoken. She knew everyone in the village and everyone knew her.

I waited for Laurence to say something but he would not even look the cunning-woman in the face, instead keeping his eyes fastened on the earth, so I stretched out my hand instead and said: ‘We have brought you something, Mistress Travis, an offering.’

The old woman put out a palm that was oddly smooth and soft. I placed the talisman in it. She tilted it so that it caught the little light remaining in the clearing. Her eyes were pure blue. She raised the talisman to her nose and sniffed at it. Looking at her, I thought that despite the hairs on her face, she must have been handsome many years ago. I remembered one of the stories I’d heard about her: that she’d been in holy orders and was once a woman of learning and refinement. ‘This is not yours,’ she said.

‘I found it.’

‘Where?’

‘In a copse of trees near a stile.’

‘Where the physician was done to death?’

‘Yes,’ said Laurence, speaking up for the first time. ‘You were there that afternoon, Mistress Travis. I saw you.’

The cunning-woman looked at Laurence. I could not tell whether her look was an admission – yes, I was there – or whether she didn’t know what he was talking about. I wondered why he’d raised the subject. Why should she remember where she’d been six months ago? Now she bent her white-haired head over the object that nestled in her palm.

‘For sure, it is one of the physician’s things,’ said Mistress Travis, examining the golden image tucked inside the little frame. ‘They say the image of the lion is a protection against the stone. It is also for those of a choleric disposition or humour and all other hot conditions.’

‘Then the physician must have dropped it,’ said Laurence.

‘No,’ said the crouching woman. She brushed her finger-tips several times back and forth across the little image and she cocked her head, as though she was listening to someone we could neither see nor hear. ‘Its story is plain enough if you have the ears to hear it. This passed from the physician’s hands into another’s. There was no loss involved.’

I thought she meant that the talisman must have been sold or given away, not stolen.

‘Whose hands?’ said Laurence.

I felt my heart beat faster. Mistress Travis did not reply. She clasped the talisman in both her own hands now and rubbed it gently. She raised her hands to her face and then cradled her cheek against them and closed her blue eyes. She looked like a child trying to fall asleep. Laurence and I gazed at each other. It was growing more gloomy in the clearing and the evening breeze rattled above us. We were startled by a sudden moan from Mistress Travis. Then, with her hands still to the side of her face and without changing her crouching posture on the stool, she started to speak.

‘The rain is coming down hard. He is walking along the path across the fields. He is moving fast because he is eager to see her. Anger and hatred boil up within me and cloud my vision. The rain is coming down hard even under the trees where I am standing and I wipe my hands across my eyes to clear them but I still cannot see clearly. And now he is drawing level with me and all I see is his arms swinging and his legs moving like knives. Soon he will be with her in the dry and the warm and his legs will be moving like knives, and hers too moving against his, and the anger and hatred boil over and spill down my sides. Here, at my side, somewhere at my side, I have a piece of rope that I have been keeping for just such an occasion. No, it is for this occasion now, as he walks past me so fast and then stops close to the stile. He is thinking for a moment how best to get over it without marring his clothes, and now is the same moment when I go and-’