The Medieval Murderers - The Deadliest Sin

The cunning-woman delivered all this in her usual singsong tone. When she stopped it was in mid-flow, as if she had been cut off by some external force. That was odd because neither Laurence nor I had spoken a word or moved an inch. But even odder was the fact that though Mistress Travis talked of anger and hatred her voice had not changed in its up-and-down style. It was as if she were reading words she did not understand out of a book. Gooseflesh rose on my arms and I felt my hair stir. Beside me, I sensed rather than saw that Laurence was just as horrified as I.

We waited, not certain what to do next. The woman lowered her hands to her lap. She unclasped them to reveal the lion-talisman crouching there, unchanged. Her eyes opened and, after a moment in which she gazed blankly at the two of us standing either side of her doorway, she came back to herself.

‘It is getting late,’ she said. ‘Home before dark.’

We were being dismissed like children. The inner chill I’d felt while she was telling the story was starting to fade, to be replaced by the outer cold of the evening. I wanted to thank her, even if I wasn’t quite sure of the meaning of what she had told us. I gestured at the talisman in her hand.

‘What do I need it for, Agnes?’ she said, passing it back to me. ‘I do not suffer from the stone and I am not choleric. Take it back and give it someone who has need of it.’

Even so, I was reluctant to take the thing and she sensed it was because I was frightened of the talisman brooch now and considered it unlucky. Mistress Travis said, ‘There is nothing to fear here. It was created to ward off harm and some small trace of that remains. The person who lost it under the trees cannot touch you.’

I reflected that I had already kept the talisman secret for the whole summer without coming to grief and so I took it back and thanked her in my stumbling way. Laurence said nothing. We turned away from the hut and threaded a path back through the woods. It was fortunate we were together and that we were not children, despite Mistress Travis’s words, for otherwise we might have been fearful of the gathering shadows and the sounds of animals settling down or stirring themselves for the night.

We waited until we’d reached the boundary of the woods before talking about the cunning-woman. Laurence was of the opinion that it was all nonsense. He said that Mistress Travis hadn’t denied being near the place where the murder occurred. Either she was making things up or possibly she had glimpsed somebody lurking under the trees by the stile but had no idea who it was. I reminded him that Mistress Travis mentioned the rope. She couldn’t have seen that from a distance. The rope wasn’t a secret, he said. Everybody knew how Thomas Flytte had died. The coroner had pronounced on it. In truth, the cunning-woman had seen nothing, she knew nothing. All that business with stroking the talisman and pretending to go into a trance was nothing more than foolery, designed to impress us, and all for the sake of – of…

‘Yes, Laurence,’ I said, ‘all for the sake of – what? Tell me. Because she didn’t want any money or gifts from us. She wouldn’t even keep the talisman. She was still speaking to us as children almost, telling us to get off home before dark. We are hardly worth impressing.’

There was a silence and I could tell he wasn’t pleased.

‘All right,’ he said. ‘Then, if we do believe her, it must be the cunning-woman herself who was under the trees by the stile. She was the one lying in wait for Thomas Flytte. Everyone knows she had a grudge against the physician. She’s strong enough to have overpowered him and pulled a cord round his neck and choked him. You know some people say she’s really a man.’

‘And others say that she’s a nun. But it didn’t happen like that at all. She held the talisman in her hands and, because of that, she was able to see through the eyes of… the person who possessed it at the time. Through those eyes, she saw Thomas Flytte crossing the field at a run because it was raining, she saw him pass in front of her and then pause in front of the stile. Or rather ‘she’ didn’t see all this but…’

‘Have you tried to do that thing, Agnes?’ said Laurence, ignoring everything I’d been saying. ‘Go on, hold the wretched object, rub it tenderly and see if you have any visions.’

‘Don’t be stupid, Laurence. I haven’t got the gift. Even her enemies admit that Mistress Travis has the gift.’

‘Answer me this, then. Why did she suddenly stop at the very point in her story where she was about to tell us what happened? According to you, she can see or pretends she can see through the eyes of the person who is spying on the physician while he strides across the field. Thomas Flytte pauses as he gets to the stile, and then this “person” goes and does… whatever it is he does. How convenient that she cannot tell us anything that really matters. She does not see the murder, she does not see the murderer.’

‘Not convenient, just fortunate,’ I said.

‘You’re talking as much nonsense as the cunning-woman.’

I wasn’t talking nonsense and Laurence knew it, I think. It was fortunate that the cunning-woman had not seen everything in her vision. It meant that the truth was still half-hidden, which was more comfortable for both of us.

‘I have been thinking about why Mistress Travis couldn’t see the murder being done,’ I said, ‘and it makes sense. I can explain it.’

‘Nothing makes sense,’ he said. I waited for him to ask for my explanation, which I was rather pleased with, but he said nothing more. So I was forced to speak instead.

‘Remember I told you I found the talisman under the trees, not by the stile? It was close to the foot-marks. I measured those against the boots of Thomas Flytte and it was obvious from the length of them that he was not the person waiting in the spinney. He was shorter than that person. Which confirms the cunning-woman’s words. She was looking through the eyes of someone watching the physician. Even the words she used weren’t her own thoughts and feelings, but his. It was his hatred and anger boiling over. His idea that the physician’s legs were going like knives. But she could only do that for as long as the man under the trees was holding the talisman. When he no longer had the talisman with him then she could no longer see with his eyes. The talisman is her link to… that person.’

I paused, waiting for him to agree, but also to catch up with my own rushing thoughts. Then a further detail occurred to me. ‘Or probably, he wasn’t holding the lion-talisman in his hand but he had it somewhere about him, in a pocket or fastened to his belt, and in his hurry and anger as he reached for the piece of rope, which he kept with him – remember Mistress Travis talked of the rope at her side, though it wasn’t her side but his – he accidentally dislodged it and it dropped to the ground-’

‘Where it was conveniently found by Agnes Rath,’ said Laurence, breaking his silence. There was almost a harshness in his tone.

I said, ‘Don’t you believe me, Laurence? I found the talisman where I said I did, and the foot-marks, too. I have told you no lie but only the precise truth.’

After a few moments, he said, ‘I believe you,’ and this time there was no harshness in his voice but only regret perhaps. We were out in the open by now and coming to the point where he would have to follow his path back to his house while I went off to mine. It was half dark, and I was glad to be out of the woods.

‘It could have been the pedlar Hugh standing in the spinney by the stile, or Reeve,’ said Laurence.

‘I don’t think so,’ I said. It didn’t seem to me as though the shoe-marks I’d seen could belong to either of those ragged individuals.