The Medieval Murderers - The Deadliest Sin

John leaned across the table and good-naturedly poured a beaker of wine for Giles.

‘Get that down you, lad, you’ll feel better. Giving you a hard time, is he?’

Giles made a growling sound at the back of his throat. ‘I swear that man’s mother was frightened by a viper when he was in her belly and he was born spitting venom. That’s if he was actually born at all. His parents probably dug him up from under a stone.’

Robert took the beaker that John, in turn, held out for him, and drained it gratefully in one long swallow, shuddering slightly at the sour taste. ‘Think yourself lucky you’ve only one like him to please. I’ve a hundred of them each worse than the last.’

Like Oswin, Father Robert was already ordained, but had no great liking for his post. His uncle, William, who was subdean of the Cathedral, had secured him a minor position there, but Robert spent as little time working as possible. As he was forever telling his friends, the one and only benefit of being employed in the Cathedral was that it was so large that, with a bit of ducking and weaving, you could always ensure you were somewhere else whenever anyone was looking for you.

‘And where is the divine princeling?’ Eustace enquired in his nasal tone, dabbing his dripping nose. ‘You two normally arrive together.’

Robert grimaced. ‘Taking instruction behind locked doors, or so some brat informed me. Probably summoning the Archangel Michael to do his bidding,’ he added sourly.

Giles rolled his eyes and John chuckled.

‘Anyway, I wasn’t going to hang around waiting for him. I’ve been trying to dodge my uncle all day. Probably noticed I wasn’t at Mass this morning and wants to blister my ears.’

Although Robert had no intention of exerting himself in the service of the Church – at least not in the position of dogsbody in which he found himself – all the same, he had been annoyed that his uncle had not suggested him for training in place of Oswin. He was kin, after all, and the post commanded a good stipend, and a great deal of respect. Most importantly of all, everyone knew it was a stepping stone directly into high office, and Robert thought the post of bishop would suit him well. He’d rather fancied living in sumptuous rooms and having a host of minions to wait on him.

‘So where were you that you missed Mass?’ John asked.

‘Still abed,’ Robert said.

‘And I wager it was not your own,’ Eustace muttered darkly.

Eustace took the vows of celibacy extremely seriously, unlike many of the clergy in Lincoln. He wouldn’t look at a woman, even turning his face away when one of the older serving women at the tavern approached. Oswin often teased him about it, saying he was scared he’d not be able to resist the temptation to jump on her, but in truth, Eustace gave every impression of loathing all females.

John, grinning broadly, shoved the flagon of wine towards Robert, almost tipping the whole lot over with the strength of the push. Eustace made a grab for it and succeeded in righting it just in time, shaking his head despairingly at John. If there was any object that could be tripped over, broken or crushed, you could always count on John to do it.

‘It’s as well you’ve no ambitions to priesthood,’ Eustace said. ‘You’d drop the infants in the font and knock out half your parishioners every time you tried to put the host in their mouths at Mass.’

As John opened his mouth to retort, the door creaked ajar once more and they glimpsed the hem of Oswin’s robes as he sauntered down the stairs. He ducked under the archway and descended the remaining steps. He was closely followed by the serving maid staggering under the weight of a steaming pot, a basket of bread trenchers and another of fresh bread. She lumbered over to the table and heaved the pot of civey of hare onto it, and handed round the bread trenchers. The young men made no attempt to help her, and she expected none. Clergy, she had long ago concluded, would leave you lying in the street in the path of a stampeding bull, sooner than soil their hands to help you up.

She tucked a greasy lock of russet hair back under her voluminous cap and retreated back upstairs with a promise to return with another flagon of wine as soon as she had a moment, which judging by the laughter and shouts above them wasn’t likely to be soon. The men ignored her and concentrated on the meal, as if it had arrived on the table by magic.

Oswin stripped off his damp cloak, tossed it onto a barrel and settled himself on the bench. He was a well-favoured young man and a fringe of dark hair curled becomingly round his tonsure, making girls and matrons alike sigh that it was a pity that all the good-looking men ended up in the priesthood. Before anyone else could reach for it, Oswin leaned across and helped himself to the stew, sniffing appreciatively at the rich spicy steam.

‘Never realised exorcism could give a man such an appetite.’

Giles snorted. ‘It’s not that taxing. I do it every week, several times in fact.’

‘Saying a few words over a bawling infant or some crazed old woman is hardly the same thing. Even a boy in minor orders can do that.’ Oswin leaned forward eagerly, waving his knife on which he had speared a large piece of meat. ‘I’m talking about wrestling with demons, evil spirits, dark angels.’ His eyes glittered with excitement.

A dark flush spread over Giles’s face at the barely veiled insult. ‘And how many demons have you managed to subdue today? Send them all howling back to Hell in chains, did you? Have you actually read the book of exorcism they gave me when I was made exorcist? Banishing demons is in the book, too, you know.’

‘But divining isn’t, nor summoning spirits,’ Oswin retorted. ‘Divining the hidden holy objects. Now that’s a rare skill.’

‘And I suppose you can do that, too. Go on then, show us!’

Hearing the savagery in Giles’s tone, Robert glanced up from his meticulous dissection of the hare’s flesh from its bone. He cast about for a subject that would divert them and unfortunately blurted out the first and only thing that crossed his mind.

‘They’ve a new girl at the stew, backside sweet as twin peaches.’

‘Which you know, because you’ve been biting into them!’ Eustace snapped. ‘I don’t know how you can face your confessor.’

‘We all have our weaknesses and we all know what yours is, Eustace,’ Giles said acidly.

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

‘Hold your peace, lads,’ John said, doling out what remained of the wine into each beaker in equal measure. ‘I reckon one of you brought the Devil in here with you tonight. I’m away to fetch some more wine, ’cause I reckon Meggy’s forgotten we’re down here. So shift your arses and get out the dice. More gaming, less talking is what we need.’

It took John a fair time before he could finally waylay one of the scurrying tavern girls and cajole her into ignoring her other customers and bringing wine from the broached barrel in the yard. Meggy was clearing the gravy-soaked bread trenchers from the table as he lumbered down the steps. John groaned, hearing again the sound of an argument in progress. Mischief rides the east wind, his mother used to say and she wasn’t wrong. It was a spiteful wind that always set men in an ill humour. He set the wine on the table, spilling some of it onto the basket of fresh bread. Unwilling to see either wine or bread go to waste, he crammed the soggy bread into his mouth as he poured the contents of the flagon into the Black Crows’ beakers.

‘So where’s the dice, lads?’

‘We,’ Giles said, with a note of triumph in his voice, ‘have found something far more interesting to wager on, something that should be a challenge even for you.’