The Butcher of St Peter's: (Knights Templar 19)

by Michael Jecks

  ‘Why scared?’ Baldwin asked.

  ‘I think because he hates to think of them alone in their chambers with no one there to guard them.’

  ‘You put locks on your doors after he got in the second time, though?’ Sir Peregrine asked.

  ‘Why’d I do that? No, as soon as we moved our son into our own bedchamber, Est knew my lad was safe. From that day on, he never tried to break in again. All he wants is to see children safe and well. He would never hurt them.’

  ‘But he might carry a knife to protect them from others,’ Sir Peregrine guessed. ‘And if a man appeared suddenly, carrying a weapon, Est might be shocked into thinking that it was a murderer come to harm the children, and strike first. I think that explains the whole matter, Sir Baldwin! Where does this Est live, Saul?’

  ‘Take us there, please,’ Baldwin said, but it was not a request.

  Saul stood reluctantly. ‘I won’t see you hurt him. He’s no harm to anyone.’

  Baldwin said soothingly, ‘I wouldn’t wish to see him hurt either. All I wish is an opportunity to talk to him, and find out whether he was there that evening. Someone was in there, and did kill Daniel.’

  As he made that statement, he suddenly wondered again. He was assuming that the evidence of Daniel’s wife was truthful, but what if it wasn’t? What if she was lying? In that case, it might mean that there was no intruder, that the murder was a treasonous attack by a woman on her husband.

  As they left the inn and made their way eastwards along the road towards the alley where Estmund lived, Baldwin could not but ask, ‘What of Daniel? Was he a good father? If Est was in there and saw Daniel beating his children, how would he have reacted?’

  ‘Wouldn’t matter, would it?’ Saul shrugged. ‘Daniel was in his own home, dealing with his own family.’

  ‘True, but if Est saw him mistreating them, how would he respond to that?’

  ‘He’d not go in.’

  Sir Peregrine scoffed. ‘You mean to tell me that after all these years of wandering the city to peep in at other men’s children, because of losing his own, if he saw one of the little darlings being assaulted he wouldn’t do anything about it? It sounds to me more as though he’d jump into that room and kill the man attacking the children he so adored.’

  ‘What do you say to that, Saul?’ Baldwin asked.

  ‘It’s wrong. Est wouldn’t pick a fight with anyone.’

  ‘Not even Daniel, the man who had prevented his burying his wife?’

  ‘If anyone would hurt Daniel for that, it’d be Henry.’

  ‘The man who was crippled by him.’ Baldwin nodded. ‘I shall have to speak to him.’

  They were soon at the house, a scruffy place on the alley, one of a few of about the same size, but although Saul hammered loudly on the door there was no answer. Baldwin looked at Sir Peregrine, who told Saul he could go, provided he was available for the inquest later, and they waited until he had disappeared round the corner before speaking.

  Sir Peregrine was first to speak. ‘I have lost a child and lover, Sir Baldwin. I know how I felt about it. And I can tell you now: I would have slaughtered any petty-minded fool who told me not to bury her where I saw fit.’

  ‘Even now?’

  ‘Certainly. I would feel the same in ten years, or twenty.’

  ‘That makes sense … but would you delay your assault until ten years afterwards? Why should Est have been so slow to avenge the insult?’ Baldwin asked, his brow knotted.

  ‘I don’t know, but we shall hopefully discover that too before long,’ Sir Peregrine said. ‘Perhaps for now we ought to consider searching for this Estmund Webber and calling the inquest into Daniel’s death. More can be learned there than here. If you don’t mind, Sir Baldwin, I shall go and begin to arrange matters for the inquest itself. It should be conducted as soon as possible. At least we now have a likely murderer, rather than the widow. Will you be able to attend this afternoon?’

  ‘I will be there,’ Baldwin said, but without enthusiasm. Just now his breast was giving him not a little pain, and he would have preferred to return to his inn and his bed.

  Sir Peregrine marched off back towards the street at the top of the alley, where he paused a moment. As Baldwin watched, he saw the knight turn left, to head west along Smythen Street.

  Edgar saw it too. ‘If I was a betting man, I’d think he was not going straight to arrange an inquest, but first to make sure that a widow was not too distressed by the questions of his brutal associate.’

  ‘His associate must be brutal indeed for the noble knight to have noticed,’ Baldwin grunted, and began to walk slowly after Sir Peregrine. ‘I crave a place to rest awhile. My bones ache within me.’

  Agnes had gone, thank God! Juliana wasn’t sure that she could cope much longer with that supercilious expression of hers. It was so knowing, and so accusatory, as if Juliana had ruined her whole life’s joy when she took Daniel from her. Well, that was ridiculous, and Juliana wouldn’t think about it … She was so unhappy!

  Hugging Cecily as her two children sobbed, she felt the tears welling again. Daniel was gone, and here she was with two little ones to look after. ‘You’ll have to be brave for me, both of you. I can’t cope if you don’t help.’

  The widow Gwen came in just then, carrying a tray of bread and cheese and some ale. Juliana sat in her seat with her arms about Cecily and Arthur while Gwen asked one of her daughters to find a small table, and set the food down for them. Then she sat at her own table, watching with sympathetic eyes.

  It was not surprising that the children had no appetite, but Juliana was not going to allow them to go without their food. She herself poured them their ale, and took a long draught herself before breaking the bread and cheese into manageable hunks and distributing them to Arthur and Cecily. It was good of Gwen to produce her best plate – three fine pewter dishes – and Juliana looked up in gratitude at this small sign of respect. Gwen smiled in return, but her own eyes were clouded with tears. Juliana saw her gaze go to the children and realized that the gesture was intended for them rather than for her. No matter.

  She pressed food on her children, forcing them to take bread and drink ale through it to make it more easily digestible, refusing to let them reject it all. They must eat something.

  That was one of the first things that people learned when they survived the famine: no food should be turned away, because that would be to dishonour God’s generosity in providing it. And although they may not be hungry today, there might be no food tomorrow. Juliana had no breadwinner now. They must eat while they could.

  When Gwen’s daughter returned to say that the Coroner had come to the door once more, it was a relief to Juliana. The children were exhausted, the boy in particular was sagging. He needed a chance to lie down. Cecily was more reluctant to leave her mother, clinging like a small limpet to a rock. Except Juliana felt little like a rock today. She had failed her husband, and now he was dead she was committed to concealing the truth. For ever. She willingly passed both children to the young maid, who was only a little more than fifteen herself, and had comforted her brothers and sisters when two of their number died. Now she spoke soothingly to Juliana’s children and led them away to her mother’s chamber upstairs. There was a large bed there, and the girl promised she would lie down with them to help them sleep. They wouldn’t be able to be left for some while.

  When Sir Peregrine entered, Juliana looked at Gwen. The older woman grudgingly left the room. She would have preferred to remain to protect Juliana from any harsh questioning.

  ‘My lady, I am sorry to return like this,’ the Coroner said gently, ‘but it is necessary that we arrange for the inquest at the earliest opportunity. I have a responsibility to record the events of the night.’

  ‘I understand.’

  ‘And it must be before all the jury. I wanted to warn you …’ he waved a hand unhappily, ‘we must have the facts recorded.’

  ‘It would ease my pain to know that my husband’s
murderer was being sought.’

  ‘There I can help you. My friend Sir Baldwin de Furnshill is already actively seeking the man who did this.’

  She felt a faint wash of nausea. ‘Will he be successful at such a search?’

  ‘He is perhaps the most capable hunter of felons in the whole of Devonshire,’ Sir Peregrine said. ‘It can make him appear disrespectful and … perhaps unnecessarily direct, but it is his way.’

  ‘I hate him!’

  ‘He always discovers who is guilty,’ Sir Peregrine said gently. ‘He will help us to learn the truth.’

  ‘I wish someone else would take on the matter,’ she said brokenly. ‘I thought him very blunt.’

  Sir Peregrine felt his upper body lean towards her as though of its own volition, and only the exercise of strict self-discipline prevented him from going to her side as she averted her head and wiped at the tears that had begun to trickle once more down her cheeks.

  ‘I feel so alone!’

  Juliana glanced at him, then away, as though to hold him in view could weaken her resolve.

  ‘My lady – please – let me help you.’

  ‘When Sir Baldwin questioned me, I found myself questioning all. I even wondered …’ She met his eye defiantly. ‘I even suspected it could have been my sister. She and my husband had an argument, and she left our house. For a moment, when Sir Baldwin asked about someone with a grudge against Daniel, I thought of her.’

  ‘It is only natural—’ he began.

  ‘No! Agnes could not do something like that!’ Juliana blazed.

  Sir Peregrine hung his head. He could not believe a woman could be capable of killing a man like her husband, and his conventional chivalric soul quailed at the idea that she might hire an assassin. It was equally as impossible to think that this lovely woman could have a sister capable of such a deed.

  Tentatively he ventured: ‘My lady, if there was anything I could do to help … You are very … I cannot imagine any other woman being so brave. Now! I must go and organize the court. It will be held in the room where he died, of course. I shall send a man to fetch you when we need you there.’

  ‘Thank you, Sir Peregrine.’

  He nodded and bowed and left her, all the while trying to concentrate on the inquest: whom to order to attend, the bailiffs he must call, the clerk who would record the details … but he remembered only the hint of a grateful, sad smile on Juliana’s lips as he took his leave of her.

  She was a woman to whom any man would be happy to lose his heart, he thought, and then he sternly thrust the thought from his mind. Her husband had died only the night before. This was no time to daydream about her. He had graver duties to attend to.

  Henry was feeling every year of his age when he walked out of the Blue Rache and glanced up and down the lane. He was starving, and had nothing saved, so rather than wander homewards and feel his belly rumbling there he made his way to Cook’s Row and walked along it hopefully. Sometimes Tom would have a pie or pastry that couldn’t be sold which he’d offer to a beggar rather than throw away.

  He was in luck. Tom gave him a small pastry coffin filled with a sweetened apple and cinnamon custard, and he ate it quickly as he walked up towards Carfoix, wondering how Estmund was. It would have been good to see Est, but not just while the death of Daniel was on everybody’s lips, and he might be followed. Est would want to know all that Henry had heard. Likely enough, he’d not believe anything Henry said, because everyone knew what Henry thought of the murderous shit. So far as he was concerned, Daniel had lived far too long. His frenzied attack on Henry had effectually ended his life.

  He could be followed. The first man the hue and cry had sought when Daniel was found in there had been Estmund. Whenever a man was found inside another’s house, everyone immediately thought of Estmund. Who else, when the poor devil was known to wander into other men’s homes all the time?

  Nobody had ever felt threatened by the man. There was no need to persecute him further. Why hurt him? There was no evil in him. To think that he could have drawn a knife on Daniel was madness. It was as stupid as thinking that Henry himself could have overwhelmed the man.

  But everyone wanted to find the felon quickly, and people remembered Est wandering in their homes. A man had to be sensible. That was why Henry had gone to Est first thing, as soon as news of Daniel’s death was spoken in the street. He had hidden his old friend in a small load of filth and taken him out of the city in his cart. No one was going to search for a man among the manure. Est had escaped, and hopefully even now he was secure up in the Duryard.

  Henry missed him. Just now he could do with a friend to talk to, but there was no one else he wholly trusted. Ach! What was the point? He’d go home. He could take a cut through Barber’s Alley, a little passage that led behind Cook’s Row a couple of lanes behind Daniel’s old place, and get home to Pruste Street that way.

  His legs felt a little wobbly. They often did, since the day of the attack, but today they were more so. Perhaps he’d had a little too much ale in the Rache. He wasn’t so young as he had been. The effect of the ale was to deaden the pain a little, though, and he was less aware of the dull aches in his shoulder and back than usual.

  The alley was here, and he turned into it. Dark and dank, the walls rose up on either side, the upper storeys jettied so that they almost met overhead. Yes, he’d got a bit pissed. Too much ale, that was it. But what else could a man do when the enemy who had done so much harm was at last dead as he deserved? The evil devil would soon be in his grave, and the sooner he was there and dirt spread over his face, the better.

  He felt something grab at his boot just as he was thinking this, and stumbled, almost falling. Looking down, he saw a filthy darkened bundle, a long stick wrapped in material protruding from it. Some idle sod had thrown trash down here where it could trip anyone walking by – not that it was likely to be much of a risk. This alley was hardly ever used, and the likelihood of someone’s strolling down here was remote in the extreme. Whoever threw that stuff away had probably assumed that it would lie there for weeks without anyone’s seeing it. Maybe it had been here for weeks already.

  Idly, he prodded it with his staff. There was a strange softness about it, whatever it was, and then a fold of material moved and he saw an eye. Even then his mind refused to accept what he could see, and he assumed it was a dog’s or a cat’s, until the material moved further and he saw the nostrils, the nose chewed away by rats and insects, the vermin toothmarks at forehead and cheek, the missing eyeball, and then, last of all, the moving mass where the throat had been.

  Sabina wiped the food from her son’s face and kissed his brow, then smacked him lightly on the breeches as he ran outside to play.

  Other places were more worrying than this. In their house in Arches Lane a short distance from the priory of St Nicholas, there was never too much fast traffic. Elsewhere there were always the dangers of runaway carts, fools racing their horses or, God in Heaven forbid the thought, even occasional hazards from maddened hogs. One had entered a house in an alley behind St Martin’s Lane not long ago and eaten a baby lying in her cot. That must surely be the worst thing to happen to a mother, losing a child before her eyes, seeing it eaten by a ravening hog …

  God be praised, but there were many dangers for a young child in a busy, go-ahead city like Exeter. Others had said sometimes that Exeter was only a rural backwater, that for men who wanted to get on Bristol or York offered far more, and that a man who wanted to be rich beyond his dreams couldn’t do better than to move to London, but that would never tempt her husband, and Sabina was glad of it.

  Born in Bishop’s Clyst just outside the city, she had thought it a big move to come up to the city. As a child she had seen the smoke from all the fires over the hill, showing how huge the place was, and she could still remember how petrified she had been on the first day she was told to go with her father to help him in the market. It had seemed so vast, this great city with the red stone wall encirclin
g it, and when she came closer and could appreciate the immensity of the gates, the astonishing complexity of the streets and alleys, she had been certain that she could never live in such a place. She had been delighted to return home to their tiny cottage at the end of the day. Exeter was too large, too fast-paced. Anybody living there must grow as intolerant, sharp and plain rude as all the people seemed to be. She wouldn’t want to become like them.

  But as she grew older and began to search for a new life for herself, the attractions of the city began to make themselves felt. She wondered what it must be like to live safely behind those huge walls, where there were inns to visit, markets with fine silks and furs, the lure of dressmakers and cakemakers.

  All through her childhood she would travel with her father to the city to sell their produce. He was a freeman, and maintained a small orchard with apples and some pears, which he would sell at the market, while sometimes taking the windfalls and pressing the juice from them to make scrumpy, which would often sell well at his door. It was good, he always said, to have his little Sabina with him, because she would help attract customers for him. A small girl’s voice, he had said, would carry better and sound sweeter than his harsh old growl. Now she knew that he had been pretending. It was helpful to have her there because the women browsing the market stalls would see a pretty little face peering up appealingly, and would buy at an inflated price ‘to keep the child happy’.

  Many assumed she had met her Reginald that way. He lived in Exeter, of course, but she didn’t know him from there. She met him when he was passing by the farm gate one day and saw the bush tied over the door, the recognized symbol of the tavern-keeper all over the country. All families tended to brew their own ale every so often, and because ale would not keep well for any length of time the excess was sold off at the door. It so happened that Sabina’s mother had broached a barrel of scrumpy that morning, and her father had tied up the bush at midday. Early in the afternoon, Sabina heard the sound of hooves, and when she went to the door she saw the man who was to become her husband.