If he could, he would go home now, pack, and leave for ever. But he couldn’t just up and go: if he was going to do that, he’d have to take Mazeline with him. He couldn’t – Jesus, save me! – couldn’t leave her to Jordan’s mercy. What, leave her to the same fate as Anne? Impossible. And he couldn’t leave without Michael. Michael didn’t understand yet, all he knew was that Daddy was tumbling with another woman. It would be a long, long time before he could understand what his father was engaged in. Dear Christ, please don’t let my son talk about that to anyone else he knows. If he were to tell his friends and it got back to Jordie … It didn’t bear thinking of.
And then he saw her. Suddenly the sun seemed to shine again. Where the light had been dim, now it was fresh and bright, and the colours of people’s clothing were clear and vibrant again, and he was alive again, alive and happy, and all his fears seemed to fade. They didn’t leave him, because at the back of his mind there was always Jordan, but they were a little reduced in virulence, as though the fact of Jordie’s presence was less intimidating now.
‘Mistress,’ he called. ‘Mistress le Bolle?’
She turned, and he felt his joy flee, to be replaced by a terror more fierce than before. This was his Mazeline, but she was terribly marked. Her left eye was almost black, with a livid orange tidemark.
‘My God, my love, what … why did he do that?’
‘The other night – I think he thought I was nagging him. All I did was suggest he wore a coat since the weather was so inclement. That was all, and he swung his fist at me. I only wanted to help him.’
Her eyes were anguished, and he felt as though his heart must burst at any moment. ‘I will save you from him,’ he declared quietly. ‘I will, I swear it.’
She looked up at him, with those great brown eyes of hers, which he had seen so full of lust, and in them he saw only despair. ‘You? What could you do against him, Reg?’
Chapter Seventeen
Baldwin returned to the inn as soon as he could, leaving Sir Peregrine bellowing for the hue and cry, such as it was, and demanding that all the frankpledge be called to attend his inquest on Anne.
‘Somehow I can’t feel that he will be entirely successful,’ Baldwin said. ‘The location is all wrong. The dregs of the city congregate there, and most of them would be happier to confuse an official of the law than to aid him, no matter that the reason for the inquest is to help catch a murderer. Even the other whores are unlikely to help.’
‘You think that the man wasn’t killed by her?’
Jeanne’s manner was distracted, as though she had other things on her mind. He glanced at her and guessed that conversation would be good for her.
‘I think that would be extremely unlikely. He was quite a broad, powerful lad, while she was only moderately sized. The murderer cut across the throat with a long-bladed knife. It took some strength to do that.’
‘Why a long-bladed knife?’ she asked, despite herself.
‘The cut went almost to the spine. He could have used a shorter blade, but then he would have had to saw with it, and if his victim was struggling, the blade would have made a series of jagged cuts in his flesh. In fact, there was only the one fairly smooth slash. I think that means one cut, and the knife would have to have a long blade, no matter how sharp. A knife cuts as you draw it over the flesh. It won’t cut by simply pushing it onto a man’s neck. So the blade was drawn forward over his throat for some while, which implies a long one.’
‘You are sure it was a he?’
‘As sure as I can be. The strength needed to hold Mick there, the firmness of purpose, the size of the knife, they all point to a man, I think.’
She nodded dully. Then, ‘Baldwin, why would men go to a brothel like that?’
He was about to laugh when he caught a glimpse of the expression on her face. There was something alarming her, he saw, and he instinctively sought to calm her.
His infidelity was a matter of shame to him. It weighed on his soul, although he felt that it was a natural reaction to the abnormal situation in which he had found himself. Still, there was nothing he would ever knowingly do to hurt his wife’s feelings, and now he took a deep breath and beckoned her to sit on his lap. She was reluctant, looking away, but then went to him, and he pulled her down onto him.
‘My love, I have not been in one of those places since I was a lad, many years ago. Is that what worries you? I’ve not had an opportunity to go to one since we arrived here either. What is it that scares you?’
‘I don’t understand why men who were happily married would want to go to a place like that.’
‘Jeanne …’ He was pensive for a moment. ‘There are some desperate women, and some desperately lonely men in the world. As well as some men who would prefer to take a woman without commitment on either side. For them the stews serve some purpose, I suppose.’
‘Why was she there?’ Jeanne asked after a moment. She sniffed a little and rested her head on Baldwin’s.
‘I suppose she was looking for something. A security. Many women are forced into whoring because they lose a husband or a father and there is nothing else for them. Since the famine, there have been ever more women who’ve been orphaned and forced into that profession. It’s hard, but it’s understandable. Better that life than death.’
‘Maybe.’
‘But you, my love,’ he said, pulling her away from him so he could look into her eyes. ‘There’s no fear of that for you. When I am dead, you will be well provided for. I will make sure of that. It’ll be my last gift to you.’
‘I don’t care about that! I just don’t want to lose you!’ she cried, and he cuddled her close, smiling, thinking that she was only worried about his death.
Gwen swept rhythmically, her besom making small furrows in the packed earth of the floor. This room was unwholesome. A twinge of pain caught her about the breast, and she winced and leaned on the broom. ‘Sweet Mother of God,’ she muttered. The pain was definitely growing.
Life was hard. Widowed before even the famine began, she had found it a struggle to make enough money to maintain her house. Of course, the children were a bind, too, but at least as each of them grew older they could start to bring in a few pennies a week to help with buying food and drink. But life had never been easy, especially when the famine bit.
Two of her boys had died. Lovely little Mark, and then Ben too. They’d been too small to cope with the strains that starvation brought. Even now the memory of them brought tears to her eyes. They had been very precious to her, those two, and their loss had been devastating. It was easy to understand how other mothers could grow so depressed that they would consider even that most appalling sin, suicide, when a babe died. Gwen had thought of it. Aye, above a dozen times. There seemed so little to live for, especially when Mark was gone. Poor mite. He was so small at birth, it seemed unlikely he’d live more than a few days. David, her husband, had sent the midwife to fetch the priest as soon as he saw the lad, convinced that he couldn’t last the night, and wanting to serve the little fellow right as a Christian by getting him baptized as quickly as possible.
He’d confounded all their fears, though. He had a weakly arm, withered in the womb, so he’d never be a strong worker, but she had hopes for him. Perhaps he would prove to be blessed with a good mind, and could master his letters or his numbers, and learn clerking or some such. He’d be the first in her family who’d ever thought of such an occupation, but she was sure he was clever enough. Oh, yes. Bright little button, he was, with flashing dark eyes and a ready smile, that little gurgling chuckle that was always ready to burst forth whenever he saw his brothers and sisters playing.
He died in the first year of the famine. The food prices started to rise just as he was suffering from a fever, and when he needed sustenance most they couldn’t afford decent meat or ale. He faded and finally died during the vigil of the Feast of St Kalixtus*. A little while later, or so it seemed, Ben died. He’d never had the same affection which Mark ha
d enjoyed, really, and that made his death doubly hard to bear, as though she was to be blamed for not taking so much care of him. Nothing to be done about it now, though. Mark had the attention because of his poorly arm, and Ben had seemed all right, so he didn’t. It was sad, but it was the way. And now Gwen did all she could, working to help householders, and earning a little money to go and buy candles for their young souls in the cathedral church. Others went to the parish church, but Gwen reckoned it was better to go to the big one. It was where her boys were buried, and surely God would look down on the largest church first? He’d think that people remembered in that place would be more deserving than those who only merited a memorial in a parish church.
She had two boys left, and the three girls, so she hadn’t really done so badly. Her lot were less ill-treated by the famine than other families. Some had lost everything: their fine clothes, their plate, their houses, and finally, when all else was gone, their lives. Her lot were lucky, really. Only two of them had died so far. Soon be her turn, though.
She hoped that the children would carry on together when she was dead. She’d joked with them often enough that if she looked down from Heaven and saw them arguing or fighting, she’d come down and give them all such a ding over the ears … and they laughed, as good children should, but she wasn’t sure how seriously they treated her. She was always anxious that they might fall out over something, and that the family would split up. It happened so often nowadays. People argued with their brothers or sisters over the daftest things and then never spoke again. Not even when someone died. That was the worst thing to happen to a family, that was. Not to speak, as though there could be anything that justified such a falling apart.
Other families were prone to such disasters, but she hoped and prayed that hers would be safe. Soon be too late for her to do anything about it, though.
She had never had a sister or brother herself. No, well, her parents wanted another, but then Father died in the wars against the Welsh, and Mother never took another man. Used to say that she had no need of another, not when the first was such a useless bastard. He’d only two interests, fighting and … the other. With women. He had women all over the place, so Gwen’s mother had said, but she was never angry, never bitter. It was one of those things, she said. Men were men, and they had to go and find the next challenge, whether it was a battle or a maid, didn’t matter. They just didn’t have the same devotion that a woman learned. No, they were more prone to disappear when the woman had given birth. In Gwen’s father’s case, before even that.
There had been suitors, but Gwen’s mother wanted nothing of them. What was the point? she always said. When you’ve had one bad one, why take the risk of getting a worse next time round? Better to make a living on your own.
Gwen smiled now, her weight on the besom’s handle as she cast her mind back into the past. It was a welcome place to her nowadays, a period when she was very happy. Recalling her mother sitting outside the door on a summer’s evening, the bobbin spinning, she could remember the tones of her voice as clearly as the contours of her kindly old face. Lovely old maid she was.
Dead now, of course. Gwen sighed. And from the same thing she had. They all knew of it, because so many women got it, but somehow Gwen had thought herself too young still to have it. There were so many illnesses which only affected the old. She didn’t think that the disease that took away her mother could have come for her already … and then she realized that she was older than her mother had been when she died, probably.
It started the same way, with her left nipple retracting. But she knew it was all right because there was no pain. Her memory told her that her mother’s hadn’t hurt either, but Gwen didn’t listen to that sort of logic. No, it was just a bit of a change, that was all. Her whole body was sagging, swelling, or changing in some other way, so it was no surprise that her titties should alter. She kept telling herself that, even when the skin went all funny about the nipple. And when she first felt the large lump under her armpit and the second in her breast, she carried on telling herself that all would be well, she’d soon find them going down – in much the same way that her mother had, she supposed now.
But gradually, as the pain started, she knew the truth. She would soon be dead. It would be a rest, until the day of reckoning, when everyone would be raised again, like the priests said, and she would be able to see her boys again as well as her mother. That was a day to look forward to.
She hoped that the children would all remain friends, yes, but she wasn’t sure they would. The little devils were always at each other’s throats when they had a chance, and her lad Simon was a grasping little sod. Needed a clip round the head often enough. He might be ten years old, but he had no sense in his brain. All he saw was what he wanted the whole time. It was probably those sisters of his, she told herself affectionately. They’d indulged him from the day he was born, lazy little git! He didn’t even bother to learn to speak for an age because all he had to do was point and shriek and one of the girls would instantly run to fetch whatever it was he wanted. He needed no words; just the inflexion of his squeals would tell the girls what to bring.
Still, they must surely get on better than those two, she thought as she heard another bout of tears and screams from the room upstairs.
For a moment, as the pair of them shrieked at each other, she was tempted to go and tell them to be silent, if not for the sake of Gwen and her neighbours, then for the sake of the children. She came close to throwing down the besom and hurrying up there to shout at them herself, but then she sighed and continued brushing. It wasn’t her business. She was better off down here, working at the floor and enjoying her memories, rather than going up there to join in a spat between two sisters.
It was curious, though, she thought. At a time like this, with one of them so recently widowed, she would have expected the other to be kinder. Agnes was never one to hide her feelings, though, when she was angry or felt herself hard done by. Gwen wasn’t the only person in the parish to have noticed that. All about here knew full well that the older of the two sisters was the more spoiled by their parents. It was obvious. She always expected to get her way. No interest in other people or what they might think, only in what she wanted.
Little Juliana was different, though. Much quieter and calmer. Everyone thought that. It was just a shame that she had married that Daniel. He had grown into a brute, by all accounts. Violent in the street – it was him killed poor old Ham – and then he took his cruelty and his frustrations out on his wife, poor maid. And she, what could she do? It was no surprise that she found another man … perhaps she should have picked someone else, but what could a woman do when she found herself unloved and bullied by a man like Daniel? It was no surprise that she’d responded to the first man who showed an interest in her. Gwen herself had seen Jordan go in there, all preened and puffed up, the arrogant brute!
And that was the problem with the sister up there now. Just the same as two little girls, they were. Agnes was, anyway. She never grew up. Perhaps if she’d had children she’d have learned to be more mature, but as things were, she had not.
As far as Gwen was concerned it was clear as a boil on an arse that Agnes was jealous as a child without a toy watching a child who had one: she hadn’t ever snared a man, and she had a sister who’d had two. No surprise that Agnes was screaming fit to burst, when she couldn’t catch even one. And it wasn’t as though Agnes was an ugly maid, not by any means. She should have had her choice of men. Could have, too, if it hadn’t been for the fact that she was so shrewish. She wasn’t the sort of woman to suffer quietly, and her jealous nature meant that she didn’t really want to. In fact it wouldn’t surprise Gwen if—
The thought coincided with a sudden great resurgence of the pain, and she gasped with it, putting her hand to her breast, hunching over as the stabbing, grinding agony ripped into her. She clenched her teeth while the spasm lasted, then stood panting, eyes wide.
Yes, this was going to
end her soon. It was like a birthing, but longer and so much more relentless. That was what her mother had said when she was struggling for breath herself in the dark in their room: that it was unrelenting. The pains just went on getting worse and worse all the time, and there was nothing to be done about it. A leech might be able to provide a potion to stupefy the senses, but then she’d be useless. At least like this, enduring the pain meant that she could still earn a little money to put food on the table.
Another scream from the upper room and she had more or less controlled her breathing. She could scarcely miss the shrieked words. As always it was Agnes.
‘You can’t mean I would have taken him?’
Juliana’s voice was a low, saddened mumble, unintelligible.
‘Me? I didn’t regret losing Daniel. I didn’t want him. I was only glad you took my cast-off.’
Gwen stiffened to hear that, and then she began to grin. Surely that was the jealous child denying she wanted the other girl’s toy. She began sweeping again, and as she worked she could hear the bitter cries from Agnes, the inaudible replies of her sister. Juliana was too quiet for any words to be heard. She showed the correct restraint and didn’t seem to rise to any of Agnes’s taunts.
The Butcher of St Peter's: (Knights Templar 19) Page 21