The Deadliest Sin
Page 2
In a short space of time the band of pilgrims split into two, half waiting only for a pause in the downpour before resuming their journey, and the remainder, complaining of tiredness or sore feet or just wanting the certainty of a bed for the night, deciding to stay. It helped that they seemed already to have sorted themselves instinctively into different groups, one at one table, one at the other, with a group also clustered about the fire, and another two or three who seemed to prefer their own company on the fringe of each party. Laurence rubbed his hands with pleasure, calculating how he would fit those who looked likely to remain into the beds in his two chambers.
So it was that after an hour or so the pilgrim band divided, with the leavers retrieving their bags and staffs and picking their way across the Angel yard, now sticky with mud, and out into the main street of Mundham. The rain had ceased for a moment, though there were still rumbles of thunder in the distance. The rays of the evening sun shot through ragged holes in the cloud.
Those left behind ordered more food and drink and talked a little more loudly or rapidly, perhaps to reassure themselves that they were doing the right thing in staying behind. There were several hours of daylight left, no need to go to bed yet. Besides, it was pleasant to be warm and fed and to talk at leisure while receiving the hospitality of these excellent innkeepers. Whether it was because the remaining pilgrims were generally more cautious and reflective people, or had other reasons for not travelling on, the general conversation soon took a more serious turn. Although you might try to forget the pressing matter of the pestilence, you could not do it for long, and so it was here at the Angel inn at Mundham. Once again the same questions came up, as they surely recurred in thousands of conversations and exchanges taking place across the country every day.
Why was God allowing the pestilence to attack His people?
How might it be evaded?
Or, if it could not be escaped, how might its effects be minimised?
Someone had heard of a most infallible method, involving the gathering up of the contents of piss-pots and privies and the pouring of the mixture into a great brass cooking pot. Drape yourself with a towel, said this individual, and hang your head over the cauldron. Breathe deep and long until your gorge rises. Then, as soon as you have recovered, repeat the treatment. The noxious vapours will not only harden you against the pestilence but the vomiting that will likely result has the benefit of purging your body of any dangerous elements. The more fastidious pilgrims turned up their noses at this treatment but, even so, a number of them made a mental note of it.
From physical remedies the talk turned to spiritual ones: to human sin and divine salvation. There was discussion about which sin, out of the seven deadly sins, was the worst and so the most deserving of God’s punishment. Some said it was pride, others wrath or envy. Gluttony was scarcely mentioned – after all, the pilgrims were still eating and drinking. Lust was referred to, but in passing, and with an embarrassed snigger or a wry look. Rather in the way that the original pilgrim party had divided in two by instinct, so now it seemed that there was a natural tendency for this woman to denounce one particular sin, or that man to turn his attention to another, until not a single one of the seven was left unmentioned and commented on. Settling in for a longer session, several of these same pilgrims indicated that they might have stories to tell, each of which would prove the wickedness of the sin that he or she was proclaiming as the very worst, the most damnable.
Seeing an opportunity, their host, Laurence, who had by now made himself one of the party, suggested that the guests should tell their tales. After all, the long summer evening had scarcely begun. (There was plenty of time to purchase more refreshment, he might have added.) ‘Why don’t we have a proper contest?’ he said. ‘As they do in universities and such learned places, but not all dry and dusty. A contest of storytelling, told by people with real knowledge and experience of life. As,’ he said, looking round with a beaming smile, ‘I can see all of you ladies and gentlemen have knowledge and experience.
‘Yes, let us tell stories of sins, and then it might emerge which one is the best. That is, the worst . . .’
Though the idea was received with enthusiasm, there seemed to be a reluctance to go first, as if each speaker feared being judged not for his storytelling but for the sin that was its subject. Then from the group clustered around the fire came the sounds of urgent discussion . . .
The First Sin
He had listened to the anecdotes and rumours told by the other travellers with half an ear while they were trudging along the road, but once they reached the inn, Janyn Hussett glanced about him and shook his head as he settled himself near the fire, trying to ignore them.
These folks were all full of piss and wind. They wittered on about their feelings, their lives, as though nothing else mattered, but they were shallow, insubstantial people. If he had any choice, he would leave them. He wasn’t one of them. They had no idea what life was like for men like him, for men like Bill and Walt and Barda. For those who had died.
He sat and stared at the fire. Flames were licking up the faggots from the twigs beneath, and he was reminded again of the fires about Caen after the terrible sacking of the city, the wailing and weeping. And those horrors were early in the campaign, long before the astonishing victory at Crécy, and then the capture of Calais itself. His was a life of horrors: war and bloodshed, power and fear.
But now? Now it felt as though his life was ended. He had fought and killed, and when Calais fell, he had enjoyed a brief spell of happiness, but now God was punishing him – punishing everyone. Janyn’s wife and little babe were only two among the countless bodies that littered France’s villages and towns after the arrival of the Terrible Death, ‘atra mors’, or what the French were calling the ‘morte bleue’. So many: all tossed into the mass graves in cities like Calais, or left to rot in the fields and lanes uncared for, since all the others had already died. The horror would never leave him, he was sure. God had decided to punish them all. But Janyn knew others who suffered even more than he himself. One man had thought himself responsible, and suffered in his own private hell.
That was his curse.
When the travellers started this stupid game, asking about the worst sins, Janyn almost shot to his feet and left the room, struck with the urge to vomit. Scenes appeared in his mind, pictures of the corpses at the roadside, women screaming as they were raped, soldiers laughing and queuing for their turn, a nun’s corpse decapitated, babies . . . the world was full of sins. The deadliest sins? They were all deadly. Wherever men went, they brought evil with them. For a while he had been happy with his wife. He had been content. Seeing the miracle of pregnancy and birth, feeling the wonder as he held for the first time his little pink, mewling son, he had thought life could not offer anything so marvellous and awe-inspiring. Then the joy in his heart had almost crushed him. He adored his wife and son so much, he would happily have died for them.
But now both were gone. God had taken them.
Janyn Hussett wanted to shout at the other pilgrims: ‘You know what I think? I think you have no idea what real life is like! Look at you, all of you! Sitting here in comfort, out of the rain, whining about the weather . . .’
But he held his tongue. He held his hands to the fire and gritted his teeth. It was better not to speak, but to hold himself in resentful silence, ignoring their vapid maunderings.
But they would keep going on about their pointless, stupid, irrelevant lives.
‘Friend, you are very quiet,’ one of the pilgrims said to him. ‘Tell me, where do you hail from?’
Janyn looked up and snapped, ‘What is it to you where I come from? Why do you want to know?’
‘Please, friend! I was being amiable, that is all,’ said the man. He was stocky, serious-looking. His name was Nicholas. ‘We are all friends here, aren’t we? We are making a long journey. It would be good to know you better. Then, if we meet again, we can exchange stories about our lives.’
‘I would hear it,’ Nicholas pressed him quietly. ‘Come, friend, we are all here together. You are a man of much experience, I’d wager. I would value your tale. Which sin do you think is the most terrible?’
‘Why do you ask me that?’ Janyn demanded. He was wound tight as a cog’s rigging as he leaned forward, his hand straying to the knife at his belt.
Laurence saw his hand’s movement and the innkeeper shook his head, smiling and holding his hands up pacifically, but stepping forward to prevent a fight. ‘Hoy, friend, he means nothing by it: nothing. But we were talking about the deadly sins. From the look of you, you must have a view on such things. Which would you say was the worst?’
‘I have seen all the sins imaginable committed while I was in France. There are men there who have sought to offend Christ and His saints every day with their debaucheries,’ Janyn said, grimacing. ‘Ach, no! Why do you want me to speak of them? I would forget them all.’
‘You were a fighter in France?’
This was the prior, the churchman with the sharp face. He sat at the other side of the fire, smugly arrogant as he eyed Janyn – like a judge presented with a felon of notorious fame.
Janyn sneered and turned his attention back to the flames. ‘A pox on your cockiness! If you were in France, you wouldn’t survive above a day,’ he muttered. Then he looked up, his dark brown eyes fixed on the rest of the group as he spoke, glowering with a fixed intensity that spoke of pain and anguish. ‘What can you know of the horror, the suffering of the men out there? How many of you have been told to slaughter prisoners? To butcher men and women, aye, and their wains? Not one. You cannot appreciate how war changes a man, how it twists him and torments him, until he is utterly broken.’
He was a grim-faced little man. Like many a peasant, his face was leathery and tanned from exposure, but there was a hard edginess to the lines on his face.
‘You want to know what I think, then? I’d say lust is the worst. Because it’s lust that leads to murder and slaughter. Lust for women, lust for gold, lust for power. All come to the same: lust! And one man felt sure that his own lust brought about the plague that hunts all men now.’ ‘Tell us your story, friend. Show us what you mean.’ He stood, caught between the urge to leave them there in the chamber – and the desire to tell them all. He was almost ready to flee the room but, just then, Laurence passed him a green-glazed drinking horn, and he took it and stared into the pale-coloured ale. There were bubbles and swirls in the drink, and suddenly, as clouds might form the appearance of a cog at sea or a man’s face, he saw her again: Pelagia, the Frenchwoman with the neck of a swan, the body of an angel. He saw her face as clearly as he saw the flames in the fire.
It decided him. With a gesture of defiance, he tossed his head back and drained the horn in one. He could tell them a tale to make them sit up and listen! A tale of . . .
Lust
War is evil for many, but most of all for the people who want no part in it – he began – the women and children. They suffer from the unwanted attentions of men; they are raped and slain by invaders, or they’re killed by their own because they can’t fight, or they starve because food is kept back for the men who will fight. That is what Calais was like. A foul city, full of scared, fretful people. When we got there, the place was already encircled by our King’s host, but the fear – you could taste it in the air.
Men react differently to things like that: the smell of fear. Some are like hounds. If a hound senses another is scared, it’ll push it around, snarl, growl . . . anything to make it know who is the master, who is the villein. Some men are the same: if they can tell another is petrified, it gives them a feeling of power. In the army, there were many men like that. Some beat their men, some would brawl and bellow, bragging about their conquests, while others would enjoy a man’s terror in silence. They would stand quietly and observe as a man shivered and shook. They are the ones to watch, the ones who will tease and torment, and twist the knife a little deeper, enjoying every squeal of terror, every rictus of agony.
I knew a man like that at Calais, a man called Henry the Tun. The centener.
At Crécy, I was a vintener myself, responsible for twelve men by the end of the campaign. They were all that was left of two vintaines of forty archers under our banneret, Sir John de Sully, but my boys were badly mauled during the flight to the north. We were harried all the way from Paris by the French King’s armies, and the people of the towns came out and attacked us as we drew near. There was never a spare yard that wasn’t fought for.
After Crécy, things eased a bit. We had destroyed the French on that battlefield, and when we finally left it we were filled with joy. The country was ours, with all the wealth. Even poor archers became rich. And we soon had more men arrive to fill the gaps. My own vintaine needed new blood more than most, and we had seven new fellows join us. But then I was struck down with a fever, and I had to take to a wagon. My men were sent on before me, and I rattled along in their wake like some kind of pathetic infant, with only a pair of brothers to help me: Bill and Walter from Southampton. They were recent recruits, sent to help win Calais after our losses on the long march. I didn’t know them, nor the men we travelled with, and, at the first opportunity, I left the wagon and took up a horse. I wanted to rejoin my men. With the brothers, I tagged along behind another vintaine that was passing, and soon I was introduced to their centener: Henry the Tun.
He was a short, thickset man, with a heavy belly that stuck over his belt like a sack of oats bound at the middle. His face was round and ruddy, with cheeks as red as the apples that made his favourite drink, cider. A nose like a plum, and jowls like a mastiff’s gave him a pleasing appearance. He looked jolly, a genial, jovial man like a Bacchus come to earth. His eyes were constantly creased as though in great humour – but when a man looked into them, it was clear that there was nothing there. No kindness, no humility, only an overweening greed and desire.
When we were within eyesight of the town, he sat back on his mount and breathed deeply, before pointing to it and grinning at me and his own vinteners. ‘There, boys, that’s where we’ll make our fortunes,’ he said.
One of his sergeants, a man called Weaver, looked over at the town. Most of us in that army were good at grumbling. We’d fought all the way from the coast down to Paris and, like I say, been chased away from there all the way to Crécy. There we won our famous victory, it is true, but the cost was high. We lost many friends, good friends, on that march homewards, so we felt entitled to grumble.
Anyway, Weaver was there at the front with Henry, and as he looked out over the town and the army, he drew his face into a sneer. ‘The King wants that? I wouldn’t pay a clipped penny for the whole place.’
‘Shows how much you know of things like that,’ Henry said. He sat back in his saddle, gazing ahead of him, that smile on his thick lips, like a glutton presented with a whole roasted suckling pig. ‘It’s the King’s delight, is Calais, and should be yours, too, Weaver. It’ll be an easy sail home from here. You can almost see England over there.’
Weaver, he just grunted. All we could see was a greyish mess. Could have been clouds, but more likely it was the thick smoke rising from all about the town. When you have a few thousand Englishmen in an army, you have a mess. Weaver wasn’t stupid enough to argue. We’d all seen others who’d argued with Henry. They hadn’t done so well.
Anyway, Weaver, he said nothing. I thought it was because he didn’t want to be beaten, but when I looked at him, I saw why. He was staring down at a figure by the side of the road. A young woman.
/> Like I said, war is a horrible thing for the poor souls who work the land it smothers. That’s what war does, it engulfs whole lands; and the poor people who live there, they’re like cattle. Captured, milked dry, and killed. Of course, for women and children, it’s worse. They are little better than slaves to an invading army, and any can be taken or slain on a whim. I saw enough of that kind of casual brutality on the way to Calais. Even English boys who were there to help support the fighters were often beaten for no reason, just because the soldiers knew they could.
This girl had been brought up well. She had soft skin on her hands, and her knees were unmarked. She wasn’t a peasant’s child, I could see that from the first. But her clothing was rough, tattered stuff that would have suited a maid from a plague vill. You know what I mean. We’ve all heard of folk who’ve lost their families since the plague. In France, I’ve seen worse: girls and boys without their fathers, who’ve had to fend for themselves for months until they starved. All with swollen bellies, their faces pinched and grey. Well, this girl had the same ragged clothing, but her belly was flat, her face still haughty. It was a wonder she had not learned humility yet, I thought. After all, a girl with that kind of manner appeals to many men.
You can imagine how a girl like her would have found life under the English boot. She had been brought up to enjoy all the finer things: good food, wine, servants. Suddenly she was homeless, wandering with the refugees trying to escape the English. Us.
Who was she? No one. She had been raised in some town or other – mayhap it was Caen – and was daughter to a fuller. He was a good, kind man, apparently, but, as our army approached, he insisted that she should leave with her mother and two brothers. He was to remain to look after the town with the rest of the militia, so she said when I got to speak with her later. She and her mother and brothers took a heavy purse of coin, and set off on their way.