The Deadliest Sin

by The Medieval Murderers

  ‘An ambush?’ Janyn asked.

  ‘Yes, Hussett. We’ll have our archers here at the front, and as they enter the quarry, we’ll loose the arrows. It’ll blunt their ardour, eh? The front ranks will run to cover in the quarry, and we can keep aiming arrows at the men coming. They will be pushed on by the press of men behind them, and we can kill many of them as they keep coming.’

  Janyn nodded. It was the way the English fought. The archers stood their ground while their enemies ebbed under their withering assault. He moved off to prepare his men.

  The two brothers were still there, and now he saw that when Pelagia went to speak with either, it was to Bill that she naturally turned. Walter was left sullenly glowering nearby while she spoke with his brother, her hand resting naturally on his forearm.

  Janyn turned away. It was none of his business, but he disliked the idea that she might be breaking the close bond between the two lads.

  The first that Janyn knew of the attack was a shrill scream in the night that jerked him from his slumbers.

  They were all settled by early evening, his vintaine taking a patch of turf close to the wall of the old quarry. Their cart was nearby, and their weapons all laid close to hand. Bow-staves lay on the ground beside many of the archers, the strings held about their throats or kept in their purses, against the threat of the dew dampening them. As Janyn lay back, his head on his pack, he could see the men. Wisp and Barda stared into the flames from their campfires as they lay wrapped in blankets, and Bill and Walter were a little further off, their faces lost in the glare of the nearer fire. Janyn had dozed off staring at the coals and glittering sparks.

  It was foolish to be so arrogant. A few successes against the French and all believed that they were secure, even here, lying out in the open. They should have known that even a cowed enemy would not hesitate to attack a force much smaller, and yet no one had thought to post a guard. All were asleep as the first cry came.

  As soon as he heard the first high, piercing shriek, Janyn was up, flinging aside his blanket and bellowing at the other men to gather their weapons and follow him as he sprang forward.

  The roadway was already a scene of confusion. Half-asleep archers were milling in the near darkness, while some few blundered around gripping blazing torches in their fists, rubbing the sleep from their eyes.

  Janyn hurried to the line nearer the French army, but there was no sign of fighting there. All was peaceful, so far as he could see. A small group of French peasants lay hacked and bloody in a heap near the front line of the English, and two sentries were dead.

  ‘What happened here?’ he asked a man-at-arms.

  ‘We all heard a cry, and when we came here, we found this little force. They were probably just here to cut a couple of throats, steal a purse and make their escape. We were lucky: someone behind us heard them and gave the alarm.’

  ‘Hardly behind you,’ Janyn said. It was a stupid comment to make. Unless the French had infiltrated the English camps and killed someone in their midst. And yet that first cry, he could have sworn it had not come from this direction. ‘Must be the way the hill curls around us. The quarry. Rock can make noises seem to come from an odd direction.’

  ‘If you think so, Vintener,’ the man said without conviction.

  ‘Right,’ Janyn said, watching as the men pulled the bodies about, one with a war-hammer giving each skull a good blow for good measure. There was no time to take prisoners up here.

  Looking at the dead, he felt sad. It was such a pathetic little group: farmers and peasants who were determined to strike their blow for the defence of their realm. When they were confronted and joined battle, they were soon forced to flee, leaving many of their companions dead or squirming in their own blood, their hatchets, bills and sickles left on the ground. If the French Army of the King was no match for the English force of arms, how could these fools have thought that they were capable of doing them damage?

  When it was clear that all was safe and not further attacks could be expected that night, Janyn returned to the camp with his men, but when he looked around, he realised that the woman was not where she had hidden.

  Pelagia was gone, and so was Bill.

  Even now he shuddered at the memory of the shock that coursed through his body at the sight. Bill’s bed roll was left open just as so many others were all about; each man, hurrying to his feet, had thrown aside his blankets and grabbed his weapons in a hurry to get to the fight. But Janyn could not remember seeing Bill at the road or up at the front line. ‘Walter, where is your brother?’ he demanded.

  ‘I don’t know, Vintener,’ he said, but in his eyes there was a terrible anguish as he looked to where Pelagia had been lying.

  ‘Your brother took her, didn’t he? Christ’s bones, the shriek that woke us, that wasn’t the French, that was Bill. He’s killed her, hasn’t he?’

  Walter hesitated. It was enough for Janyn. He had seen the look in Bill’s eyes over the last few days. The longing and desperation that had gradually turned to greedy hunger. He wanted the woman, Janyn was sure. And now he felt sure Bill had taken her.

  ‘Walter, if you find your brother first, you’d better make sure she’s all right, because if I learn Bill’s hurt her, I’ll see him hang!’ he said.

  ‘What do you mean? Bill wouldn’t hurt her any more than I would,’ Walter said haltingly. He was almost pleading.

  ‘You’d better hope that’s true if you don’t want to watch Bill hanged from a tree.’

  ‘What do you want to do, Jan?’ Barda asked. All banter had ceased at Janyn’s tone of voice. Now the men stood watchfully.

  Where they were, the quarry wall encircled their little camp, but there was no way to tell where the two could have gone. Had they fled together, he would have left things as they were. The loss of one lovesick man was one thing, but if he had snatched Pelagia to rape her, Janyn would see to it that Bill paid.

  ‘Jan?’ Barda said again. ‘Do you want us to find them?’

  ‘How’ll we do that at this time of night?’ Janyn said. It was the middle watch of the night, when the darkness was at its blackest, and even the best hunter and tracker would find it difficult to follow a trail. Janyn knew he was no master huntsman. Besides, he and his men had been installed here to help protect the road, and that they must do.

  ‘You want to leave it till morning?’

  ‘Yes. For now we all need to rest,’ Janyn said, striding to his blankets. He wrapped himself in them, spreading a heavy cloak over the top, and closed his eyes, seeking sleep.

  But he sought it in vain.

  Janyn took himself back to the next miserable morning, and as he did so, he felt his face hardening.

  He had been furious when he learned what had happened. The shock to discover he had been fooled all that time. And then the slow realisation that he had been wrong again. Even now, the worm of disgust squirmed in his belly at the memory, and his voice grew colder.

  ‘I had trusted those brothers as much as any other men in my vintaine for months. I had done all I could to help them, and then I took Pelagia under my protection too.’

  The attractive, well-dressed woman in the pilgrim party – her name was Katie Valier – nodded encouragingly, absorbed in his tale. ‘You approach the end of your tale, friend? Round it off.’

  ‘Very well,’ Janyn said shortly.

  It was still dark when the screams and shouts started afresh. All the vintaine was roused at once, and they collected their weapons and moved to the front in support of a small company of men who were beset by the vanguard of the French army.

  Janyn recalled that battle as a series of disjointed little fights. There were never more than a couple of hundred men from either side. It was mostly a matter of brutal hand-to-hand combat with small groups of Frenchmen. Janyn fought with his teeth gritted, his belly clenched, stamping down on feet, stabbing, butting his shield into a man’s face, then hacking at a man fallen at his feet. As day broke, he and the vintaine was th
rust backwards, and Janyn saw Henry over to the further side of the vintaine as the fighting began to wane and the French who were still capable began to drift away, fighting as they went.

  The men gathered about Janyn, faces pale from exhaustion, weary from too little sleep and too much fighting. For some time none of them could speak, but all stood panting, their fingers still gripping their weapons with the death-grasp of men who knew they could be under attack again at any moment. They all had a need for rest after their exertions, but even as the reinforcements arrived and the first of Janyn’s vintaine began to drop to the ground, a series of fresh calls came from further up the line, and they hurriedly clambered to their feet again and ran to the alarms.

  It was after the last of these small frays that Janyn was called to a small pavilion some yards from the road. ‘Hussett? I have need of your men,’ Janyn was told. It was his master, Sir John de Sully.

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘Take your archers to the right of our front. There seems to be a small party of French archers over there, near the edge of your quarry. They’re loosing bolts into our flank. I want you to go with your men and remove them.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘But be careful.’

  ‘Yes.’

  He saw at the pavilion’s door a quick movement, and caught a fleeting glimpse, no more, of a figure that stalked away. It was impossible to be certain, but it looked like Henry.

  The men were soon arrayed with bows at the ready, quivers full, and they made their way slowly about the edge of the quarry, climbing the steep hillside through mixed brambles, thorns and thick undergrowth between the slender boughs of young saplings. Overhead great branches rustled in the soft, soughing breeze. All that Janyn could hear was the noise of men breathing heavily, cursing, slipping and cracking twigs.

  Their way was not easy. Loose stones and soil moved underfoot, sending more than one man sprawling on his face. They were trying to approach the French from the north, looping around in a great circle so that they could attack from the rear of their enemy, but even as they reached the top of the hill, they realised their mistake.

  Before them and to their side was a large company of Genoese crossbowmen lying in wait. Loosing their quarrels from safety behind trees, they unleashed a sudden attack that knocked six of Janyn’s men down in the first instant.

  It was a hellish place to try to fight. The trees shielded the men from the sun, and the thick vegetation meant none of Janyn’s men could see a target. But every instant a solid thud told of another bolt slamming into a tree trunk, or a damp sound like a wet cloth thrown against a stone heralded a fresh scream of pain as a bolt struck a man.

  Janyn tried to rally the men and charge, but it was impossible. On the ground before him, he saw other men. Another vintaine had been here to storm the Genoese, and they too had been killed. In only moments Janyn had lost half his own men, and now the Genoese were picking off the remainder. With too few men to assail the crossbow-men, and with the English handicapped by their great long bows here in among the trees, Janyn had little choice other than to call the remnants of his men to him. He was himself struck in the calf, and began to hobble away, helped by Barda, who stopped and turned to loose an arrow at every other step, taking one Genoese in the throat, whose slow, agonised death persuaded the rest of the pursuit to take more care.

  As they made their way through the trees, sliding on the scree and tripping over roots and branches, Janyn’s mind was empty of suspicion. But then, as they came closer to the quarry, he slipped on something soft and fell to his hands and knees, winded. It was some little while before he could turn and take in the sight.

  In a deep hole formed where a tree’s roots had once clung to the soil, he had stumbled over an accumulation of loose branches. Leaves dangled from them, still full and fleshy. They had been cut recently. A bolt hurtled overhead as Janyn leaned down, a leaden sensation in his belly.

  ‘What are you doing, Jan?’ Barda demanded.

  ‘Shut up. Just keep them back,’ he said, pulling branches and twigs away. ‘Christ!’

  ‘What?’

  Janyn didn’t answer, but squatted back on his haunches, staring down at the pale features of Pelagia. ‘At least now she is at peace,’ he mumbled to himself.

  She had the look of a woman deep in sleep. If it weren’t for the nakedness of her lower body, the blood on her thighs and belly where her murderer had slashed and stabbed at her, Janyn might have thought she was only resting.

  ‘Who did this?’ Barda demanded. He was staring down at the body with horror in his eyes. ‘Shit! Was this Bill?’

  ‘Who else could it have been?’ Janyn asked. He heard the whistle, thump, as another bolt slammed into a tree. ‘The two of them disappeared in the night. I suppose Bill got away after this. He took her, raped her, and fled before we could catch him.’

  There was a sudden cry from over on their left. They crouched, and then began to crawl through the thick bushes towards the source of the sound. There they saw a pair of Genoese holding an English archer, while a third calmly spanned his bow and set a bolt ready.

  Before he could lift it to aim, Barda’s arrow passed through his head. The man was hurled to the ground by the impact, and then Janyn was hobbling forward, pulling his knife from its sheath, while a second arrow flew and took one Genoese in the cheek, spinning him about and making him fall. Janyn’s knife was up and he grabbed the last man’s arm, pulling the man off-balance and slamming his knife into the man’s liver and kidneys, stabbing again and again until the fellow stopped moving.

  Standing, panting, he looked about him to see that the other man was dead. Two more arrows had hit him in the back of the neck and spine and, although his body twitched sporadically, there was clearly no life in him.

  ‘Come, quickly!’ Janyn hissed, and grabbed the man from the ground.

  It was not until that moment that Janyn paused to glance at the man he and Barda had rescued. For an instant, he gaped, and then he leaped forward and rammed his fist into the boy’s belly. ‘That’s for her, you son of a whore!’

  Barda had to pull him away and hold him back. ‘Let’s get away from here, Jan. Come on, this isn’t the time or the place.’

  Janyn stood with his jaw clenched so tightly he thought a tooth was loosened. Then he turned on his heel and set off down to the camp, leaving Barda to help the boy.

  The rage bubbled and fizzed in his blood. There was a hollowness in his belly, and his heart was thundering like a galloping horse in his breast as he strode on, all thought of the Genoese put from his mind. It was only as he reached the English lines and saw a column of men marching forward towards him that he remembered the trap in the trees, and paused to warn the commander of the men.

  Back at the camp, already the main assault had been turned away, and now the only sign that there had been a battle was the mound of corpses, as Englishmen picked up the French slain and piled them one upon another. Janyn marched to his banneret’s pavilion and stood outside while Sir John finished buckling greaves and pulling on his gauntlets.

  ‘You removed them?’ Sir John asked.

  ‘No, sir. They were too numerous, and in the trees there, there was little we could do to protect ourselves. They were well positioned.’

  ‘Never mind. The main assault has failed, anyway. I’m surprised, though. Your centener thought you would easily win through.’

  His words took a moment to register, and then Janyn thought again about the figure hurrying from the pavilion earlier, before he and the men went to outflank the Genoese. ‘Henry? He suggested us?’

  ‘Yes. He said your men were best placed. He said you were freshest and ready for a little excursion up into the woods. Why? Is there a problem?’

  ‘No, sir,’ Janyn said. ‘Did you know someone else had tried that route before? There were many dead on the ground already.’

  ‘I had not heard, no. That is annoying – we could have saved you and your men, if we had been told.’ />
  ‘Yes, sir.’

  Over at the carts, he saw Bill lean up against a wheel, his arms draped over the wheel. Janyn thought to himself how he would see him whipped later, until the skin was flayed from his back. It was clear enough what had happened. The boy had taken Pelagia, hoping perhaps to run away with her, and then raped and killed her when she refused. The murderous scum had hidden her body to hide his guilt. In his mind’s eye, Janyn saw the scene: Bill half-dragging the woman up the slope after him, all for lust. All for desire for a woman who didn’t want him.

  But as he’d noticed, she did seem to want him. Janyn could only assume she wanted to imitate a nun, and when Bill got her up on the hillside, she didn’t want to open her legs to him. Perhaps she was scared of the idea of the army approaching, or maybe Bill’s lust was alarming to her. Whatever the reason was, she refused him. And he, craven cur that he was, forced her.

  Although that too seemed unlike him. Janyn stood, staring over at the cart. Bill had a gash on one cheek, and even as Janyn watched, the lad turned, draping his hands over the top of the wheel as though crucified.

  He had never shown violence towards her. He had never even displayed much lust. Rather, he held a simmering bitterness towards anyone else who looked at her. The only man of whom he appeared to hold no jealousy was his brother. That was natural, after all. Brothers could maintain their friendship even in the face of rivalry.

  But there was another man who had shown his lust. Henry had been violently angry when the vintener refused to allow him to take Pelagia. He expected to be able to rape her, and had even made threats when he was thwarted. And today, for some reason, he had recommended Janyn and the others to go into that terrible wood.

  It was coincidence, Janyn told himself. Why would Henry want to kill off the vintaine, especially Janyn? It made no sense, except he knew Henry. They all did. If he felt snubbed or insulted, his brutality in revenge could be boundless.

  Janyn was suddenly assailed by a sense of revulsion so intense, he had to grasp a nearby tree and cling to it, waves of nausea running through his entire body.