The Deadliest Sin

by The Medieval Murderers

  ‘It was him,’ he said. ‘Damn his eyes, Henry tried to get us all killed!’

  Barda saw his sudden lurch, and hurried to his side. ‘Jan? Are you all right?’

  ‘By God’s cods, Barda, I think little is well,’ Janyn said.

  Henry was with his commanders when Janyn approached him. The other vinteners were about him, and Henry looked at Janyn sidelong.

  ‘Thank you, centener,’ he said. ‘My men appreciate being sent up to the ridge.’

  ‘What are you talking about, Jan?’

  ‘You’d had your own men, or another man’s vintaine up there already. Their bodies are all over the hill. We’d already fought all morning before light, but that didn’t worry you, did it? You were happy enough to be rid of us, I suppose.’

  ‘You always were an insubordinate bastard, Hussett. Your father was a trader in second-hand clothes, and I suppose you’re little better. Well, if you don’t like the army, you shouldn’t have joined the King’s forces.’

  ‘I joined my master, Sir John, to come here,’ Hussett said. He looked about the other men with casual deliberation. ‘But he wouldn’t have sent me to have me killed with the callous disregard that you did.’

  ‘Me? What are you saying?’

  ‘That you wanted your vengeance because you wanted the woman Pelagia. You were prepared to kill us all to have her, weren’t you?’

  ‘You’ve been drinking too much cheap wine!’

  ‘She’s dead. But perhaps you know that already. She was killed and set down in a hollow last night. Where were you? Did you go up there to kill her, and then tried to have me and all my vintaine wiped out so you could hide your murder?’

  ‘Now you’re talking hog’s turds!’ Henry said, and set his arms akimbo. ‘You say I killed the maid? And what of it if I had? How many other men and women have we all killed? You think I’d have run with my thumb up my arse in case a peasant’s mongrel like you learned of it? Get your brain to work, man! You think I’m scared what you or anyone else thinks? Go swive a goat!’

  Janyn was about to launch himself at the man, but Barda put a restraining hand on his breast. Then Janyn paused and considered.

  There was merit in Henry’s words. Why would he worry about killing the woman?

  ‘You tried to have all my vintaine wiped out just so you could have her to yourself, didn’t you?’ he said wonderingly. ‘It wasn’t just to hide her murder – it was simple lust. You wanted her, and you were prepared to kill me and all my men just so you could take her.’

  ‘You have no way of knowing what I would or woudn’t do,’ Henry said, but now his voice was colder.

  ‘You were prepared to have Sir John’s force depleted just so you could rape the woman.’

  ‘She would have been willing enough,’ Henry said with a smirk. ‘The women always are.’

  Janyn nodded. He set his jaw and gazed at all the other vinteners standing with Henry. ‘You all heard that. He wanted to sacrifice us, his own men, so that he could grab the woman. Like David and Bathsheba. A corrupt leader prepared to see his own men slain just so he can steal their women. We all know where we stand with him.’

  ‘Get your arse out of my sight!’ Henry spat. ‘That is villeiny-saying of the worst sort, you—’

  ‘You accuse me of villeiny-saying?’ Janyn said mildly, but then he launched himself forward. Barda grabbed his arm as he flew past, and another vintener caught him by the shoulder and neck, keeping him back. ‘Get off me! Leave me alone! He’s safe enough from me – for now!’

  ‘You’re finished!’ Henry said. ‘I’ll see that you’re ruined, Hussett! You won’t fight here with the men ever again, you little shite!’

  Janyn nodded. As he was released, he tugged his jack and hosen back where they had been jerked tight. ‘I will never fight for you again, Henry. I don’t mind a Frenchman killing me, but I won’t die from your bile.’

  He stalked away, and Barda had to trot to keep up.

  ‘Do you really think he did that?’ he asked.

  ‘Who doubts me? Sir John told me as much. He wanted to see all of us die in a trap up there, Barda.’

  ‘He won’t do that again.’

  ‘No,’ Janyn said. The two glanced back over their shoulder to where the centener was expostulating with his other commanders. ‘No, he will not last long in the next fight.’

  Janyn and Barda found Walter not far from the front line with the rest of the vintaine.

  ‘Have you heard about your brother?’

  ‘What, have you found him?’ Walter said.

  ‘Yes. He wasn’t far from her body.’

  Walter nodded, his face empty, and then, very slowly, a tear formed. ‘I couldn’t let him. I’m sorry, but I couldn’t . . .’

  ‘She was going to marry him?’

  ‘I think she enjoyed the attention we both gave her. It gave her satisfaction to see men bickering over her, and when it was me and Bill, she was pleased to see how she could make us both suffer for love of her.’

  ‘It wasn’t love. Love doesn’t mean raping a woman and then killing her.’

  ‘I didn’t want to kill her! I didn’t mean to! I only wanted to keep her for my own! I thought if I took her, and showed her how much she meant to me, that maybe she’d marry me. I made her take me, but then, when I was spent, she looked at me like I was a turd, and told me she would enjoy telling Bill what I’d done. I saw her then for what she really was. It was your fault, Jan! You brought her with us – you should have let us leave her behind! Why did you bring her with us? It’s ruined us all!’

  ‘What will you do?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Your brother knows?’

  ‘When I took her, he saw us leave, and followed us. I had to strike him down before he could find her. I knocked him down, and covered her over. I hoped he wouldn’t realise it was me!’ He was sniffling now, snot gathering at the tip of his nose. He wiped it away angrily. ‘I didn’t want to hurt him. I was just desperate. And lonely.’

  ‘You did better than hurting him,’ Barda said. ‘You nearly had him killed. The Genoese found him up there and would have killed him. And when we found him, Jan nearly killed him, too.’

  Janyn stopped. His eyes were fixed on the flames as though he could see the faces from long ago deep in the flickering light.

  ‘Well?’ Laurence asked quietly. ‘What happened? Did the two brothers forgive each other?’

  ‘Only one need forgive,’ the Austin canon said. ‘That was the point. His lust drew the man Walter into dishonour and deceit, and made him knock down his own flesh and blood.’

  Janyn shut his eyes in disgust, then stared up at the friar. ‘Did you understand nothing of my story?’ he said harshly. ‘You think it was all that cut and dried? It was lust moved them all: simple, animal lust. Henry wanted the woman, and he was prepared to kill anyone to slake his desire. Bill wanted her too, and he would have killed anyone who threatened her. He would have taken her if he had the courage, but instead his brother decided to take her for himself. Not because he was worse than the others, but because his lust overwhelmed him sooner. And what else? Why were we all there in France? Because of the lust of two kings for the same city. We are all consumed by lust. Even Pelagia, who wanted revenge like Henry wanted her body! We were all consumed by lust. And then the plague came, and Calais was consumed. This plague, it is a proof of God’s displeasure with us. All of us!’

  ‘What happened to Henry?’ the landlord enquired after a moment’s thought.

  ‘He died a short time later. His centaine was in the thick of a battle, and he fell.’

  ‘From a blow before him or behind?’

  Janyn curled his lip without humour. ‘If you were a man in his hundred, and you heard about him sending an entire vintaine to its doom just because he wanted a woman, would you want to fight with him?’

  ‘What happened to the brothers?’

  ‘What would you have done? Was there any purpose to be served in
punishing one? I didn’t have to, in any case. Bill refused to speak to Walter, and a week or so later, Walter was found hanged in a barn near Calais. He couldn’t bear the guilt over what he had done. And then, he couldn’t bear his brother’s contempt either.’

  ‘Did his brother survive?’

  ‘Bill took his money when Calais fell, but when the peace was agreed, he went away. I heard he joined a fraternity of mercenaries. He didn’t feel there was a life for him back here.’

  ‘What happened to you?’

  ‘Me?’ Janyn stared into the flames. ‘I swore I wouldn’t fight any more after Calais. I took up a little alehouse in the town and built good custom with the English garrison. I promised myself I’d forget war, and for a year I was happy. I married Alice, my lovely Alice, and she bore me a son.’

  ‘Are they in Calais still?’

  ‘Oh, yes. They will always be there. Both perished when the plague came. So I came here on pilgrimage. To find peace.’

  Aye, he said to himself: peace – calm after the fighting. A pilgrimage to beg forgiveness.

  Forgiveness for slaying his own centener in the midst of a battle; forgiveness for all the Frenchmen he had killed, some in anger, some in cold blood; forgiveness for the rapes and tortures, for the abbeys and churches laid waste, for the nuns left raped and slain in the burning embers of their convents.

  And for failing the young French woman who had sought his protection.

  The Second Sin

  Every man in the party had at some point surreptitiously ogled the woman who now moved forward to offer her story. Her clothes were of the finest cloth, and their cut betrayed an origin in the Mediterranean. The south of France, perhaps or one of the northern Italian city-states. She was a mature woman without being matronly, for her waist had not grown thick, as did that of others of her age. Perhaps she had never had children. She was attended by a younger woman, but no one could say whether she was a servant or a daughter. The more discerning males amongst the gathering might have come to a consensus about her age, and supposed she was past her fortieth year, but only just. All would have been surprised to learn she was actually in the middle of her fifties. Her hair was blond with a hint of gold to it, but no white, and her face was healthily rosy and unlined. When she spoke, her voice rang like a small silver bell, and her Italian accent was obvious.

  ‘I want to tell you about the corrosive effects of that most deadly of the seven deadly sins – greed.’

  Here she paused for effect, and cast her pale blue eyes around the gathering. No one challenged her contention that this particular sin was the most deadly. Not yet, anyway. They would reserve judgement until her story was told. Satisfied that she had their full attention, she went on.

  ‘This is a story often told by my grandfather about a time when I was a young woman living in Venice. Niccolo Zuliani had travelled to the ends of the earth, and seen many wonders. Great palaces where a thousand men may banquet at a time, a robe made of salamander that can resist fire, and a black stone that burns better than logs. Some said he told lies, or at the very least embroidered so heavily on the truth that it would have hardly known itself if it looked in a mirror. I like to think that everything he spoke of was the literal truth. Whatever people may have thought, this story is certainly one I can verify the truth of myself, as I was involved in its unfolding, as you will eventually see.’

  The small group of travellers leaned closer to her to hear the tale of . . .

  Greed

  Nick Zuliani was bored. Though he was more than seventy years of age, his mind was as sharp as it had ever been. He had recently returned from a small Greek island owned by the Soranzo family, where he had performed a service for Giovanni Soranzo, who was now the Doge of Venice. Since his return, his days had been full of idleness, and he yearned for something to occupy his mind. Even his dearest love, Cat Dolfin, was tired of his sighs and his constant wandering through the rooms of her home, Ca’ Dolfin.

  ‘You’re like some tiresome ghost, always interrupting my peace, Niccolo. Do stop it.’

  Zuliani sighed some more at the rebuke, knowing that if she addressed him by his full name and not as Nick, she was seriously annoyed. Then, seeing Cat’s reaction to his further sigh, he satisfied himself with a silent grimace.

  ‘Perhaps you are tired of having me around. You should throw me out on the street like some homeless beggar.’

  He was indeed homeless, and had been for some time. Since, that is, his own house had been burned down in a fire set by a man seeking to mask his deliberate disappearance. In that conflagration, Zuliani had lost almost everything he possessed, including most of the wonders he had brought from Cathay. Still, at the time it had been a boon, in that it had resulted in him finding and moving in with his long-lost love, the aristocratic Caterina Dolfin. At the same time, he had also discovered the existence of his granddaughter, Katie.

  He cast his mournful gaze on the still slim and attractive woman, who as a young lady he had left pregnant when he had skipped Venice over some misdeed or other. His only excuse at the time was that he had not known of Cat’s delicate state when he had fled. Cat returned his soulful look with a steely one of her own. She pursed her lovely red lips.

  ‘Don’t push your luck, Niccolo.’

  Then she sighed, knowing what was behind his irritating behaviour. He needed to be busy, and the only thing that truly excited him was the pursuit of trade and the growth of money.

  ‘Oh, very well. I will loan you some money, just so that you can lose it on some hare-brained scheme, like you have with your own money.’

  Zuliani flashed her a smile.

  ‘A promissory note will be enough, and I shall be out from under your feet and on my way to the Rialto in an instant.’

  She quickly picked up a quill before he could change his mind.

  ‘So this is about a Venetian’s greed for money,’ said one of the pilgrims gathered in the Angel tavern in Norfolk. Katie frowned, annoyed that the thread of her story, so soon started, had been broken already.

  ‘Not at all. There is no sin in honest trade, as any Venetian will tell you. Listen, and you will soon learn what sort of greed I am telling you about.’

  It was not long before Nick Zuliani found his way to the Rialto. The great wooden bridge was at the centre of the early settlement, and was now the commercial heart of La Serenissima. On its sturdy planks strode impecunious merchants seeking the funds for trading ventures that they could not afford on their own. Any Venetian with a little money to invest could have a share in such trade. Artisans and widows, even the aged and the sick, could enter into what was called a colleganza. This might take the form of a simple partnership between two merchants, or that of a large corporation of the kind needed to finance a trans-Asiatic caravan. It might run for a short, agreed period or might be an ad hoc, ongoing arrangement that would be dissolved automatically when the venture was complete. Whatever the constituent parts of the partnership, it was founded on trust and was inviolable. Even one involving an immense initial outlay, or several years’ duration and considerable risk, could be arranged on the Rialto in a matter of hours.

  Zuliani walked up and down for a while assessing the merchants who were on the bridge. They were mostly young men such as he had once been. He too had stood here, eager-faced and keen to find someone past their prime who could afford the money but not the time or effort to travel to the corners of the globe for profit. Now he was on the other side of the fence – one of those aged men too weary for long journeys in pirate-infested waters. He listened in on a couple of merchants who were already trying to persuade the people around them to take a chance on making their fortune.

  One, a raw-boned man with a face that looked as though it had been chiselled out of rock and been around the world, was expounding the virtues of trading salted North Sea cod, Rhenish and Bordelais wines, and Breton salt with oil and rice from ports in the Mediterranean. Zuliani knew such a colleganza would provide steady profits,
but what he sought was excitement, even if it was of the vicarious sort. The other merchant he turned to was a fresh-faced youth with long, black hair that kept blowing across his eyes in the wind that swept up the Grand Canal. He spoke of cotton from Syria and North Africa, and silks from the East. Zuliani’s heart began to beat a little faster. He moved closer, the eager eyes of the young trader spotted him and his spiel grew more expansive.

  ‘Remember that at sea there are no toll duties as there are on routes overland. A sea route costs a twentieth of an overland route, and all we have to fund is the basic cost of fitting out a ship, freight charges, and sailors’ wages – which are precious little.’

  As he said this, he nudged the well-dressed man standing next to him and laughed. The man did not respond, his face keeping its solemn cast as he twisted the ring on his thumb, so the trader swallowed his joke and pressed on.

  ‘The more valuable the cargo, the greater the profit. I am proposing a colleganza that will sail as far as Antioch and Tyre in order to benefit from the silks that come from Cathay.’

  At the mention of that far distant empire, Zuliani was won over to this young man’s proposition. Memories of his own travels around Cathay at the instigation of the Great Khan, Kubilai, flooded his mind. He elbowed his way to the front of the crowd that had gathered around the young merchant.

  ‘I will have some of that trade, young man.’

  The trader eagerly grasped his hand.

  ‘You are a wise man, sir, and I shall not let you down. My name is Bernardo Baglioni, and yours is . . .?’

  Zuliani hesitated, fearful that his name and reputation would draw too many into the venture and dissipate the profits. He produced the note signed by Cat.

  ‘Let’s merely say I am acting on behalf of the Dolfin family.’

  Baglioni’s smile broadened. It was not often that someone from the case vecchie – the old aristocracy of Venice – got involved in trade.