The Deadliest Sin

by The Medieval Murderers

  My mother’s words soon passed out of my mind when I thought of my next secret meeting with Agnes Rath. But fear of the consequences didn’t put us off. There’s a Latin saying for that, too, and I don’t need anyone to provide it for me, thank you. Amor vincit omnia. Love conquers all. That was our happy state, Agnes and I. And you should have seen Agnes as she was then! Lithe as willow, with hair that tumbled down like a shower of gold when it was loosened.

  You may think I have been talking about my father and mother without the reverence that is their due, calling one a gossip or snob, and the other a miser and so on. Perhaps I have spoken of them without due respect. But they are long dead and I can see them clearly now. They had faults, yes, and which of us does not have faults, God have mercy on us? But they had virtues too. I thought my father was an honourable man, who was prepared to be humiliated in the alehouse rather than be considered a thief. Thank God, he was not aware of the presence of his son that day when he was forced to hold up the little length of rope. We could not have looked each other in the eye afterwards if he’d known I was there. And though my mother may have been a snob it meant that she wanted to see her sons rise in the world, and because she had a churchman as an . . . uncle . . . she made sure I gained a little more learning than I might have been entitled to as a tenant farmer’s son. My mother’s uncle sometimes gave me lessons himself. I even picked up a few Latin sayings from him.

  Agnes and I had appointed to meet towards the end of that same spring day, the day of the market. We had a regular place. It was on the boundary of the land that my father held against her father’s. Because of all the trouble between the two families, the hedges that marked the boundary were left straggling and unkempt, as if to discourage trespassers, and it was these same hedges that must have been the reason for Alfred Rath’s complaint to my mother.

  In a remote spot, almost out of sight of any dwelling, there was a stile. This too was overgrown and broken down. Because there was no coming and going between the two families, no one had bothered to maintain or repair the stile. Agnes and I often met there, and one or the other would clamber over to the opposite side so we might spend time together. In the past there had been a path running on both sides of the stile and linking the two properties, but because of the coldness between Carters and Raths, there was no occasion for it to be used. Except by us.

  It was early evening, with the wind shaking the blossom in the trees and the sun sending out his long beams from the west. A heavy downpour of rain that afternoon made everything smell damp and fresh. As I was on my way to the meeting-place, I thought I glimpsed Mistress Travis, the cunning-woman, on another path that bordered our land. She was running and her wild hair was streaming out behind her. It was strange to see her away from the Great Wood and the rain-sodden hut. But I thought no more of her and instead of Agnes Rath. As I approached the boundary, I could see my friend approaching from the other side through the gaps in the hedge. Between us was the stile. It wasn’t until I drew much closer that I noticed something draped over the dilapidated steps of the stile. I took them for discarded clothes but, nearer too, I saw that underneath the garments was a figure. At first, I thought he was asleep, then I thought differently. I shouted to Agnes to stay back but she was already as close as me.

  If we had any sense we’d have turned tail and left it to someone else to make the discovery. But curiosity nudged us forward. Besides, I felt that this overgrown gap in the hedge belonged to us, and I was almost angry that another person should have been using it. Even if that person was dead. He was draped over the stile as he’d been if struck down in the act of crossing, with his legs on Agnes’s side and his top half dangling down on mine. His head was obscured. I crept closer still and got down on my hands and knees in the damp grass and peered up and sideways at the countenance of the dead man. I already suspected that it was Thomas Flytte the physician but I had to make sure.

  The side of his face that was visible to me was swollen and mottled with purple like the colour of the threadbare surcoat he used to wear. There appeared to be a cord buried deep in the flesh of his neck. His eyes were bulging and sightless. It was obvious that he had not died a natural death. It was only later that I had time to experience any sorrow. This was the man who’d spoken kindly to me – and told me I might become a tavern-keeper! Here was the physician who had plucked Agnes from the jaws of death! But at that moment all I felt was a tightness round my own neck. When I heard someone speaking from the other side of the hedge, I sprang up and almost ran away. I thought of Reeve, Flytte’s companion, and half expected him to come slithering out from under the hedge. But the speaker was Agnes. I couldn’t see her. Not clearly, just an outline. She was more composed than me. When she spoke again there was scarcely a tremor in her voice.

  ‘Who is it, Laurence? It is not my father, is it?’

  I suppose she thought this because the dead man had obviously been coming from the direction of her family’s land and house.

  ‘Not, it is the physician, Thomas Flytte.’

  ‘What are we going to do?’

  ‘We should raise a hue and cry.’

  ‘Yes.’

  Even then, some instinct kept us from moving, though every moment we delayed in raising the hue and cry meant that the murderer of Thomas Flytte could be making his escape from the district.

  ‘Wait, Agnes,’ I said. ‘We cannot report this together. People would ask us what we were doing at this deserted place, and our secret would be out. Go home and say nothing. I’ll pretend I was out here by myself, wandering about, looking for birds’ eggs. I’ll say I found him, found the physician’s body. I will keep you out of the story.’

  Laurence Carter paused in his present story. He seemed almost overcome by his words, by the memory of the body of Thomas Flytte hanging across the stile. There was a stir from the far side of the group of pilgrims and a woman spoke up. It was the landlord’s wife. She’d already made clear her feelings about her husband’s storytelling by coughing and then harrumphing loudly when he was making comments about the long-haired beauty of his youthful love, Agnes.

  ‘That’s not how I remember it, husband.’

  ‘No, my dear?’ said the landlord.

  ‘No. I remember you were too confused by the discovery of the body to think straight or to have any idea what to do. It was I who said that we couldn’t do this together and that one of us should go and raise the alarm while the other went quietly home.’

  ‘Well, it may have been so,’ said the landlord.

  ‘It was so,’ continued the voice from the other side. By now, people were craning round to look at the speaker. ‘And there are one or two other details in your account that were not altogether as you describe them.’

  ‘Perhaps you would like to take up the tale then, Agnes. To tell the truth, my throat is getting dry. I’d welcome another voice – and another drink. Come forward, my dear.’

  ‘Thank you, my sweet.’

  Laurence Carter stood aside while his wife bustled to the front of the group. There was some amusement among the Walsingham pilgrims, as well as surprise, to see that the girl he’d been referring to all this while – Agnes Rath – had become his wife. And was still his wife. It was as if a character in a story had suddenly come to life. Agnes Carter cut a very different figure from the lithe young girl with flowing hair, as depicted by her equally young lover. She was a substantial woman well into middle age, who looked as though she’d take no nonsense from any of her servants or her guests. Her shape was concealed by a gown of dull red, like a dying fire, while her hair was tucked away beneath a wimple.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ she said, eying the room, ‘you are looking at me and all the while remembering Laurence’s description of me when I was a girl. Well, if I have changed a little, so has he. Thirty years ago, he was a . . . oh, well, never mind.’

  The landlord of the Angel, now sitting in comfort as one of the audience, shrugged ruefully as faces turned towards him. He raised his
bowl of wine in ironic salute. Whatever the small niggles between husband and wife, it was obvious that they understood each other well. Agnes Carter now took up the part of the storyteller.

  There’s one thing that Laurence has not told you, which he did not know at the time. But I had it from my mother, Joan Rath. Thomas Flytte the physican was Joan’s cousin from the village of Woolney, and his companion, Reeve, was actually his son. My mother said this was common knowledge in the family but something never spoken of. If you looked closely you could see a likeness in their faces, around the eyes. Thomas had fathered the child before he left Woolney as a young man. It may have been his reason for leaving the village in a hurry, to avoid some forced betrothal. When he came back all those years later, by instinct he went first to the village to find that only his son was left. The child had grown to a man, but he was a shy and sullen one, who preferred to keep away from company. He was called Reeve because that was the surname of his mother – her father had been reeve of an estate near Woolney. The lad must have had a given name but, if so, his father never used it and simply referred to him as Reeve, as if to say: you don’t really belong to me but to that other person with a different name.

  The father may not have wanted to acknowledge the son, but Reeve wasn’t to be so easily shaken off. He followed Thomas away from his birthplace and came with him to Wenham, where they were housed by my mother. The villagers assumed he was some sort of servant. Laurence says he trailed after the physician like a dog, and that there was something sinister or dangerous about him. I didn’t see that. To me, he was a rather pitiful creature. At first, anyway . . .

  My mother also had a story about just why Thomas Flytte returned home after all those years of wandering. She believed what he said because she was truly grateful to him on account of his treatment of her daughter. As I am grateful to him, God rest his soul, for without him, I don’t believe I would be standing here in front of you. My mother and the physician exchanged confidences. He told his tales of travel and foreign courts. He showed her a brooch of yellow topaz. The image of a falcon was cut into it. He said that this was to attract the favour of kings. It was his most treasured possession.

  Thomas told my mother that he had fallen foul of a powerful man in the court of Edward II. This courtier surrounded himself with a rabble of projectors and forecasters, some of them little better than vagabonds. Thomas Flytte was on the verge of a great discovery in the search for the substance that would transform base metal into gold, but before he could achieve this the courtier demanded the return of some money he had invested in the scheme. Thomas promised the man that if he was allowed to continue only a little longer he would be rewarded a hundred times over but the courtier was not to be persuaded. The physician had already spent the money, and his own besides, on the equipment he needed, so when the courtier began to threaten him with dreadful punishments and vengeance, Thomas had no choice but to return here to his birthplace in an obscure corner of the country. He was lying low, licking his wounds, deciding what to do next.

  The landlady, Agnes Carter, paused in her narrative. Like her husband, but in a more genteel way, she sipped at a bowl of wine before returning to her story, and the moment when they’d discovered the physician’s corpse.

  It was a strange talk we had, young Laurence and I. We did not raise our voices but conversed in loud whispers on either side of the crossing. I had a cooler head than he, I think, so I said that he should go back and raise the hue and cry. In fact he’d be punished if he didn’t do that since it was his duty and he was of age. Meantime, I’d return home and pretend that nothing had happened, if anyone noticed my absence and asked. Already I was good at adopting a guarded face – and keeping secrets. Despite what men say, women can keep counsel, you know.

  Laurence took to his heels across the fields. But I did not return home straight away. I gazed at the body of the physician, or what I was able to see of it bundled across the stile. I did not mind being so close to the corpse. I almost felt that he should not be left alone, even though I knew I could not be discovered here when the people came. Then I started wondering what Thomas Flytte had been doing out here. Obviously, he was on his way somewhere, going from the little house where he lodged with Reeve to . . . where? Or perhaps, he had been coming in the opposite direction, from the Carters’ to the Raths’, and had met someone as he was crossing the stile. Or perhaps, some person had been lying in wait for him. I looked at the ground at the base of the stile but it was just tussocky grass. It was coming on to rain again. Close by was a clump of trees and I went there for cover, though the branches were still quite bare.

  From where I was standing I had a good view of the protruding legs of the dead man. I looked down and saw something glinting on the ground. I picked it up. It was a tiny sheet of gold, or what looked like gold, set in a frame of wood. On the sheet was engraved the image of a lion. I’d never seen this object before but I recognised it all the same. It was one of the talismans that Master Thomas carried with him, and the sort of thing he bestowed on those he treated. I cast around on the ground under the trees but saw no more items. Had he dropped it? Had someone tried to steal it from him? Surely the little lion showed that the physician had been here under the trees. I could have dropped the talisman on the ground again, but instead I took it.

  And now I examined the earth more closely, I saw the mark of boots or shoes pressed into the earth in a place where the grass grew more thinly and where the mud was still soft on account of the wet dripping down from the bare branches. The print of the shoes was deep as though the person standing here had continued for a long time without movement. I shivered. I crouched down and measured the length of the imprint against my outstretched hand. It was nearly twice the length of my hand. Then I stole off towards the corpse and the feet that stuck out on this side. Strangely I did not feel frightened or disrespectful but . . . merely curious. I placed my hand against the sole of the dead man’s shoe and realised that whoever it was that had left their mark under the trees it was not Thomas Flytte.

  Then I thought I had done enough work for one day and I ran home, before Laurence should arrive back and the hue and cry begin. It was too late to do anything that evening and by the time the first villagers came out to examine the body, the light had almost faded from the sky. Anyway, nothing could be done until the coroner arrived. He attended the next morning. He had come from Thetford, as quick as carrion, eager to see what pickings he might get from the corpse in the way of deodands and fines. I remember his horse; it was a dapple grey hackney. He was accompanied by a servant.

  In truth, that scene is clearer and sharper in my mind’s eye than anything that happened yesterday. Almost everybody in the village of Wenham, from priest to ploughman to hayward stood in the field close to the stile, the babies in their mothers’ arms, the children jostling to the front for a better view. It was a chill morning. The crows circled and the clouds pressed low overhead. But however grim the occasion, and however much sadness there was at the death of Thomas Flytte, you could sense excitement, too. Even the Carters and the Raths buried their differences for a time and exchanged a few words, though they did it warily, as if they understood that an unconsidered remark or a thoughtless move might bring trouble down on all their heads.

  The coroner’s first question was to confirm that the body had not been moved. No, not moved? Good. So, whose land was it on? On a boundary, marked by the stile. On one side were the fields farmed by the Raths, on the other those of the Carter family. Thomas Flytte was discovered exactly between the two. His head and upper part were hanging down on the Carter side, while his lower half, his legs, were dangling over the Rath portion. It took some time for this to be imparted to the coroner, with both William and Alfred eager to explain, and somehow nudge responsibility for the body towards the other’s territory.

  The coroner rubbed his hands. Perhaps he was cold or perhaps he was thinking that having two families involved increased his chances of making a pro
fit. Then he ordered Thomas Flytte to be lifted down from the stile and laid out on some sacking, which had been placed on the ground. The overnight delay had caused the countenance of the poor physician to grow more mottled and bloated, while the body itself had stiffened, making it awkward to handle. When he was stripped bare of his clothing and his shrunken frame exposed for his injuries to be openly witnessed and assessed, there were expressions of real grief from the crowd. They came strong from my mother, and from me too. I noticed that even the Carters were affected and that stern old William seemed almost moved.

  The Thetford coroner asked if anyone present could say for certain who the corpse was, though everyone knew. My mother identified him as her cousin from Woolney. Her voice was low but steady now. The coroner proceeded to examine the body more closely and determined for himself that the cause of death was indeed the rope wrapped about the man’s neck. It had been tugged so tight that it bit deep into the flesh, which had swollen up and made the cord hard to unfasten. The coroner ordered the attendant who’d ridden with him to retrieve the rope, and I remember it came away from the corpse with a tearing sound. Then the coroner held it up as if daring someone to come forward and claim it. No one did, of course. He kept the rope but it was thin pickings. There were no goods he could confiscate here. Nevertheless, the coroner took – for himself, no doubt – the topaz brooch, which was in a pocket. I hope he managed to attract the King’s favour with it.

  No one said so at the time but much later, after the coroner had departed, someone remarked that the length of rope looked like the piece that William Carter had displayed in the alehouse to prove that he had not stolen a woman’s purse. The length he’d picked up in the street, when he’d been seen by my father. Even though it had happened a year or more earlier, everyone remembered that moment. Even those who hadn’t been present had heard of it. What had happened to that bit of rope? William had thrown it to the alehouse floor in anger and disgust before he stalked out. But had someone retrieved that rope and stored it away to use many months later to squeeze the life out of a man? It didn’t seem likely, but somehow it linked the murder of Thomas Flytte to the Carter and the Rath families.