The Deadliest Sin

by The Medieval Murderers

  ‘Ah, but they were proud,’ Randal said. ‘Listen and you shall see.’

  They sought out each other’s company because they considered themselves to be far more interesting than the dull-witted clergymen who infested most of the city. There was one of the Black Crows in particular who took great pride in his talents and intellect, a young priest by the name of Father Oswin. He’d come to the attention of Bishop Henry Burghersh as someone who would do well in the Church, destined for great things and high office, many said. Oswin could read and write prodigiously well in several languages in addition to Latin, standing out markedly against his fellow priests, many of whom could barely gabble a Latin prayer by rote and that with little idea of what it meant.

  Thus it was that Father Oswin, a man of no more than twenty-five, was selected, as one of the youngest men ever to be trained in the art of necromancy and other spiritual defences in the service of the Church. Subdean William and a few other members of the Cathedral Chapter had counselled strongly against it. It took a wise head and a steady nerve to wield power over spirits and angels, they said. No one under the age of forty was mature enough to handle such a role. But Dean Henry pointed out that wisdom did not necessarily increase with age. Many priests were just as addlepated and vacillating at sixty as they had been at sixteen, probably more so, he added, pointedly staring at several of the members of the Cathedral Chapter. The will of the dean, as head of Chapter, prevailed and Father Oswin entered into training.

  Although Oswin was supposed to discuss his training only with his tutors, he could not resist the temptation to impress his fellow members of the Black Crows with little hints about the mysteries he was learning and, out of curiosity and perhaps a little jealousy, they constantly pressed him to tell them more.

  One cold December night, the members of the Black Crows began to make their way towards their favourite tavern. There was a bitter wind blowing, carrying with it a fine misty rain, which clung to clothes and quickly soaked them.

  First to arrive was Deacon Eustace, a thin-faced man with a long nose, which was always dripping and red, for he seemed perpetually to have a cold. He was dismayed to find himself the first, for he hated being down in the cellar alone. It was a gloomy place. Barrels and kegs of wine, flour and salt were stacked around the mildewed walls, and slabs of salted goat and bacon hung from the great hooks in the arched ceiling. The floor had once been the street on which Roman soldiers had marched and some in the town claimed their ghosts still did. It was only too easy to believe in ghostly soldiers in the flickering candlelight, which sent strange shadows creeping around the barrels and boxes.

  Eustace had just made up his mind to wait for the others up in the warmth of the crowded ale-room, when he heard footsteps on the stairs and John ducked his head under the arch. He grinned cheerfully on seeing Eustace and clattered down the remaining steps into the cellar, stripping off his cloak as he came and shaking the rain from it. Eustace was still sitting huddled in his, for even in summer he complained constantly about the cold and damp of the cellar.

  ‘Good,’ John said, rubbing his meaty hands and straight away pouring himself a beaker of wine from the flagon on the table, which had been set ready for them. ‘Thought I was going to be last, and I’d have to drink fast to catch up.’

  John had the build of a blacksmith rather than a cleric, with a strength to match. Indeed, that was the trade of his father and older brothers, but there wasn’t enough work in the smithy for all of them, and he, being the youngest, had taken minor orders simply to get an education, but he had no intention of remaining in holy orders. His talent lay in gambling, and he was convinced that if only he could scrape some money together, he could make a comfortable living as the owner of an honest gambling house, which would surely prosper if word spread that his tables had not been rigged, nor the dice weighted.

  Footsteps clattered on the stairs again and Giles and Robert descended into the cellar. Giles, like John, was also in minor orders as the parish exorcist, his main duties being to exorcise infants at the church door prior to their baptism and organise the parishioners who were to receive the host at Mass and ensure they didn’t smuggle the bread away uneaten to use in spells and charms. Giles bitterly resented this lowly role. Unlike John, he desperately wanted to be a priest, but he could not be ordained into major orders until he could find a living to support him. Without a wealthy patron, that was proving impossible.

  He wiped the rain from his freckled face and threw himself down on the bench. It was evident to all that he was in a foul temper. ‘I swear one day they’re going find that old priest hanging from the rood screen with his tongue cut out. If I could carry him up there I do it myself.’

  John leaned across the table and good-naturedly poured a beaker of wine for Giles.

  ‘Get that down you, lad, you’ll feel better. Giving you a hard time, is he?’

  Giles made a growling sound at the back of his throat. ‘I swear that man’s mother was frightened by a viper when he was in her belly and he was born spitting venom. That’s if he was actually born at all. His parents probably dug him up from under a stone.’

  Robert took the beaker that John, in turn, held out for him, and drained it gratefully in one long swallow, shuddering slightly at the sour taste. ‘Think yourself lucky you’ve only one like him to please. I’ve a hundred of them each worse than the last.’

  Like Oswin, Father Robert was already ordained, but had no great liking for his post. His uncle, William, who was subdean of the Cathedral, had secured him a minor position there, but Robert spent as little time working as possible. As he was forever telling his friends, the one and only benefit of being employed in the Cathedral was that it was so large that, with a bit of ducking and weaving, you could always ensure you were somewhere else whenever anyone was looking for you.

  ‘And where is the divine princeling?’ Eustace enquired in his nasal tone, dabbing his dripping nose. ‘You two normally arrive together.’

  Robert grimaced. ‘Taking instruction behind locked doors, or so some brat informed me. Probably summoning the Archangel Michael to do his bidding,’ he added sourly.

  Giles rolled his eyes and John chuckled.

  ‘Anyway, I wasn’t going to hang around waiting for him. I’ve been trying to dodge my uncle all day. Probably noticed I wasn’t at Mass this morning and wants to blister my ears.’

  Although Robert had no intention of exerting himself in the service of the Church – at least not in the position of dogsbody in which he found himself – all the same, he had been annoyed that his uncle had not suggested him for training in place of Oswin. He was kin, after all, and the post commanded a good stipend, and a great deal of respect. Most importantly of all, everyone knew it was a stepping stone directly into high office, and Robert thought the post of bishop would suit him well. He’d rather fancied living in sumptuous rooms and having a host of minions to wait on him.

  ‘So where were you that you missed Mass?’ John asked.

  ‘Still abed,’ Robert said.

  ‘And I wager it was not your own,’ Eustace muttered darkly.

  Eustace took the vows of celibacy extremely seriously, unlike many of the clergy in Lincoln. He wouldn’t look at a woman, even turning his face away when one of the older serving women at the tavern approached. Oswin often teased him about it, saying he was scared he’d not be able to resist the temptation to jump on her, but in truth, Eustace gave every impression of loathing all females.

  John, grinning broadly, shoved the flagon of wine towards Robert, almost tipping the whole lot over with the strength of the push. Eustace made a grab for it and succeeded in righting it just in time, shaking his head despairingly at John. If there was any object that could be tripped over, broken or crushed, you could always count on John to do it.

  ‘It’s as well you’ve no ambitions to priesthood,’ Eustace said. ‘You’d drop the infants in the font and knock out half your parishioners every time you tried to put the host in
their mouths at Mass.’

  As John opened his mouth to retort, the door creaked ajar once more and they glimpsed the hem of Oswin’s robes as he sauntered down the stairs. He ducked under the archway and descended the remaining steps. He was closely followed by the serving maid staggering under the weight of a steaming pot, a basket of bread trenchers and another of fresh bread. She lumbered over to the table and heaved the pot of civey of hare onto it, and handed round the bread trenchers. The young men made no attempt to help her, and she expected none. Clergy, she had long ago concluded, would leave you lying in the street in the path of a stampeding bull, sooner than soil their hands to help you up.

  She tucked a greasy lock of russet hair back under her voluminous cap and retreated back upstairs with a promise to return with another flagon of wine as soon as she had a moment, which judging by the laughter and shouts above them wasn’t likely to be soon. The men ignored her and concentrated on the meal, as if it had arrived on the table by magic.

  Oswin stripped off his damp cloak, tossed it onto a barrel and settled himself on the bench. He was a well-favoured young man and a fringe of dark hair curled becomingly round his tonsure, making girls and matrons alike sigh that it was a pity that all the good-looking men ended up in the priesthood. Before anyone else could reach for it, Oswin leaned across and helped himself to the stew, sniffing appreciatively at the rich spicy steam.

  ‘Never realised exorcism could give a man such an appetite.’

  Giles snorted. ‘It’s not that taxing. I do it every week, several times in fact.’

  ‘Saying a few words over a bawling infant or some crazed old woman is hardly the same thing. Even a boy in minor orders can do that.’ Oswin leaned forward eagerly, waving his knife on which he had speared a large piece of meat. ‘I’m talking about wrestling with demons, evil spirits, dark angels.’ His eyes glittered with excitement.

  A dark flush spread over Giles’s face at the barely veiled insult. ‘And how many demons have you managed to subdue today? Send them all howling back to Hell in chains, did you? Have you actually read the book of exorcism they gave me when I was made exorcist? Banishing demons is in the book, too, you know.’

  ‘But divining isn’t, nor summoning spirits,’ Oswin retorted. ‘Divining the hidden holy objects. Now that’s a rare skill.’

  ‘And I suppose you can do that, too. Go on then, show us!’

  Hearing the savagery in Giles’s tone, Robert glanced up from his meticulous dissection of the hare’s flesh from its bone. He cast about for a subject that would divert them and unfortunately blurted out the first and only thing that crossed his mind.

  ‘They’ve a new girl at the stew, backside sweet as twin peaches.’

  ‘Which you know, because you’ve been biting into them!’ Eustace snapped. ‘I don’t know how you can face your confessor.’

  ‘We all have our weaknesses and we all know what yours is, Eustace,’ Giles said acidly.

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  ‘Hold your peace, lads,’ John said, doling out what remained of the wine into each beaker in equal measure. ‘I reckon one of you brought the Devil in here with you tonight. I’m away to fetch some more wine, ’cause I reckon Meggy’s forgotten we’re down here. So shift your arses and get out the dice. More gaming, less talking is what we need.’

  It took John a fair time before he could finally waylay one of the scurrying tavern girls and cajole her into ignoring her other customers and bringing wine from the broached barrel in the yard. Meggy was clearing the gravy-soaked bread trenchers from the table as he lumbered down the steps. John groaned, hearing again the sound of an argument in progress. Mischief rides the east wind, his mother used to say and she wasn’t wrong. It was a spiteful wind that always set men in an ill humour. He set the wine on the table, spilling some of it onto the basket of fresh bread. Unwilling to see either wine or bread go to waste, he crammed the soggy bread into his mouth as he poured the contents of the flagon into the Black Crows’ beakers.

  ‘So where’s the dice, lads?’

  ‘We,’ Giles said, with a note of triumph in his voice, ‘have found something far more interesting to wager on, something that should be a challenge even for you.’

  They all knew that if women were Robert’s vice, then John’s was definitely gambling, not that he would have considered any pleasure that was so exhilarating to be a vice.

  John flopped down on the end of the bench with such a thump that Giles, sitting on the other end, felt it lift beneath him. John leaned forward eagerly.

  ‘So what’s to do? What’s the wager?’ he demanded.

  ‘Our princeling here has been boasting that he can find any holy object that’s been hidden,’ Eustace said. ‘Giles has challenged him to put it to the test. Robert is to take something from the Cathedral and hide it. The wager is that Oswin won’t be able to find it, using divination alone.’

  ‘And when I win,’ Oswin said, ‘Giles will do a penance of my choosing in front of all the Black Crows for accusing me of lying.’

  From the malicious expression on Oswin’s face, it was plain he’d already decided any penalty was going to be as humiliating an ordeal as was in his power to devise.

  ‘And when you lose,’ Giles countered, ‘you will confess the sin of pride and vainglory to your confessor and I trust he will impose the full penance that is laid down by the Church.’

  A spasm of alarm flashed across Oswin’s face. The full penance for the sin of pride was, as they all knew, that for seven long years the sinner must abstain from meat every Wednesday, in addition to the regular fish days, and consume only dry bread and water on Fridays. In practice, it was considered so harsh, it was seldom given any more but, for a man in training to do battle with the forces of darkness on behalf of the Church, there was every likelihood the penance would be imposed exactly as written. For a man with such sin on his soul could certainly not fight demons and hope to survive.

  ‘Never mind that,’ John said, ignoring the serious faces of his companions. ‘What’s the stake to be?’ His eyes were ablaze with a fierce excitement that only the cockfights or gaming tables could normally engender.

  ‘One full mark,’ Oswin said, staring unblinking at Giles. ‘Each.’

  Giles swallowed hard and he swayed slightly on the bench, as if he’d been struck.

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous. That’s far too rich for our stomachs,’ Eustace protested. ‘It’s all very well for you and Robert, but John and Giles are only in minor orders. They’re paid a pittance, and a deacon’s stipend’s not much better,’ he added, ruefully patting his own purse.

  Oswin raised his eyebrows. ‘Well, of course, if Giles can’t afford to pay then we’d better call it off.’

  ‘Scared, are you? Trying to find a way of weaselling out?’ Giles said. ‘Don’t worry about me finding the money, Eustace. We won’t need to pay, because this braggart isn’t going to win.’

  ‘Hold the lantern up higher, the keyhole’s not at my feet,’ Robert whispered fiercely.

  John obligingly tipped the horn lantern, almost smashing it against the door as he did so.

  The wind screamed through the bare branches and rattled the shutters of the tiny chapel. On either side of the lonely track, trees and bushes bowed and swayed, and in the darkness it was only too easy to see them as robbers or wolves advancing. The men clustered around the door drew their cloaks tighter about them, shuffling impatiently. There was nothing, save for their tonsures, to mark them as clerics, for like all priests they dressed in the same clothes as those worn by the laity, except when they were on their way to and from church, and when performing, their duties.

  Cursing under his breath, Robert finally wrangled the great iron key into the lock and eased the door open. A stench of mice, mildew and rotting wood rolled out to greet them, but the men jostled each other to get inside, anything to be out of that cutting wind. Tiny creatures scurried into the shadows, as the light of the swinging lantern disturbed th
eir nocturnal foraging. Stagnant puddles of water on the floor glistened black under the candlelight. The roof was evidently leaking in several places. The low door opposite the main one still had its key rusting in the lock though it was evident no one had entered that way for years, since it was draped beneath a thick swathe of dirt-encrusted cobwebs.

  The dim yellow light from the lantern revealed a stone altar with a cross cut into each corner, and a heap of bird droppings on top. But filthy as it was, all the men turned as one to face it, kneeling and making their obeisance. They gave the gesture no more thought than breathing.

  Eustace took the lantern from John, before he could smash it or drop it, and set it down in a deep niche, the length of a man, built into the wall to the left of the altar. It was the Easter Sepulchre in which the statue of Christ was placed on Good Friday and brought forth from on Easter Sunday. A crumbling wreath of yew branches and the ancient stubs of candles lay among the dirt that had accumulated in there. He hoped that keeping the light low down would prevent it from being seen outside, shining through the broken shutters. He’d no wish to attract the attention of the kind of men who roamed these tracks at night.

  He sniffed, wiping his dripping nose with his hand. ‘This place is a disgrace. Who says Mass here?’

  ‘No one any more,’ Robert said. ‘Family that endowed the chantry all died out and eventually so did money they’d left to pay the priests to say the Masses for their souls.’

  ‘Is it still consecrated?’ Oswin said. ‘This must be done on consecrated ground.’

  ‘Trying to find another reason for backing out?’ Giles said, from the shadows.

  Robert jumped in quickly, before another argument could break out. ‘The relic’s still beneath the altar; so long as that remains, it’s as holy a place as St Hugh’s shrine at the Cathedral. See for yourself.’