The Butcher of St Peter's

Chapter Twenty-Five

The watchmen outside Jordan le Bolle’s house had still seen no sign of the man, so Simon and Baldwin returned to the deanery with the Coroner.

Sir Peregrine was content to sit and listen to the story Baldwin told the Dean. There was little in it he had been aware of, and the telling made sense of other stories he had heard recently.

‘I can tell you much, I think, Dean. A lot of it is conjecture still, but most is based on what I have learned from people who know what has been happening: the matters of Gervase the merchant and Sir William of Hatherleigh being two cases.

‘This man Jordan is a committed felon, Dean. He is keen to steal what he can. For some time, I believe, he has been taking your cargoes and filching what he could. But people grew to realize what he was up to — especially Daniel, the sergeant. So Daniel had to be destroyed. Perhaps Jordan tried first to simply bribe him, but whatever else he was, I do not believe the sergeant was a felon, and taking money to close his eyes to an injustice would not have appealed to him. Not only that, but I think he saw it as a matter of honour that he should capture this man because what he was doing was harming the cathedral itself.

‘So Jordan decided to have him removed. However, he couldn’t simply dispose of one man alone and hope that it would leave him clear to continue with his pilfering. He thought to himself that it would be best if he were to distract the cathedral too. How to do that?

‘The man was nothing if not imaginative. Before ever he had arranged for Daniel’s death, he thought of setting up a dispute between the chapter and the friars. He knew, just as all the population of Exeter knows, that the two houses were often at daggers drawn. It should be easy to create a dispute between them. And so it happened.

‘The merchant, Gervase, appeared in the city. A fool with his money, he was easily parted from it over some ales and gambling. Jordan could easily fix a series of games, at first to let Gervase win, and then, when he thought his luck was in, to fleece him of the lot. Every game he lost, until he owed Jordan a fortune.

‘Jordan told him to rest at the cathedral for a day or so and make good use of the chapter’s hospitality, and then claim that his money had been stolen there.’

‘The ungrateful … I shall have him arrested,’ the Dean muttered.

‘He has left the city already. I should permit him to go and count yourself fortunate that so few people think of such schemes!’ Baldwin said with a chuckle. ‘After all, he cost you nothing, and he has himself been robbed, if by another person.’

‘Why did Jordan do this?’

‘It permitted him to raise doubts in the minds of others. And he made use of the best means of telling people. He knew how the friars had been shamed by the discovery that one of their brethren had stolen money; he decided to show them that the cathedral had a thief too. The friars were delighted to think that they had a means of exacting revenge on the cathedral, and went about the city telling all their audiences that the cathedral was harbouring a felon. And then, when the cathedral went and took the body …’

‘That wasn’t his fault, I suppose?’ the Dean asked hopefully.

‘The Prior did say that he had mentioned the death of Sir William. It struck him how similar the situation was to the death of Sir Henry Ralegh twenty years ago, and he, I think, hoped that a hothead might commit a similar offence. And so it came to pass.’

‘Because the fool Peter was told to by Jordan?’

‘That is how I should read the tale.’

The Dean sat silently for a few moments. ‘This man has much to answer for.’

Baldwin nodded. ‘A great deal. And a few of those matters are the murders of Daniel and Mick, and the suicide of Anne.’

‘He is an incomparably evil man,’ the Dean said.

‘Perhaps so,’ Baldwin said. ‘We should know before long.’

Betsy opened the doors with a small yawn. She was getting too old for the game. Already the sun was well up and she hadn’t done anything yet.

It was the way of life for girls like her, though. They’d sleep and doze through the day, unless someone came in with an urgent itch for scratching, and then they’d set to work properly in the evening. Each man coming in in the evening had his woman for the night. That was the rule, and each had to satisfy her client as often as he asked. Not always an easy task, it was true, but the girls tended to do their best. Especially now.

Betsy had tried to keep her from their gaze, but several of them had gone in to look at Anne’s ravaged features after she died. There was something compulsive about seeing how Jordan would punish any of them for the crime of wanting to take one man for her own. Anne had been popular in the house, and the idea that someone could destroy her so completely was appalling to many of the girls. Betsy had even seen old Mark, the man who had been at the South Gate when Anne had left the city that last morning. He had come with a small gift, a bunch of flowers, which he had set by her head.

No one was unaffected. Betsy could see it in their eyes. There was a new haunted look in the faces of the girls. The older ones now realized that they truly couldn’t escape this place. Not while Jordan was there. Not while he wanted them. The younger girls understood what they had become — nothing more than the property of a man who saw them in the same light as a herd of cows. They had value to him, but every so often the less productive members could be culled for the good of the rest.

Betsy heard a low whimper, and at the sound she seemed to feel a cold hand clutch at her throat, tightening like a steel gauntlet. She could sense icy waves floating down her spine, and she walked along the passageway slowly. The doorway was darker than most of the rest, and she hesitated before leaning forward to listen. There was a steady, sad weeping from behind it now, and her heart seemed to clench in her breast. She dared not enter. Not while he was still in there. Her hand lifted, her forefinger crooked to knock, but then she licked her lips. A picture of Anne’s face appeared in her mind, and the finger uncurled as she spun on her heel and stole away.

The shame burned her soul.

Baldwin and Simon took their leave of the Dean, and Sir Peregrine was somewhat surprised to see how they dawdled about leaving the close.

‘Should we not hurry to the man’s house?’ he burst out at last when the slowness of their progress grew intolerable. ‘This man is a murderer at least twice, and here we are, progressing more slowly than a nun crossing the threshold of a brothel!’

‘So you think,’ Simon said. ‘But there is no point hurrying to Jordan’s house just to wait there alongside the watchmen. If we must wait, this is as good a place as any. Then if Jordan le Bolle arrives home, the watchmen will send to tell us, and we can go to catch him together.’

‘And in the meantime,’ Baldwin said with a quickening interest, ‘we may just learn something from this man.’

Peregrine turned to see Henry walking towards them along the long pathway from the conduit.

He walked like a man in pain, his withered arm dangling at his side. His face was a mass of wrinkles, most of them caused by squinting in pain, and Sir Peregrine felt some sympathy for the man as he saw how his gait was affected.

‘Henry, I am grateful to you for coming here,’ Baldwin said.

‘The boy said you had something to say that would ease my mind.’

‘It is this: we think that we may know who the murderer of Daniel was; whether that is true or not, I feel sure that your friend was innocent of any crime.’

Sir Peregrine was about to protest when he caught sight of Baldwin’s eye on him. It seemed to him as though the knight was asking him to trust his judgement. He shrugged. There was little enough else to be done. Sir Peregrine had nothing better to advance for now. He had only two interests: the man Jordan, and later Juliana. Juliana! He was looking forward to seeing her again. At least the Keeper had stopped accusing her!

However, it seemed to him that Baldwin’s comments were rather strong. If the man thought his comrade would be safe if he appeared in public again, he was being far too hopeful. As far as Sir Peregrine was concerned, as soon as Est reappeared he would be attached and gaoled until the Justices of Gaol Delivery could hear his case. And then, if Sir Peregrine had anything to do with it, the man would be hanged quickly. Any man who routinely broke into other men’s houses to look at their children deserved the rope. Still, if Sir Baldwin wanted to tease the man out into the open, it would make his arrest all the more easy. Perhaps that was all the Keeper intended: to flush the man from his cover. The sooner the better, too. Sir Peregrine wanted to put the whole affair behind him so that the poor woman Juliana could be permitted to put it all behind her.

‘Henry? Could you tell him?’ Baldwin asked.

Henry was in two minds as to what to say. He didn’t know where Est was any more, and the thought that he might be found now, just when he might be thinking he was safe, was an abhorrent idea. Poor Est. Devastated after the death of his child and his wife, he could never know any peace because of the actions of another man.

‘I don’t know where he is,’ he admitted. ‘He was up at a place he and I know, but he wasn’t there the last few times I went to check. I’ll see if I can find him.’

‘You do that,’ Baldwin said, but not harshly. ‘He has been evilly served. It is time he received a little compensation.’

Mazeline glanced out through the window, and immediately saw the two men waiting, just as her bottler had said.

There was a wonderful lightness to her spirit this morning. She felt as though she was almost free of all her troubles. Even Jane; Mazeline had asked her cousins to take the child overnight, and they had taken Jane to sleep with them. The men outside must surely be there to arrest her husband, and although she was not sure what crimes he was guilty of, she was certain there were enough felonies to see him hanged.

It was not the most loyal emotion for a wife to feel at the thought of her husband’s death, but just now uppermost in her mind was only joy. She had no idea what the future might hold for her, especially since her man had made some powerful enemies in the cathedral and in the city, and several might seek to demand money from her. She could lose her house and all inside it, and yet she would remain alive, and free.

Freedom was a strange word. For years she had thought herself free enough; married to a wealthy man who was powerful and important, she had thought herself extremely fortunate, but since the revelation yesterday when he told her he didn’t love her, had never loved her, her mind had been in a turmoil. It was only as she slept that her brain and her heart were able to comprehend what had happened to her. The man who had bullied her had not done so in order to improve her, he’d done it because he liked to see her suffer. He’d beaten her for his own pleasure, no other reason. He had never loved her.

So now she was rid of him. She had no love for him either. Although she did feel something bright and sweet in her relationship with Reg.

If Jordan were to be arrested and executed, what would happen to Reg? Surely he was likely to be taken for the same crimes? They were both engaged on the same plots and stratagems … she must warn him!

She stood, and was about to pull on a warm cotte when there was an odd noise. It was a wet crunching — a strange sound that reminded her of a whole fresh, large cabbage being kicked: slightly damp, but crisp as well. She thought it came from the rear of the house, towards the buttery, and she turned her head to the buttery’s doorway, but saw nothing. She opened her mouth to call to the bottler, but no words came. Instead she found her heart filling with a terrible dread, and she started to walk backwards away from the door that led to the back of the house. Stumbling against a table, she recalled the two men outside even as she remembered the small window in the buttery. A man entering clandestinely might clamber in there and take a short cudgel to the dozing bottler’s head.

The window was near now. She could feel the draught against the nape of her neck, and she was about to turn her head to it, when she saw him in the doorway.

‘Hello, bitch! Didn’t expect to see me again, did you?’

Ralph was seeing another patient when the messenger arrived, and he finished the consultation as swiftly as possible without appearing to rush. He liked Betsy, but paying clients had to be treated with a little more respect than a simple turfing out. They were the ones who kept him in business, after all. Without them he wouldn’t be able to help her.

When he had his small bag filled, he threw it over his back and hurried to the South Gate.

‘Back again, leech?’ the porter asked from his doorway.

‘Another one is unwell,’ he acknowledged.

‘So long as it’s not the evil bastard who cut up Anne. I liked her.’

‘Many did,’ Ralph agreed.

‘Yes. You tell me who did it to her, and I’ll get any number of men’ll see to him.’

Ralph thanked the man, but as he walked out towards the quay and the brothel he wondered whether anyone would ever pay for that foul crime.

The door was wide, and as he entered he could hear the weeping and shrieking from the back. With an awful feeling of encroaching doom, he stepped quietly along the passage and out to the back of the building. The noise was coming from inside one of the little chambers, and he walked along the corridor towards a room whose door stood open. There were lights inside, and their flames cast a lurid glow out into the walkway, where he could see three of the younger whores, their faces orange and red in the flickering light. One turned to him as though in terror, but then her appalled gaze was dragged back to the room.

As he reached it, Betsy came out. Her forearms were bare, and looked like those of a battlefield physician’s, covered in blood. Her face was twisted with revulsion and self-loathing.

‘I could have saved her, I should have. But I was too scared,’ she said, and began to sob.

There was little else to be done that day, other than command that the hue and cry search out Jordan le Bolle if he was not found within the city. Baldwin was loath to do that, at least until he had checked with the two men outside Jordan’s house again.

It was remarkable that the man had not yet appeared. Baldwin was quite sure that he would have returned to his house. Even a man who had need of a quick escape must first put together the means of survival. He would need food, money, some thick clothing in this miserable season. It was unlikely that he would have been carrying much about with him, surely.

Unless he had hurried away last night, perhaps to take cash from a strongbox in his gambling rooms or his brothel. If he had done so, they would have missed him. He could have boarded a ship at the quay and made his way down the river to the coast, there to disappear for ever.

From the end of the street they could see the two men at the house. They were standing and indulging in a close debate. As they watched, one of them lifted his tunic and directed a stream towards the road’s gutter.

Sir Peregrine swore at the sight. ‘Look at them! They’re supposed to be keeping a close watch on the damned house, not chatting about the ales they drank in the tavern last night. Worse than an old gossip from the market, those two!’

Baldwin smiled, but as he did so he saw both watchmen spin and stare at the house. A moment later, while the one was hobbled, trying to put his tarse back under his tunic, and the other was grabbing for the polearm he had dropped, Baldwin and his companions were sprinting along the roadway to the source of that scream.

Mazeline felt the table at the back of her thighs and had to stop. She wanted to get to the window, to call for help, but there was no hope now, with Jordan standing before her, as insouciant as ever.

‘Who were you expecting? Anyone?’

‘I was waiting for you, husband, but with the men outside, I thought that you’d be caught.’

‘I’m not so stupid that two watchmen like them can catch me out. I came in through the garden. From the castle’s gardens over our wall — it’s perfectly easy,’ he said, smiling. ‘Get me some ale, and meat. I am starved.’

She nodded and walked out to the buttery. The window was open, and she felt the breeze from the passageway, but then, as she entered the room, she felt the chamber start to spin about her, and as her nostrils caught the tang of salt on the air, the sweet, heavy odour that made her think of butchery and the slaughterhouse, she saw the body of the bottler with the head completely stove in and the brains spread over the floor.

It was the smell of blood and the sight of the corpse that made her start to faint, and it was the sensation of damp tackiness on her hands as she pitched forward that made her start to scream and scream …