The Butcher of St Peter's: (Knights Templar 19) (2 page)

One aspect of my books which has caused upset to some readers, I know, is my depiction of the attitudes and behaviour of religious
men and women in the early fourteenth century.

For many people (myself included when I first began to research this period) it is hard to believe that those who were supposed
to have dedicated their lives to God could have been quite so avaricious, argumentative and violent. However, I have not invented
much. The tales about conniving canons and their friends in the friary are not made up. In particular the case of Sir Henry
Ralegh’s burial is well documented.

Sir Henry had lived for some years as a confrater of the monks, and although there’s no evidence that he actually took the
oaths it seems clear that he wanted to be buried in their church. Many people at this time wanted to be buried in churches
or cathedrals, because it was felt, logically enough, that the nearer the corpse lay to the altar, the better their prospects
in the afterlife.

However, as Sir Henry and the friars would have known perfectly well, in Exeter, the cathedral had a monopoly on funerals
and burials. This was not a privilege which the cathedral was likely to give up without a fight because it was worth a lot
of money to them – there were the sales of funeral cloths and candles, and the potential donations from family members.

Nicholas Orme points out in ‘Death And Memory In Medieval Exeter’ (David Lepine and Nicholas Orme, Devon and Cornwall Record
Society, 2003) that disputes about burials were not unique to Exeter. The Church everywhere benefited from such occasions,
and was not happy to give up its right to the profits to be won. Matters came to a head in 1300 when the papal bull
Super Cathedrum
was issued by Pope Boniface VIII, laying down that any man could be buried in a friary, but that one quarter of his estate
must then be donated to the local church. He was trying to calm matters.

Why? Well, the case of Sir Henry de Pomeray shows the problem. He asked permission to be buried in the friary. In 1281 he
died, and the friars apparently respected the cathedral’s rights and brought the corpse to the cathedral for the funeral service,
but then the friars took away all the funerary ornaments, the candles, the money, everything, when they took his body back
to be buried. That rankled.

It was 1301 when the friars had Sir Henry Ralegh’s body in their church and the canons heard about it. A number of men from
the cathedral forced their way into the friary church, beat up some of the friars, broke the lattice, removed the dead man’s
remains, and incidentally took the cloth, the wax, the gifts, and all other movables. Back they went to the cathedral, where
they held the funeral, and then they carried the body back to the friary so that the friars could actually bury it. Except
the friars were by then sulking. To the shame of both groups, the friars locked their gates and refused to let Sir Henry enter
to be buried: the canons huffily indicated that it was nothing to do with them, and left poor Sir Henry’s remains outside
the doors.

These characters were, of course, members of important religious foundations, and yet they were prepared to use a dead man
as a bargaining counter. The corpse was left for some little time, until, apparently, the canons skulked back and took him
to the cathedral. It would seem that he was buried there, and
although it’s possible he was later dug up and taken to the friary, it’s quite probable that there was no exhumation, and
that ‘the body of Sir Henry Ralegh still rests under his effigy in the cathedral’ (‘The Franciscans And Dominicans Of Exeter’,
A. G. Little and R. C. Easterling, Exeter, 1927).

The ramifications of this dispute dragged on for several years. There were court cases, demands that justices should hear
the claims of the friars that the canons had broken the Peace, and claims for reimbursement of up to twenty pounds, and the
friars went so far as to declare the canons concerned to be excommunicate.

All of which is interesting, but to me it became much more relevant when I learned that one of the canons involved in the
carrying off of Sir Henry from the friars’ church was my own Bishop Walter of Exeter, Walter Stapledon. He was still being
accused of being excommunicate in 1305 when he was about to incept as Reader and Master in law at Oxford.

Bishop Walter was clearly an aggressively ambitious individual. He survived the fights with the friars over some four years,
saw off challenges to his position as bishop, and increased his political influence by supporting a middle of the road grouping
in Parliament. In 1320 he was made Treasurer to the King, largely due to the patronage of the Despensers, but then in 1321
he resigned on the eve of the Despenser wars – it would seem he disapproved of King Edward II’s decision to allow the Despensers
back into the country when he had previously committed to exiling them both.

I like to think that this behaviour, resigning a position of great value with the potential for huge personal aggrandizement
over a matter of honour, shows the real Bishop Walter. It points to his character too that he founded Stapledon Hall – later
Exeter College – at Oxford, that he created a grammar school at Ashburton, that he tried to help the poor, and that he appears
to have been a tireless diocesan. He did much that was good.

While at the Treasury, he was an effective and undaunted administrator. He tidied and sorted out much of the rubbish in the
Exchequer, and indeed a lot of his initial unpopularity may have been due to his habit of chasing debts which had been long
forgotten. However, there are other hints that in an age when no man was a saint, Bishop Walter was not unwilling to line
his own pockets. True, everyone else did too, and it is fair to point out that he seems to have collected money mostly in
order to spend it on things such as the cathedral rebuilding, a project close to his heart – and yet the rumours were strong
that he exploited his position. One such indicates that he took Queen Isabella’s estates for himself. It’s quite possibly
true, but he would have seen others, notably the Despensers, stealing estates willy-nilly from any man they wanted, even,
not being notably chivalrous, from widows. He would have seen the King stealing lands and legacies from many in order to reward
his friends. In short, up and down the country, people were taking what they could. There was no point having an advantageous
position in the world if you weren’t going to use it to further your own or your family’s interests.

Perhaps the Bishop’s behaviour was better than many. Others stole to enrich themselves. Much of the time the good Bishop seems
to have taken money not for himself, but to fund long-term ventures which were to the benefit of the diocese and the country.

Not a bad epitaph, really.

At the same time, there were many other religious men and women who were far less honourable than they should have been.

After the Ralegh scandal, the affair of Nicholas Sandekyn’s robbery of some money from a sum deposited with the friars seems
somewhat tame. Still, it was a humiliating matter for the friars. That one of their number should steal from a justice and
Sheriff of Devon was sufficiently embarrassing to make three consecutive priors seek to conceal the theft.

At the same period there were many men and women fleeing the harsh regimes in convents, incidentally breaking all their vows.
I have mentioned in past Author’s Notes the cases of the Parson of Quantoxhead, the murderous Dean John of Exeter and, of
course, the Mad Monk of Haldon Hill.

The fact always to bear in mind is that such a large percentage of the population was employed by the Church in one capacity
or another, and it would be incredible to think that of all these people a number would not be thieves, con men, or perhaps
dangerous psychopaths. All had been raised with weapons everywhere around and were used to a concept of personal honour, and
many of them had been brought up believing in their right by birth to have authority of life and death over their villeins.
Some of them even believed that they could remove a person’s right to enter the Kingdom of Heaven.

A simple case of murder really wouldn’t have bothered them.

I regularly tour with the Medieval Murderers and with Quintin Jardine, among others, and one question that is often thrown
at me is whether or not I’d have liked to live in this period. Read about the sanitation, the starvation, the poverty, and
then imagine relying on a clerical psychopath for your soul’s safety, and I think you can guess my view!

Michael Jecks

North Dartmoor

Winter 2004

Exeter, August 1317

In the grey light, the winding sheet looked thin, as though it had been stretched by the heavy deluge that fell all about.
The shroud was so sodden that it lay tight across the flesh beneath, and Estmund could see every curve and projecting bone
of the body it covered. Water pooled where it might: in the eye-sockets, between the breasts, in the soft hollow of her empty
belly, her groin … This was his woman – and yet it wasn’t. Emma was dead, her soul was gone. Truly, this was a husk, nothing
more.

The
shame
! He was discarding her carcass with as much ceremony as a man throwing away some worthless trash. If she had died even a
year ago, he could have afforded a coffin. It was wrong for her to be out here like this, on view to all passers-by, the thin
cloth showing off her body as plainly as though she were naked. He wanted to cover her up, hide her from the people who wandered
about the place, their dull, uninterested eyes glancing at him before surveying Emma’s corpse. Two urchins appeared and stood
silent, staring fixedly. In the end he grabbed his cloak and threw it over her. It was wrong that she should be the subject
of such attention here on the boundary of the cemetery.

He felt a sob start deep down in his belly, and closed his eyes. Yes, he should have provided a proper coffin for her, just
as he should have given her a real funeral, but he could do neither. Coffins were all but unknown now. Already, just in the
last three months, one twentieth part of the population of the city had died, so they said. There weren’t enough coffins for
the bodies. And his job was unprofitable now. In the past it had been worthwhile to be a butcher. It meant sufficient money,
good food … Good Christ, they had been happy on what he could earn, and her pregnancy had set the seal on their delight.

All Estmund had ever wanted was children of his own. Growing up with three younger sisters, he had been used to having babes
and toddlers about him, and even when he went to be apprenticed he had gone to a master butcher who had a large family. Est
had grown up with youngsters all around him, and the idea of fathering his own with his wife was wonderful.

He had wedded his beautiful Emma just four years ago, and it had seemed that soon all his hopes would be fulfilled. Shortly
after their wedding, she fell pregnant and Cissy was born in August of 1314.

But even as she was brought struggling into the world by that incompetent bitch of a midwife, their lives were changing.

The winter after Cissy’s birth was cold, but not so much worse than many others – Est had filled their plates with whatever
he could buy – but worse was to come. Throughout the summer the rain fell in torrents. At first all were stoical about it,
laughing about the normal English summer; some made jokes about a new Noah. But as the summer progressed, their humour left
them. Men could see the harvest was going to fail. The crops drowned in the fields. And soon the people began to die.

Theirs was not the only family to lose
a child, but to lose Cissy so young, only one month over a year old, seemed to Estmund to be awful. He did not hear her call
his name, nor see her stagger for her first steps. All was snatched from him when she died.

At the same time, when the cathedral refused to bury Cissy, Est saw his wife begin to slip away. It took her two years, but
at last she had joined their baby.

He returned to the pit. As he dug, Estmund could hear the rattling thump of another cart moving along the way. Pausing, he
straightened, a short, thickset figure with a stooped back, his face drawn and pale under a thinning cap of mousy hair. He
peered with eyes that were raw with grief at the small party led by a gaunt pony straining at its harness.

‘Come on, Est,’ his friend said, shovelling aside dirt from the pit at his feet. Much of what he brought out was mud now.
The hole filled with running rainwater as swiftly as they could clear it, an unwholesome red water like blood.

Estmund Webber remained standing staring at the cart. Its iron-shod wheels creaked as it lurched from side to side, crashing
into a hole where a slab had been moved, then righting itself and continuing as the pony lumbered onwards. At the side were
two carters holding the boards steady, so that the corpse resting on them mightn’t topple off and fall into the mud that lay
all about. Behind them, through the greyness of the blanket of rain, came the grieving family. A woman first, only five-and-twenty
or so, a pretty thing, with a man at her side. Est knew her and her husband: Jordan le Bolle and his woman, Mazeline. Behind
them came their servants and a cousin of Mazeline’s.

It was too small for an entourage, not enough to remember the dead. Who was it? Est had been told, but things like that seemed
unimportant now. The grief of others could not
penetrate the scars of his misery. Vaguely he recalled hearing that Mazeline’s mother had died. Starved, of course. Just like
all the others. So many …

Even before the wagon had gone, he could hear another making its way up from the Ercenesk Gate. There were so many deaths
now. So much suffering.

That was the way people should go, he thought. Along that paved way that led up to the great west door of the cathedral, the
last door on the road to God. The cart should stop before the door so that the men could carry the wrapped body inside, up
to the altar where they could pray for the soul, make sure that she’d be accepted at the gates of Heaven.

‘Est?’

He was sobbing uncontrollably again. Pathetically, hunched over his spade, he tried to wipe the tears from his face, but only
succeeded in smearing a thick plaster of reddish mud over his features. The rain was so heavy it didn’t really matter. It
would soon be washed away. He closed his eyes and bent his head as the racking grief engulfed him again, remembering …
remembering so much joy …

Young, gay, sweet, she had been all those things. His delight, his love, his darling, his sweeting … his beautiful wife.
He took a deep, shuddering breath and thrust his shovel into the rough ground, leaning on it, face covered with a muddy hand.

‘Get a move on, Est. We need to finish up here.’

Now the memories flooded back, and the tide washed away the grief, if only for a moment.

His wedding had been the happiest day of his life. He had gone to the parish church with Emma, and they’d repeated their oaths
in front of the priest there, a kindly old soul who had known them both all their lives – he’d baptized Emma when she was
born, and would have buried her too, except of course
none of the parish churches were allowed to bury anyone. All the city’s secular funerals must be conducted at the cathedral
church, and the burials must take place in the massive cemetery that almost encircled it. Not that Emma could have been buried
there anyway.

‘Est, come on, hurry up!’

The urgency of the words reached Estmund through the all-enveloping anguish that was now his life. He stared down at his friend,
Henry, who reached out to him, his face torn with sympathy, and as his fingers touched the rough material of Estmund’s tunic
Estmund began to sob again. His eyes rose once more to the cathedral, to the great edifice that stood to protect people like
him, like his wife. It was there to save their souls.

But not his beloved. The Bishop had declared her excommunicate. Her soul was lost, just like Cissy’s.

A cathedral in such times must accommodate many funerals, of course, and far be it from Agnes to complain about that, but
it was nevertheless upsetting to have to share it today of all days.

The rain was a constant blanket over the world. It wasn’t just that it lanced down, thick gobbets pounding into the already
sodden ground, it was the way the light had changed.

This late in the summer, all should have been clear and bright, warm and serene, with children playing in the cathedral’s
yard, wet- and dry-nurses idling with their charges, men haggling over deals, horses cropping the rough cemetery grass, hucksters
offering pies or trinkets, others calling out with wine or ale. The colours should have been distinct and glorious, gay flags
fluttering, men and women flaunting their finery for others to admire … and instead all was grim. This greyness was more
than the absence of light: it was the dullness of obscurity. The falling drops made all details murky, and the rain gathering
on her eyelids didn’t help, either.

The sun could not penetrate the thick layer of clouds. She was hidden from all, but here in the cathedral’s close, away from
the chilly gusts, Agnes could still feel her warmth. Up there somewhere the sun shone, and her efforts served to make the
dampness worse by increasing the humidity.

Agnes looked up at the cathedral as they approached. The old church was being rebuilt, the eastern portion first, and later
this, the western entrance. Precarious-looking scaffolding was lashed together against the building, great cranes reached
skywards, rubble lay all over the area near the cathedral where old stones had been dashed from the walls to make way for
the new ones, and it looked a mess. It hardly seemed a fit setting for the solemn rite that was about to be conducted for
Agnes’s father.

At the great door stood a cart from which a body had only recently been carried inside, and she felt a frisson of distaste.
Poorer folk could not afford the necessary sustenance, of course, but it was more than a little unsatisfactory to have them
leave a pony and cart before the doors where others were intending to enter for their own business. Churls ought to have a
separate entrance; it wasn’t right for them to get in the way of people like her family.

Stepping past the cart with its underfed pony, which watched the second funeral with a lacklustre eye, Agnes stood at the
doors to watch.

Her mother was weeping uncontrollably. She had her mouth open, and Agnes felt a fleeting discomfort. Mother and Juliana, Agnes’s
younger sister, were both showing their grief to the world, but she herself could not. She felt sure that Daniel,
Juliana’s husband of four years, felt the same as she. Although peasants might wail and moan, it would be
unseemly
for people in Agnes’s station to behave in like manner.

The cart stopped and the pallbearers lifted her father’s body on its bier. With bowed heads, the men carried it inside.

Agnes waited until her mother and sister were at the door, and then she joined her mother. As she glanced at her, Agnes realized
how old her mother had grown. She and Agnes’s father had always been so close; Agnes suddenly wondered whether she would have
any reason to continue living. The idea was shocking – yet unavoidable.

She took her mother’s arm and walked with her inside, aware all the time of her sister and brother-in-law just behind her.
She was always aware of
him
: Daniel, sergeant of the city. She cast an eye about her as they entered the gloomy interior. Yes, Juliana had done very
well for herself. Marrying a sergeant of the city might not seem like much of an achievement – after all, almost any of the
members of the Freedom would earn much more than a mere sergeant – but Daniel was slightly different from the run of the mill
officers. He was brave to the point of rashness, convinced of his own strength; handsome, with a jutting, pointed jaw and
square face. His eyes held the confidence of a man who knew that his friends would soon see him promoted. Perhaps he would
be given one of the gates. It was an important job, having the control of a gate; but then he could be given some duties in
one of the courts instead. Men there could always make themselves wealthy, and Daniel was bound to be successful.

Agnes dipped her fingers into the stoup of holy water and crossed herself. It was an awesome thought, that Juliana – ‘little
sister’ – was already a mother herself, but at least Juliana had achieved her life’s ambition. Agnes knew full well that her
little sister had early on been determined to marry before her. Well, that was well and good, because Agnes had not wanted
to marry. She was content with the life she enjoyed, she told herself, and the idea of having to pander to a man was unattractive.
She had no need of a husband yet. The oft-repeated injunction was soothing, faintly, but not enough. She was growing lonely,
and the thought that her life could be ended as swiftly and as quickly forgotten as that of her father was alarming.

In front of her she saw the funeral party which had arrived before her father, and she could not help a small sneer. It was
Jordan le Bolle and his wife. That, Agnes knew, would be enough to drive her brother-in-law the sergeant into a cold rage.

Thinking that, Agnes could not stop herself from casting a glance at Daniel. No matter what she told herself, that she wasn’t
jealous, that she hadn’t wanted to marry yet, that she had never really felt that much attraction to Daniel, there was always
that niggling annoyance at the back of her mind.

After all, Daniel had been
her
man until Juliana snatched him from her.

He could feel her eyes on him, but Daniel was no fool. He knew damned well that she would be near him every day from now onwards.
No matter what his success or failure, little Agnes would always be there to smile with that small, sarcastic twist of her
lips, just as she always had been. With her father gone, Daniel had a responsibility towards her.

At first he’d wanted her so much more than Juliana. Agnes was the older, more sensible woman of the two, but of course at
her age she could afford to be more sensible. It wasn’t as though
she had to worry about anything much, except winning herself a suitable husband. That was a tough demand, though, for a maid
such as her.

Agnes was not unattractive, of course. Christ’s pain, when Daniel first met her, he’d thought her perfection itself. A pleasing
face with that mass of reddish-golden hair, faint freckles dotted over her nose and upper cheeks giving her a faintly childlike
appearance, and the way she had of peering at him with lifted chin, as though challenging him in some way. At first he’d thought
that she was simply a slut with fire in her groin, a wench who wanted to grab the first man she found and pull him into her
bedchamber, but when he’d tested her he’d found there was more depth to her than that.