The Deadliest Sin

by The Medieval Murderers

  From that day on, there was bitterness between the Raths and the Carters, and especially between the men of the households. Oh, and what about the woman’s purse, you ask, the keepsake from her mother? When she returned home she discovered that she’d never taken it with her in the first place.

  Where was I? Yes, the physician. As I said before I started on the story of the rope and the purse, Thomas Flytte was a cousin of Joan Rath’s. He came from a village a few miles away, Woolney, but he’d soon shaken the dust of that place off his feet and gone in search of a better, wider life. He was a learned man, Thomas Flytte. He talked about his studies in Oxford and Cambridge and famous cities across the seas. He’d travelled and lived for long periods away from England, even going as far as the East. He said some of the greatest physicians and writers had come from there. He casually referred to the noble men and women who had applied to him for help – never by name but as the prince of this or the duchess of that – and no one would have thought to ask at the time whether he was inventing these people or whether they really existed.

  He made a point of mentioning the elaborate preparations he’d concocted for those great men and women who lived in foreign lands. One, I remember, was a medicine made up not only of gold and silver leaf but of tiny fragments of precious gems like sapphire and garnet, all mixed in a honey or syrup. Obviously, you must be very wealthy indeed even to think of having your physician offer such remedies. Master Thomas had all the answers at his finger-tips too. If you were to ask him why gold was good for the heart, for instance, he’d say that the heart was under the influence of Leo, which is the House of the Sun, and that gold is the metal of the Sun. His talk often turned to the subject of gold.

  So what was he doing back in a straggling village in a corner of England staying in his cousin’s house? Something had gone wrong, that was obvious, even if Thomas Flytte never talked about it. Perhaps one of those foreign princes or duchesses had died under his hands, when he’d promised a recovery, or perhaps he had been involved in some dispute with a more powerful physician in a royal court and come off the worse. Or maybe there was not much truth in his tales of travel and noble patrons, and he’d never gone further than Southampton, casting waters for the wives of shipmasters and town burghers.

  If Thomas the doctor of physic had had money once, he did not seem so well off now. Looked at close to, his purple surcoat was so threadbare that you would see through the fabric in places, while the ermine trimming his hood was yellow rather than white and bright. Even a child could see this. Especially a child. Joan Rath persuaded her husband to lend him a mantle against the bad weather. She said it was the least he could do after what the physician had done for them . . . Well, I’ll come to that in a moment.

  Thomas Flytte had a companion with him, a kind of attendant. This wasn’t a student learning physic at the feet of the master but someone whose idea of an effective remedy was more likely to be the point of a dagger than a pestle full of simples. He was called Reeve, this companion. I do not know his given name. Thomas Flytte referred to him as Reeve and so everyone called him Reeve, if they wanted to call him anything at at all, which wasn’t often.

  Whereas his master, Thomas Flytte, was a short man with a bit of plumpness to him, as if he was still living off the fat of the olden days, Reeve looked as though he’d always been as spare as a fence-post. He said very little. When he did speak, it was as if words were coins, he doled them out so grudgingly. He dressed in drab greens and browns, and I think it was so he could pass unnoticed. I saw him once emerging from the edge of a wood, ducking his head beneath the branches as though he was coming out of his house. He was carrying a rabbit, which he’d just caught, unlawfully, no doubt. It hung limp and blooded in his hand. He saw me looking at him and he smiled a little smile, and I turned cold all over. That was Reeve.

  The fact that Flytte the Physician was a cousin of Joan Rath wouldn’t have been enough by itself for her to give him houseroom. She hadn’t seen him for many years, I believe. Besides, he was accompanied by the disagreeable Reeve and that was enough to put anybody off. Something more was needed. And something more was very soon provided. Almost immediately after he’d arrived in town, Flytte showed that he was more than talk. Joan had a daughter of twelve or so called Agnes, who was sick, almost on the point of death, it was feared. The apothecary from the next town had visited and then the cunning-woman, who lived in the woods nearby, and each of them suggested various remedies, to no avail. The family resigned themselves to Agnes’s death. No food had passed her lips, nor had any words, no, not for several days.

  Then, as if guided by providence, Thomas Flytte turned up and, within a few hours of examining Joan’s daughter and drawing up his charts and grinding his herbs and powders and mixing them in solution and easing a little of it down her unwilling throat, the girl began to stir and to talk a little sense for the first time in days. By the next morning, she had risen from her sickbed and by the afternoon she was once more sitting down to eat with her family.

  It was a miracle! Thomas Flytte was modest or clever enough to credit it not only to his own skill but also to some particular herbs, which he had brought back from the East, plants that were not known in Europe. Of course, this made his presence in the town even more interesting. If Joan Rath hadn’t offered him his own quarters someone else would probably have done. The fact that Reeve was with him was overlooked, since it was evident that if you took one man you had to take the other.

  Mistress Rath was able to provide the physician and his man, Reeve, with a dilapidated cottage, which she had patched up at her own expense and furnished, too. All this was in gratitude for Flytte’s care of her daughter, even if it was understood that he’d stay in the place only for a while. He must surely be going somewhere more significant than the village of Wenham, an important man like Thomas Flytte who’d treated foreigners and royalty. Wenham was a very ordinary village with only a small handful of well-to-do inhabitants, apart from the folk up at the manor. And, having properties elsewhere, they spent little time in Wenham but left their business in the hands of a steward. Joan’s husband, Alfred Rath, didn’t seem quite so glad at the physician’s stay, though he had to acknowledge that the man had ability. Some of the villagers went to consult him and paid for it and, although he didn’t bring anyone back from the brink of death as he had with Agnes, he impressed them with his talk and his expertise.

  Not everyone was happy with Flytte’s presence. Of course, William Carter and his family made insinuations about him and said he wasn’t what he appeared to be. If they’d dared to, they might have accused him of witchcraft. Even so, I saw William and Thomas talking together more than once, and I think that he too consulted the physician. Then there was the local priest, Master John. Maybe he didn’t like the fact that a few of the villagers went looking for help to Flytte instead of him, and he certainly didn’t like it that money that might have gone to the Church coffers was instead finding its way into a physician’s purse. In his sermons, he preached against Thomas Flytte, not directly at first, but with little digs and warnings against men of science. Parsons don’t like doctors of physic anyway, they shy away from ’em as if by instinct. I’ve been told that churchmen are convinced that doctors do not believe in Our Saviour. There’s some saying about it on the edge of my mind but I can’t quite recall it . . .

  Laurence paused and took a sip from his bowl of wine. And from the circle of listeners a learned man threw in: ‘The proverb you are looking for, landlord, is, “Ubi tres medici, duo athei,” which means, “Where you get three physicians together, two will be atheists”. Because physicians sometimes search out natural causes for unexplained things, they also encourage people to mistrust miracles, you see.’

  ‘Thank you, sir,’ said Laurence. ‘What a wealth of learning and wisdom there is to be found among the visitors to a tavern!’

  He paused again to allow his audience to reflect on the compliment before continuing with his story. The pause
was interrupted by a cough from the landlord’s wife, who was sitting near the back of the audience. It was the kind of cough that meant: get on with it.

  There were others apart from the priest who were suspicious or resentful of Thomas Flytte. I mentioned the cunning-woman a while ago. She’d been consulted about Agnes’s sickness, without result. While the land to the south of Wenham was mostly clear, the area to the north was wooded. This wood stretched so far and the trees in it were so dense that it was always called the Great Wood. Anyway, the cunning-woman lived in the Great Wood, and like most such women she was feared as much as she was tolerated. The children in the village wouldn’t go near her. But some of the farmers and shopkeepers used to visit her rain-sodden hut to get forecasts for the harvest or to find out which of their workers was thieving from them. She was a strange creature with straggling white hair and touches of a beard, and yet with a hint of breasts too. Though she spoke with a singsong voice, some said she was a man or a gelding. Others said she had been a nun and was a woman of learning and refinement. Her name was Mistress Travis.

  Thomas Flytte was very dismissive of Mistress Travis and her kind. He said that such women – and the cunning-men who ply the same trade – were like the stale leftovers of more superstitious ages. Word of this certainly got back to her even as the villagers who considered themselves more up-to-date stopped consulting her, and so the little sums of money and offerings of food she received began to dry up. If Thomas Flytte was concerned about this, or afraid of her power to lay a curse on him, he never showed it. Like his cousin Joan Rath, he was someone who knew his own mind. Then there was the apothecary from the nearby town who’d also been called in to treat Agnes. His name was Abel. He might have been expected to be jealous of Flytte but, in truth, he seemed eager to learn from the much-travelled visitor, keen to pick up whatever titbits of knowledge were going spare.

  There was one other individual whose path crossed with that of Flytte the Physician before the crime occurred . . . and before a very peculiar situation arose . . . This other person was a pedlar who passed through Wenham two or three times a year. Hugh Tanner sold saints’ relics – bits of bone, fragments of cloth – to ensure good health to your cattle and clean water in your well, and all the rest of it. Unlike a pardoner, he carried no papal bulls, he offered no pardon for your sins and he wasn’t extortionate in his demands. On the contrary, he sold his wares quite cheaply, without much bargaining, and people bought them for that reason and because they felt sorry for Hugh Tanner. They were probably thinking . . . you might as well buy one of these for you never know what’s going to bring you luck or protect you from misfortune in this life, do you?

  He was a fellow with hangdog eyes and a skin as leathery as if he’d been tanned himself. His sales patter hardly deserved the name and yet somehow he managed to make a living from travelling through towns and villages like Wenham. He brought news from other places, which was always welcome, and sometimes he even talked of London. Like the cunning-woman, he was supposed to have the gift, to be able to see things that ordinary people couldn’t see. But it was a gift he was reluctant to use, as if whatever he saw was nothing good.

  I myself was a witness to the first encounter of Hugh Tanner and Thomas Flytte. Except that it wasn’t their first encounter. It was market day again but this time on a spring morning, and people’s spirits were light. Hugh Tanner couldn’t afford a stall but he settled himself down with his scrip on a little mound at the edge of the village because he judged the flow of people would be best there. It was where a couple of paths from other hamlets came together, and so old Hugh was aiming to catch people before they reached the stalls and spent what little they had. He wasn’t a complete fool, was Hugh.

  I was there at the edge of the village, with Agnes Rath, as it happens. We were friends, and a bit more besides, but we had to be careful, very careful, over our friendship. I’d prayed for her recovery when she was sick, and despaired with everyone else when she looked to be dying, and then rejoiced when the skill of Thomas Flytte saved her. I looked up to the physician for what he’d done and I tried to engage him in conversation. I went up to him in the street, and welcomed him to our village, which was a bit forward of me. He could have cuffed me for speaking out of turn or simply walked by. But he seemed amused. He stopped walking and started talking, not once but on two or three occasions, and that’s how I found out why gold is good for the heart and about those remedies that are made up of precious stones. He was patient with answering my questions, which is more than my mother or father were. From them, or at least from my father, I got blows or silence, mostly. It was Thomas Flytte who predicted I’d make a good tavern-host. He said, you’ve got to like people and to be unafraid of talking to them and curious about their lives, while knowing when it’s time to rein in your curiosity. You’ve also got to have a business head on your shoulders. Of course, all this went over my own head, business or otherwise, when I was twelve, but years later I remembered it and now you see me, and my dear wife, settled here at the Angel.

  Agnes and I were by the village wash-house. This was a tank fed by a spring and covered with a pillared roof but otherwise open to the weather. There was a bit of privacy on the far side of it, and we were lying on the grass enjoying the April morning and feeling the season coursing through our veins. For once it wasn’t raining. The wash-house was a good spot to be on market day because none of the village women would be doing their laundry, and when the two of us met we had to meet in secret. We were out of sight of Hugh Tanner and the people passing along the road but could see them by peeking over the stone edge of the tank.

  Suddenly, we were aware of insistent voices, overlapping with each other. We peered across the tank. The pedlar and Thomas Flytte were in the middle of an argument. They were talking too low for us to catch even the occasional word but I could hear the anger in both men’s tones, like water boiling in a pot. This was surprising because the physician was not only a grave and learned man but also a calm one, while Tanner was not one of those pedlars who shout their wares at the top of their voices but just the opposite. Something about the way the two men were standing quite close together on top of the little mound of grass, and the hissing tones of their speech, showed that they’d met before. In fact, they must have done, because Hugh Tanner had come back to the village that very morning, his first visit for several months, while Thomas Flytte had been there only a few weeks.

  Within a few moments, Flytte strode away, and Tanner flung some words after him. They might have been ‘Fraud yourself!’ but I couldn’t say for certain. Then out of the woods came Reeve, the physician’s companion. He rarely walked beside Thomas Flytte or even close to him, but was usually trailing at a distance, like a dog following his master while being distracted by other, more interesting concerns. Reeve’s presence made you feel uneasy but it also cast a shadow of doubt over the physician. You asked yourself what he was doing with a man like that for a servant.

  As he passed Hugh Tanner, Reeve gave him a glance, which the pedlar was unable to return. Fortunately, a couple of market-day visitors appeared and Hugh gladly unpacked his scrip and spread out the bits of rag and bone that even he scarcely pretended were the property of the saints. Meanwhile, Agnes and I slunk off from our trysting-place behind the wash-house without being observed and went our separate ways, arranging to meet later. We couldn’t afford to be seen together in the village.

  What was the reason the two of us couldn’t be seen together? Surely, you must have guessed it by now, ladies and gentlemen – such a quick-thinking gathering of guests and pilgrims as this is? As you know, Agnes was from the Rath family, the oldest of several children. And I . . . I was one of the Carters, the eldest son of Alice and a stepson to William. He was my mother’s second husband. I cannot remember my own father, though I do know that he was called Todd. It was from Todd that my mother had gained the farm, which she was allowed to keep as a tenant because she worked hard and, better still, she was abl
e to make others work harder. Then she married William Carter, when I was small. From the time I can remember anything at all, it was William who was telling me to sop up the last spot of grease from the soup bowl or sending me out at night in the rain to ensure the barn doors were properly fastened. By the time I found out that my mother’s husband wasn’t my father, I’d learned to think of him – and fear him – as a father. So that’s how he remained to me.

  Well, if my father had caught me in company with Agnes, he’d have beaten me within an inch of my life. And Agnes, too, would have suffered at the hands of her parents. The hatred and suspicion between the heads of these two families extended to every person in them, or was supposed to. I had an example of that a few moments after I parted from Agnes. I glimpsed my mother, Alice, talking with Alfred Rath on Church Lane. It seemed as though they were having an argument for her face was growing red as it did when she was angry and she was gesturing with her hands. Alfred was raising his own hands in an appeasing way but it made no difference and she turned on her heel and came striding towards me. I looked round for a way of escape and saw my father William coming in the opposite direction. Luckily, I was by the lich-gate to the churchyard and so I slipped through there and crouched behind the churchyard wall. Neither my mother nor my father was aware of my presence.

  ‘What were you doing with that man?’ I heard him say. His voice had gone very quiet, in a way I’d learned to fear.

  ‘The insolence of that Rath,’ my mother said. She didn’t sound daunted but indignant. ‘He says I need to attend to our boundaries. He says the hedges are overgrown and the fences broken. He is demanding I go and inspect them with him this very afternoon.’

  ‘You’ll not go, of course.’

  ‘What do you take me for?’ said my mother.

  My father grunted in reply, and I thought that he didn’t like being reminded of the fact that it was my mother who had taken over the farm from her first husband, and the related fact that people usually went to her first with any complaint or request. Probably my father thought he ought to be the one dealing with any question about the boundaries. Except, of course, Alfred Rath wouldn’t have approached him any more than William Carter would have approached Alfred Rath.