The Deadliest Sin

by The Medieval Murderers

  The new widow paled and clutched at her throat in a typically feminine gesture of shock. ‘Are you sure of this? Who could have done such a terrible thing?’

  ‘No one is above suspicion, madam,’ said the serjeant, drily indicating that even the lady of the house herself was a candidate. ‘I need to interrogate every servant immediately, to get at the truth.’

  The two soldiers that he had brought with him rounded up all the staff and drove them into the back yard, where they stood in trepidation. William, wearing his most ferocious expression, repeated the news he had given to Eleanor Giffard and then demanded that anyone who had any information must give it that instant or suffer the consequences, which included a hanging for conspiracy to murder.

  Edward Stogursey typically protested that he objected to being humiliated like a common criminal, but William pointed out that he was the best candidate, due to his knowledge of herbs, plants and drugs generally – and as the most senior servant, his easy access to every household activity.

  ‘The poison was sprinkled or smeared into the victim’s boots and hose!’ he thundered. ‘I am going to discover who did that, even if it means putting everyone to the Ordeal!’

  This was a blatant bluff, as the Ordeal as means of divining guilt had been abolished in the previous century, but his meaning was clear and there were moans from some of the men and muffled shrieks from the two women.

  ‘Who would have dealt with the master’s boots, such as cleaning them?’ rasped Hangfield, glaring around at the servants huddled in the yard.

  A small voice piped up, hesitantly. ‘Me, sir, but I didn’t do anything bad, honest!’ It was Henry, who came forward and dropped to his knees in front of the coroner’s officer. ‘I loved the master, sir; he was always kind to me.’

  Eleanor gave a sob and ran forward to pick up the little lad to comfort him. ‘Of course you did nothing wrong, Henry, we all know that!’

  There was a sudden commotion at the end of the short line of servants as one man made a sudden dash for the back gate. One of the soldiers ran after him and sent him crashing to the ground before he could escape, dragging him back to throw him in front of William Hangfield.

  ‘So, you do more than cooking here, John Black! Since when do cooks see to their master’s boots and hose, eh?’

  The fat man crawled to his knees and tried to embrace William’s legs in supplication. ‘I thought the powder was doing him good, sir, after his illness in the winter,’ he blubbered unconvincingly.

  The serjeant gave him a kick that sent him sprawling.

  ‘You damned liar! And it must have been you that put the ragwort or whatever it was in his food that caused that disorder of bile!’

  ‘He said it would do him good . . . I did it from the best of intentions,’ wailed the cook, with the prospect of the gallows opening before his eyes.

  ‘And who was “he”, may I ask?’ shouted William, relentlessly. ‘Where did this evil powder come from, eh? And who paid you to put it in his hose and boots?’

  The man grovelling on the ground whispered a name, and the officer gave him another kick.

  ‘Men-at-arms, come with me!’ he yelled. ‘And bring this wretch with you!’

  At a shabby house in a side lane off Corn Street, the group that had left the Giffard residence came to a halt outside the door. William Hangfield hammered on it with his fist and when there was no response, repeated the action with the pommel of his dagger.

  ‘Open up in the name of the King’s coroner!’ he yelled, but again there was no reaction from inside the dwelling.

  ‘There’s someone in there, sir,’ called one of the soldiers, who had seen a shutter open slightly on a window to their right. ‘I saw a face looking out for a second, then it was slammed shut again.’

  ‘Right, give him another minute, then kick this door down!’ ordered the serjeant. As no movement was heard inside and the door remained firmly closed, one of the menat-arms relinquished his hold on John Black and began attacking the stout oak door. He had nothing but his foot to smash against it and it was soon obvious that he was making little impression.

  William grabbed the other arm of the cowed cook so that the other soldier could join his companion. Using their shoulders and feet, they thundered against the planks for several minutes until eventually they weakened the fastenings of the bolt inside so that with a splintering noise the door swung open.

  ‘Find him! He’s here somewhere!’ howled William, still hanging on to the sagging John Black.

  The two men rushed into the house and began searching the few sparsely furnished rooms on the ground floor. There was a shout from somewhere in the back and William answered with an urgent cry.

  ‘Hold him, don’t let him get away!’

  However, when he reached the room, still dragging the cook, he saw his command had been unnecessary, as the fugitive was sitting calmly on a chair, his hands folded on his lap.

  ‘Erasmus Crote, you’ll hang for this!’ said Hangfield fiercely. The physician shook his head and held up a small empty flask.

  ‘I’ll not end on the gallows, unless revenge leads you to string up a corpse,’ he said mildly. ‘I’ve just swallowed all that remained of the poison that killed Robert Giffard. There’s no antidote. I’ll be dead within a couple of hours at most.’

  William grabbed the bottle from his hand and stared at the yellowish-brown dregs that lay in the bottom. ‘We’ll make you vomit, wash your stomach out with water!’ he said wildly.

  Erasmus shook his head and smiled at the officer. ‘It would be useless; I took enough crushed yew seeds to kill a dozen cows. It’s far better this way – better for us all.’ His eyes moved to the fat cook, cowering in William’s grip. ‘So you betrayed me, John Black! I suppose it was to be expected.’

  The cook shook his head vigorously. ‘I had no choice. They were blaming it all on me. I would have hanged!’

  ‘You’ll hang anyway,’ grated William, ‘in place of this evil man, if what he says is correct about the poison.’

  Black began blubbering again and Hangfield contemptuously pushed him back into the custody of one of the soldiers.

  ‘You still seem quite healthy, Crote!’ he snapped at the physician. ‘We’ll keep you locked up and, if you don’t die, you’ll swing from the gallows tree.’

  ‘Give it time, officer,’ replied Erasmus calmly. ‘Though already I can feel the first twitches and racing of my pulse.’

  ‘Why have you done this evil thing?’ demanded Hangfield.

  The lean physician, his sallow face resigned to death, sighed. ‘Envy, officer! Just envy, pure and simple. You see, I loved my profession, yet have been dogged by ill luck and feelings of inferiority all my life.’

  William frowned. ‘I don’t understand you, man.’

  Erasmus gave a slight twitch as one of his shoulders had a spasm. ‘I was a good doctor, but never had a fair chance. I never was properly trained, I picked it up from years as an apprentice in Dublin, walking the wards of a poorhouse and following a drunken doctor around a public refuge. I never had the chance to study the theory or read the famous texts, and never had the opportunity to listen to learned teachers.’

  He sighed again and in spite of himself, Hangfield began to feel a little sorry for this gaunt man.

  ‘Even those two buffoons who call themselves physicians in this city had the benefit of proper education, one at St Bartholomew’s and the other at Montpellier, which he never let us forget.’

  ‘What has this to do with murder?’ growled William.

  Erasmus Crote suddenly put a hand over his heart, feeling a sudden racing of the beats. ‘It’s started, there’s not much time,’ he muttered. ‘There must have been more left in that flask than I expected – but all to the good.’

  He brought his eyes up to meet Hangfield’s again. ‘I was better at treating diseases of the skin that all of them put together – including Giffard, though he was a good physician. But where did it get me? Nowhere! I
scratched a living amongst the poor, treating sailors with scurvy, stevedores with sores on their jacks and urchins with ringworm, often for no payment at all. Yet in King Street, all the rich and notable citizens, as well as half the nobles of the county, beat a path to Robert Giffard’s door.’

  His head jerked back as a rictus of pain shot through his neck muscles.

  ‘I was envious of his status, envious of the large fees his rich patients lavished on him! I was even envious of his comely wife, though God knows that, as a widow, she would never have looked twice at me. She was the daughter of a baron and Giffard himself came from a prominent family with high-placed friends in Westminster. What chance did I have of making a name – or even a living – for myself against such competition?’

  He jerked again and sweat began glistening on his forehead as he felt a rush of palpitations in his chest. The coroner’s officer now knew that Crote was soon going die, but hoped that it would not happen until he had the complete story of this sorry tale of envy and professional jealousy.

  ‘And for that, you committed murder?’ he snapped, almost incredulous that a man who spent his life trying to heal the sick could take life so cold-bloodedly.

  Erasmus Crote was now flushed and shivering, but quite rational.

  ‘You as a coroner’s assistant must have known many murderers who killed for gain, whether it be for money, lust, love or hatred. They were no different from my overweening ambition to be looked up to in my profession, just as Giffard was a friend to all in this county who were its leaders. What difference is there between a thief who robs a merchant for his purse, and a doctor who tries to wrest a good practice from another?’

  William Hangfield pointed out the obvious fact to him that he had failed. ‘And what good has it done you, even if you had not been caught? Giffard’s widow has just imported another good physician from London and with her lofty social connections, all the grand patients will remain there – especially now that it looks as if she will soon be taken into the bosom of the fitz Hamon family.’

  Erasmus seemed to droop in his chair, his inflamed complexion suddenly turning into a deathly pallor.

  ‘It is the story of my life, sir. Failure at everything, even the attempt to turn my life around. I wanted what Robert Giffard had and a growing obsession made me strive for it, without regard for the consequences. Envy overrode everything else – I was mad with envious ambition and it has brought me nothing, except death!’

  ‘Was it you who wrote that letter to the mayor, to mislead us by hinting that it was Mistress Giffard’s lover who committed this crime?’

  Erasmus nodded, then with a groan, his head flopped on to his chest and his arms dropped to his sides.

  ‘Is he dead?’ asked one of the soldiers.

  Hangfield pulled back Crote’s head by the hair and thumbed up his eyelids to look at his pupils, then placed a hand on his chest.

  ‘No, not yet, though his heart beats like a kettle-drum played by a madman. Lay him on the floor. There is nothing we can do for him.’

  At the castle later that day, the coroner’s officer related the whole sorry episode to Ralph fitz Urse and the sheriff, while Erasmus Crote’s corpse lay in the dead-house and John Black was incarcerated in the cells in the castle undercroft to await his fate in front of the King’s justices when they next came to Bristol.

  ‘So why did this bloody cook agree to commit murder for the physician?’ demanded the sheriff.

  ‘Crote paid him money and the greed of John Black overcame any remorse at harming his own master,’ replied William. ‘He said he knew Eramus from often meeting him in an alehouse and eventually, for a bribe, he agreed to put a strong extract of ragwort into Robert Giffard’s food.’

  ‘Must have been a big bribe to get him to risk his neck for an attempted murder,’ said the coroner.

  ‘The excuse that Crote gave him was that he only wanted to make Giffard ill for a time, so that he would be unable to look after all his patients and Crote could gain by offering them his own services. However, Giffard going away for several weeks spoiled the plan, as his recovery, then the regime of the strict tasting of his food, restored him to health.’

  The sheriff shook his head sadly, deploring of the evil of some men. ‘So then he decided to kill him, I suppose?’

  The coroner’s officer nodded. ‘He devised the idea of placing yew poison in his footwear. Being a skin doctor, he knew it could be absorbed in that way, albeit slowly. Giffard again became ill, but the villains did not reckon on the wife and this Edward Stogursey managing to keep the practice going. He gave Black more money, but also threatened to denounce him as his accomplice if he refused to help.’

  ‘So he was determined to succeed or die, as he would be implicated if the cook was found out,’ summarised Ralph fitz Urse.

  There was silence for a while as the sheriff and the coroner thought about this tale of jealousy and frustrated ambition that led to murder.

  ‘At least I’ll be able to finish the inquest on Giffard that should satisfy all the élite of Somerset,’ said the coroner. ‘A novel verdict, eh? Murder by envy!’

  The Seventh Sin

  ‘Pride, vainglory, that’s the worst. It’s the father of all the other sins,’ the voice from the corner growled. ‘Every wicked deed in this world was sired by pride, by man thinking himself more deserving than his fellows and wiser than God.’

  His fellow pilgrims at the table craned round in surprised. Up to now on this journey, they’d not heard Randal utter more than a few words, so that some didn’t even recognise his voice. And now that they had heard it, his tone only confirmed the opinion they’d already formed of the man, for his voice wasn’t a pleasant one, more like shingle being dragged out by the tide.

  As usual, Randal had taken his food over to the rickety bench in the far corner and had sat, hunched, eating and drinking alone, as if he was afraid his meats might be snatched from him. Even inside the inn, he kept his hood pulled up over his head, the long points wound round turban-style, seeming ready to leave in an instant should the need arise. And in truth his fellow pilgrims privately wished he would leave. Most of those sitting around the table had hoped he would go on ahead with the other group to Thetford, while those in the group who had braved the rain and travelled on were much relieved he’d elected to stay behind. Randal’s presence unnerved everyone.

  On the road, he’d always trailed a little way behind the group or kept well to the side of them, as wary as a stray dog. The others had tried to speak to him, but only received the briefest of answers, which had revealed nothing about the man, and even when he did speak he had the disquieting habit of looking over the shoulder of the person he was addressing, as if there was someone standing just behind them. The look was so intense, people would turn to see what he was staring at, but saw nothing.

  There was more than enough to make even the boldest man wary on these roads. Any clump of trees or tall rushes might conceal a band of robbers lying in ambush or the next turn might find you stumbling into the deadly embrace of the pestilence, if the chilling rumours were to be believed. Those were fears enough for any man. They didn’t need the additional anxiety of travelling in the company of a fellow who gazed at things no one else could see. Only the mad or those who commune with ghosts and demons do that. In the large group they could avoid him, but now that they were fewer in number, their unease returned.

  Randal’s remark about pride might have been left hanging in the air like a stray wisp of smoke had it not been for Laurence, ever the genial host. He could tell from the moment the group arrived that this man had not struck up any friendship among his fellow pilgrims, and reckoned this to be the perfect chance to draw him into companionship.

  ‘You have a tale for us, sir? Come, we are all eager to hear it, aren’t we?’ he said, nodding vigorously at the others to lend their encouragement to the man. But the grunts and murmurs he received in return were not quite as enthusiastic as he hoped for.

 
; ‘Come closer. Join us,’ he urged, but Randal did not move.

  He clasped his beaker of ale in both hands and stared into it as if he could see shapes forming in it. Katie Valier shuddered and found herself tucking her thumbs beneath her fingers to ward off evil, as Randal began his tale of . . .

  Pride

  My tale takes place in the wealthy city of Lincoln, Randal began, not more than twenty years ago, though at times to me it seems like two hundred. It should be a holy city for it’s a city of many churches, some reckon there to be as many as forty-six within its walls and that’s besides the great Cathedral, the Bishop’s Palace, the chantry chapels and the religious houses. So there are a great many priests in the city and most have precious little to occupy their time, save for saying Masses for the dead, for which the wool merchants pay handsomely.

  But the hours that God does not fill, the Devil will. And there was in that city a group of five young clerics who regularly met in the evening to drink, eat and gamble at dice. Their chief amusement was to set challenges for each other – dares, if you will – and wager on the outcomes. They frequented a tavern near St Mary Crackpole, which inspired the name for their little circle – the Black Crows. The owner allowed them to use the cellar, trusting that the priests would not steal from the kegs and barrels. It suited both parties: the young men didn’t want rumours reaching their superiors that they were spending long hours in the tavern and the innkeeper didn’t want the presence of a group of clerics to prick the consciences of his other customers and put them off their drinking and wenching.

  Randal paused to take a gulp of his ale and the pilgrims’ host, Laurence, chuckled heartily, nodding as if he understood the problem of entertaining clerics only too well, but his laughter died away under the stern glare of Prior John Wynter, who clearly disapproved.

  ‘It seems to me this is a tale of greed or gluttony,’ the prior said coldly. ‘I hardly think that these young men can have had anything to be proud of. Shame is the only thing they should have been feeling.’