The Deadliest Sin (36 page)

By now there were at least three dozen men and boys gathered together, and all of us eager to give chase. I was so distracted by the hurry and excitement that I had almost no time to think of
the death of the man who was my step-father. Later, I grieved, though not for long. Now we set off across the fields, half striding, half running. Almost everybody was clutching a weapon of some
sort: staves, clubs, pitchforks, knives. From what we’d seen, Ralf and I, it did not seem as though Reeve could still be armed. He’d left his dagger planted in William Carter’s
chest, and his clothing was so tattered that there was no place for anything else. Yet, even if unarmed, he was still very dangerous: he was an outcast and a murderer, a man almost naked, painted
with blood, and possessed by spirits.

The sun had burned off the mist and we were sweating by the time we reached the boundary of the Great Wood, where Agnes and I had visited Mistress Travis the day before. She lived in a different
part, opposite to the Raths’ farm, where it was less densely wooded and there were more paths. Even so, I worried for her in the woods with Reeve on the loose, and I wondered at this because
yesterday I had been afraid of her and her visions. Now, Alfred Rath halted us on the edge of the trees and split us up into four groups, directing one to go left and one to the right and search
inside the boundary, while the other two were to penetrate deeper into the trees, one veering to the east, the other west. He told us to stay tight within our own group and to judge our direction
as best we could by the glimpses of the sun. Though the trees were bare, they were clustered together in many places, making it hard to see far.

I was with Ralf and, by chance, we were part of the band that was heading north-east, though any idea of direction stopped meaning much when we were crashing through the undergrowth and fanning
out to cover as much ground as possible. We whooped and we shouted and some banged their staves against the tree trunks, as if we were trying to flush out the quarry from his hiding-place through
the sheer din of the thing. Yet for all the noise and the company, Ralf and I found ourselves somehow separated from the others.

We followed a narrow path that was piled thick and slippery with yellow leaves until we were brought up short by a pool of blackish water. Only when we stopped to look for the best way round it
did we realise that we were alone. In the distance we could hear the whoops and cries of the others. Then the noises died away and we heard nothing apart from the creaking branches and some
rustling in the undergrowth. It was as if there had never been anyone in the Great Wood but Ralf and me – and Reeve, most likely. I felt my scalp prickling and my hand tightened round the
chisel, which I still held. Ralf prodded at the black pool with his stave and it bubbled and gave off a terrible stench. He looked at me from under his heavy brows and I saw that he was as
frightened as I was. For all the thickness of the trees there was some light on the floor of the forest on account of the fine morning. Abruptly, it grew dark. It was only the sun going behind a
cloud but the sudden gloom added to my fear. I looked up and I must have gasped or cried out for I was conscious of Ralf staring at me in horror before he too turned his head upwards.

Immediately above us dangled an object that I couldn’t make out. Then I saw that it was a pair of naked feet, all clenched and curled up in agony like the feet of our saviour on the cross.
Ralf and I staggered back and away from the pool of black water. Once the first shock had subsided, we were able to see more clearly. Hanging from a branch far above us was the body of the man
called Reeve. He was absolutely naked now, though he was all scrawled over with the streaks of dried blood. I could scarcely see his face, he hung so far above us, but it lolled down as if he was
regarding us from his great height and with his tongue stuck out.

We ran a few yards down the path and shouted. I don’t know what we said. I was very glad when some of the others came in answer to our cries, and most glad of all to see Alfred Rath. My
companion, Ralf, pointed with his arm stiff and outstretched and then it seemed as though every man and boy in Wenham was crowding through the trees and down the path and teetering on the edge of
the black pool and shoving each other aside so as to get a better view of the hanged man.

After that there was no real part for me to play. All work in the fields and in the village stopped with the double deaths and the arrival of the Thetford coroner. My father’s body was
removed from the herb garden and laid out in our house, with Master John in attendance. Some time later during the day Reeve’s body was cut down. It was Ralf who offered to climb the tree. I
think he felt that as he, with me, had been the first to glimpse the body he should be the one to retrieve it. He used the ladder from our hayloft. I helped him carry it across the fields and into
the Great Wood. He climbed up the dead man’s tree and crawled along the stout branch, and with a knife cut through the knots holding up the body. Reeve had hanged himself with the lengths of
rag he wore about his middle or wrapped around his feet. Once Ralf severed the ragged noose, the body plunged down and landed half in the pool of black water. Several people who’d been
standing too close were spattered with the stinking mud, to the amusement of the rest of us.

Although everybody treated that day as a kind of grim holiday, running between houses and standing gossiping on corners, the alehouse did good business. There was more talk about Reeve than
about my father. People shuddered and looked over their shoulders and crossed themselves and said the murderer could not be human, but a monster or a devil in human shape. They said he must have
been living wild in the Great Wood – which was surely true – catching and killing small animals to eat raw and besmearing himself with their blood and his own, for he had many cuts and
wounds across his body. I remembered the time I’d seen him emerging from the shadows, holding a dead rabbit and giving his little smile.

It was Reeve, of course, who had killed Thomas Flytte in the springtime, choking the life out of the physician and leaving his body draped over the stile between the Carters’ land and the
Raths’. Although almost no one was aware that he was more than a servant or companion to the physician but instead Thomas’s bastard son, everyone remembered the way he’d trailed
after his master like a sullen dog. Everyone remembered his silent stare. As to why he had stabbed my stepfather, that was no mystery at all. If Reeve was a devil, then this was what devils did. If
he was human, which was doubtful, then he must be mad or possessed, and it was well known that such individuals behaved in ways that were completely beyond reason or explanation. It was a mercy
that he had hanged himself and saved the gallows an extra burden.

William Carter was buried in proper fashion in the churchyard, with all due ceremony. Master John reminded us that life was short and fragile – as if we needed reminding! My mother paid
for Mass to be said daily for my father. I do not know what happened to Reeve’s corpse. Somebody suggested it should be left where it had fallen by the black pond, which was dark and stinky
enough to be one of the mouths of hell. But this was not enough for those men in the village who wanted to dispose of it so that it could never return to trouble us. They dumped the body in the
back of a cart and took it off somewhere distant from Wenham, as if to remove the taint altogether from the village. They were gone for more than a day and when they returned not a one of them
would say what they’d done with it. Perhaps they burned the corpse. Perhaps they buried it at a crossroads after driving a stake through the heart.

No one asked Ralf or me what we’d witnessed from the hayloft, beyond requiring the bare details from us, which we repeated again and again. The figure with the sun behind him, the body
streaked with blood, the flashing knife. I didn’t tell anyone of the words that I thought my father had uttered as he faced Reeve – ‘It is come, then’ or, ‘You are
come, then’ – for the words made no sense. No more sense than the way my father stood there without moving while Reeve came closer. He didn’t try to defend himself, he
didn’t rush inside and bar the door. Normally, my father was prickly and quick to take offence. He was a choleric man. But on this final occasion he had stayed to be slaughtered like a
tethered beast.

My mother’s grief at my father’s death did not last so long. By the next summer, she had married, for the third time. Her husband was – Alfred Rath. For Joan had died before
the Christmas of that year. So the two families that had been at odds for so long were joined together, after a fashion. Agnes and I became like cousins, true cousins, and no one cared now what we
did or how much time we spent together.

A lot has happened in the intervening years, other deaths and births as well. All our parents are dead now, and the land that we farmed is held by our brothers, while Agnes and I are settled
here at the Angel. We’ve often thought about what occurred during that summer and together we have pieced together a kind of story.

‘The story is like this,’ said Agnes, speaking from the back of the room, so the listeners once more had to crane their heads. ‘It might even be true. The
individual waiting under the spinney by the stile was William Carter, the stepfather to Laurence. William hated Alfred Rath, on account of their long-lasting quarrels and differences, and
especially because of the business of the rope in the alehouse. But above all he hated his neighbour because he suspected something was afoot between his wife, Alice, and Alfred. He could not keep
watch on her all the time, he had too much to attend to, but his suspicions grew stronger all the time.’

Agnes Carter stopped and now her husband began to speak. From now on each spoke a few
sentences as if they were sharing the tale, as if they really had created it together. Sometimes the Walsingham pilgrims weren’t even sure which one was speaking, man or wife.

Eventually, William Carter convinces himself that what he fears and suspects is so, and he decides to act. He knows that the most out-of-the-way path between their two
properties is across the overgrown stile. After witnessing the couple meeting in Church Lane that morning, he determines to keep watch near the stile. Were they arguing about boundaries – or
were they having a lovers’ quarrel? He listens to his wife, Alice, talk about inspecting the hedges and fences and the request from Alfred to meet there. She won’t go, of course. Or
will she?

He walks out in the afternoon and reaches the boundary between his land – his wife’s land! – and he slips over the stile because he wants to catch Alfred Rath all unawares. He
shelters under the spinney. While he waits, the rain pours down and the anger boils up within him until it can no longer be contained. When he glimpses a figure he thinks it is Alfred Rath, because
of the man’s size and because of the clothes he is wearing. The man under the trees fumbles for the piece of rope he has carried for just this moment – what better way to dispose of an
enemy than with an item like the one he taunted you with? – and as he does this he lets fall the talisman which the physician had given him as a preventative against the stone and choler and
other hot conditions. He runs out of his hiding-place and overpowers Alfred as he stands for an instant before the stile. Except that the man is not Alfred Rath but Thomas Flytte, who has been lent
a mantle by Alfred. In the madness of his attack, William does not realise this. Perhaps he does not see what he’s done until he has choked the doctor and thrown his body head-first across
the stile. Perhaps it is not until later that he realises with horror that he has killed the wrong man.

Luckily for him, there are other possible culprits to hand, like the pedlar Hugh Tanner and the servant Reeve. Both are missing and either of them might have murdered Thomas Flytte. Yet William
Carter has not got away with it. He suffers in silence, or an even greater silence than usual. His wife is perhaps uneasily aware of her part in all of this, as is Alfred Rath. That is what her
father means when he says to Agnes, ‘I should not have done it.’ He is not talking about the rope and the alehouse but about his . . . link with Alice Carter. Unhappiness has descended
on both families. Joan too pays a penalty even though she has done nothing, and it may be the reason she slowly fades from our sight.

So when William sees Reeve emerging out of the sun and mist that morning, it was as if he’d been expecting him. How else to explain the way he stayed fixed to the spot or to understand
those strange words he uttered: ‘You are come, then’? He did not try to run away or to avoid the blow. It was the punishment he felt he deserved, even if he might not have known it was
coming at the hands of the physician’s son. And there we have Reeve’s motive, too. He wasn’t a demon or a man possessed by one. He must have witnessed his father’s murder or
appeared in the aftermath of the scene. He alone knew who was responsible, and that it was William Carter. Reeve took refuge in the Great Wood where he went mad in his own fashion until that
morning when he appeared clad in rags and armed with a knife to take his vengeance. He was angry. But not as angry as William Carter when he brooded over the wrongs done to him by his neighbour. In
the end, his rage blinded him and he killed an innocent man, an act that led to the deaths of others as well as himself.

‘So you see, ladies and gentlemen,’ concluded the landlord of the Angel, ‘why it is that I say anger is the worst of the seven sins. Like the other sins,
it blinds us to our faults and even causes us to believe we are acting rightfully. Then it takes us further, urging us to pick up the nearest implement and to turn our rage into deeds. The injury
we do ourselves is made many times worse by the injury we do to others.’

‘And here,’ said the landlady of the Angel, ‘is a token of our story.’

From the depths of her dark red gown, Agnes Carter produced a small object. She lifted and
turned it so that it glittered gold in the candlelight. She held it out to the nearest pilgrim.