The Deadliest Sin (9 page)

But as he’d noticed, she did seem to want him. Janyn could only assume she wanted to imitate a nun, and when Bill got her up on the hillside, she didn’t want to open her legs to him.
Perhaps she was scared of the idea of the army approaching, or maybe Bill’s lust was alarming to her. Whatever the reason was, she refused him. And he, craven cur that he was, forced her.

Although that too seemed unlike him. Janyn stood, staring over at the cart. Bill had a gash on one cheek, and even as Janyn watched, the lad turned, draping his hands over the top of the wheel
as though crucified.

He had never shown violence towards her. He had never even displayed much lust. Rather, he held a simmering bitterness towards anyone else who looked at her. The only man of whom he appeared to
hold no jealousy was his brother. That was natural, after all. Brothers could maintain their friendship even in the face of rivalry.

But there was another man who had shown his lust. Henry had been violently angry when the vintener refused to allow him to take Pelagia. He expected to be able to rape her, and had even made
threats when he was thwarted. And today, for some reason, he had recommended Janyn and the others to go into that terrible wood.

It was coincidence, Janyn told himself. Why would Henry want to kill off the vintaine, especially Janyn? It made no sense, except he knew Henry. They all did. If he felt snubbed or insulted, his
brutality in revenge could be boundless.

Janyn was suddenly assailed by a sense of revulsion so intense, he had to grasp a nearby tree and cling to it, waves of nausea running through his entire body.

‘It was him,’ he said. ‘Damn his eyes, Henry tried to get us all killed!’

Barda saw his sudden lurch, and hurried to his side. ‘Jan? Are you all right?’

‘By God’s cods, Barda, I think little is well,’ Janyn said.

Henry was with his commanders when Janyn approached him. The other vinteners were about him, and Henry looked at Janyn sidelong.

‘Thank you, centener,’ he said. ‘My men appreciate being sent up to the ridge.’

‘What are you talking about, Jan?’

‘You’d had your own men, or another man’s vintaine up there already. Their bodies are all over the hill. We’d already fought all morning before light, but that
didn’t worry you, did it? You were happy enough to be rid of us, I suppose.’

‘You always were an insubordinate bastard, Hussett. Your father was a trader in second-hand clothes, and I suppose you’re little better. Well, if you don’t like the army, you
shouldn’t have joined the King’s forces.’

‘I joined my master, Sir John, to come here,’ Hussett said. He looked about the other men with casual deliberation. ‘But he wouldn’t have sent me to have me killed with
the callous disregard that you did.’

‘Me? What are you saying?’

‘That you wanted your vengeance because you wanted the woman Pelagia. You were prepared to kill us all to have her, weren’t you?’

‘You’ve been drinking too much cheap wine!’

‘She’s dead. But perhaps you know that already. She was killed and set down in a hollow last night. Where were you? Did you go up there to kill her, and then tried to have me and all
my vintaine wiped out so you could hide your murder?’

‘Now you’re talking hog’s turds!’ Henry said, and set his arms akimbo. ‘You say I killed the maid? And what of it if I had? How many other men and women have we all
killed? You think I’d have run with my thumb up my arse in case a peasant’s mongrel like you learned of it? Get your brain to work, man! You think I’m scared what you or anyone
else thinks? Go swive a goat!’

Janyn was about to launch himself at the man, but Barda put a restraining hand on his breast. Then Janyn paused and considered.

There was merit in Henry’s words. Why would he worry about killing the woman?

‘You tried to have all my vintaine wiped out just so you could have her to yourself, didn’t you?’ he said wonderingly. ‘It wasn’t just to hide her murder – it
was simple lust. You wanted her, and you were prepared to kill me and all my men just so you could take her.’

‘You have no way of knowing what I would or woudn’t do,’ Henry said, but now his voice was colder.

‘You were prepared to have Sir John’s force depleted just so you could rape the woman.’

‘She would have been willing enough,’ Henry said with a smirk. ‘The women always are.’

Janyn nodded. He set his jaw and gazed at all the other vinteners standing with Henry. ‘You all heard that. He wanted to sacrifice us, his own men, so that he could grab the woman. Like
David and Bathsheba. A corrupt leader prepared to see his own men slain just so he can steal their women. We all know where we stand with him.’

‘Get your arse out of my sight!’ Henry spat. ‘That is villeiny-saying of the worst sort, you—’

‘You accuse me of villeiny-saying?’ Janyn said mildly, but then he launched himself forward. Barda grabbed his arm as he flew past, and another vintener caught him by the shoulder
and neck, keeping him back. ‘Get off me! Leave me alone! He’s safe enough from me – for now!’

‘You’re finished!’ Henry said. ‘I’ll see that you’re ruined, Hussett! You won’t fight here with the men ever again, you little shite!’

Janyn nodded. As he was released, he tugged his jack and hosen back where they had been jerked tight. ‘I will never fight for you again, Henry. I don’t mind a Frenchman killing me,
but I won’t die from your bile.’

He stalked away, and Barda had to trot to keep up.

‘Do you really think he did that?’ he asked.

‘Who doubts me? Sir John told me as much. He wanted to see all of us die in a trap up there, Barda.’

‘He won’t do that again.’

‘No,’ Janyn said. The two glanced back over their shoulder to where the centener was expostulating with his other commanders. ‘No, he will not last long in the next
fight.’

Janyn and Barda found Walter not far from the front line with the rest of the vintaine.

‘Have you heard about your brother?’

‘What, have you found him?’ Walter said.

‘Yes. He wasn’t far from her body.’

Walter nodded, his face empty, and then, very slowly, a tear formed. ‘I couldn’t let him. I’m sorry, but I couldn’t . . .’

‘She was going to marry him?’

‘I think she enjoyed the attention we both gave her. It gave her satisfaction to see men bickering over her, and when it was me and Bill, she was pleased to see how she could make us both
suffer for love of her.’

‘It wasn’t love. Love doesn’t mean raping a woman and then killing her.’

‘I didn’t want to kill her! I didn’t mean to! I only wanted to keep her for my own! I thought if I took her, and showed her how much she meant to me, that maybe she’d
marry me. I made her take me, but then, when I was spent, she looked at me like I was a turd, and told me she would enjoy telling Bill what I’d done. I saw her then for what she really was.
It was your fault, Jan! You brought her with us – you should have let us leave her behind! Why did you bring her with us? It’s ruined us all!’

‘What will you do?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Your brother knows?’

‘When I took her, he saw us leave, and followed us. I had to strike him down before he could find her. I knocked him down, and covered her over. I hoped he wouldn’t realise it was
me!’ He was sniffling now, snot gathering at the tip of his nose. He wiped it away angrily. ‘I didn’t want to hurt him. I was just desperate. And lonely.’

‘You did better than hurting him,’ Barda said. ‘You nearly had him killed. The Genoese found him up there and would have killed him. And when we found him, Jan nearly killed
him, too.’

Janyn stopped. His eyes were fixed on the flames as though he could see the faces from long ago deep in the flickering light.

‘Well?’ Laurence asked quietly. ‘What happened? Did the two brothers forgive each other?’

‘Only one need forgive,’ the Austin canon said. ‘That was the point. His lust drew the man Walter into dishonour and deceit, and made him knock down his own flesh and
blood.’

Janyn shut his eyes in disgust, then stared up at the friar. ‘Did you understand nothing of my story?’ he said harshly. ‘You think it was all that cut and dried? It was lust
moved them all: simple, animal lust. Henry wanted the woman, and he was prepared to kill anyone to slake his desire. Bill wanted her too, and he would have killed anyone who threatened her. He
would have taken her if he had the courage, but instead his brother decided to take her for himself. Not because he was worse than the others, but because his lust overwhelmed him sooner. And what
else? Why were we all there in France? Because of the lust of two kings for the same city. We are all consumed by lust. Even Pelagia, who wanted revenge like Henry wanted her body! We were all
consumed by lust. And then the plague came, and Calais was consumed. This plague, it is a proof of God’s displeasure with us. All of us!’

‘What happened to Henry?’ the landlord enquired after a moment’s thought.

‘He died a short time later. His centaine was in the thick of a battle, and he fell.’

‘From a blow before him or behind?’

Janyn curled his lip without humour. ‘If you were a man in his hundred, and you heard about him sending an entire vintaine to its doom just because he wanted a woman, would you want to
fight with him?’

‘What happened to the brothers?’

‘What would you have done? Was there any purpose to be served in punishing one? I didn’t have to, in any case. Bill refused to speak to Walter, and a week or so later, Walter was
found hanged in a barn near Calais. He couldn’t bear the guilt over what he had done. And then, he couldn’t bear his brother’s contempt either.’

‘Did his brother survive?’

‘Bill took his money when Calais fell, but when the peace was agreed, he went away. I heard he joined a fraternity of mercenaries. He didn’t feel there was a life for him back
here.’

‘What happened to you?’

‘Me?’ Janyn stared into the flames. ‘I swore I wouldn’t fight any more after Calais. I took up a little alehouse in the town and built good custom with the English
garrison. I promised myself I’d forget war, and for a year I was happy. I married Alice, my lovely Alice, and she bore me a son.’

‘Are they in Calais still?’

‘Oh, yes. They will always be there. Both perished when the plague came. So I came here on pilgrimage. To find peace.’

Aye, he said to himself: peace – calm after the fighting. A pilgrimage to beg forgiveness.

Forgiveness for slaying his own centener in the midst of a battle; forgiveness for all the Frenchmen he had killed, some in anger, some in cold blood; forgiveness for the rapes and tortures,
for the abbeys and churches laid waste, for the nuns left raped and slain in the burning embers of their convents.

And for failing the young French woman who had sought his protection.

Every man in the party had at some point surreptitiously ogled the woman who now moved forward to offer her story. Her clothes were of the finest cloth, and their cut
betrayed an origin in the Mediterranean. The south of France, perhaps or one of the northern Italian city-states. She was a mature woman without being matronly, for her waist had not grown thick,
as did that of others of her age. Perhaps she had never had children. She was attended by a younger woman, but no one could say whether she was a servant or a daughter. The more discerning males
amongst the gathering might have come to a consensus about her age, and supposed she was past her fortieth year, but only just. All would have been surprised to learn she was actually in the middle
of her fifties. Her hair was blond with a hint of gold to it, but no white, and her face was healthily rosy and unlined. When she spoke, her voice rang like a small silver bell, and her Italian
accent was obvious.

‘I want to tell you about the corrosive effects of that most deadly of the seven deadly sins – greed.’

Here she paused for effect, and cast her pale blue eyes around the gathering. No one challenged her contention that this particular sin was the most deadly. Not yet, anyway. They would
reserve judgement until her story was told. Satisfied that she had their full attention, she went on.

‘This is a story often told by my grandfather about a time when I was a young woman living in Venice. Niccolo Zuliani had travelled to the ends of the earth, and seen many wonders.
Great palaces where a thousand men may banquet at a time, a robe made of salamander that can resist fire, and a black stone that burns better than logs. Some said he told lies, or at the very least
embroidered so heavily on the truth that it would have hardly known itself if it looked in a mirror. I like to think that everything he spoke of was the literal truth. Whatever people may have
thought, this story is certainly one I can verify the truth of myself, as I was involved in its unfolding, as you will eventually see.’

The small group of travellers leaned closer to her to hear the tale of . . .

Nick Zuliani was bored. Though he was more than seventy years of age, his mind was as sharp as it had ever been. He had recently returned from a small Greek island owned by the
Soranzo family, where he had performed a service for Giovanni Soranzo, who was now the Doge of Venice. Since his return, his days had been full of idleness, and he yearned for something to occupy
his mind. Even his dearest love, Cat Dolfin, was tired of his sighs and his constant wandering through the rooms of her home, Ca’ Dolfin.

‘You’re like some tiresome ghost, always interrupting my peace, Niccolo. Do stop it.’

Zuliani sighed some more at the rebuke, knowing that if she addressed him by his full name and not as Nick, she was seriously annoyed. Then, seeing Cat’s reaction to his further sigh, he
satisfied himself with a silent grimace.

‘Perhaps you are tired of having me around. You should throw me out on the street like some homeless beggar.’