The Deadliest Sin Read Online Free

Like many a peasant, his face was leathery and tanned from exposure, but there was a hard edginess to the lines on his face.
    ‘You want to know what I think, then? I’d say lust is the worst. Because it’s lust that leads to murder and slaughter. Lust for women, lust for gold, lust for power. All
come to the same: lust! And one man felt sure that his own lust brought about the plague that hunts all men now.’ ‘Tell us your story, friend. Show us what you mean.’ He stood,
caught between the urge to leave them there in the chamber – and the desire to tell them all. He was almost ready to flee the room but, just then, Laurence passed him a green-glazed drinking
horn, and he took it and stared into the pale-coloured ale. There were bubbles and swirls in the drink, and suddenly, as clouds might form the appearance of a cog at sea or a man’s face, he
saw her again: Pelagia, the Frenchwoman with the neck of a swan, the body of an angel. He saw her face as clearly as he saw the flames in the fire.
    It decided him. With a gesture of defiance, he tossed his head back and drained the horn in one. He could tell them a tale to make them sit up and listen! A tale of . . .
Lust
    War is evil for many, but most of all for the people who want no part in it – he began – the women and children. They suffer from the unwanted attentions of men;
they are raped and slain by invaders, or they’re killed by their own because they can’t fight, or they starve because food is kept back for the men who will fight. That is what Calais
was like. A foul city, full of scared, fretful people. When we got there, the place was already encircled by our King’s host, but the fear – you could taste it in the air.
    Men react differently to things like that: the smell of fear. Some are like hounds. If a hound senses another is scared, it’ll push it around, snarl, growl . . . anything to make it know
who is the master, who is the villein. Some men are the same: if they can tell another is petrified, it gives them a feeling of power. In the army, there were many men like that. Some beat their
men, some would brawl and bellow, bragging about their conquests, while others would enjoy a man’s terror in silence. They would stand quietly and observe as a man shivered and shook. They
are the ones to watch, the ones who will tease and torment, and twist the knife a little deeper, enjoying every squeal of terror, every rictus of agony.
    I knew a man like that at Calais, a man called Henry the Tun. The centener.
    At Crécy, I was a vintener myself, responsible for twelve men by the end of the campaign. They were all that was left of two vintaines of forty archers under our banneret, Sir John de
Sully, but my boys were badly mauled during the flight to the north. We were harried all the way from Paris by the French King’s armies, and the people of the towns came out and attacked us
as we drew near. There was never a spare yard that wasn’t fought for.
    After Crécy, things eased a bit. We had destroyed the French on that battlefield, and when we finally left it we were filled with joy. The country was ours, with all the wealth. Even poor
archers became rich. And we soon had more men arrive to fill the gaps. My own vintaine needed new blood more than most, and we had seven new fellows join us. But then I was struck down with a
fever, and I had to take to a wagon. My men were sent on before me, and I rattled along in their wake like some kind of pathetic infant, with only a pair of brothers to help me: Bill and Walter
from Southampton. They were recent recruits, sent to help win Calais after our losses on the long march. I didn’t know them, nor the men we travelled with, and, at the first opportunity, I
left the wagon and took up a horse. I wanted to rejoin my men. With the brothers, I tagged along behind another vintaine that was passing, and soon I was introduced to their centener: Henry the
Tun.
    He was a short, thickset man, with