Free The Butchers Funeral: A Medieval Murder by C. M. Harald

been looking everywhere for you.'
    Anna opened a tired eye to the darkness, intent on glaring at the excitable man.  Recognising him she quickly remembered that his wife was due to give birth.  With a groan she eased herself to her feet, many aches firing across her body.
    'Have you sent someone to get my birthing chair?  Has she confessed her sins?'  She eased herself into her role as midwife, forgetting Col Butcher in the life and death trial that was childbirth.
     
    The labour had been quick and pleasingly uncomplicated.  The delivery had occurred late, well into the night.  Safety was never something that could be guaranteed and the complicated and dangerous births that Anna had been present for were beyond count.  For once, this baby had just popped straight out, the mother was well and Anna was certain the baby would survive the week and probably had as good as a fifty-fifty chance of surviving her first year.  The parents had been more relived that joyful.  It was not the first child this mother had birthed, but certainly the easiest, and barring unexpected infections, she would recover quickly.
    After tidying up and once again checking on mother and child, Anna had carried off, for disposal, the bucket of bloody water and the placenta.  The family had few spare rags and those they had provided, they would wash and bleach in the sun until they were usable again.  Anna would do the same with the few rags she had brought.  There was no point carrying the full bucket far, so Anna headed for Shitebrook.  It was not too far out of her way and there really was not anywhere else she could leave the waste.  Well, she thought to herself, she could leave it in the middle of the street for those lazy muckrakers to clear up, but she knew they would merely take the waste outside the city walls and dispose of it in Shitebrook instead of taking it well away from the city.  She could do that for herself.  Half measures were what she was used to from those well-paid street cleaners, besides, she could not see how leaving waste in a street, waiting for the muckrakers to get around to it, was going to be good for anyone.  At the very least it would lead to more injurious miasmas floating around for people to breath in.  At worst, vermin would be encouraged, especially the pigs that some people kept inside the city walls despite the mayor trying to get the animals banned from within the city.
    As she poured out the waste bucket into the ditch, she was surprised to see Col Butcher walking, or was it staggering, towards her.  She quickly deduced that what had started out as a dismal evening was beginning to turn into a very productive night.  Time to make the sod pay with a lesson he would never forget.  He had clearly gone back to the tavern for some late night drinking while she was busy delivering the child.
    'Oh butcher?' she said in her most enticing voice, 'Would you care to come over her and help me?'
    He emitted a grunt and staggered towards her.  Typical man, she thought, a few drinks and they all fall for the damsel in need of help.
    'What is it love?'  So he's not so far gone that he can talk, she thought.  Excellent, she would teach him a lesson he would never forget.
    'I need some help with my bucket.'  She pretended to strain at the imagined weight of the now empty bucket.
    'I thinnnnk, I think, I think I can help you with that.'  Definitely drunk, she thought, even slurring.
    Anna let the butcher take the handle of the bucket, noting the lack of control he had over his hand.  How much had he drunk?  As he straightened up she stepped closer, raising her knee quickly between his legs.  He yelped in pain and Anna hastily stepped back as his spare hand reach forward to steady himself on her.  Before she knew it, he was falling forward, the hand that had held the bucket handle, now holding the tender place between his legs.  He lay squirming on the follow for a while.
    'Why?' He gasped as soon as he