Read A Summer of Discontent Online
Authors: Susanna Gregory
Tags: #Mystery, #Historical, #blt, #rt, #Cambridge, #England, #Medieval, #Clergy
A Summer of Discontent (2 page)
‘That is not the same,’ said Barbour firmly. ‘Your gossip is dangerous. You have already caused one young woman to drown herself
because her life was blighted by your lies.’
There was a growl of agreement from the other drinkers, and Glovere at least had the grace to appear sheepish. ‘It was not
my
fault that she killed herself before it could be proven that she was not with child,’ he objected sullenly. ‘I
only told people what I thought. And it was not
my
fault that her betrothed went off and married someone else, either. Was it, Chaloner?’
He stared archly at a burly man who sat alone in one corner of the inn. Others looked at Chaloner, too, and none of the expressions
were friendly. Chaloner was a rough, belligerent fellow who cared little for what people thought. But he knew the good citizens
of Ely had neither forgotten nor forgiven the fact that he had too readily abandoned poor Alice to marry another woman when
Glovere made his accusations – accusations that turned out to be wholly false. People had liked Alice; they did not like Chaloner
and he often found himself at the receiving end of hostile glances or comments. Usually, he ignored it all, and certainly
did not permit his neighbours’ priggish disapprobation to influence the way he lived his life. But it was late and Chaloner
was too tired for a confrontation that night. He drained his cup, slammed it on the table and slouched from the tavern without
a word.
‘Why Alice killed herself over him is beyond me,’ said Glovere sanctimoniously, after Chaloner had gone. He was well aware
that a conversation about the detested Chaloner might induce Barbour to forget his irritation with Glovere himself. ‘I did
her a favour by saving her from marriage with him.’
‘A favour that killed the poor lass,’ muttered Leycestre under his breath.
‘It would not surprise me to learn that Chaloner is the thief,’ Glovere went on. ‘We all know he has a penchant for the property
of others. Perhaps he has become greedy.’
‘And the reason we all know about his weakness for other people’s goods is because he keeps getting caught,’ Barbour pointed
out. ‘Chaloner does not have the skill or the daring to burgle the homes of the wealthiest men in Ely.’
‘The gypsies do, though,’ said Leycestre immediately.
‘I do not know why we tolerate men like Chaloner in our town,’ said Glovere, cutting across what would have been a
tart reprimand from Barbour. ‘None of us like him, and Alice is better dead than wed to him. More ale, landlord!’
Barbour’s expression was unfriendly. ‘You can have more when you can keep a decent tongue in your head. And it is late anyway.’
He glanced around at his other patrons. ‘You all need to be up early tomorrow to gather the harvest, and so should be heading
off to your own homes now.’ He began to collect empty jugs and to blow out the candles that cast an amber light on the whitewashed
walls.
Glovere glared at the landlord, then stood reluctantly and made his way outside. There was a sigh of relief from several customers
when the door closed behind him.
‘He is an evil fellow,’ said Leycestre fervently. ‘And Chaloner is not much better.’
‘There are a number of folk in this city we would be better without,’ agreed Barbour. He gestured to a lanky, greasy-haired
man who lurched to his feet and clutched at a door frame to prevent himself from falling. ‘Haywarde is drunk again, which
means his wife will feel his fists tonight. If there was any justice in the world, someone would take a knife to all three
of them.’
Leycestre frowned, watching the other patrons give Haywarde a wide berth as they left. Haywarde was scowling angrily, and
no one wanted to be on the receiving end of his quick temper. ‘What do
you
think of Glovere’s claims, Barbour? Do you believe that a townsman – like Chaloner – is responsible for these burglaries?’
The landlord shrugged as he set a tray of goblets on a table and began to dunk them in a bucket of cold water; he was relieved
when Haywarde finally released the door frame and staggered away into the night. ‘Possibly. These are desperate times.’
‘But it is the gypsies, I tell you,’ insisted Leycestre. ‘The thefts started the day after they arrived in Ely. It is
obvious
that they are to blame.’
‘It is late,’ said Barbour flatly. He was tired, and had not silenced Glovere’s malicious diatribe in order to hear one
from Leycestre. ‘And if you see Glovere on your way home, you can tell him that I meant what I said. You know I like a bit
of gossip myself – what taverner does not like news to entertain his guests with? – but Glovere’s chatter is spiteful and
dangerous, and I want none of it in my inn.’
He ushered Leycestre unceremoniously out of the door and barred it from the inside, walking back through his inn to exit through
the rear door. He stood for a few moments, savouring the silence of the night before deciding he was too unsettled for sleep,
and that he needed to stretch his legs. When he reached the main street, he saw that Leycestre and several of his fellow drinkers
had also declined to return home when the night was too humid and hot for comfortable sleeping.
Meanwhile, Glovere was still angry as he slouched towards the river. Unlike the others, he was not obliged to rise before
the sun was up to spend the day labouring in the fields. As steward to Lady Blanche de Wake, his only task was to watch over
her small Ely manor while she was away. It was scarcely onerous, and he often found himself with time on his hands, and he
liked to pass some of it by speculating about the private lives of his fellow citizens. He had risen at noon that day and
was not yet ready for sleep. He reached the river and began to stroll upstream, breathing in deeply the rich, fertile scent
of ripe crops and the underlying gassy stench of the marshes that surrounded the City in the Fens.
A rustle in the reeds behind him caught his attention and he glanced around sharply. Someone was walking towards him. He stopped
and waited, wondering whether he had gone too far in the tavern, and one of the patrons had come to remonstrate with him or
warn him not to be so outspoken. It was too dark to see who it was, so he waited, standing with his hands on his hips, ready
to dispense a taste of his tongue if anyone dared tell him how to behave. A slight noise from behind made him spin around
the other way. Was someone else there, or was it just the breeze playing among the waving reeds? Suddenly Glovere had the
feeling that it was not such a fine evening for a stroll after all.
Near the Isle of Ely, Cambridgeshire, August 1354
A
LIGHT MIST SEEPED FROM THE MARSHES, AND WRAPPED
ghostly white fingers around the stunted trees that stood amid the wasteland of sedge and reed. In the distance, a flock
of geese flapped and honked in panic at something that had disturbed them, but otherwise the desolate landscape was silent.
The water, which formed black, pitchy puddles and ditches that stretched as far as the eye could see, had no ebb and flow,
and was a vast, soundless blanket that absorbed everyday noises to create an eerie stillness. Matthew Bartholomew, physician
and Fellow of the College of Michaelhouse at the University of Cambridge, felt as though his presence in the mysterious land
of bog and tangled undergrowth was an intrusion, and that to speak and shatter the loneliness and quiet would be wrong. He
recalled stories from his childhood about Fenland spirits and ghosts, which were said to tolerate humans only as long as they
demonstrated appropriate reverence and awe.
‘This is a vile, godforsaken spot,’ announced his colleague loudly, gazing around him with a distasteful shudder. Brother
Michael was a practical man, and tales of vengeful creatures that chose to inhabit bogs held no fear for him. ‘It is a pity
St Etheldreda decided to locate her magnificent monastery in a place like this.’
‘She built it here precisely because it was in the middle of the Fens,’ said Bartholomew, glancing behind him as a bird fidgeted
noisily in the undergrowth to one side. The causeway along which they rode ran between the thriving market town of Cambridge
and the priory-dominated city
of Ely, and was often used by merchants and wealthy clerics. Thus it was a popular haunt for robbers – and four travellers
comprising a richly dressed monk, a physician with a well-packed medicine bag, and two servants would provide a tempting target.
‘St Etheldreda was fleeing a husband intent on claiming his conjugal rights, and she selected Ely because she knew he would
not find her here.’
‘Did it work?’ asked Cynric, Bartholomew’s Welsh book-bearer, who sat in his saddle with the ease of a born horseman. Tom
Meadowman, Michael’s favourite beadle, rode next to him, but white-knuckled hands on the reins and his tense posture indicated
that he was unused to horses and that he would just as soon be walking.
Bartholomew nodded. ‘The legend says that she fled from the north country to the Fens almost seven hundred years ago. Her
husband, the King of Northumbria, never found her, and she built her monastery here, among the marshes.’
‘She is one of those saints whose body is as perfect now as when it went into its tomb,’ added Meadowman, addressing Cynric
but looking at Michael, clearly intending to impress his master with his theological knowledge. ‘Her sister dug up the corpse
a few years after it was buried, and found it whole and uncorrupted. A shrine was raised over the tomb, and some Benedictine
monks later came and built a cathedral over it.’
‘I know the story,’ said Michael irritably. ‘I am a monk of Ely, after all. But my point is that Etheldreda could equally
well have hidden in a much nicer place than this. Just look around you. That we are riding here at all, and not rowing in
a boat like peasants, is a testament to my priory’s diligence in maintaining this causeway.’
‘It is a testament to the huge tithes your priory demands from its tenants,’ muttered Cynric, casting a resentful glower at
the monk’s broad back.
Since the Great Pestilence had swept through the country, claiming one in three souls, there had been fewer peasants to pay
rents and tithes to landowners. Inevitably, the
landowners had increased their charges. At the same time the price of bread had risen dramatically but wages had remained
low, so there was growing resentment among the working folk toward their wealthy overlords. Cynric sided wholly with the peasants,
and seldom missed an opportunity to point out the injustice of the disparity between rich and poor to anyone who would listen.
Meadowman shot his companion an uneasy glance, and Bartholomew suspected that while he might well agree with the sentiments
expressed by Cynric, he was reluctant to voice his support while Michael was listening. Besides being the Bishop of Ely’s
most trusted agent, a Benedictine monk, and, like Bartholomew, a Fellow of Michaelhouse, Brother Michael was also the University’s
Senior Proctor. He had recently promoted Meadowman to the post of Chief Beadle – his right-hand man in keeping unruly students
in order. Meadowman enjoyed his work and was devoted to Michael, and he had no intention of annoying his master over an issue
like peasants’ rights. Cynric, on the other hand, had known Michael for years, and felt no need to whisper his radical opinions.
‘Between the Bishop and the Prior, the people in Ely are all but bled dry,’ he continued. ‘The Death should have made the
wealthy kinder to their tenants, but it has made them greedier and more demanding. It is not just, and the people will not
tolerate it for much longer.’
Bartholomew knew that his book-bearer was right. He could not avoid hearing the growing rumble of discontent when he visited
his poorer patients, and believed them when they claimed they would join any rebellion that would see the wealthy strung up
like the thieves they were seen to be. Personally, he believed such grievances were justified, and thought the wealthy were
wrong to continue in their excesses while the peasants starved.
Michael chose to ignore Cynric, concentrating on negotiating a way through one of the many spots where the road had lost its
battle with the dank waters of the Fens. The
track, for which ‘causeway’ was rather too grand a title, was little more than a series of mud-filled ruts that barely rose
above the bogs surrounding them. Reeds and long cream-coloured grasses clustered at its edges, waiting for an opportunity
to encroach and reclaim the barren ribbon of land that stood between Ely and isolation.
The route through the Fens was an ancient one, first established by Romans who did not like the fact that there were huge
tracts of their newly conquered empire to which they did not have easy access. They built a road that ran as straight as the
flight of an arrow across the marshes and the little islets that dotted them. In places, this ancient trackway could still
be seen, identifiable by the unexpected appearance of red-coloured bricks or cleverly constructed drainage channels that kept
the path from becoming waterlogged. There were bridges, too, which took the track higher in areas that regularly flooded,
and from the top of these the traveller could look across a seemingly endless sea of short, twisted alder trees and reed beds
that swayed and hissed in the breeze.
The people who lived in the Fens – and many considered the risk of flood and the marshes’ eye-watering odours a fair exchange
for the riches the land had to offer – made their living by harvesting sedge for thatching, cutting peat to sell as fuel,
and catching wildfowl and fish for food. Legally, any bird or animal that inhabited the marshes belonged to the priory, but
the Fenfolk knew the area much better than their monastic overlords, and it was almost impossible to prevent poachers from
taking what they wanted. Punishment, in the form of a heavy fine or the loss of a hand, was meted out to anyone caught stealing
the priory’s game, but it was not often that the thieves were apprehended.
‘There is certainly a growing unease among the people,’ said Bartholomew, his mind still dwelling on Cynric’s comments and
the hungry, resentful faces he had seen hovering in Cambridge’s Market Square the previous day.
Men and women had come to buy grain or bread, only to find that prices had risen yet again and their hard-earned pennies
were insufficient. ‘These days, a loaf costs more than a man’s daily wage.’
‘It is disgraceful,’ agreed Cynric, his dark features angry. ‘How do landlords expect people to live when they cannot afford
bread? There is talk of a rebellion, you know.’
‘And “talk” is all it is,’ said Michael disdainfully, finally entering the conversation. ‘I, too, have heard discussions in
taverns, where men in their cups promise to rise up and destroy the landlords. But their wives talk sense into them when they
are sober. However, you should be careful, Cynric: not everyone is as tolerant as Matt and me when it comes to chatting about
riots and revolts. You do not want to be associated with such things.’
‘It may be dangerous
not
to be associated with an uprising,’ muttered Cynric darkly. ‘If it is successful, people will know who stood with them and
who was against them.’
‘In that case, you should bide your time and assess who is likely to win,’ advised Michael pragmatically. ‘Keep your opinions
to yourself, and only voice them when you know which of the two factions will be victorious.’
‘I see you will be on the side of right and justice,’ remarked Bartholomew dryly. ‘Cynric is right. The people are resentful
that the wealthy grow richer while the poor cannot afford a roof over their heads or bread for their children. The King was
wrong to pass a law that keeps wages constant but allows the price of grain to soar.’
‘Cynric is not the only one who needs to watch his tongue,’ said Michael, giving his friend an admonishing glance. ‘When we
arrive at Ely, you will be a guest of the Prior. He will not take kindly to you urging his peasants to revolt.’
‘You mean you do not want me to embarrass you by voicing controversial opinions,’ surmised Bartholomew. ‘You were kind enough
to arrange for me to stay at your priory so that I can use the books in the library to complete
my treatise on fevers, but you want me to behave myself while I am there.’
‘Exactly,’ agreed Michael. ‘Prior Alan is a sensitive man, and I do not want you distressing him with your unorthodox thoughts.
And while we are on this subject, you might consider not telling him what you think of phlebotomy, either. He has all his
monks bled every six weeks, because he believes it keeps their humours balanced. Please do not disavow him of this notion.’
‘Why not?’ demanded Bartholomew. ‘In my experience as a physician, bleeding usually does more harm than good. If a man is
hale and hearty, why poke about in his veins with dirt-encrusted knives and risk giving him a wound that may fester?’
‘The monks
like
being bled,’ replied Michael tartly. ‘And they will not want you encouraging Alan to deprive them of something they enjoy.’
Bartholomew regarded him uncertainly. ‘Why would they be happy to undergo unnecessary and painful surgery?’
‘Because afterwards they spend a week in the infirmary being fed with the priory’s finest food and wine. You will make no
friends by recommending that the practice of bleeding be abandoned, I can assure you.’
Their conversation was cut short by a warning yell from Cynric. Meadowman fumbled for his sword, then fell backwards to land
with a gasp of pain on the rutted trackway. Cynric whipped his bow from his shoulder and nocked an arrow into it, looking
around wildly. As a crossbow bolt thudded into the ground near the horses’ hoofs, a stout staff miraculously appeared in Michael’s
hand and Bartholomew drew his dagger. When a second bolt hissed past his chest, perilously close, Bartholomew’s horse panicked
and started to rear and buck. Knowing he would be an easy target in his saddle, the physician abandoned his attempts to control
the animal and slipped to the ground, anticipating the sharp thump of a quarrel between his ribs at any moment.
* * *
It was all over very quickly. Cynric drew his long Welsh dagger and spurred his pony into the undergrowth. Moments later he
emerged with the crossbowman held captive. Meadowman sat up and grinned sheepishly, indicating that it had been poor horsemanship
that had precipitated his tumble, not an arrow. Michael held his staff warily, ready to use it, while Bartholomew tried to
calm his horse.
‘And the rest of you can come out, too,’ growled Cynric angrily, addressing the thick bushes that lined one side of the causeway.
‘Or I shall slit your friend’s throat.’
Evidently, Cynric’s tone of voice and gleaming dagger were convincing. There was a rustle, and two more men and a woman emerged
to stand on the trackway. Still clutching his knife and alert for any tricks, Bartholomew studied them.
They were all olive skinned and black haired, and their clothes comprised smock-like garments covered in a colourful display
of embroidery. Bartholomew imagined they were itinerant travellers from the warm lands around the Mediterranean, who drifted
wherever the roads took them, paying their way by hiring out their labour in return for food or a few pennies. They looked
sufficiently similar to each other for Bartholomew to assume they were related in some way, perhaps brothers and sister.
The three men were heavy-set fellows who sported closely cropped hair and a week’s growth of beard that made them appear disreputable.
One of them stared at Cynric, his eyes wide with childlike terror, and Bartholomew saw that although he possessed the strong
body of man, his mind was that of an infant. The woman moved closer to him, resting a comforting hand on his shoulder to silence
the beginnings of a fearful whimper. She was tall and, although Bartholomew would not have described her as pretty, there
was a certain attractiveness in the strength of her dark features.
‘There is no need for further violence,’ she said in French that held traces of the language of the south. ‘You can see we
are unarmed. Just take what you want and let us be on
our way. We have no wish to do battle with robbers.’
Michael gaped at her. ‘It may have escaped your notice, madam, but
you
were shooting at
us
, not the other way around.’
The man who was still perilously close to the tip of Cynric’s knife turned angry eyes on the monk. He was the largest of the
three, and had a hard-bitten look about him, as if he was used to settling matters with his fists. He wore a peculiar gold-coloured
cap that was newer and of a much higher quality than his other clothes. Bartholomew wondered whether he had stolen it, since
it seemed at odds with the rest of his clothing.
