A Summer of Discontent (9 page)

‘So, de Lisle summoned you the day he was accused – Friday – and then sent a second summons the following day,’ said Bartholomew,
trying to understand the order of events as they had occurred.

Michael nodded. ‘It was the second death by drowning – Haywarde, on Saturday morning – that really alarmed him. He is afraid
Blanche will accuse him of that, too, and while the good citizens of Ely may overlook one suspicious death, they will certainly
not disregard two of them.’

‘What was Glovere doing here without Blanche anyway?’ asked Bartholomew. ‘If he was her steward, why was he not with her in
Huntingdon?’

‘I asked Prior Alan that when you were gossiping about boils to Henry. Apparently, Glovere was employed to protect Blanche’s
Ely estates – she owns farms nearby, and he oversaw them for her. By all accounts, he was a proficient steward, but not likeable,
and she was always relieved to be away from him when she left Ely.’

‘Ten days is a long time for a corpse to be above ground in this hot weather,’ said Bartholomew disapprovingly. ‘Why was he
not buried a week ago – before Blanche made her accusation?’

‘Apparently, no one was willing to pay. His requiem mass is Blanche’s responsibility, so I suppose she will provide the necessary
funds when she arrives.’

‘It does not cost much to dig a hole.’ Bartholomew was still disgusted. ‘It would have been better to bury him immediately,
rather than leave him lying around until Blanche deigns to arrive. Supposing she refuses to pay? Then what happens?’

Michael waved a dismissive hand, uninterested in the logistics of burial. He felt it was fortunate that Glovere was still
above ground, given the circumstances, and was hopeful that Bartholomew would be able to produce a verdict of death by drowning
while drunk, and thus put an end to Blanche’s machinations. He thought about what he had learned from talking to his brethren
that afternoon.

‘According to Alan, Glovere was universally disliked because he was a gossip. When he and de Lisle had that very public argument
two weeks ago, it did wonders for de Lisle’s popularity – everyone was delighted to see Glovere
on the receiving end of some eloquently vicious insults. Now it seems that very same disagreement is leading people to believe
de Lisle guilty of murder.’

‘It is not just the public row, Brother,’ Bartholomew pointed out. ‘Even
you
think he may have done it, and you were not even a witness to this squabble.’

‘Whatever,’ said Michael impatiently. ‘But suffice to say that Glovere was loathed by all, and no one is prepared to pay a
few pennies for a hole for his corpse.’

‘Because he told tales?’ asked Bartholomew doubtfully. ‘I can see that would make him unpopular, but I cannot see that it
would lead to such heartlessness regarding his mortal remains.’

‘Apparently he was a liar, too, whose uncontrolled tongue caused a lot of unnecessary heartache. Alan told me that his malicious
stories resulted in a young woman committing suicide last winter.’

‘How?’

‘He started rumours that she was with child, which led her intended husband to marry someone else. It transpired that Glovere’s
accusations were wholly unfounded, and were based on the fact that he had seen the girl sewing clothes for a baby. The clothes
were for her sister’s child.’

Bartholomew regarded the monk uncertainly. ‘But if Glovere was a known liar, why did this husband-to-be believe him in the
first place?’

‘Because he was a foolish man with too much pride and too little trust. It was one of those silly affairs that would have
righted itself, given time. Unfortunately, the intended groom acted immediately, and Glovere’s spite thus brought about a
tragedy. But the city has not forgotten the story and Glovere remains friendless and graveless.’

‘And the body is in a church somewhere?’ asked Bartholomew, wishing he had not agreed to help Michael after all. The last
ten days had been gloriously hot, and a corpse of that age was not going to be pleasant company.

‘Lord, no!’ said Michael. ‘No sane parish priest would
agree to hosting a corpse for that length of time in the summer. Glovere resides in the Bone House.’

‘What is a bone house?’ asked Bartholomew dubiously. ‘It sounds horrible.’

Michael started to explain. ‘When the foundations of the Lady Chapel and the Church of the Holy Cross were laid, we kept unearthing
bones. The whole area to the north of the cathedral – where these buildings were being raised – is the lay cemetery, you see.’

‘I hope plague victims were not buried there,’ said Bartholomew immediately. ‘I do not think it will be safe to unearth those
bodies for a long time yet.’

‘Most were found thirty years ago. But there were so many remains that it was decided a bone house should be erected to store
them until they could be reburied.’

‘Why not inter them straight away? Why keep them above ground at all?’

‘Because we did not want to lay them to rest only to dig them up later when more foundations were needed. It is better to
stack them safely, then bury them with due ceremony when we are sure they will not be disturbed again. Look – there it is.’

Michael pointed to a two-storeyed lean-to building near the north wall of the priory, between the Steeple Gate and the sacristy.
It was sturdily built, but was little more than a long house with one or two very small windows and a thick, heavy door. It
was evidently anticipated that the occupants would not require much in the way of daylight, because the shutters had been
painted firmly closed, giving the whole building a forlorn, secretive appearance that did not encourage visitors. For some
peculiar reason, the Bone House had also been provided with a chimney, although Bartholomew could not see why. He could not
imagine anyone – living, at least – tarrying inside for long enough to warrant the lighting of a fire.

‘It is obvious it was built for laymen, and not monks,’ said Bartholomew, critically eyeing its crude lines and
unprepossessing appearance. ‘It is hardly the grandest edifice in the area.’

‘It is a storeroom, Matt,’ said Michael irritably. ‘It is not intended to be a final resting place.’

‘I hope I do not end up in a place like this,’ said Bartholomew, as Michael took a hefty key from his scrip and fitted it
to the lock on the door. ‘My skull at one end of a room and my feet at the other, all mixed with someone else’s limbs, and
my ribs still buried in the churchyard.’

‘I shall see what I can do to prevent it,’ said Michael, evidently anticipating that he would last a good deal longer than
his friend. ‘You should approve of Glovere being stored here, Matt. It means he is well away from living people.’

‘But he is also out of sight and therefore out of mind. Perhaps the Prior is hoping that he will turn into bones if left long
enough.’

‘Good God!’ exclaimed Michael, leaping backwards as he opened the door. ‘What a stench!’

‘I am not surprised the monks do not want this in their cathedral,’ said Bartholomew, recoiling, despite the fact that he
had prepared himself for the olfactory onslaught. ‘Such a vile smell cannot be good for the health of the living.’

‘It does not say much about the health of the dead, either,’ muttered Michael. ‘I have never known a corpse to stink so.’

He took a step forward, but then hesitated when he became aware that flies buzzed within. Pulling a face, Michael produced
from his scrip a huge pomander stuffed with lavender and cloves, placed it over the lower part of his face, and indicated
that Bartholomew was to precede him inside. Bartholomew obliged, taking care to breathe through his nose. It was a popular
belief that inhaling through the mouth was the best solution for dealing with foul odours, but Bartholomew had learned that
did not work for especially strong smells: he ended up being able to taste the foulness as well as smell it.

It was dark inside the Bone House, and the two scholars
waited a few moments for their eyes to adapt to the gloom. Someone had placed a lamp on a shelf to one side, and as Michael
lit it, Bartholomew looked around curiously.

A row of shelves in front of him was stacked with grinning skulls, most with missing teeth that lent them rakish expressions.
To his left was a pile of long bones – arms and legs – in various states of repair, while to his right lay a heap of broken
coffins. Some revealed a glimmer of white inside, while others had apparently been emptied of their contents. An old barrel
near one shuttered window was filled almost to the brim with bone fragments – flat pieces of cranium, and tiny carpals and
tarsals that had once been living hands and feet.

‘I suppose this must be him,’ said Michael, stepping forward to a human shape that lay on the bare stone of the floor. It
had been covered with a filthy piece of sacking, but that was all. Glovere had no coffin, no shroud, and no one had performed
even the most basic cleansing of his body. The sacking was too small for its purpose: a bristly stack of hair protruded from
one end, and a pair of legs from the other. Michael grabbed the material and pulled it away, backing off quickly when the
movement aroused a swarm of buzzing flies.

‘This is horrible!’ he choked through his pomander. ‘Why are we doing this?’

‘Because you promised your Bishop you would,’ replied Bartholomew, flapping at the insects that circled his head as he knelt
next to the bloated features of the dead man.

In the summer months, most corpses were laid in the ground within a day or two of their deaths, and it was unusual to see
one that had been left for so long. The face was dark, with a blackish-green sheen about it, and was strangely mottled. The
eyes were dull and opaque, half open beneath discoloured lids, while the mouth looked as though it had been stretched, and
gaped open in a lopsided way that Bartholomew had never observed in the living.

He studied Glovere for a moment before beginning his
examination, trying to see the man who had lived, rather than the corpse that lay mouldering in front of him. He saw a fellow
in his middle thirties who had been well nourished, and who had sported a head of brown hair and a patchy beard. His skin
was puckered in places, as though his complexion had been spoiled by a pox at some point. His clothes were dirty and stained,
but of decent quality.

‘He drowned,’ pronounced Michael with authority. He reached out a tentative hand, and plucked something from Glovere’s hair.
‘See? River weed.’

‘There is more of it in his clothes, too,’ said Bartholomew, pointing. ‘And that smear of mud on his cheek doubtless comes
from the river bank. His bloated features also indicate that he spent some time in water, along with the fact that you can
see a stain on the floor, where some of it leaked from him and then dried.’

‘Nasty,’ said Michael, backing away quickly when he saw his sandalled feet were placed squarely in the middle of one such
stain. ‘But, if he drowned, then the Bishop is innocent of murder. Come away, Matt. It is unpleasant in here with all these
flies. I will ascertain from the inns in the city that Glovere was in his cups, and we will have an end to the matter.’

‘He fell in the river while drunk and then drowned,’ mused Bartholomew, turning Glovere’s head this way and that as he examined
the neck for signs of injury. ‘It is possible, but we should be absolutely sure, if you want to lay this affair to rest once
and for all.’

‘Even I can see there are no marks of violence on the body,’ said Michael, too far away to tell anything of the kind. ‘I appreciate
your meticulousness, Matt, but do not feel obliged to linger here on my account. Cover him. I will see you outside.’

Flapping vigorously at the winged creatures that swarmed around him, the monk was gone, leaving Bartholomew alone in the Bone
House. The physician did not mind; he had found Michael’s commentary distracting in any case. He
moved the lantern to a better position for a thorough examination, and began to remove the dead man’s clothes.

Just when he was beginning to think that Michael was right, and that Glovere had simply drowned – although whether by accident
or deliberately was impossible to say – Bartholomew’s careful exploration of every inch of mottled flesh paid off. His probing
fingers encountered a wound at the base of Glovere’s skull, just above the hairline. Bartholomew turned the body and studied
it, noting that the injury was a narrow slit about the length of a thumbnail, and that it appeared to go deep. If it had bled,
then any stains had been washed away by the river. Because it was hidden by Glovere’s hair, Bartholomew realised that he might
well have missed it, had he not been in the habit of inspecting the heads of corpses very closely when examining them for
Michael.

He took one of the metal probes he carried in his medicine bag, and put one end into the hole to test its depth. He was startled
when it disappeared for almost half the length of a finger before encountering the solid resistance of bone. He sat back on
his heels and considered.

He knew that damage to the whitish-coloured cord that ran from the brain down the spine was serious, and it seemed that the
injury to Glovere’s neck was sufficiently deep to have punctured it. Since Glovere was unlikely to have inflicted such a wound
on himself, the only explanation was that someone else had done it. It was very precisely centred, and the physician doubted
that it could have happened by chance. He rubbed his chin thoughtfully, and then called out to Michael. The monk entered the
Bone House reluctantly, but listened to what Bartholomew had to say without complaining, flies forgotten.

‘Lord, Matt!’ he breathed when the physician had finished. ‘Glovere was murdered after all? And worse, someone committed the
crime with considerable care, so that his death would appear to be an accident?’

Bartholomew nodded. ‘It is impossible for me to say what happened, but it seems reasonable to assume that a blade
of some kind was inserted into Glovere – perhaps while he lay drunk and insensible on the river bank – and then he was pushed
into the water so that it would look as though he had drowned.’