Candace Robb - The Riddle Of St Leonard's

Her immediate thought was that it was a funeral pyre. She remembered how in the time of the first pestilence, even on the windy coast of the North Sea, the air over Scarborough had some days been thick with smoke from the burning of the plague corpses. She had been heavy with her son Peter and fearful that the stench would turn him to a monster in her womb. But the deaths so far had been few compared with that time.

Her second thought was for her Uncle Julian, who had a small house within the hospital walls. He was a careless man with a lamp or a candle, especially when in his cups, which might be at any time of day or night now he no longer did an honest day’s work.

Bess glanced at her half-cleaned chamber and judged it tidy enough for tonight. Dirty it was not. She did not tolerate dirt in bedchambers, be they the guest chambers or her own. But organising the clutter must wait until she confirmed her uncle’s safety. With an impatient tug, she removed the scarf that protected her thick hair, the red dulled with the passing years, but still a full head of hair of which she was quite proud, and replaced the scarf with one of her starched and beribboned caps.

St Leonard’s Hospital stretched over a large area within the north corner of York’s city walls, bordered by Footless Lane, St Mary’s Abbey, and Lop Lane, and reaching almost to Petergate. The East Gatehouse stood at the top of Blake Street, with a high arch over the lane in which was set a statue of St Leonard. The church and the claustral buildings of Austin canons filled the north-east half of the precinct; the other half held the infirmary with two chapels, and extensive additional buildings for a grammar school, guest hall, tannery, malthouse, stables, workshops, kitchens, and dwellings of staff and corrodians. It seemed almost a self-contained town. St Leonard’s had been founded by Athelstan before William the Norman harried the north, and it was said by many to be the largest hospital outside London.

As Bess passed under the arch, she encountered a scene of chaos: people swarmed like frantic bees smoked from a hive, running hither and yon, bumping into each other as if blinded by the smoke; buckets and pots clanked and sloshed with water. Bess pushed through the crowd towards the infirmary, shaking herself loose from those who clutched at her and shouted gibberish. But she realised in short order that the infirmary and its chapels were intact; the smoke came from the north wall, from either the grammar school or one of the small houses for corrodians — which included her uncle’s dwelling.

With renewed urgency she pushed through the crowd, using her left shoulder as a battering ram, and was soon past the grammar school and forcing her way through an even louder throng. She was rewarded by the sight of Julian’s house, scorched on the left side, but intact. The house beside it, however, was a burned-out shell. Before it lay two bodies, one writhing beneath the ministering hands of two women, one of whom Bess recognised as Honoria de Staines, once her uncle’s servant and now a lay sister. The other man lay quietly beneath the bowed head of an Austin canon.

As Bess approached, she saw that much of the clothing on the motionless man had been burned away, and his body scorched — his face beyond recognition. Don Erkenwald solemnly prayed for his soul. Bess crossed herself, moved over to the one struggling to stand to escape the two women. ‘Uncle Julian! Praise God!’ She almost laughed, thinking how like him to be surrounded by fawning women. But when he turned to Bess and she saw his face bruised and cut, his mass of white hair singed on one side, both hands bandaged from fingertips to wrists, she saw how close he must have come to being the one lying still beneath the priest. ‘What happened, uncle?’

‘Tell Anneys and Honoria to see to Laurence.’ Julian’s voice was hoarse. He struggled to rise, pushing the two women aside.

‘Don Erkenwald is with him,’ Bess said. And glad she was, too, as she realised the dead man must be her uncle’s oldest friend, Laurence de Warrene. Erkenwald was a former soldier and knew death when he saw it. He would have found help for Laurence if there had been any hope.

‘Erkenwald knows nothing of physicks,’ Julian said, taking a step towards Bess. As he put his weight on his left foot he stumbled with a cry of pain.

Bess caught him, and with the help of the one called Anneys managed to lower him gently to the ground. ‘Sit and keep your peace, uncle.’ Bess shook her head at his singed sleeves, hem, and hair. ‘Were you in that house as it burned?’

Julian closed his eyes and put a bandaged hand to his forehead. ‘Laurence’s house.’

Bess caught sight of two men pushing their way through the crowd with a stretcher, motioned them over. ‘Get him to the infirmary at once.’

Julian growled at them. ‘See to Laurence.’

Honoria touched Julian’s cheek. He pushed her away.

‘Let the men lift him,’ Bess said, grabbing the woman by the shoulder and pulling her up. Hearing her uncle groan, Bess turned, shouted to the stretcher-bearers, ‘Be gentle with him.’

Honoria grabbed Bess’s arm. ‘I am a lay sister of this spital and not accustomed to such treatment.’

‘I know your station,’ Bess said. ‘And your previous calling.’ Folk said her husband had left her rather than compete with her lovers.

‘I took good care of Master Taverner when I served him.’

‘I am sure you did.’ Bess turned to the other woman, who was dressed in a similar dark, simple gown and white wimple. ‘You are a lay sister also?’

The woman nodded. She was older than Honoria — by her greying eyebrows and the lines around her eyes, Bess guessed her beyond her child-bearing days — and had a competent air about her.

But she was still a mere servant. ‘Where are your superiors?’ Bess demanded. ‘Does my uncle not deserve to have one of the nuns tending him?’ He had paid good money for his corrody at the spital, he deserved the best they had to offer.

‘We were near,’ Anneys said. ‘Dame Constance has gone before us to the infirmary to prepare Master Taverner’s bed.’

‘Ah.’ The Mother Superior. That was better. Bess watched as Honoria picked up her skirts and hurried after the stretcher. Even in her drab gown she managed to provoke stares from the men in the crowd.

Another stretcher had been brought for Laurence de Warrene. Don Erkenwald, relieved of his charge, joined Bess and Anneys. He was a muscular canon with the scars of his former life on his face. Bess had always thought him an odd one to be an almoner. ‘Both women have been trained by the sisters and are trusted with our patients, Mistress Merchet.’

‘Laurence was dead when you found him?’

Erkenwald gave a brief nod. ‘I believe he was so when your uncle pulled him from the house.’

‘He knows, then?’

‘It is difficult for him to accept that God has taken his friend and spared him.’

He did not wish to know was more like. ‘What happened here?’

‘You know that Master Warrene’s wife died of pestilence several days ago?’

Bess nodded.

‘It was recommended that he burn aught that had touched her in her illness — clothes, bedding …’

‘A simple task gone terribly wrong,’ Anneys said.

Bess ignored the woman. ‘Was he ordered to burn her things in the house?’ she asked the almoner.

He smiled at the suggestion. ‘We are not fools, Mistress Merchet. The fire had been built here, in the yard, before the door. How the house caught, or how the two men came to be within, I do not know.’ He was suddenly distracted by someone in the crowd. ‘ Domine ,’ he muttered under his breath. ‘Here comes little Cuthbert.’

The crowd had parted to allow the passage of a tiny canon who strode forward, hands in sleeves, his face puckered in an expression of disgust as his eyes swept back and forth over the charred scene.