Susanna GREGORY - The Tarnished Chalice

‘Then I want to change it,’ cried Shirlok, as the sheriff’s men began to drag him away. ‘I am not guilty. I did not take anything after all – it was Chapman, Lora and… It was not me!’

‘Next case,’ said Sir John.

Cambridge, June 1355

A cart clattered along the tangled lanes known as the Jewry and headed for the high street. It was still early, and the wispy clouds were not yet tinged with the sun’s golden touch, although the birds were awake and sang loud and shrill along the empty streets. Folk were beginning to stir, and smoke curled lazily skyward as people lit fires to heat ale and breakfast pottage. Bells announced the morning offices, and sleepy monks and friars made their way to their dawn devotions.

Matilde urged her horse to move faster, but the cart was heavy – it was loaded with all her possessions and the beast was not able to move as briskly as she would have liked. When she passed St Michael’s Church, her eyes misted with tears. She glanced down the lane opposite, and saw the Master of Michaelhouse striding towards the High Street, his scholars streaming at his heels as he led the daily procession to the church. Matilde could not see whether the man she loved was there, because her tears were blinding her.

She reached the town gate and passed a coin to the man on duty, knowing he would barely look at her: guards were trained to watch who came into the town, but did not care who left it. He waved his hand to indicate she could go, and she flicked the reins to encourage her nag into a trot, wanting to put as much distance between her and Cambridge as possible, before anyone realised she had gone.

Matilde was leaving because she longed for the respectability she knew she would never have in Cambridge. Folk too readily believed she was the kind of woman to entertain men in her house all night, and she wanted something better. In another county, she could begin a different existence, where she would be staid, decent and respected by all. She would be courted by good men, one of whom she would eventually choose as a husband. She could not afford to waste more of her life on Bartholomew, when it was becoming increasingly obvious that he was never going to ask her to be his wife.

She did not look back as her cart rattled along the road that led to the future. She would not have seen anything if she had, with hot tears scalding her eyes. She did not hear the birdsong of an early summer morning, and she did not care about the clusters of white and pink blossom that adorned the green hedgerows. She wondered whether she would ever take pleasure in such things again.

When the service at St Michael’s had finished, Bartholomew slipped out of the procession to head for the Jewry. He heard the birds singing and saw the delicate clouds in the sky, and his heart was ready to burst with happiness. He was going to see Matilde, and it was the first day of his new life. The joy he felt told him he should have asked her to marry him years before.

He hesitated when he raised his hand to tap on her door, suddenly assailed with the fear that she might not have him – that the love he had for her was not reciprocated, and she might object to being wed to a physician with few rich patients and a negligent attitude towards collecting his fees. But he would not know unless he asked, so he knocked and waited. There was no reply, and he was tempted to postpone the matter, although he knew he was just being cowardly. He rapped again, then jiggled the latch, but the door was locked. He supposed Matilde had gone to the Market Square, to buy bread for breakfast, so he set off in that direction.

But the traders had not seen Matilde that morning, and nor had her friend Yolande. Then the physician was summoned to his sister’s house, where one of Oswald Stanmore’s apprentices had a fever. The illness was a serious one, and it was the following afternoon before he could leave his patient and go in search of Matilde again. He was surprised to find Yolande weeping on the doorstep.

‘She has gone,’ she wept. ‘And it is your fault.’

Bartholomew regarded her blankly. ‘What?’

Yolande pushed open Matilde’s door to reveal a chamber that was empty, with the exception of two benches that had evidently been too large to carry. When he stepped inside, his footsteps echoed hollowly. There was a note on the windowsill, which he picked up with shaking fingers. It said nothing other than that Yolande was to have the remaining furniture, and that the enclosed coins were to pay any outstanding debts.

‘She wanted to marry you, but you would never ask her,’ said Yolande accusingly. ‘It is your fault she has left us.’

He sank down on one of the benches, dazed and numb. ‘I came to propose yesterday.’

‘But it was too late,’ said Yolande harshly. ‘She told me she would not wait for ever.’

Bartholomew stood, resolute. ‘I will find her. Where would she go?’

‘She has a sister in Carcassonne and a cousin in Poitiers, so she may have gone to them. And there was a man who once asked her to wed him – he was rich, not a near-pauper, like you. His name was William de Spayne and he was a merchant, but I cannot remember where she said he lived.’

‘Well, try,’ ordered Bartholomew curtly. ‘It is important.’

‘She is more likely to go to her sister first,’ said Yolande, sniffing. ‘But she once said that if she ever left Cambridge, then no one would ever find her.’

‘I will,’ vowed Bartholomew with quiet determination. ‘I shall leave within the hour.’

Lincoln, December 1356

The sun was setting as the travellers approached the outskirts of the city. Red-gold beams struck the mighty cathedral perched atop its hill, turning its pale stone to a glowing bronze that darkened as night approached. Already, stars were beginning to appear in a cloudless sky, and shadows slanted across the frozen track. Matthew Bartholomew, Master of Medicine at the University in Cambridge and Fellow of the College of Michaelhouse, shifted uncomfortably in his saddle, and was glad the journey was almost at an end. It was unusually cold for the time of year, and early snows dusted the surrounding countryside.

‘A magnificent sight,’ breathed Thomas de Suttone, gazing at the minster in awe. He was a large man who wore the habit of a Carmelite friar, albeit a very elegant one. One of Michaelhouse’s theologians, Suttone preferred to tell others how to practise moderation and poverty than to do it himself. ‘A fitting tribute to the glory of God.’

‘It is on a hill,’ complained Brother Michael, the third of Michaelhouse’s travel-weary scholars, regarding it balefully. He was a Benedictine, and his dark cloak and habit were splattered with pale mud. His palfrey stumbled in an ice-filled rut, and a lesser horseman might have been thrown, but the monk had been taught to ride before he could walk, and he did no more than shift in his saddle and adjust the reins. ‘We shall have to ascend it on foot, because my poor beast is spent.’

‘It is spent because you are so fat,’ explained Suttone brutally. ‘My animal is not nearly as exhausted, and neither is Matt’s. Yours has a far greater load to carry.’

‘I am slimmer than I was this time last year,’ countered Michael indignantly. He was proud of the fact that the habits he had filled to bursting point eighteen months earlier were now slightly loose, although even the most sycophantic of his friends could not deny that he still possessed a very full figure. Bartholomew encouraged him in his new regime of moderation, because, as a physician, he believed that obese men were susceptible to dangerous imbalances of the humours.

‘When the Death returns – which it will – it will carry off gluttons,’ stated Suttone matter-of-factly. He was fond of predicting what would happen if the country were ever ravaged by the plague again. Bartholomew stifled a sigh. He was weary of Suttone’s gloomy prophecies, and did not like to be reminded of the time when all his medical skills and experience had proved to be useless.