Susanna GREGORY - A Summer of Discontent

The physician started to trot down the south aisle, looking for Henry among the shadows. There was nothing. He stopped running and listened, but could only hear the crashes and thumps Welles made as he pounded on the door. Bartholomew jogged on, not understanding why Henry should choose the opposite direction from the place where he would be safe from pursuit. He ran harder then there was a booming sound and the door flew open against the wall. Welles uttered a yell of victory when he spotted the physician.

Bartholomew reached the end of the nave and skidded to a halt, gazing wildly around him. Then he heard a sharp crack and a patter, as some loose masonry fell to the ground in the crumbling north-west transept. Henry was climbing the scaffolding.

‘No!’ he cried, suddenly realising why Henry had not aimed straight for the sanctuary. ‘Henry! There is no need for this!’

He darted forward. Voices echoing loudly in the aisle indicated that Michael and Bukton had arrived, too, and were coming towards him. Bartholomew rushed to the transept and looked up. A figure on the scaffolding was making its way higher and higher, aiming for the roof. Bartholomew started to climb after him, intending to bring Henry down. But with a triumphant cry, Welles reached him and grabbed one leg. Bartholomew found himself unable to move up or down.

‘Henry!’ he shouted, trying to kick free of the determined novice. ‘You do not need to do this. Come down and talk to Michael.’

He could feel vibrations of movement through the scaffolding as Henry continued to ascend, and struggled to free himself. But with a monumental display of desperate strength, Welles swung all his weight on Bartholomew’s foot and the physician lost his grip. He slipped to the floor, where Welles pinned him down. Bartholomew gazed up at the roof, disconcerted by the towering framework above him, which seemed to be swaying.

‘It is going to fall!’ he heard Michael yell. ‘Matt, get out of there!’

Welles decided Michael was right. He released Bartholomew and scrambled away, and Bartholomew saw the entire structure begin to topple. He leapt to his feet, and ran with his head down, aware of falling spars, plaster and pieces of timber clattering all around him. He had only just cleared the transept when there was a tremendous crash, and the scaffolding came tumbling to the ground in a mess of broken planks, crushed stones and coils of rope. Dust billowed, making it difficult to see.

Michael surged forward, peering into the mess. ‘Henry!’ he shouted. ‘Henry!’

But there was no reply.

Michael rounded on Welles, who was visibly shaken. ‘Look what you have done! If you had not tried to stop us, we would have been able to catch him, and this would not have happened!’

‘You would have hanged him,’ said Welles, his eyes filling with tears when he realised that Henry was unlikely to have survived the fall. ‘And he is a decent, kind man. I do not care what you say you have discovered.’

‘He murdered people,’ said Michael, trying to make them see reason. ‘And then your interference allowed him to kill himself. I thought he came here for sanctuary, but the kind of sanctuary he had in mind was his own death.’

‘If he did all that, then he only harmed wicked people,’ said Welles loyally, white faced as a tear coursed its way down his dusty cheek. ‘He loved the rest of us. He was patient with our faults, and he was gentle. He was the only man in the priory who tried to help that horrible Julian.’

‘Julian is dead in the infirmary,’ said Michael harshly.

‘Then not before time,’ said Bukton, defiant but shaken. ‘If Julian had had no Henry to care for him, he would have been dead a lot sooner. I do not care what you say, you will never persuade me that Henry was not a saint.’

‘I liked him myself,’ said Michael tiredly. ‘It is not pleasant to know that a man I have known and admired for years could do such terrible things.’

‘He did not do terrible things,’ wept Welles. ‘He did things that made the priory better and made the town better.’

‘All right,’ conceded Michael. ‘But he broke the law.’

‘Then the law is wrong,’ declared Bukton uncompromisingly. ‘The townsfolk have a point when they claim the laws of the land are unjust. The law would have hanged Henry.’

‘Henry has hanged himself,’ said Bartholomew quietly. He pointed to the wreckage of smashed scaffolding, where the body of a monk swung slowly from side to side. A rope had caught around Henry’s neck, suspending him in midair a long way from the ground. His hands hung limply at his sides, and the awkward angle of his head indicated that his neck was broken. Henry was dead, and there was nothing Bartholomew, Michael or the novices could do about it.

‘Henry has hanged himself,’ Bartholomew repeated softly.

‘That was one of the least pleasant cases I have ever worked on,’ said Michael two days later, as he and Bartholomew sat quietly together near St Etheldreda’s tomb in the cathedral. ‘I felt no sympathy whatsoever for the victims, and a great admiration for the killer.’

‘Even after you discovered he was a murderer?’ asked Bartholomew.

Michael nodded. ‘I have known Henry for years, and have always respected and liked him. I am not surprised young men like Welles and Bukton were prepared to do all they could to save him.’

‘They knew he would have hanged, had you caught him.’

‘He would not,’ said Michael tiredly. ‘Alan would not have permitted that, especially if you had provided evidence that hemp had damaged his mind. He would have been sent away from Ely, though, and would not have been allowed near an infirmary again. But how did he die? Could you tell, when you examined the body?’

‘The rope broke his neck. He died instantly.’

‘That is a mercy,’ said Michael. He stood, and began to walk out of the cathedral, pausing for a moment to glance at the ruin of the north-west transept. ‘I shall think of him every time I come here. His sudden death means that he did not have time to make a confession, and, according to Roger, he always allowed the men he killed to repent.’

‘That was good of him.’

Michael sighed, turning his flabby white face to the warmth of the sun as they left the cathedral and walked through the cloisters towards the Black Hostry. ‘You knew Henry for only a few days, so I cannot expect you to understand. He was a good man. Welles, Roger and the others are right.’

‘I suppose his pre-stabbing ritual partly accounts for the bruises on the victims’ faces,’ said Bartholomew thoughtfully. ‘I assumed the killer was holding them to cut their necks, but he was also allowing them to make a final confession. I cannot imagine what was going through his mind at that point.’

‘Nor me,’ admitted Michael. ‘But Roger revealed that he and Ynys helped Henry kill Chaloner and Haywarde. Then Henry took the bodies to the river to get rid of them.’

‘They died late at night, Brother,’ said Bartholomew. ‘After they left the Lamb. What were two old men and Henry doing out and about at that hour?’

Michael regarded him with raised eyebrows. ‘Patients come to you at all hours of the day and night, and Henry’s were no different. Also, remember that these were selfish men, who thought nothing of waking a physician just because they happened to feel the need of one. One came to the infirmary with a sore thumb and the other an aching knee, apparently – both ailments that would have kept until a more convenient hour.’

‘And so Henry copied Ralph’s murder of Glovere by putting the bodies in the river? He, like Ralph, hoped to pass the murders off as suicides?’