Susanna GREGORY - A Summer of Discontent

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.’