The Medieval Murderers - The False Virgin

When he looked away to the right, he saw that a score of yards in front of the main door of the church, a transverse wall ran across the oblong compound, cutting it in half. It was pierced by a central gate and beyond this, the more secular part of the establishment lay separated from the monastic area around the church. It contained the guest-house, kitchen, stables, laundry, brewhouse and accommodation for the lay brothers, who did all the manual work in the priory and in the fields outside.

As he stood on the steps of the prior’s house, built at the inner angle of the cross wall, Mark looked again at the creamy stone of the frater and dorter on his left, where the monks ate and slept. The dorter was connected to the south transept of the church by a passageway that led to the night stairs. This allowed the monks to enter the church for the nighttime services directly from their dormitory over the refectory, without being exposed to the elements. The young monk was well aware that the Benedictine Order was often accused of soft living, which had given rise to several splinter groups, who practised a more ascetic way of life.

His contemplation of the architecture complete, Mark crossed the inner courtyard to the opposite side of the church, where the chapter house and infirmary occupied that corner of the enclosure.

As he approached the infirmary, he saw the infirmarian coming towards him.

‘Have you much trade today, Brother?’ he asked Brother Louis in a mildly jocular way. The French infirmarian, who had studied medicine at the prestigious school of Montpellier, looked sternly at the younger man, critical of his light-hearted manner.

‘If you mean that we have a number of souls needing treatment for their ailments, then yes, trade is good,’ he said haughtily. In fact almost everything about Brother Louis was haughty. He was a thin, erect and stiff-necked man of about fifty, very conscious of his good education and medical skills.

Not at all chastened by this, Mark delivered a message from Brother Paul.

‘The prior wishes to know how Brother John is faring,’ he said. ‘We were all worried about him last evening when he had another of his seizures.’

The infirmarian shook his head, more in exasperation than concern.

‘Our Brother John is getting on in years. In fact, that is his main problem, as there is little physically wrong with him. He is frail and all we can do is humour him and keep him comfortable for the remaining years of his life, which I fear may not be all that many.’

Having put the younger man in his place, Louis stalked on towards the long building in the lower corner of the inner compound, opposite the prior’s house. This was the domain of Brother Jude, the cellarer, who was responsible for all the stores, including those that made life comfortable for the residents. A couple of lay brothers were unloading casks of wine from an ox-cart and carrying them through the large doors into the capacious storerooms, but the Frenchman entered through a smaller door into the cellarer’s office.

Brother Jude was a large, somewhat obese, monk with a full pink face and a red nose, which suggested that he was conscientious in sampling much of the liquor that entered his vaults. Indeed, the first thing he did was to offer the infirmarian a cup of best Burgundy wine and keep him company with a similar libation while they discussed the list of medical supplies that Louis had placed before him.

When this was done, Jude also enquired after the health of the older brother, John, who had collapsed on his way to matins the previous midnight, after having one of his shaking fits.

‘He has been getting worse for months,’ commented Jude as he finished the last of his wine. ‘I often see him from here, walking about the precinct talking to himself, staring up at the sky with his hands clasped as if he is speaking directly to God himself!’

Louis shrugged indifferently. ‘Perhaps he is, for all we know. There is little I can do about it, as he has no physical infirmity that I can treat. He has been having these fits these many years, but at least they are not getting worse.’

After a little more conversation about the state of the world, and especially the concerns about the political unrest in the country, the infirmarian walked in his stately fashion back to his hospital. Though its primary function was to treat the occupants of the priory, the small population of only eighteen brothers and a score of lay brothers provided relatively little work for the doctor. However, much of his labour went on the treatment of visitors, who came with a variety of ailments, seeking relief both from his medicines and through the miraculous water from St Beornwyn’s spring. Though some of these supplicants were common folk, the reputation of the priory for its medical care was such that a considerable income was obtained from rich merchants and manor-lords who came from all over the Midlands, the Marches and the West Country.

Once inside his infirmary, which was a long, low building, roofed in slate like the rest of the priory, Brother Louis went to the room at one end, which acted as his office and dispensary. A table and two chairs represented his consulting room, the rest of the chamber being given over to cabinets and shelves filled with various herbs and drugs, together with his paraphernalia for rolling pills and mixing tinctures. He poured a small quantity of a reddish liquid from a flask into a small earthenware cup and went into the main ward, which had half a dozen low beds, each consisting of a straw mattress resting on a low wooden plinth. Beyond was a short corridor leading to four cubicles, used either for patients wealthy enough to pay for a private room or those who were very sick. Only two were in use at the moment, one for a fat burgess from Hereford with a disfiguring skin disease of his neck, and the other for a wealthy fish merchant of Bristol suffering from weeping ulcers of his legs. The main ward contained only one patient and it was to that bed which Louis now went, holding up his cup of medicine as if it were a Communion chalice.

‘Drink this down, John,’ he commanded imperiously. ‘It will settle your mind after your disturbance of last night.’

‘It was no disturbance, Louis, it was a message from Heaven telling me to expect grave news!’ quavered the old man indignantly.

‘Just take this sedative, John, then get some sleep,’ urged the infirmarian impatiently. ‘You should be fit enough to attend compline later today.’

With this admonition, he walked away towards the private cubicles, where his bedside manner improved markedly as he enquired solicitously after the health of the two rich patients.

At St Oswald’s they subscribed to the tenets of the Benedictine Order, founded by the great man many centuries earlier, but they did not adhere as strictly to the rules as did the Cistercians or the Cluniacs, who had diverged from them because of their perception that the Benedictines had gone soft. Though, as in all monastic establishments, there were nine offices each day devoted to praising God, this small priory had compromised by joining several services together, so that they were actually only held on five occasions. That morning, terce, sext, nones and High Mass had been combined into a forty-minute observance that ended in plenty of time for midday dinner.

The black-robed monks trooped into their refectory and sat at the three oak tables set in a U-shape. At the centre of the top table sat Prior Paul, with his sub-prior, Matthew, on his right, and Pierre, the sacristan, on his left. The prior often ate alone in his house, but today he ate with his flock, anxious to hear if any of them had picked up any gossip from the lay brothers about the army that lay over the horizon.