A Summer of Discontent (26 page)

Bartholomew shook his head. ‘You will probably find that Mackerell had no intention of meeting us in the first place. Why
should he? He will be safer hiding in the Fens.’

‘I hope you are right,’ said Michael gloomily. ‘I would not like to think that Mackerell lies dead because we spoke to him.’

‘He is not dead, Brother. If I raise this torch, you can see clear across to the other side of the river. There is no corpse
floating here.’

‘I have no idea what is going on in this town, Matt,’ said Michael tiredly. ‘But I intend to find out. No one gets the better
of the Senior Proctor and his trusted associate. We shall solve this mess, Matt. You mark my words!’

T
HURSDAYS WERE MARKET DAY IN
E
LY, AND WORK STARTED
early. The hum of voices, the rattle of carts along the streets and the whinnying of horses could be heard long before it
was light, and Bartholomew had the sense that the city had barely slept the night before. He certainly felt as though he had
not: old Roger in the infirmary had had a difficult night, and Bartholomew and Brother Henry had managed to sleep only in
fits and starts. By the time the first glimmerings of dawn appeared, the infirmarian looked as heavy-eyed and weary as Bartholomew
felt. With dawn came peaceful sleep for Roger, and the two physicians left Julian watching over him while they went for some
fresh air. They strolled around the marketplace, watching the frenetic activity taking place in the half-light as stall owners
struggled to raise bright awnings over their shops and arrange their offerings in a way that they hoped would prove irresistible
to buyers.

Bartholomew looked around him. There were butchers’ stalls with colourfully plumaged waterfowl hanging by their feet, and
bloody hunks of meat already beginning to attract flies as well as paying customers. Hares were common at the Cambridge market,
but they were rare in the Fens, and there was not one to be seen. There was plenty of fish, though, displayed in neat, glistening
rows: the shiny black-skinned eels that were so famous in the area, trout and a grotesquely large pike hanging across one
counter, its ugly head dangling just above the mud of the street.

Bakers and pie-sellers provided more sweetly fragrant wares, and baskets of loaves of all qualities and shapes were carefully
stacked, along with cakes and pastries for those
able to afford more than the basic necessities of life.

Food was not all that was for sale. Ely was a thriving city, and boasted its own pottery and a lucrative rope-making industry.
Pots with a beautiful blue glaze were displayed by one proud craftsman, while others sold the unglazed, functional utensils
that were present in every kitchen – large jugs for milk, great cauldrons for stews, and dishes for serving meat and fish.
The rope-makers’ stalls were piled with huge coils of cord in every thickness imaginable; some of extra strength were used
by builders for their pulleys, while others were silky and delicate and were used to lace shirts and bodices.

There was livestock, too. Squealing pigs, frightened calves and milling sheep were locked in pens at one end of the marketplace,
while flocks of geese, ducks and squawking chickens weaved in and out of the legs of the busy stall holders. Loud human voices
added to the general noise and confusion. In one corner, spices from distant and little-known lands were on sale, and the
exotic aroma of cinnamon and cloves almost, but not quite, dispelled the overpowering smell of warm manure from the animals.
Dogs sniffed the soft mat of rotting straw and dung underfoot, occasionally excavating something they deemed edible.

Bartholomew bought some ink from a parchment seller in anticipation of the work he planned to do on his treatise on fevers,
and then Brother Henry purchased some of the weak breakfast beer that was being sold by the priory’s brewer. It was exactly
how Bartholomew liked his morning ale: cool, sweet, pleasantly nutty and so clear that he could see the bottom of the jug.
The ale served at Michaelhouse tended to be a brew that had been bought cheaply; it was already past its best, and invariably
cloudy.

The physicians finished their ale and went to the cathedral to celebrate prime. A thin column of black-robed monastics was
already winding its way into the chancel, each man pushing back his hood as he crossed from the cloister to the church proper.
They walked in silence, their sandalled feet
tapping softly on the flagstones. Henry nodded a farewell to Bartholomew and joined the end of the procession. The physician’s
heart sank when he saw a door open in the west end of the cathedral and Father John bustle in. Prime would not be a peaceful,
contemplative occasion after all.

The monks began to chant their prayers, and Bartholomew closed his eyes to listen as the rich rumble of the basses acted as
a drone for the higher notes of the tenors. Then Michael’s pleasant baritone began to echo through the chancel, singing alternate
lines with the rest of the monks acting as a chorus. Just when the physician began to lose himself in the beauty of the music,
Father John’s mass started.

Bartholomew opened his eyes to see Michael glowering in the direction of the nave, displeased that his singing was being spoiled
by the priest’s continuing battle with the priory. Bartholomew tried to concentrate on the words of the psalm, but found instead
that he listened with horrified fascination to John’s bastard Latin. Most of it was entirely nonsensical, but some bore enough
resemblance to the original to be amusing. John’s parishioners did not know, and probably did not care, that their priest’s
mass was incomprehensible, and were present in their usual numbers.

Bartholomew spotted Leycestre standing near the back with his two nephews. Feeling that it was unreasonable for anyone to
expect him to pray under such conditions, he slipped out of the chancel and made his way to the nave, intending to ask Leycestre
what had happened in the Lamb Inn that had resulted in the gypsies’ undignified expulsion. Not surprisingly, given his state
the night before, Leycestre looked fragile and his face was pale and unshaven.

‘I trust you arrived home safely last night?’ Bartholomew whispered.

Leycestre blinked stupidly for a moment, then rubbed his head as he understood what the physician was saying. ‘It was you
who prevented that fight. I am sorry. I was the worse for ale, and should have been better mannered.’

‘Even to gypsies?’ asked Bartholomew archly.

Leycestre smiled ruefully. ‘Even to gypsies. They are thieves, and it is possible that they killed our three much-lamented
townsmen, but we need their labour at this time of year, and we cannot afford to have them leave just yet.’

‘That is not the position you held last night,’ Bartholomew remarked. ‘Eulalia told me that you accused them of stealing the
wages from honest local folk.’

Leycestre edged around one of the great, thick columns, so that the priest would not see him talking during the mass. ‘I should
have kept my thoughts to myself. I do believe that
we
should have the money the landowners are willing to pay the gypsies, but it is not the gypsies’ fault that the situation
is as it is.’

‘Will you apologise to them?’ Bartholomew asked. ‘It cannot have been pleasant to be accused of stealing in such a public
place.’

‘I will mention to Eulalia that I may have spoken out of turn,’ said Leycestre, resentment thick in his voice. ‘But I will
not apologise to her loutish brothers – especially that Guido.’

‘Was there a reason for all that drinking last night?’ Bartholomew asked curiously. ‘A large number of people were in the
taverns, and they were all buying a lot more ale than usual.’

Leycestre gave him a puzzled glance, as though he could not believe the question had been asked. ‘It was a Wednesday.’

It was Bartholomew’s turn to look bemused. ‘What of it?’

Leycestre gave a long-suffering sigh. ‘We are paid on Wednesdays. It is the day before the weekly market, you see, and the
landlords want us to spend all our hard-earned wages on the goods of other rich men. It is a cunning ploy.’

‘I see,’ said Bartholomew, wondering whether that was truly the reason for the choice of day, or whether it was to allow the
women to make their purchases in the marketplace before the men had time to squander all their earnings in taverns. If the
previous night was anything to go by, such a policy might be well justified.

‘Market days are always interesting occasions,’ Leycestre
went on. ‘They are excellent opportunities to discuss the heavy yoke of labourers with men who feel empathy with us.’

‘I am sure they are,’ said Bartholomew. He changed the subject, before Leycestre could start preaching. Like many men who
burned with the fire of his convictions, Leycestre was tedious company once he had started holding forth. ‘Do you know a man
called Mackerell? He was supposed to meet Michael last night, but he never arrived.’

‘He drinks in the Mermaid,’ said Leycestre helpfully. ‘You should ask there for him.’

‘We tried, but no one seemed to know his whereabouts.’

Leycestre rubbed his chin thoughtfully. ‘He is Ely’s best fisherman, but the monks insist on buying all his eels for an absurdly
low price. He is finding it increasingly difficult to manage on the wages they pay him, but they refuse to give him more.’

‘He found the bodies in the river,’ said Bartholomew, refusing to be side-tracked by Leycestre’s biased assessment of fish
economics – Mackerell was not that poor. He had been reasonably well dressed and had declined Michael’s offer of free wine.
‘We wanted to know whether he noticed anything that might lead us to the killer.’

‘He might have done I suppose,’ said Leycestre. ‘He has certainly been acting a little oddly since he found them.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Naturally, he was unsettled at being obliged to haul corpses from the river, but he makes his living by water and such men
are used to drownings. However, I was surprised they bothered him as much as they seem to have done. He is a surly fellow
at the best of times, but the discovery of these bodies has done nothing to improve his temper.’

‘Other than the gypsies, who you believe are responsible for everything bad, is there anyone else who might have committed
those murders?’ Since Leycestre was a man who liked holding forth in taverns, Bartholomew wondered whether he had heard any
rumours that he might be prepared to share.

‘None of us know who else it could be,’ came the disappointing answer. Bartholomew supposed he should not be surprised: Leycestre
was rigid in his belief that the gypsies were the source of all evil.

‘And none of the three dead men had any particular enemies?’ he tried again.

Leycestre shrugged. ‘They all had a great number of enemies. You must have heard by now that they were not popular. Haywarde
drank heavily and was inclined to fight; Glovere was a miserable pig who wronged people with his vicious tongue; and Chaloner
had an annoying liking for the property of other people.’

‘A thief?’ asked Bartholomew. ‘No one has mentioned this before.’

‘Well, I suppose no one likes to speak ill of the dead. We do not want them returning from Purgatory to wander among us because
we have unsettled their souls.’

Bartholomew smothered a smile. While that might usually be true, few Ely citizens seemed to have any qualms about saying exactly
what they thought of Glovere, Chaloner and Haywarde. ‘And Mackerell?’ he asked. ‘Is he liked in the town?’

‘Not especially,’ replied Leycestre. ‘He is an excellent fisherman, but he occasionally tops up his basket with the catches
of others.’

‘You mean he is a thief, too? When he does not catch enough eels for himself, he steals?’

‘We all do it occasionally when we are desperate, but he does it frequently. I blame the priory, personally, for placing him
in a position where he is forced into dishonesty on a regular basis.’

‘Father John has warned you about discussing such matters during mass,’ came a sharp voice behind them. Bartholomew turned
to find he was facing the formidable Agnes Fitzpayne. Her words had been addressed to Leycestre, but it was Bartholomew she
had in her beady gaze. Leycestre backed away a little, and some of his confident bluster evaporated.

‘Leycestre was telling me about Mackerell,’ said Bartholomew, hoping to placate her by revealing what they had discussed.
‘He was supposed to meet Michael last night, but failed to appear.’

‘Unreliable,’ declared Agnes immediately. ‘Do not read anything sinister into it. That man pleases himself whom he sees and
when.’

‘The landlord of the Lamb tells me that you recently had quite a conversation with the brother-in-law you told me you despised,’
said Bartholomew, watching her closely for any reaction that might betray what she had been doing in the tavern with Haywarde
the night he died. ‘You, Leycestre and his two nephews.’

Agnes’s eyes narrowed. ‘What of it? Barbour is a shameless gossip, and had no right to tell you my personal business.’

‘Perhaps not, but he did. What did you discuss? I was under the impression that you disliked him, but you still spent the
last night of his life in eager conversation with him.’

‘What we discussed is none of your affair,’ snapped Agnes angrily. ‘But I can see that if I leave it at that, you will tell
your fat friend, and then he will spread lies that it was
us
who threw Haywarde in the river. If you must know, we were talking about money.’

‘Money he owed you?’ pressed Bartholomew.

‘Money I gave to my sister and that he took for his own purposes,’ said Agnes. ‘Now, there is a mass in progress. If you are
a heathen, who cannot bring himself to listen to Father John’s pious words, then you should leave. If you are a Christian,
you will stay and listen in reverent silence.’

The competition between chanting monks and yelling priest was reaching its customary crescendo and Bartholomew was finding
it difficult to concentrate on his conversation with the seditious Leycestre and the aggressive Agnes anyway. He opted for
the first choice, to the shock of Agnes, and nodded a brief farewell before walking outside.
But the discordant racket followed him so he walked more quickly, trying to escape the noise, and ended up racing past the
cemetery and towards the infirmary. There, he ran headlong into Michael, who was making his way to the refectory.

‘What are you doing here?’ asked Bartholomew. ‘You are supposed to be celebrating prime. In fact, you were a major part of
it, the last I heard.’

‘I could stand it no longer.’ Michael glanced at the physician, breathless from his dash and with wind-blown hair, and smiled.
‘You know exactly what I mean. But I left in a dignified manner, whereas you fled like a cat from water, with ears flattened
and terror in your eyes.’