Abbot's Passion
Authors: Stephen Wheeler
ABBOT’S PASSION
by Stephen Wheeler
Text © Stephen Wheeler
Cover photograph of Norwich Cathedral cloister © Philip Moore
By the same author
THE SILENT AND THE DEAD
Brother Walter Mysteries:
UNHOLY INNOCENCE
BLOOD MOON
DEVIL’S ACRE
“Hear
me when I cry to thee Oh Lord for when I was in trouble you set me free.”
So said the psalmist - well, more or less. I translate loosely from the Latin. But in either English or Latin the message is the same: it is a plea for help, and help is what I need right now.
The fact is I have the toothache and am at a loss to know what to do about it. That’s an embarrassing admission for a doctor to make for if I, Walter de Ixworth, physician to the monks and good folk of Saint Edmundsbury, cannot cure my own ailments why should anyone else trust me with theirs? Physician, heal thyself indeed.
Rot!
Teeth are the bane of the medical profession. I truly wonder if there will ever be a time when they can properly be repaired. I’ve tried all the usual remedies: salt water, alcohol, garlic, cloves. Nothing works. I’ve even boiled magpie beaks and drunk the liquor, a cure I have often recommended to others in the past. I shan’t be doing that again. Useless as well as disgusting. Naturally I’ve prayed to Saint Apollonia of Egypt who you would think might have some sympathy having had all her own teeth broken by the Alexandrian mob before being burned alive as a martyr. She is reputed to have voluntarily thrown herself into the flames. If she had half the pain I am suffering at the moment I can quite believe it. But I will admit that petitioning the blessed lady is about the only thing that has had any positive effect. At least she hasn’t made the pain worse.
Which is more than can be said for my assistant, Gilbert. Don’t get me wrong, he’s a willing lad, obedient and helpful most of the time. But I’m afraid he is in some awe of me and reluctant to do what is necessary for fear of incurring my wrath.
He’ll incur it a whole lot more if he doesn’t do as I ask.
How often have I told him that in the art of physicking it is sometimes necessary to be cruel in order to be kind? There is no point, for instance, pussy-footing around with dislocated joints. Bones need determination as Sylvanus our chamberlain discovered last month when he put his back out. My solution was simple. I came up behind him unawares, grasped him firmly about the ribs. A sudden quick tug, a single cry of surprise and it was all over. Admittedly he’s not been able to get off his cot since but at least the pain is gone, along with much of the feeling. Same with the toothache. I got Gilbert to fix one end of a length of cord to the offending molar and the other to the door handle of my laboratorium. One determined shove of the door and out would pop the tooth. But the boy made a complete hash of it. His push when it came was altogether too timid. The cord snapped and the tooth remained embedded in my jaw but is now loose and the pain a thousand-fold worse.
Why am I recounting all this? Partly because it does the spirit good to have a jolly good moan now and then. But also because it was due to my toothache that I came to take part in one of the most momentous events in the abbey’s history: to wit, the invasion of Lakenheath village and the extraordinary consequences that resulted.
Oh, and the murder of course.
JAW-JAW
This
year of Our Lord 1201, the first of a new century, has started rather well all things considered. The end of the world did not occur on January 1
st
as many had prophesied. Indeed, the winter has been a remarkably mild one. The barns are full and it looks as though there will be fewer hungry bellies this spring than last.
On the political front, following the Treaty of Le Goulet King Philip of France finally acknowledged King John as the legitimate heir to his brother’s throne - and crucially to the rights of Richard’s fiefs in France. This was something of a diplomatic coup for John but which in typical fashion he did his best to scupper by stealing the twelve-year-old bride of a member of the powerful Lusignon family on the very steps of the matrimonial altar and marrying her himself. This has thrown the Lusignons back into the arms of King Philip although I should say more because John reneged on his promise of financial compensation than from any sense of moral outrage on the part of the Lusignons. For the moment their indignation has not spilled over into outright rebellion although I can foresee trouble from that quarter in the future. John then took his new queen on a tour of England to show her to her people who by and large received her well. In the course of this he even managed a détente with the King of Scots which was another unexpected success for John although when William the Lion tried to persuade him to add the counties of Cumberland and Westmorland to his Scottish dominions John is said to have treated the suggestion as a joke. As I write the king is still in the north reconciling himself with his half-brother Geoffrey, Archbishop of York, with whom he had a falling out. So for the first time since John’s coronation two years ago England is at last at peace.
Alas, the same cannot be said for our abbey of Saint Edmund. Barely had we concluded the feast of the Forty Martyrs at the beginning of March when the new papal legate to England, Abbot Eustache de Fly, paid us a...dare I say it?...
flying
visit. Of course it’s not unprecedented for the pope’s personal representative to come here; Saint Edmund’s is after all one of England’s greatest abbeys and its abbot one of her most senior churchmen. But we Edmundians guard our independence jealously, none more so than Abbot Samson who never takes kindly to interference from outside least of all from a French abbot. And bearing in mind the reputation of this particular French abbot we knew this was not going to be a social event. Still, we welcomed Abbot Eustache with bells and a sung procession as befitted this most senior of papal dignitaries, albeit with a degree of trepidation. As things turned out we were right to be so...
‘May the Furies of Hell be unleashed on him! May the hags of Tartary bludgeon him to a bloody pulp! May all the legions of Beelzebub fall mercilessly upon his body and excoriate it to the bone!’
‘I take it you’re not entirely enamoured of our new legate, father?’
‘Oh you can snigger Walter, you haven’t met him yet. Wait till you do. The man’s a Diablo! Do you know what he said to me when he arrived yesterday? “Do not fret, Father Abbot, I am here for your comfort and the comfort of your flock.” Comfort of my flock indeed!’
Samson shifted painfully on his cushion - always a bad sign. Whenever he gets agitated he eats the wrong food which aggravates his bowel and that in turn inflames his anal protuberances. As his physician as well as the abbey’s I am only too aware of his discomfort and am naturally concerned. But this was not the moment to start prescribing intimate palliatives. It was Sunday morning and we were in his study at the top of the abbot’s palace, but we were not alone. Two of my brother monks, Jocelin the guest-master and Jocellus the cellarer, were also there - and all of us, it seemed, at the behest of Abbot Eustache.
‘Did the abbot-legate give a reason why he wanted the three of us?’ I asked. ‘It seems a strange combination - the physician, the guest-master and the cellarer. Not a trio that readily springs to mind.’
‘No doubt he’ll explain himself when he gets here. But whatever the reason, you can be sure it won’t be pleasant.’
‘He is the pope’s m-mouthpiece,’ said Jocelin wringing his hands together. ‘I s-suppose we m-must d-do as he asks.’
‘
Asks
, brother guest-master? Did I hear you say
asks
? The Abbot of Fly does not ask. He demands. He harangues. He hectors.’
Jocelin flushed red and lowered his eyes. ‘Y-yes of course, father abbot. S-sorry, father abbot.’
‘Is there any particular reason why I have to be here?’ frowned Jocellus. ‘Sunday is my busiest day. I can’t really afford the time to be standing about like this. I have things I ought to be doing.’
Samson smiled benignly at him. ‘Such as?’
‘A consignment of wine needs auditing. Rats have got into the undercroft again and are nesting in the granary. And later this morning I am due to meet a group of merchants in order to place my order of fish for Holy Week.’
As cellarer Jocellus is responsible for the abbey’s cellars and stores. Without him and his network of suppliers we monks wouldn’t eat.
‘Oh, by all means meet with your fish merchants,’ said Samson. ‘Buy, sell all you will. Just be sure to let us know where you wish your corpse to be buried when Father Eustache has finished with it.’ He leaned towards him. ‘Haven’t you heard? Trading on a Sunday is precisely what the abbot-legate is here to put a stop to.’
Oh dear. It seemed the rumour mill was right. Abbot Eustache was here to promote his views about Sunday trading. Put simply, he doesn’t agree with it. He thinks the Sabbath is for church and nothing else - which I suppose is as it should be. But it has long been our custom in Bury to hold our market on a Sunday, a practice that began not out of any disrespect for the sanctity of the Lord’s Day but rather for convenience. It was simply that with so many people coming into the town for Sunday mass it was expedient for some to stay on afterwards and barter. Admittedly some unscrupulous merchants do come purely for the trade, but it could be argued that without them both town and church would be the emptier. Alas this argument is unlikely to cut much ice with Abbot Eustache and word has it that he wants us to transfer our market day from Sunday to another day forthwith, Tuesday being the favourite.
‘Where is our distinguished abbot-legate?’ I sighed rubbing my aching jaw again.
‘Gone down to the necessarium. No doubt to expel some excess of bile.’
‘I take it he will be coming back up again soon?’
‘Like the proverbial bad penny.’
A sound on the stairs cut short our discussions.
‘That’s him now,’ said Samson rising from his desk. ‘Watch what you say, all of you. One word out of place and he’ll have us all in sackcloth and ashes till Michaelma-ya ah, there you are good Father Eustache!’ he beamed over our heads. ‘Come in, come in! Welcome! Welcome indeed!’
We all turned to see a thin young man dressed in a white robe and standing in the doorway, his hands clasped behind his back and swaying very gently on the balls of his feet. I have to admit I was shocked. From the build-up Samson had given him I was expecting to see a lion but what we got instead was a mouse, and a baby mouse at that. It was difficult to equate this gaunt child abbot with Abbot Samson who was quite old enough to be Eustache’s grandfather. The young man also had the severest tonsure on anyone I had ever seen with the merest wisp of yellowish hair sprouting over the ears and forehead. Was this creature really the Abbot of Fly? It seems he was. Behind him there was another monk, but this one was even shorter - a dwarf also dressed in the white robe of a Cistercian. This, I quickly discovered, was Brother Fidele, Abbot Eustache’s personal clerk who never left his master’s side for a moment - not even, it seemed, to answer a call of nature.
‘Aha, yes, well now,’ beamed Samson, ‘let me introduce you. Do you know Brother Jocellus our cellarer and Master Walter our physician? Brother Jocelin of course you’ve already met at the guest-house.’
The abbot-legate acknowledged each of us in turn with the briefest nod of his head. But when he came to me his gaze seemed to linger a little longer than on the others.
‘
Maître
Walter?’ The abbot-legate raised a quizzical eyebrow to his clerk. Fidele quickly consulted the notebook he held tightly against his chest and whispered something in Eustache’s ear.
‘
Ah oui
,’ the legate nodded. ‘
Le casseur d'os
.’
I baulked a little at that. Even my poor French understood this reference to “the bone-breaker”. It was one soubriquet I had hoped never to hear again having been the invention of my old enemy, Geoffrey de Saye of hateful memory. I don’t know where Abbot Eustache could have heard it. As far as I knew de Saye was in the West Country where he’d been under virtual house-arrest for the past two years. Its repetition today sent shivers down my spine.
‘Do we know each other, father abbot?’ I asked.
Eustache curled one side of his mouth. ‘As the personal representative of His Holiness in Rome the details of every member of his flock is of interest to us,
maître docteur
.’
I wasn’t sure I liked the sound of that.
‘Well now,’ said Samson rubbing his hands together, ‘to business. Why are we here? We are here because -’
‘We are here,’ Abbot Eustache cut across him, ‘because of all the monks of Bury you three know the town best. The cellarer with his dealings with the merchants of the town; the guest-master with his knowledge of the town hostelries; and the physician with his
patients privés
.’ He spoke these last two words with an unmissable measure of distaste.
I’d only known the abbot-legate for three minutes but I was already irritated by his patronizing tone. Normally I would let such things bother me but today the pain in my jaw was making me a little less tolerant than usual.
‘I’m not sure that’s quite right, father abbot.’
Eustache raised a quizzical eyebrow. ‘In what way,
maître
?’
I could feel Samson’s eyes burning into me, but I ignored him.
‘Well, take Brother Jocellus for instance. He does practically all his buying and selling in the abbey slype and has little time for the market. Brother Jocelin would faint rather than go anywhere near a tavern or an alehouse. As for my private patients - those who can afford my prices tend to be the wealthier of the town. They are a rather exclusive club, hardly representative of the
populus communi
.’
Out of the corner of my eye Samson looked as though his scalp was on fire.
‘I am concerned with all who live in the town of Bury,’ said Eustache levelly, ‘whatever his rank or degree. And I do not come unprepared.’ He glanced at his clerk. ‘Brother Fidele has made a thorough analysis of all the monks here. You three are the ones best suited for my purpose and all of you will - with the abbot’s blessing,’ he added as an afterthought, ‘accompany me today.’
‘Er - ac-company you where, f-father abbot,’ said Jocelin still grinning like a monkey, ‘m-may one be so b-bold as to ask?’
‘Why, to the market of course. The Holy Father has decreed that the Lord’s Day is to be kept free of all encumbrances so that men may devote their thoughts exclusively to God. That is what Sundays are for. My brothers, there has been a decline of morals in recent years which his holiness is determined to correct. Sunday is when the churches should be full. Instead it is the alehouses and taverns that are full. There is laughter and gaiety in the streets when there should be prayer and quiet contemplation. That is why I am here. That is what I am charged to achieve.’
‘You intend to close the market?’ I said.
‘I intend no such thing. I will merely point out to those buyers and sellers in the marketplace the error of their ways.’
‘The error of their ways, father?’
Eustache looked at me with pity. ‘As man of learning,
cher maître
, you know that the world is divided into three estates:
bellatores, oratores, laborares
- those who fight, those who pray, and those who labour. That is God’s perfect symmetry. Where does the market trader fit into this? Nowhere. These people skew the natural order. They are parasites. I intend to correct that. But to achieve this I need in fact do nothing. Once they are moved by the grace of the Holy Spirit - once I have pointed it out to them - they will wish naturally to abandon their odious practices and follow the path of true faith.’
‘So you do intend to close the market?’
He scowled at me. ‘I’ve just told you, my intention is to do the Lord’s work.’
‘I see. And our part in this great enterprise of yours - erm, yours and the Holy Spirit?’
‘Will be to support me. You three are the most senior obedientiaries of the abbey. Your presence will demonstrate to the
populus communi
, to use your colourful phrase
maître,
that we are serious in our undertaking.’
‘Admirable sentiments I am sure, father. But I’m a physician. I really don’t really see how my presence -’