The Riddle of St Leonard's (38 page)

Owen thought to cheer her. ‘They are tending Matilda’s garden at the hospital. She would be proud of it.’

‘I am glad of that.’ Lucie was quiet a moment. ‘You know, in the end, the second part of the riddle was wrong. Not only the guilty suffered. And think what that woman almost did to the hospital that raised the daughter she abandoned.’

‘And what of the penance? Were they responsible for Adam Carter’s death? Or the fate of his leman and children?’

‘That, my love, is a question for our dinner guest.’

‘I think I shall leave it for another day.’

F
rom dawn onwards, all employees of the York Tavern felt the brunt of Bess’s frustration. If perfect cleanliness was possible, they would achieve it this day. Scrubbing, dusting, sweeping, polishing, and Bess herself doing the work of three. She could not believe the ingratitude shown her the previous evening by Owen and Lucie. Shoving her out of the house as if she were any old busybody. For pity’s sake, it was her uncle’s death and his claims about Laurence’s death that had made folk see that something was amiss. And all the days she had sacrificed to assist Owen. Small thanks she received for it.

By midday, she was exhausted. ‘I shall have a rest now, Tom. See that they don’t slacken their pace.’

Up in her bedchamber, she flung open the shutters to get a breeze. It had all begun here, when she had smelled the fire. The sky was blue today, and but for the tolling of St Mary’s bell, it was passing quiet. That was another frustration; after all her effort, Brother Wulfstan had passed away. What was God about these days?

And what was that? She leaned farther out of the window. Merciful Mother, it was His Grace the Archbishop of York coming out of Stonegate into the square with a dark-haired child clutching his left hand, a babe in his right arm. Brother Michaelo walked behind him carrying a large basket. She squinted. The babe had flame-red hair. Bess turned and hurried down the stairs.

‘Tom! You will never guess what the archbishop has returned to us. Stop that noise and listen to me.’

Tom paused with a wooden mallet in mid-air; he was trying to hammer a pewter plate flat once more. ‘What is it, wife?’

‘Gwenllian and Hugh. His Grace has brought them back from the country.’

‘There is a tale to tell in that, I would guess.’

‘I should attend them. See whether they have enough food.’

‘You would do better to wait until summoned.’

But she was already mounting the stairs. A splash to her face, neck and hands, off with the apron and on with one of her beribboned caps and she would be presentable, even to an archbishop.

She arrived in time to witness tearful greetings. Lucie’s were not entirely tears of joy as she clutched Hugh to her.

‘Sir Robert is ill,’ Thoresby was telling her, ‘and thus your aunt and I thought it best the children be brought away from him.’

‘Pestilence?’ Lucie asked in a whisper.

‘No. A chill brought on by a tumble into the pond. It seems he was jousting with Gwenllian.’

The dark-haired two year old sat in her father’s lap, solemnly listening. Owen stroked her hair, curly and wiry as his own. ‘That does not mean you are to blame, Gwenllian.’

She said nothing, but grabbed Owen’s hand and held on tight.

‘Is he very ill?’ Lucie asked.

Thoresby motioned to Michaelo to take the basket to the kitchen. ‘At his age, any illness is difficult, Mistress Wilton. Dame Phillippa seemed anxious, but I think it was the children worried her.’

Perhaps it was not the time to interrupt, Bess thought. She was backing out of the doorway when Owen noticed her.

‘Come in, Bess, come in.’

‘Your Grace,’ she bobbed a curtsey. ‘I had to come see whether my eyes tricked me.’ She gave the children hugs, glanced over the well set table. So there was to be a feast.

‘She has sharp eyes, Your Grace,’ Owen said. ‘And was a great help to me in finding the truth about her uncle’s death.’

‘Which I have yet to hear, neighbour,’ Bess reminded him.

‘You are a woman of many gifts, Mistress Merchet,’ Thoresby said. ‘I shall remember you if ever I need another spy.’

Bess shook her head until her ribbons bobbed. That was the last thing she wished. ‘I pray you, think not of me for such work, Your Grace. Managing the tavern is more to my liking.’ But it was pleasing to be praised for something other than her housekeeping. ‘Though I do admit I have a certain knack for it.’

The concept of a hospital in fourteenth-century England differed from the modern concept in a critical way, perhaps best defined by Rotha Mary Clay in her classic 1909 work: ‘the hospital … was an ecclesiastical, not a medical, institution. It was for care rather than cure: for the relief of the body, when possible, but pre-eminently for the refreshment of the soul … The staff … endeavoured … to strengthen the soul and prepare it for the future life.’ Not that survival was unheard of. St Leonard’s ordinance stated that those cared for within the hospital were not to be discharged until convalescent and able to work.

Along with the concept, the meaning of the word ‘hospital’ has changed, and one might almost say contracted, over time. St Leonard’s, York, encompassed most of the definitions provided by the OED: ‘A house or hostel for the reception and entertainment of pilgrims, travellers, and strangers; a hospice. A charitable institution for the housing and maintenance of the needy; an asylum for the destitute, infirm, or aged. A charitable institution for the education and maintenance of the young. An institution or establishment for the care of the sick or wounded, or of those who require medical treatment.’ St Leonard’s was, additionally, a monastic house, and it daily provided alms to the poor of York and fed the inmates of the York Castle prison. Hence, it was of tremendous importance to the city. There were other hospitals in York, but none was so diverse in purpose, none touched on so many aspects of the people’s lives. Most were more specialised, caring for lepers, ailing clergy, wayfarers, the poor, and, increasingly, guilds provided care for their own ill and elderly. A speciality not found was pestilence.

The pestilence of 1369 was the third visitation of the plague. Records of this outbreak are sketchy, but most agree that it took mostly the elderly or infirm and children, which suggests to our modern way of thinking that people were building up an immunity. Rosemary Horrox sums up fourteenth-century theories of the plague’s causes: ‘Scientists were agreed that the physical cause of plague was the corruption of the air – or, rather, since air was an element and could not change its substance, the mixing of air with corrupt or poisonous vapours, which when inhaled would have a detrimental effect on the human body. Where they differed was in the explanations they gave for the corruption. Some causes were obvious. Everyone agreed that the air could be poisoned by rotting matter, including dead bodies, or by excrement or stagnant water. Naturally enough, suspicion was extended to anything which smelt unpleasant … [thus] suggested precautions against plague always include a recommendation to surround oneself with pleasant smells.’ Yet day to day life had to go on, so people became creative about portable sources of positive scents. Some of their preventatives might have had the incidental effect of repelling fleas or creating an environment unappealing to rats, which may have accidentally saved some people.

Gathering the victims together in an infirmary was absolutely contrary to the wisdom of the times. The sick were isolated, as far as was possible, and the healthy were advised to avoid crowds. I thought it an interesting situation in which to study St Leonard’s, to show how the role of a hospital in a community has changed. Richard de Ravenser goes to York not to give moral support to his people working among the plague victims but to see to the hospital’s finances and shore up its reputation. The plague had no particular significance to the Master of St Leonard’s.

One of the few charitable institutions that survived the Conquest, St Leonard’s was popularly said to have been founded by King Athelstan in 936 as a hospice, or guesthouse for wayfarers (not the canons of the minster). It was known as St Peter’s Hospital until the late twelfth century, as it was administered by the canons of York Minster, or St Peter’s. An estimated 300 people populated the precinct, which extended from Footless Lane almost to Petergate, and from Lop Lane to the south wall of St Mary’s Abbey. The full complement of staff of the hospital included a master, at least thirteen brethren, lay brothers, eight sisters, plus clerks, servants and lay sisters. In the fourteenth century, the mastership of the hospital, by then known as St Leonard’s, was in the King’s patronage, although Richard de Ravenser, being the Queen’s Receiver, may have owed his appointment to the Queen. Of course, he was also the nephew of John Thoresby, Archbishop of York.

The work of the hospital was financed by the Petercorn, a grant of thraves (or a measure of grain, roughly twenty-four sheaves), one from every plough (or about every 120 acres) in the diocese of York. After the first visitation of the Black Death, the income from the Petercorn did not keep pace with prices and wages; poor harvests such as that of 1368 aggravated the problem. The hospital received endowments of land, churches and mills, which brought additional income, but the dwindling of the Petercorn had encouraged former masters of St Leonard’s to sell corrodies for quick cash. A corrody was rather like an investment in a retirement home – a sum of money paid in return for not only room and board but also medical and spiritual aid. Difficulties arose when corrodies were sold for flat fees; many corrodians lived longer than expected, and thus cost the hospital. The King, being the hospital’s patron, also used St Leonard’s and other establishments as repositories for ageing servants; and the King paid no fee for these corrodians.

As Keeper of the Hanaper and Queen’s Receiver, Richard de Ravenser proved himself adept at finance. In 1363 the King promoted Ravenser’s Keeper status to a clerk of the first grade. Also in this year, the King gave Ravenser, as the Queen’s Receiver, the task of clearing the queen’s considerable debts. So it is not surprising that during his mastership of St Leonard’s (1363–84), Ravenser placed priority on improving the hospital’s financial situation. He refused to sell corrodies for flat fees; instead he sought to increase the hospital’s valuable and appreciating property holdings in the city in the form of messuages and tenements in return for corrodies and obits (offerings for annual memorial masses on behalf of the deceased).

I thought the issue of corrodians outliving their welcome a situation ripe for a murder mystery. And had Ravenser not been a real historic figure, I doubt I could have resisted implicating him in some convenient deaths. But the more I read about Ravenser, the more I felt that his flaw was more likely to be an obsession with balanced ledgers and good reputation and a lack of intuition concerning the people in his charge.

But one evening in 1995, during a congenial dinner in York, Patricia Cullum mentioned the lay sisters who began to appear, perhaps in the late fourteenth century, at St Leonard’s. And slowly Anneys began to form in my imagination: a widow taking minor vows as a lay sister in order to move about the city and the hospital without bringing much attention to herself. It was convenient (for me) that the lay sisters lived outside the hospital, in the city. And as they were little more than servants, I thought it unlikely anyone would be terribly interested in their backgrounds or their activities when they were not on duty.

Plague and the Queen’s death were interesting complications. It is unclear when John Thoresby dismantled Sherburne for its stones, but I thought it fitting that he would have done something so drastic at this time, with his city in turmoil and the Queen on her death-bed.

Queen Phillippa did not die of plague; she had been ailing for years, and in the summer of 1369 she took a turn for the worse. Many say that when Phillippa died, Edward III lost his anchor. Unless, of course, one considered Alice Perrers a fitting substitute. Froissart reports that on the Queen’s death-bed she asked the King to grant three wishes: that he would honour her debts, and her bequests, and that when he died he would be buried beside her at Westminster. The King tearfully agreed. By tradition, her death-bed was donated to the clergy. The hangings and coverlets were made into vestments for the clergy of York Minster, in memory of her wedding in the cathedral. Her subjects had loved her dearly, and she was deeply mourned. Her body was taken down the Thames as far as the Tower so that her funeral procession would move through the crowds in London on its way to Westminster. She was buried in earth brought from the Holy Land.

By many accounts, the infamous Alice Perrers did indeed give birth to a daughter christened Blanche in this year. A tribute to John of Gaunt’s late wife? Or a not-so-subtle clue as to the father? Interestingly, not all accounts of Alice’s life include a daughter by this name. She remains ever the enigma.

The Black Death
, Rosemary Horrox (translator and editor), Manchester University Press, 1994.

Cremetts and Corrodies: Care of the Poor and Sick at St Leonard’s Hospital, York, in the Middle Ages
, P. H. Cullum, University of York, Borthwick Paper No. 79, 1991.

Hospitals and Charitable Provision in Medieval Yorkshire, 936–1547
, P. H. Cullum, unpublished doctoral thesis, University of York, 1989.