A Plague on Both Your Houses (16 page)

qualified physicians in the country, was unable to tell the difference between a living man and a dead one!

He watched as Alcote scurried forward when Swynford

left. What could he do? Perhaps he had already signed

his death warrant with the Bishop, or with some of the forces about which Aelfrith had warned him.

Alcote left, and William stepped forward. Aelfrith

seized his arm. ‘You must take the oath! You will

not live another day if you do not! Do it for the

College, for Sir John.’ He broke off as the Bishop

gestured for him to approach. Michael slid along the

bench towards Bartholomew, his eyes frightened in his

flabby face.

‘For God’s sake, Matt! None of us like this, but

you are putting us all in danger. Do you want to be hanged, drawn, and quartered at Smithfield? Just swear this wretched oath! You do not need to do anything else.

You can always go away until all this dies down.’

Abigny stepped forward. Michael’s grip became

painful. ‘Not to take the Bishop’s oath will be treason, Matt. I understand the position you are taking, but it will cost you your life if you persist!’ He stood as the Bishop gestured for him to advance, swore his promise, and left.

Bartholomew reflected that his colleagues seemed very

keen that he should take the Bishop’s oath. Was this

out of concern for him, or did they have other, more

sinister reasons for wanting his silence concerning the deaths at Michaelhouse? The conclave was silent. The

Bishop and Bartholomew regarded each other.

The Bishop suddenly snapped his fingers, and, in an

instant, parchment was cleared away, inkhorns sealed,

and pens packed. The clerks filed out in silence, leaving the Bishop alone with Bartholomew.

Bartholomew waited, and was surprised when the

Bishop sat heavily at one of the tables and put his head in his hands. After a few moments, the Bishop looked

up, his face lined and grey with worry, and gestured for Bartholomew to sit next to him.

T have become so involved in the interests of the

Church, and of upholding the law, that I have failed to see some things,’ he said. “I know what I am asking you to do is wrong on one level, and yet, on another it is absolutely right. This pestilence is at the centre of it.

Have you heard the news? In Avignon, our Pope has

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had to consecrate the River Rhone because there were

too many bodies for the graveyards. In Paris, the dead lie stinking in their houses and the streets because there are none left to bury them. All over Europe, villages lie silent.

Many great abbeys and monasteries have lost more than

half their brethren.

‘Some say it is a visitation from God, and they may

be right. The people will need their faith to deal with this terrible plague, and they will need their priests, friars, and monks to help them. If the same happens in England as has already happened in France, there will

be a desperate shortage of clergy, and we will need every religious house and the universities to train more.

‘Do you not see, Matthew? We must prepare

ourselves, and gather our forces. We cannot allow the

University to flounder now, just before the people will need it more than ever before. You may have been told

that some scholars at Oxford would like very much to

see Cambridge fall so that they will have a monopoly

over students and masters. This may well be true, but

I cannot allow that to happen. We must offer as many

places of training as possible, so that we can produce learned clergy to serve the people.

‘You made me angry earlier, and I am sorry. I had

to threaten you because I could not allow your stand to cause the others to waver. I will not force you to take the oath, because you, of all the Fellows, would not want the people to suffer from a lack of spiritual comfort during this terrible plague and the years to follow. I have heard that you choose to work with the poor, when you could

easily become rich by healing the wealthy. I know that you understand why I was forced to ask the others to

protect the University.’

The Bishop was no longer the splendid figure in

purple who had ridden in at the gates, but a man

struggling to reconcile his actions with his conscience.

Bartholomew’s anger was still very much at the surface, and he had had too many dealings with crafty patients

not to be aware that some people possessed powerful

skills at lying.

‘So where does this leave us?’ he said suspiciously.

‘It leaves us in your hands, Matthew,’ said the

Bishop. ‘If you will not give outsiders the explanation I have offered, then say nothing. In a few weeks it may not matter anyway, and you and I could be dead.’

He sighed and stood up to leave. ‘Go in peace,

Matthew,’ he said, sketching a benediction in the air

above Bartholomew’s head. ‘You continue God’s work in your way, and I will continue in mine, and may we both learn from each other.’

The Bishop walked out of the room, and by the

time Bartholomew had limped over to the window

to watch him leave Michaelhouse, he had regained

his regal bearing. He sat upright in his saddle, and

clattered out of the yard with his clerks and monks

trailing behind him.

The door of the conclave burst open and Brother

Michael shot in, his chest heaving with exertion. ‘Oh, thank God!’ he said, fervently crossing himself. “I

expected to find you here with a knife in your ribs!’

His words brought back a memory of Brother Paul,

and he visibly paled. ‘Oh lord,’ he groaned, flopping

into Wilson’s chair, ‘we really are going to have to be careful!’

December 1348

BROTHER PAUL, AUGUSTUS, AND MONTFITCHET were laid to rest in the little cemetery behind St Michael’s Church two days after the Bishop’s

visit. The official explanations for their deaths were given to any who asked, and, although speculation was

rife for several weeks, the Fellows’ consistent rendering of the same story began to pay off. Bartholomew, when

asked specific questions, replied that he did not know the answer, although whenever possible he avoided the

subject. Eventually, the excitement died down and the

incident seemed to be forgotten. Term started at

the beginning of October, and, although student numbers were low because of the fear of the impending

plague, the Michaelhouse Fellows found themselves as

busy as ever with lectures, disputations, and readings.

Bartholomew tried to forget about the events of

August; even if he had discovered anything, what could he have done about it? He considered confiding his thoughts to his brother-in-law, but was afraid that if he involved Stanmore, he might endanger him somehow. For the same

reason, he did not wish to involve any of his friends.

Rachel Atkin had regained her wits after the death

of her son. As well as his manor in Trumpington, Sir

Oswald Stanmore owned a large house at his business

premises in Milne Street in which his brother Stephen

lived with his family. Bartholomew persuaded Stephen

to take Rachel as a laundress, and she seemed to settle well enough into his household.

The Oliver brothers remained a problem. They

seldom attended lectures, and Wilson would have sent

them down had not the College’s acquisition of the

property on Foul Lane depended on their academic

success. Bartholomew occasionally saw Henry glowering

at him, but it became so commonplace that eventually

he came not to notice it.

Bartholomew spent many of the final days before

term in the company of Philippa Abigny. They rode

through the rich meadows to Grantchester, and watched

the archery competitions in Barton, sometimes alone,

but often in the company of her brother and one

of his latest loves. Brother Michael or Gregory Colet

occasionally acted as chaperons, prudently disappearing on business of their own once outside the sight of the nunnery, leaving Bartholomew and Philippa alone together.

Edith also acted as chaperon, and was only too pleased to encourage her younger brother in his courting. She had been nagging him for years to find a wife and settle down.

Bartholomew and Philippa often strolled together in the pleasant grounds of St Radegund’s Priory, careful not to touch each other, for they knew that behind the delicate arches of the nunnery windows the Abbess watched with

hawklike eyes.

On several days they attended the great Stourbridge

Fair, which ran for most of September and drew huge

crowds of people from the countryside for miles around.

They saw fire-eaters from Spain, jugglers from the Low Countries, and jongleurs from France, who sang of deeds of daring. Men and women hawked pies, pastries, drinks of fermented apple, crudely made wooden flutes, and

cloths and ribbons of all colours. The smell from roasting meat mingled with that of damp straw and horse manure.

Animals bleated and squealed, children screamed in

delight, jousting knights clashed their weapons, and

here and there a lone voice shouted warnings of the

terrible pestilence that swept over Europe and would

soon claim all whom God deemed unholy.

The threat of the coming plague cast a grim shadow

over their lives. Stories came to Cambridge of settlements like Tilgarsley in Oxfordshire where every inhabitant

had died, leaving behind a ghost village. A third of

the population of the city of Bristol was said to have perished, and in October the first cases began to appear in London. Bartholomew spent long hours consulting

his fellow physicians and surgeons about how to deal

with the pestilence when it came, although the truth of the matter was that they really did not know. The town officials tried to impose some sort of control on who was allowed into the town in an attempt to prevent the disease from spreading, but it was impossible to enforce, and

those barred from entering merely crossed the ditches, swam the river, or hired a boat.

The first snows fell early, powdering the ground with

white before the end of November, and Bartholomew

saw an increasing number of elderly patients with chest troubles brought on by the cold. Then, just before term ended, he saw his first case of the plague.

It was a cold morning, with a raw wind howling from the fens, with the promise of more of the persistent drizzling rain that had been dogging Cambridge for the past three days. Bartholomew had risen at five, while it was still dark, and attended Father William’s high-speed mass. Lectures started at six, and his students, perhaps sensing the role they might soon have to play, bombarded him with

questions. Even Francis Eltham, whom Bartholomew

doubted would ever make a physician, had joined in

the lively discussion.

Lectures finished around nine, and the main meal

of the day was at half-past ten. It was a Friday, and so the meal was fish, freshly baked bread, and vegetables.

Bartholomew tuned out the reading of the Bible scholar and thought about the debate on contagion in which he

had just led his students. He wondered how he could convince them that there was a pattern to whom infectious

diseases affected, and they were not merely visitations from God. He had risked the wrath of the clerics by

refusing to allow the students to consider ‘struck down by God’ as a determinant for contagious disease. They

had to think for themselves. ‘Struck down by God’ was a convenient excuse for not working out the real causes.

After the meal, all members of College were obliged

to attend the midday service in St Michael’s Church.

Bartholomew walked back to the College with Michael,

who was grumbling about the cold.

‘Right! I am away,’ said Abigny, coming up behind

them and slapping them both on the shoulders. ‘It is

too damned cold at that College. I am going over to

St Radegund’s, where they have warm fires to toast

pretty little feet.’ He raised an eyebrow at Bartholomew.

‘Coming? Philippa specifically told me to ask you.’

Bartholomew smiled. ‘Tell her I will come later. I

have two patients to see first.’

Abigny tutted. ‘But will she wait until later, Physician?

I, for one, would not wish to embrace you after you had been in those shabby hovels you like to frequent.’

‘Then it is just as well you will not get the chance,

Philosopher,’ retorted Bartholomew.

Michael nudged him. ‘Just go, man. Your patients

will wait; your love might not.’

Bartholomew ignored them and went to collect his

leather sack of medicines and instruments. He was in

good spirits as he set off towards the Trumpington Gate, despite the bitter wind and the promise of rain. His first call was to the family of tinkers that lived near the river; the other call was on Bridge Street, near the church of the Holy Trinity, to one of Agatha’s numerous relatives.

Afterwards, he could go straight to the Priory and visit Philippa while Abigny was still there, since the nuns

would not allow Bartholomew to see Philippa unless

she was chaperoned.

The first drops of rain were beginning to fall when

he reached the tinker’s house. A group of children waited for him, standing barefoot in the mud. He followed them to the ramshackle pile of wood and earthen bricks that was their home. It was cold inside, despite the fire that billowed smoke so that Bartholomew could barely see.

He knelt down on the beaten earth floor next to a