A Summer of Discontent (35 page)

‘It will not take a moment,’ said Bartholomew, putting one foot on the bottom rung and beginning to climb. ‘And we do not
want to miss something.’

Michael sighed heavily, but came to hold the bottom of the ladder. ‘I suppose I had better wait here. Since you were afraid
of falling on the outside, I should be prepared to catch you if you fall on the inside.’

Carefully, because the ladder was in a poor state of repair, Bartholomew began to ascend. At every step it grew hotter, so
that it was almost impossible to breathe. Wheat dust caught in his throat, making him cough, and through his choking he could
hear Michael sneezing in the darkness below. He supposed that it would not be so bad when the great doors were thrown open,
or when the weather was not quite so hot, but that day it was a vile experience. Anxious to complete his task and return to
the comparative cool of the sunlight outside, he climbed more quickly, ignoring the protesting creaks of wood that should
have been renewed years before.

When he reached the top of the ladder and stepped cautiously on to the platform at its head, he found his way barred by sacks
that were piled as high as the ceiling. There was no earthly way anyone could be hiding there – even a rat would have problems
insinuating itself between the closely packed bags. Moving carefully, he turned to inspect what lay below.

Looking from above offered a radically different perspective. The bags were lumpy and uneven, although they appeared to be
neat enough from the ground. Bartholomew
could see Michael below him, wiping his nose on a piece of linen that gleamed very white in the gloom. There was something
else, too. Directly beneath him, Bartholomew saw an indentation in a sack that would perfectly match the shape of a man: someone
had recently been there.

Still moving cautiously, he climbed down a few steps, then leapt from the ladder to the top of the pile, landing on his hands
and knees and releasing a choking cloud of chaff. He coughed hard, vaguely aware that Michael was demanding to know what he
thought he was doing. Almost blinded by the whirling dust, Bartholomew groped around, trying to see whether the person who
had been in the granary had left some clue as to his identity. It was not long before his tentative fingers encountered something
hard. He took hold of it and discovered it was yet another grain sack, although a clanking sound suggested that something
metal, rather than cereal, was contained within. Slinging it over his shoulder, he began to descend the ladder.

He was halfway down when the thing he had been afraid would happen did: one of the rungs gave way. Had he been using both
hands to climb instead of one, he would have been able to save himself, but he was unbalanced by the heavy sack and the broken
rung was the last straw. With a yell, he found himself precipitated downwards, arms and legs flailing.

He landed with a thump on more bags of grain. They were not as hard as the ground would have been, but the fall winded him
nevertheless. He decided that wheat was a lot harder than it looked. His sudden weight had caused the cheap material of one
sack to split with a sharp rip, and its yellow contents began to spill across the floor. Mixed with the grain was something
darker, and when Bartholomew inspected it closely he saw it was gravel. He rubbed his elbow ruefully, and thought it was not
surprising the sacks were so hard for a falling man if they were more than half full of stone.

‘I caught it,’ he heard Michael say. He turned to see that the monk had deftly fielded the bag he had dropped.

‘Well, that is a relief,’ he grumbled, standing stiffly and flexing his bruised arm. ‘I am glad you decided to save the bag
and not me.’

‘The sack looked the lighter of the two, and I thought you would come to no harm on all that soft wheat anyway.’

‘Most of it is grit,’ said Bartholomew. ‘No wonder so many people in Ely have broken teeth, if they eat bread made from this
rubbish.’

Michael leaned down and ran a handful of the grain through his fingers, his eyes round with surprise. ‘The lay-brothers should
have been more careful with what they accepted. Alan will not be pleased when he learns that most of the tithes comprise gravel.’

‘True. And he will never know who gave it to him, either.’

‘He will if
all
the sacks are like this,’ said Michael grimly. ‘Let us hope that only one farmer has been so rash as to try to cheat the
priory. But I do not like it in here, Matt. We should go outside to see what you have found.’

Bartholomew was grateful to be out in the sunshine. Michael’s habit was covered in chaff, and no amount of brushing seemed
to remove it. Bartholomew took off his tunic and gave it a vigorous shake, disgusted by the dust that billowed from it. He
was even more disgusted to see how much stuck to his body, but supposed it would come off when he had cooled down.

He sat next to Michael in the shade and watched the monk struggle to untie the thongs that fastened the sack’s neck. It was
secured very tightly, and it was some time before it could be unravelled. When it was finally open, Michael up-ended it on
to the ground. With a clank and a clatter, three objects rolled out. The first was a handsome silver chalice that appeared
to have come from the high altar of a church.

‘Has a theft of religious vessels been reported in the city recently?’ asked Bartholomew, picking it up and polishing it on
his tunic.

Michael shook his head and reached for the second object – a small pouch. He opened it, and bright coins rolled into
the palm of his hand. They were gold nobles and he counted twenty of them – a total of ten marks.

‘Ten marks is what William took,’ said Bartholomew, regarding his friend soberly. ‘Or it is what Thomas told us William requisitioned
from the hosteller’s fund.’

‘Yes,’ said Michael. ‘That had not escaped my attention, either.’

The third object was perhaps the most puzzling. It was a neat white package, similar – if not identical – to the one they
had seen Thomas secreting away the night before.

‘Well,’ said Michael, picking it up and turning it over in his hand. ‘Is this Thomas’s property, do you think?’

‘It looks the same,’ said Bartholomew. ‘But does that mean Thomas took William’s money and hid them here together?’

‘Or does it mean that William took or was given this package before he decided to flee with all his belongings?’

‘Then why did he leave them behind?’ asked Bartholomew. ‘I am sure ten marks would come in useful for a man on the run, especially
if he does not intend to return.’

‘I do see how he can return. Stealing monastery property is not something most priors look kindly on. No, Matt. If William
has gone, and his missing belongings suggest that he has, then he will not be coming back.’

‘But what about his gold? Why leave it? The barn was only a temporary hiding place, because the grain will be used by the
end of the year. It is not as if he can come back for it whenever he likes.’

Michael shook his head. ‘I wish Thomas could speak! A few sentences from him would probably solve all these mysteries.’ He
grabbed Bartholomew’s arm suddenly. ‘He may not be able to speak, but he can write! That will suffice – we shall have our
answers after all!’

‘You heard Robert goading him the other day,’ said Bartholomew wearily. ‘Thomas is virtually illiterate. I suggested he wrote
down what he wanted to say as soon as
we discovered he could not speak, and I tried very hard to make sense of his scrawl. I thought paralysis was causing the
problem, but Henry told me that he barely knows his alphabet.’

‘I forgot about his lack of skills in that direction,’ said Michael, disappointed. ‘It has always been something of a scandal,
actually – that a man should rise so high in our Order and the Church without being able to spell his name. Damn it all! I
thought for a moment that we might have had our solution.’

‘Not from Thomas. But perhaps we can show him these objects, and see from his reaction whether they are his or William’s.’

‘Very well,’ said Michael. ‘At least we do not have to walk along the river today. It will be too late by the time we finish
with Thomas.’

‘What is in the parcel?’

Michael opened it carefully. It was tied with fine twine and sealed with a line of red wax. It was not large, perhaps the
size of a small book. And once Michael had carefully removed the wrapping from the package, he saw that was exactly what it
was.

‘It is a book of hours,’ he said, puzzled. ‘Is that all? I expected a letter from the King, or something far more interesting.’

Bartholomew took it from him, and flicked quickly through it to see whether any passages had been marked that might be significant.
But there was nothing.

‘It seems very old,’ he said doubtfully. ‘Perhaps it is valuable.’

‘It may be, I suppose,’ said Michael, regarding it disparagingly. ‘It is a little gaudy for my taste. I do not like bright
colours in my books. That is for men who cannot read, like Thomas.’

But when they returned to the infirmary, Thomas was sleeping, and Bartholomew would not allow Michael to wake him. Still troubled
by the notion that he was responsible for
the man’s condition, Michael deferred to his friend’s opinion, and wandered away to spend the evening with Prior Alan. Bartholomew
offered to spend the second half of the night watching over Thomas. Reluctantly, Henry acknowledged that he could not tend
Thomas all night
and
his elderly patients during the day, and agreed to wake the physician at two o’clock. When he took Bartholomew’s shoulder
and shook it, the bell was ringing for nocturns. Henry’s eyes were heavy and he seemed grateful to be going to his own bed.

Bartholomew went into the hall and lit a candle, intending to pass the night by reading Philaretus’s
De Pulsibus
. The infirmary was as silent as the grave. One of the old men occasionally cried out, and Roger and Ynys were sleepless and
gazed into the darkness, lost in their memories. Thomas’s sleep was unnaturally deep, but his breathing was little more than
a whisper, not even enough to vibrate the mounds of fat that billowed around him. Bartholomew studied the grey, exhausted
face and wondered whether the sub-prior would see another morning.

When dawn came, it was with a blaze of colour. The sky lightened gradually, then distant clouds were painted grey, orange
and pink, and finally gold. Henry awoke and came hurrying to Thomas’s bedside, smiling a prayer when he saw the fat sub-prior
still lived. There were lines under Henry’s eyes that suggested he had slept badly, but he was still cheerful and patient
with the old men. Bartholomew offered to sit with Thomas while Henry attended prime, not at all disappointed to miss another
volume competition in the cathedral.

When Henry returned, Julian and Welles were with him, carrying the dishes and baskets that contained the old men’s breakfasts.
There was a large pot of warm oatmeal, enriched with cream and enough salt to make an ocean envious, the inevitable wheat-bread,
some tiny cubes of boiled chicken and
a bowl of candied fruits thick with honey from the priory’s beehives. Bartholomew saw Julian slide a slice of peach into
his own mouth when he thought no one was looking.

‘Your own meal will be ready soon,’ he remarked, suspecting that the sickly fruits were the most popular item with the old
men.

Julian treated him to a hostile sneer. ‘These are wasted on those old corpses in there! You might as well give them dung –
they would never know the difference.’

‘Julian!’ exclaimed Welles, his normally smiling face dismayed. He was busy spearing chicken with the masonry nail Bartholomew
had seen him use in the refectory before Thomas was taken ill, arranging the cubes in an appetising pile on one side of a
platter. ‘That is a vile thing to say.’

‘But I would know the difference,’ said Henry sternly, as he ladled oatmeal into wooden bowls. ‘And if I catch you trying
to feed my old friends anything unpleasant, you will have me to answer to.’

‘He would not really try to feed them dung,’ began Welles, loyally defensive of his classmate. His words petered out when
he saw from the expression on Julian’s face that he might.

A loud thumping from the library above made them all glance upward.

‘Goodness!’ exclaimed Henry in astonishment. ‘Symon is at work already, and the sun has only just risen. That is unusual.’

‘I expect one of the priory’s guests has demanded to use the books, and he feels obliged to make at least some pretence at
caring for them,’ said Welles.

Bartholomew was unimpressed to see that even the novices knew about and condemned the appalling state of the library, and
yet Prior Alan was still not prepared to replace the man with someone competent.

‘Bishop Northburgh, actually,’ came a voice from behind them. They were all startled to see Symon framed in the doorway. ‘And
I will thank you to keep a civil tongue in
your head, Welles, or I shall tell the Prior about your insolence.’

‘Why does Northburgh want to use the library?’ asked Henry. ‘He is supposed to be dedicating his time to solving these murders.’

‘I imagine he wants to scour the medical texts to learn about elixirs that will make him young again,’ said Bartholomew. ‘In
case you fail to provide him with one.’

Henry grimaced. ‘Prior Alan should never have agreed to those terms. He has put me in an impossible situation.’

‘You should let me try a few things on him,’ offered Julian, selecting a knife used for paring fruit and fingering the blade
meaningfully. ‘I am prepared to use more imaginative methods than you are.’

‘Perhaps so, but Northburgh wants to survive the treatment intact,’ said Henry wryly. ‘He does not want to lose his wrinkles
by having his skin pared from his bones.’ He glanced upward as another thump sounded from above. ‘Is that him now?’

‘That is Bukton,’ said Symon, insinuating himself into the infirmary and choosing one of the candied fruits to eat. ‘I do
not perform menial tasks like cleaning. That is why we have novices.’