The Lost Abbot (12 page)

‘Where did you take it?’ asked Michael disapprovingly. ‘Scotland? You have exhausted the poor creature.’

‘The “poor creature” almost got me killed,’ said Bartholomew crossly, dismounting while he could. He shoved the reins at Michael. ‘Aurifabro is out, his mercenaries are in, and I am
walking
back to Peterborough.’

The monk had no more luck in persuading the soldiers to let him into Aurifabro’s house than had Bartholomew, and he was disgruntled when he finally caught up with the physician.

‘That was a waste of a morning,’ he grumbled. ‘I shall mention Aurifabro’s lack of cooperation in my report to Gynewell. And you should not have stormed off alone. Two men disappeared on this road, you know.’

‘I thought I might find some clues if I travelled on foot,’ explained Bartholomew, moving so that the monk was between him and the stallion. The beast was guilelessly docile now it was being led by a man who knew what he was doing.

‘You found something?’ asked Michael eagerly.

‘No. However, if I had to pick somewhere to commit murder, the Torpe road would be high on my list of choices. No one lives on the part Aurifabro owns, large sections are obscured by trees, and there are ditches galore to hide in.’

They continued in silence, past a cluster of buildings that Bartholomew had barely noticed when he had been struggling to stay mounted. It was St Leonard’s Hospital, and a familiar figure stood outside its gate.

‘It is Botilbrig,’ said Michael. ‘Does he loiter at every entrance to the town?’

‘You are needed,’ the bedesman informed Bartholomew. ‘Lots of people are desperate for medical attention now that Pyk is gone. Some are waiting for you inside.’

‘I told them you would pass this way,’ said William apologetically, emerging to stand next to him. Clippesby was there, too. ‘Their plight moved me, and I thought you would not mind. Besides, they offered to show me their holy well if I helped to secure them a few moments of your time, and I like sacred things.’

‘They will need more than a few moments,’ murmured Clippesby, who had a piglet under one arm and a duck under the other. ‘There are dozens of them.’

‘Are you ready?’ asked Botilbrig, indicating the hospital with a gnarled hand.

‘I cannot refuse, Brother,’ said Bartholomew, when he saw Michael’s brows draw together in an irritable frown. ‘It would be unethical.’

Michael gave a gusty sigh, then lowered his voice so their colleagues would not hear. ‘I suppose I can replace you with William for the rest of the day, just this once. Do you mind keeping Clippesby? He should not be left alone.’

‘He should not,’ agreed Bartholomew. ‘He is still upset about Joan’s murder and—’

‘I am more concerned that he does not do something to show he is no saint,’ interrupted Michael. ‘Our continued comfort depends on it, so please be careful.’

‘You should not have lied about that,’ said Bartholomew uneasily. ‘The truth is bound to emerge, and when it does, you will have some awkward questions to answer.’

‘Then we shall have to ensure it does not,’ said Michael, unrepentant.

The Hospital of St Leonard was larger than St Thomas’s, although it was Norman rather than Gothic. It boasted a range of picturesque cottages, sheds and stables, but its core comprised a chapel and an adjoining two-storeyed building with a hall on its ground floor and three smaller chambers above.

The hall had once held beds for lepers, but as its days of dealing with incurable diseases were over, it had been converted into a pleasant common room. There was a hearth at one end, in which a fire glowed despite the warmth of the day, and its furniture was simple but elegant. Several bedesmen were clearing a long trestle table of what looked to have been an ample meal, suggesting that Peterborough’s monks were not the only ones who knew how to cater to their personal comfort.

A long line of people stood patiently outside the hall, and Bartholomew assumed they were queuing for alms until he noticed that most were too well dressed to be beggars. With a start, he realised they were waiting to see him, and wondered if half of Peterborough had turned out. He jumped in alarm at a sudden shriek.

‘I am a bat,’ cried an elderly man, flapping his arms. ‘Get out of my way, or I shall entangle myself in your hair.’

‘Simon the cowherd,’ explained Botilbrig. ‘He has been without his wits for years now, and is one of us bedesmen. We did our best to make him sleep today, given that he is inclined to be disruptive, but he refused to drink the flagon of wine we tried to feed him.’

‘Bats never entangle themselves in hair, Simon,’ said Clippesby, addressing the cowherd softly and kindly. ‘It is a tale often put about, but it is wholly untrue.’

Simon lowered his arms and regarded the Dominican warily. ‘How do you know?’

‘They told me so themselves,’ replied Clippesby matter-of-factly.

Bartholomew was disconcerted when the remark was repeated in awed murmurs down the line of patients, but no one laughed, and there were further whispers that this was evidence of the Dominican’s saintliness. Entirely unwittingly, Clippesby reinforced the belief by favouring Simon with one of his sweetest smiles, an expression that revealed his innate goodness.

‘They talk to me, too,’ hollered the cowherd, beginning to dance again. ‘And so do the pigs and the bumblebees.’

‘Then you must tell me what they say.’ Clippesby caught his hand and led him to sit by the window; Simon went quietly, like a child.

‘That is the calmest he has been in years,’ said a tall, silver-haired man wonderingly. ‘Clippesby truly
is
holy. We are blessed today, with visits from a saint
and
a physician.’

‘I am having a consultation with both,’ announced Botilbrig. ‘They are only here because they took a liking to me yesterday, so I am within my rights to demand it.’

‘They had better tend Kirwell first,’ said the silver-haired man. He bowed to Bartholomew. ‘My name is Prior Inges, head of this fine hospital.’

‘I should have been Prior, rightly speaking,’ interposed Botilbrig. ‘As I am the eldest resident – other than Kirwell, of course. But Abbot Robert told me I was not clever enough, and appointed Inges instead. It was not very nice, actually.’

Inges ignored him. ‘Once you have seen Kirwell, I shall show you the healing well. You can begin seeing patients after that.’

‘Can I now?’ muttered Bartholomew, resenting the presumption.

‘Kirwell is our own saint,’ Inges went on, ‘whom God has blessed with an especially long life. He is a hundred and forty-three years old.’

‘How do you know?’ asked Bartholomew curiously.

‘Because we have irrefutable evidence – namely that he was born in the year of Magna Carta. He remembers his mother telling him so, you see.’

It was not Bartholomew’s idea of ‘irrefutable evidence’, but he followed Inges up the stairs to where Kirwell had been provided with a bedchamber all to himself. Someone was singing a ballad in a lilting tenor, so beautifully that Bartholomew stopped to listen. Inges had no such compunction, however, and barged in without ceremony.

‘Very nice, Appletre,’ he said briskly and in a manner that suggested it was time for the precentor to leave. ‘It was good of you to come.’

‘It is my pleasure,’ replied the precentor amiably. ‘Although I suspect I did more to send Kirwell to sleep than to entertain him.’

Kirwell lay in bed, wizened, concave-headed and entirely bald. Appletre was right to say that he had fallen asleep, for he snapped into wakefulness at Inges’s interruption, revealing rheumy eyes that were almost white. However, Bartholomew thought that while he might well be ninety, or even a hundred, he was certainly no more.

‘Here is the physician, Kirwell,’ announced Inges. ‘We brought him to you first, so keep him for as long as you like. The rest of us are happy to wait.’

‘I will come back later, then,’ said a figure who had been sitting quietly in the shadows. It was the young chaplain Trentham. He was blinking drowsily, suggesting that Appletre’s singing had had a soporific effect on him, too.

‘Please do,’ said Inges. ‘And then I shall finish telling you about my first day as abbey steward, when I was obliged to confront a vicious killer.’

‘On your first day?’ asked Appletre, wide-eyed. ‘That sounds nasty.’

‘It was,’ agreed Inges. ‘The culprit was a man who discovered his wife in bed with a shepherd. He fastened his hands around her throat and slowly wrung the life out of her.’

‘Oh,’ gulped Appletre, raising a hand to his own neck. ‘I have nightmares about that – someone doing something awful to my throat. Singing is my only skill, and without my voice, I would be useless. In fact, I would rather die than live without music.’

‘If someone strangled me, I would want it done vigorously,’ confided Inges. ‘Not like the man with his wife, which took an age. It is more merciful to grab one’s victim and finish him with one brief but powerful squeeze. There would be no pain and—’

‘Stop!’ cried Appletre, putting his hands over his ears. ‘Such a discussion is hardly appropriate in front of saints, physicians and priests – or precentors, for that matter.’

‘It is only idle chatter,’ shrugged Inges. ‘But we should not waste Doctor Bartholomew’s time, because he has a lot to do today. Thank you for coming, Appletre. You, too, Trentham. Kirwell enjoys these weekly sessions very much.’

Inges accompanied the priest and the precentor out, leaving Bartholomew alone with the patient. Kirwell turned his opaque eyes in the physician’s direction.

‘How much longer?’ he asked in a low voice.

Bartholomew sat next to him. ‘How much longer until what?’

‘Until I die,’ whispered the old man. ‘I am weary of life and want to sleep in my grave.’

‘That is not a question I can answer.’

‘I am tired of lying here while folk prod and gawp at me. The attention was fun to start with, but now I have had enough. So how much longer?’

‘Is there anything I can do to make you more comfortable?’

‘Yes, you can give me a potion that will ease me painlessly into death.’

‘Other than that,’ said Bartholomew.

Kirwell scowled. ‘Are you following Inges’s orders? Has he instructed you not to rob his hospital of its main source of income?’

‘He did not need to – physicians are not in the habit of dispatching people.’

Kirwell went on bitterly. ‘He sees me as too valuable to die. But I can barely recite my offices these days – I keep falling asleep halfway through them. I am no kind of priest now.’

Bartholomew regarded him thoughtfully. ‘I attended the abbey school here, but I do not recall hearing about you. Yet you would have been ancient then – if you really are a hundred and forty-three, of course.’

‘Well, you should have paid more attention,’ sniffed Kirwell. ‘Because I have been a bedesman ever since Lawrence de Oxforde was hanged, which was long before you would have been learning your letters. Do you not know my story?’

‘I am afraid not.’

‘It began with his execution. I was praying by his grave the following day when there was a brilliant flash of light. It knocked me clean off my feet, and was declared miraculous by all who saw it.’

‘Oh,’ said Bartholomew. It did not sound very miraculous to him.

‘Afterwards, it was decided that I should live here at abbey expense. I was grateful, because my eyes were failing, and what use is a sightless cleric?’

‘What caused the light? The sun?’

Kirwell grimaced. ‘You are a practical man who looks for rational explanations of God’s mysteries. But you are wrong to be sceptical, because my life changed in that moment. Before, I was a frightened man, lonely, poor and going blind. After, I was a bedesman with every comfort at my fingertips.
That
was a miracle.’

‘Right,’ said Bartholomew, his mind drifting to the people who were waiting to see him below. What manner of ailments would they present? Would any be new to him? Would the town’s apothecary be able to produce the complex remedies he might need to prescribe?

‘Oxforde gave me a prayer,’ Kirwell was saying. ‘One he composed the night before he was executed. I told him it was beautiful in an effort to touch his conscience, although it was actually rather trite. But he believed I was sincere, and he wrote it down for me.’

‘He could write?’ asked Bartholomew, pulling his mind away from medicine. He did not want to offend the old man by being inattentive.

‘Like you, he attended the abbey school. He promised that I would live long and happily, provided I never showed it to anyone else. I did not believe him, of course, and planned to sell it – some folk pay good prices for that sort of thing. But then that light flared over his tomb, so I decided to do as I was told. Within an hour, I was awarded my life of luxury.’

‘I see,’ said Bartholomew, wondering where the story was going.

‘But a month ago, I decided that I had had enough, so I told my story to Abbot Robert. He said that if I gave
him
the prayer, I would be released from my wearisome life.’

‘Really?’ Bartholomew wondered what Robert had been thinking. It was hardly appropriate for an abbot to encourage superstition, especially in a fellow religious.

Kirwell scowled. ‘I did as he suggested, but he is the one who is dead, while I still linger. It is not fair!’

‘I doubt Oxforde’s prayer is responsible for—’

‘Of course it is,’ declared Kirwell crossly. ‘I passed it to Robert two days before his fateful journey to Aurifabro, and now he is gone. But why him? He promised
me
death.’

‘I do not know,’ replied Bartholomew, when he saw that Kirwell expected an answer.

‘Damn you, then,’ whispered the old man. ‘Damn you to Hell!’

His head dropped forward, and he began to drowse. Moving carefully, so as not to wake him, Bartholomew left.

Prior Inges was waiting in the hall below. ‘Did he bless you? Or touch you in benediction? He has been a bit remiss in that direction of late, but he has always admired physicians.’

Bartholomew did not like to say that he had been cursed. ‘Not exactly.’

Inges looked disappointed. ‘Perhaps he will oblige you next time. Holy men can be unpredictable, as I am sure you know from your Clippesby.’