The Lost Abbot (2 page)

Staying away after she had discovered that he loved her as much as she loved him was not easy, but it had been the right decision – for him, at least, because the occasional report she received suggested that he was content. But then she heard that another woman had entered his life: Julitta Holm, trapped in a barren marriage to the town’s new surgeon.

The news that he was ready to look elsewhere came as a shock to Matilde, and gradually she began to view her noble sacrifice as rather silly. This was reinforced when she met a wise-woman named Mother Udela, who informed her bluntly that she was a fool to sit back and watch while the only man she had ever really loved gave his heart to someone else. So Matilde started to consider ways in which she and Matt could be together.

The main stumbling block was money. If they had some, he could continue to physick the poor, which would go some way to consoling him for losing his students. As he was unlikely to acquire any on his own – he invariably forgot to collect fees that were owing, and was less interested in wealth than any man Matilde had ever met – she saw it was up to her to secure the necessary fortune. She did not know if it was possible, but she was a resolute woman and the prize was her future happiness, so she was determined to try.

She rode north that very day.

Everyone was relieved when the towers and pinnacles of the great Benedictine abbey finally came into view. It had not been an easy journey, and misfortune had dogged them every step of the way – lame horses, flooded roads, accidents and a series of raids by robbers. And as none of the
party had wanted to leave Cambridge in the first place, the litany of mishaps had done nothing to soothe ragged tempers.

‘At last!’ breathed Ralph de Langelee. ‘I thought we would never arrive.’

‘I told you we should not have come,’ said Father William, an unsavoury Franciscan who wore a filthy habit and whose thick hair sprouted in oily clumps around an untidy tonsure. ‘It is hundreds of miles across dangerous country, and we are lucky to be alive.’

‘It is not hundreds of miles,’ countered Matthew Bartholomew, gripping the reins of his horse with fierce concentration. He was not a good rider, and had fallen off twice since the journey began; he was determined it would not happen again. ‘It is less than forty.’

William only sniffed, declining to acknowledge that he might be wrong. Bartholomew did not blame him for thinking the distance greater than it was, when a journey that should have taken no more than two or three days had extended to almost a fortnight. He glanced at his companions.

Langelee was in charge, not only because he was Master of Michaelhouse, the Cambridge College to which they all belonged, but because he had been a soldier before embarking on an academic career, and so knew what to do in the kinds of crises that had plagued them. Most of the University thought he should have stuck to warfare, because he was patently unsuited to scholarship, and his classes had a tendency to slide off into discussions about camp-ball, his favourite sport. But he was a just and fair leader, and his Fellows were content with his rule. Or they had been before he had decided that some of them should visit Peterborough.

There were seven Fellows in his College, and he had picked three of them to travel with him, while a fourth had been ordered to go by no less a person than the Bishop of Lincoln. As all had hoped to spend the summer recovering from the rigours of an unusually frantic Easter Term, not to mention preparing work for the next academic year, the decision to drag them away had been unpopular, to say the least.

‘I do not see why I
had to come to this godforsaken place,’ grumbled William, glaring at the monastery with dislike. ‘I will be unwelcome here – the Black Monks will mock me and make me feel uncomfortable. And they have no right, because everyone knows that the Franciscan Order is the only one God really likes.’

‘Is that so?’ asked Brother Michael coldly. He was a Benedictine himself, tall, generous of girth and whose ‘rough travelling habit’ was cut from the finest cloth. He had lank brown hair that was trimmed carefully around a perfectly round tonsure, and expressive green eyes. Besides teaching theology, he was also the University’s Senior Proctor, and through the years he had manoeuvred himself into a position of considerable authority. He had not found it easy to surrender his hard-won power to his deputy.

Worse yet, one of the King’s favourite ministers was in the process of founding a new College, and Michael was uneasy with the entire venture – the unseemly speed with which matters were being pushed along, the fact that only lawyers would be permitted to enrol there, and the resentment that was brewing in the rest of the University, which felt it was being bulldozed. Michael had promised to write Winwick Hall’s charter himself, to prevent the founder from slipping anything sly into it, but if the return journey took as long as the outward one, he would be too late. The resulting strain did not render him an amiable travelling companion.

‘Yes,’ William flashed back. ‘Benedictines are venal and greedy, and everyone knows it. And if you do not believe me, then look at the size and grandeur of this abbey.’

The Franciscan had a point. It had been four hundred years since the Black Monks had arrived in Peterborough, which had given them ample time to build themselves one of the finest monasteries in the country. Michael was disinclined to admit it, though.

‘You should not have brought him,’ he said testily to Langelee. ‘He has been nothing but trouble the entire way.’

‘How dare you—’ began William hotly.

‘I have already explained why he had to come,’ interrupted Langelee. ‘He upset a lot of people by accusing the Deputy Sheriff of corruption last month, and this jaunt will allow time for tempers to cool.’

‘But I was right,’ objected William, stung. ‘He
is
corrupt.’

‘Almost certainly,’ agreed Langelee. ‘But you should not have made the point in a public sermon. Your remarks almost caused a riot.’

‘And me?’ asked Clippesby, the last of the four Fellows to be travelling. He was a Dominican, who spoke to animals and claimed they answered back. Most people considered him insane, although Bartholomew often thought that the gentle, compassionate friar was more rational than the rest of the Fellows put together. ‘Why did you drag me all the way out here? I made no slurs against deputy sheriffs.’

‘No,’ agreed Langelee. ‘But Thelnetham will be Acting Master while I am away, and he does not like you – it seemed prudent to eliminate a source of discord. Besides, just think of all the new creatures you will meet. It is an opportunity to expand your social life.’

Clippesby shot him a baleful look. He did not usually let his colleagues’ opinions of his eccentricities perturb him, but even his serene tolerance had been put to the test on the journey. ‘It was inconvenient, Master. I had hoped to complete my theological treatise on rabbits this summer. Now it will remain unfinished until Christmas.’

‘A lunatic discourse, full of the heresy that your Order loves,’ scoffed William. He harboured a passionate aversion to Dominicans, and it was fortunate that Clippesby usually ignored his bigoted eccentricities or blood would have been spilled.

‘Do not waste your time on essays, Clippesby,’ advised Langelee. ‘I never read anything my fellow philosophers write. Their ramblings are either boring or nonsensical. Or both.’

His Fellows exchanged wry glances.

‘And Matt?’ asked Clippesby. ‘Surely it was unnecessary to force him to come? He is needed at home, where he has huge numbers of patients relying on him.’

‘There are two reasons why he could not be left,’ replied Langelee crisply. ‘Julitta Holm and Gonville Hall.’

Bartholomew felt himself blush. He had believed his affection for Julitta was secret, and had been mortified to learn that half the town knew how he felt. He would have to be more discreet in future, because her friendship meant a lot to him, and he was unwilling to give it up. She was wife to Surgeon Holm, a selfish, arrogant man with a negligible grasp of medicine who was unworthy of her in every way.

‘Julitta,’ mused William. ‘Her husband might prefer the company of men, but he still objects to being cuckolded. And matrimony is a sacred—’

‘Gonville Hall is the greater crime,’ Langelee cut in disapprovingly. He scowled at Bartholomew. ‘You did not have to fail
all
its medical students at their final disputations last month.’

‘Yes, I did,’ said Bartholomew shortly. ‘They could not answer any of my questions. Would
you
want to be treated by them, if you were ill or injured?’

‘I am rarely ill, and only poor warriors are injured,’ countered Langelee, missing the point.

‘Besides, if you had wanted me out of Cambridge, why could I not have gone to Clare instead?’ Bartholomew went on. ‘I have heard many good things about the place, and I had intended to visit it this summer.’

‘It is overrated,’ declared Michael briskly. ‘You will enjoy yourself far more in Peterborough, and I was right to encourage the Master to bring you.’ He kicked his horse into a canter before Bartholomew could inform him that he had disliked his plans being hijacked. ‘If we hurry, we shall be in time for dinner, and I am famished.’

‘He is always famished,’ muttered Cynric. The Welsh book-bearer was the sixth and last member of the party. ‘And it is hardly natural.’

Cynric was more friend than servant to Bartholomew, but although he was usually eager for adventure, he had not wanted to go to Peterborough either. He had carved a pleasant life for himself in Cambridge, with an agreeable wife, a job that entailed little real work, and like-minded cronies with whom to set the world to rights over jugs of ale of an evening. It was only loyalty to the Fellows that had induced him to make the journey, afraid that unless he was there, they might come to harm. And given the number of attacks they had fended off, his concern had been justified.

Bartholomew was glad to talk about something other than Julitta and his conflict with Gonville Hall. ‘There will be scant time for feasting once we arrive in Peterborough. Michael will have to carry out his orders.’

These ‘orders’ were the real reason they were there: to find out what happened to Abbot Robert, who left his monastery a month before, and had not been seen or heard of since.

The little town of Peterborough was dominated by its abbey. Within its precincts, the church, chapter house and cloisters were the largest structures, but it also boasted a number of other buildings that turned it into a self-contained village – refectory, dormitory, almonry, sacristy, kitchens, bakery, brewery, pantries, stables and lodgings for guests and servants.

Bartholomew had attended the monastery school, and as they rode through the town’s outskirts he found some parts reassuringly familiar. Others, he was sure he had never seen before, but that was to be expected; he had been twelve when he had left, which had been more years ago than he cared to remember.

‘If Brother Michael had not accepted the honour of being made a canon of Lincoln Cathedral two years ago,’ Cynric muttered resentfully in Bartholomew’s ear, ‘we would not be in this position now. And I do not like Peterborough.’

Bartholomew laughed. Despite his reluctance to leave, the journey had been good for him. The nagging fatigue that had dogged him all term had gone, and while he missed Julitta and worried about his patients, he was fitter and more relaxed than he had been in months.

‘You cannot say you do not like it. We have only just arrived.’

Cynric gave him a meaningful look, and clutched one of the amulets he wore around his neck. ‘It is a feeling, boy, and I have learned not to ignore those. I sense wickedness here, and there will be evil spirits involved. You can be sure of that.’

There had been a time when Bartholomew would have tried to convince the book-bearer that such a notion was ridiculous, but Cynric had grown more superstitious and opinionated with age, and the physician now knew better than to try.

‘Brother Michael’s canonisation means that Bishop Gynewell has a hold over him,’ Cynric went on sourly. ‘He should have held out for one in Ely instead, because then we would not have been sent here to hunt for mysteriously vanished Abbots.’

‘Michael is a long way from sainthood yet,’ said Bartholomew, although he could see from Cynric’s glare that the book-bearer did not want a lecture on ecclesiastical terminology.

‘Once the Bishop named him as Commissioner, he had no choice but to come to Peterborough,’ Cynric grumbled on. ‘But that should not have meant that half of Michaelhouse is forced to travel with him. It is unfair.’

Bartholomew made no reply. He had been regaled with Cynric’s displeasure over the venture ever since they had left, and he was tired of discussing it.

‘I understand why most of us are here,’ the book-bearer continued. ‘Brother Michael was ordered to come by the Bishop; you and Father William had to escape awkward situations; Clippesby could not be left with mean old Thelnetham; and I am here to look after you. But what about the Master? I do not believe he is here to see old friends.’

As it happened, Cynric was right to be suspicious of Langelee’s motives. Bartholomew was not the only one who disobeyed the University’s strictures against women, and the Master’s latest conquest was the Deputy Sheriff’s wife. The man had discovered the affair the same day that William had accused him of dishonesty, and rather than risk having war declared on Michaelhouse, Langelee had opted for a tactical withdrawal. Bartholomew was the only Fellow entrusted with this information, on the grounds that Langelee did not think the others – all clerics in holy orders – would understand.

‘He does have a friend here,’ Bartholomew replied, although Langelee had confessed that he had only met Master Spalling once, and the expansive invitation to ‘visit any time’ had been issued after a night of heavy drinking. In truth, Langelee did not know whether Spalling would remember him, let alone agree to a house guest.

‘Well, I am glad he came,’ conceded Cynric, albeit reluctantly. ‘You and I could not have beaten off those robbers alone – we would have been slaughtered.’