A Summer of Discontent

At first, Bartholomew thought they had wasted their time. It was unpleasantly hot inside the granary, and dust from the wheat made his eyes scratchy and his throat tickle. Michael began to sneeze uncontrollably, and it was not long before he abandoned the search to Bartholomew, while he waited outside. There was a sudden eerie rustle, and the physician froze, half expecting a furious William to come leaping out of the shadows, incensed that his hiding place had been so easily discovered. But whatever had made the noise was still when Bartholomew inched his way over to investigate, and he could see nothing other than endless rows of wheat sacks. He decided the granary was not as rat-resistant as it appeared.

He was about to give up, when it occurred to him that he should try to climb as high as possible, and then inspect the entire barn from above, to ensure that no one was hiding on top of the piled bags. He peered around, and located the rough wooden ladder that led to the upper floor. He called to Michael, to tell him what he planned to do.

‘Do not bother,’ the monk shouted back. ‘William is not in there. No one is. How could a normal person survive in it? It is as hot as a baker’s oven and the air is thick with dust.’

‘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.’