A Summer of Discontent

He was admiring the impressive carvings around the great door in the west front, when a crash preceded a string of people traipsing in. Some were rubbing sleep from their eyes, clearly having just dragged themselves from their beds, while others had hands that were stained dark with the peaty blackness of the local soil, having already started their day’s labours. There were peasants wearing undyed homespun tunics, with bare arms burned brown by the sun; and there were merchants, in clothes of many colours with their tight-fitting gipons, flowing kirtles, and fashionable shoes.

Among them was a small, bustling character wearing the habit of a Dominican friar. He had black, greasy hair that was worn too long, and eyes so close together that the physician wondered whether either could see anything other than his nose. The priest spotted Bartholomew and strode purposefully towards him.

‘Are you visiting the city?’ he demanded without preamble. ‘Or are you a priory guest?’

‘The latter,’ replied Bartholomew, startled by the brusque enquiry.

‘Then you are the priory’s responsibility and none of mine,’ said the priest curtly. ‘You may attend my service, but you must behave yourself in a fitting manner.’

‘Behave myself?’ asked Bartholomew, bewildered. Had the shabbiness of his academic tabard, which should have been black but was more charcoal due to frequent washes, and the patches on his shirt made him appear more disreputable than he had imagined? He decided to invest in a set of new clothes as soon as he had enough money to do so.

The priest sighed impatiently. ‘Yes, behave: no swearing, no fighting and no spitting.’

‘I shall do my best,’ replied Bartholomew, wondering what kind of congregations the priest usually entertained with his morning masses.

‘I hope so,’ said the priest sternly. ‘My name is Father John Michel, and I am the chaplain of the parish of Holy Cross — this parish. I am about to conduct mass, so take your place among my congregation, if you want to stay.’

‘Here?’ asked Bartholomew, as the priest struggled into an alb and made for the rough altar at the end of the nave. ‘You plan to conduct a mass here, in the nave of the cathedral, while the monks are still singing prime in the chancel?’

‘They are a nuisance with all their warbling,’ agreed John, evidently believing that Bartholomew’s sympathies lay with the mass about to begin rather than the one already in progress. ‘Their strident voices tend to distract my parishioners from their devotions. Still, we do our best to drown them out.’

‘Why not use St Mary’s Church, on the village green?’ asked Bartholomew, intrigued by the curious arrangement the priest seemed to have with the priory. ‘Then you and the monks would not disturb each other.’

John gave a hearty sigh, and glared at Bartholomew in a way that suggested the physician should keep quiet if he did not know what he was talking about. ‘Because St Mary’s Church is in St Mary’s parish,’ he explained with painstaking slowness, as if Bartholomew were lacking in wits. ‘I am the priest of Holy Cross parish, and the nave of this cathedral is Holy Cross Church.’

‘I see,’ said Bartholomew. ‘I wondered why there was such a thick screen separating nave and chancel.’

‘You may have noticed that a new structure is being erected against the north wall of the cathedral,’ said John, gesturing vaguely to a spot where a half-finished building could be seen through the stained-glass windows. ‘When that is completed, it will be our parish church, and I shall be disturbed by the monks no longer. I wish the builders would hurry up, though: I complained to the Archbishop of Canterbury about the situation years ago, and the monks have still not finished my new church. It is the fault of that damned octagon.’

‘The cathedral’s new central tower?’ asked Bartholomew. ‘How can that be responsible for your church being unfinished?’

The patronising tone crept back into John’s voice. ‘Because the monks took the builders away from my church to raise that monstrosity instead. Then the Death came, and many masons died. It was all most inconvenient.’

‘Especially for the masons. I am sure most of them would have preferred to work on your church than to die of the plague.’

‘They were a lazy crowd, anyway,’ said John, apparently unaware of the irony in Bartholomew’s voice. ‘They would go to any lengths to avoid an honest day’s work. It would have been quicker for me to raise the damned thing myself. But I have a mass to conduct. Stand there, next to that pillar, and stay well away from those three men near the altar.’