A Summer of Discontent

‘This is a vile, godforsaken spot,’ announced his colleague loudly, gazing around him with a distasteful shudder. Brother Michael was a practical man, and tales of vengeful creatures that chose to inhabit bogs held no fear for him. ‘It is a pity St Etheldreda decided to locate her magnificent monastery in a place like this.’

‘She built it here precisely because it was in the middle of the Fens,’ said Bartholomew, glancing behind him as a bird fidgeted noisily in the undergrowth to one side. The causeway along which they rode ran between the thriving market town of Cambridge and the priory-dominated city of Ely, and was often used by merchants and wealthy clerics. Thus it was a popular haunt for robbers — and four travellers comprising a richly dressed monk, a physician with a well-packed medicine bag, and two servants would provide a tempting target. ‘St Etheldreda was fleeing a husband intent on claiming his conjugal rights, and she selected Ely because she knew he would not find her here.’

‘Did it work?’ asked Cynric, Bartholomew’s Welsh book-bearer, who sat in his saddle with the ease of a born horseman. Tom Meadowman, Michael’s favourite beadle, rode next to him, but white-knuckled hands on the reins and his tense posture indicated that he was unused to horses and that he would just as soon be walking.

Bartholomew nodded. ‘The legend says that she fled from the north country to the Fens almost seven hundred years ago. Her husband, the King of Northumbria, never found her, and she built her monastery here, among the marshes.’

‘She is one of those saints whose body is as perfect now as when it went into its tomb,’ added Meadowman, addressing Cynric but looking at Michael, clearly intending to impress his master with his theological knowledge. ‘Her sister dug up the corpse a few years after it was buried, and found it whole and uncorrupted. A shrine was raised over the tomb, and some Benedictine monks later came and built a cathedral over it.’

‘I know the story,’ said Michael irritably. ‘I am a monk of Ely, after all. But my point is that Etheldreda could equally well have hidden in a much nicer place than this. Just look around you. That we are riding here at all, and not rowing in a boat like peasants, is a testament to my priory’s diligence in maintaining this causeway.’

‘It is a testament to the huge tithes your priory demands from its tenants,’ muttered Cynric, casting a resentful glower at the monk’s broad back.

Since the Great Pestilence had swept through the country, claiming one in three souls, there had been fewer peasants to pay rents and tithes to landowners. Inevitably, the landowners had increased their charges. At the same time the price of bread had risen dramatically but wages had remained low, so there was growing resentment among the working folk toward their wealthy overlords. Cynric sided wholly with the peasants, and seldom missed an opportunity to point out the injustice of the disparity between rich and poor to anyone who would listen.

Meadowman shot his companion an uneasy glance, and Bartholomew suspected that while he might well agree with the sentiments expressed by Cynric, he was reluctant to voice his support while Michael was listening. Besides being the Bishop of Ely’s most trusted agent, a Benedictine monk, and, like Bartholomew, a Fellow of Michaelhouse, Brother Michael was also the University’s Senior Proctor. He had recently promoted Meadowman to the post of Chief Beadle — his right-hand man in keeping unruly students in order. Meadowman enjoyed his work and was devoted to Michael, and he had no intention of annoying his master over an issue like peasants’ rights. Cynric, on the other hand, had known Michael for years, and felt no need to whisper his radical opinions.

‘Between the Bishop and the Prior, the people in Ely are all but bled dry,’ he continued. ‘The Death should have made the wealthy kinder to their tenants, but it has made them greedier and more demanding. It is not just, and the people will not tolerate it for much longer.’

Bartholomew knew that his book-bearer was right. He could not avoid hearing the growing rumble of discontent when he visited his poorer patients, and believed them when they claimed they would join any rebellion that would see the wealthy strung up like the thieves they were seen to be. Personally, he believed such grievances were justified, and thought the wealthy were wrong to continue in their excesses while the peasants starved.

Michael chose to ignore Cynric, concentrating on negotiating a way through one of the many spots where the road had lost its battle with the dank waters of the Fens. The track, for which ‘causeway’ was rather too grand a title, was little more than a series of mud-filled ruts that barely rose above the bogs surrounding them. Reeds and long cream-coloured grasses clustered at its edges, waiting for an opportunity to encroach and reclaim the barren ribbon of land that stood between Ely and isolation.