The Riddle of St Leonard's (5 page)

Magda opened one eye. ‘The girl shows no sign of illness.’ She drew a small bottle from the wallet at her waist, opened it, handed it to Owen, who paused in his rowing long enough to take one drink. Then Magda drank. ‘Was a time thou wouldst accept naught from Magda, Bird-eye.’

And not so long ago at that. Owen grinned. ‘Perhaps I was not so thirsty then.’

The Riverwoman gave one of her barking laughs. ‘Aye. Mayhap.’ She took another drink, put the bottle away. ‘Magda would give much to know what calls back the manqualm from time to time, Bird-eye. A bad harvest?’ She tilted her head, thinking. ‘Each time it has followed one, ’tis a fact. But not every bad harvest summons it. Thy priests say ’tis the scourge of thy god, punishing thee for thy unholy ways. Mayhap ’tis why Magda survives. She is invisible to thy god.’ She grinned, showing her teeth, white against her tanned leather skin.

So ancient and still she had all her teeth but one, and that one she had lost as a child. No one knew how long ago that had been. Magda was not inclined to say. But folk round York spoke of her as having lived on her rock in the mud flats of the Ouse just north of the city since the time of King Canute, hence the Viking ship turned upside-down that served as her roof. Owen knew Magda was too mortal for such a life span, but there was no doubt she was old. And rich with the wisdom of a life spent healing the sick and bringing children into the world. And thinking for herself: though she lived as saintly a life as a good Christian, she was not a Christian and found the Church’s teachings poor, superstitious excuses for common sense. A dangerous opinion, but strongly held. Owen valued in her friendship her clear mind, common sense and a fresh perspective, free of fear.

‘But how do thy priests explain the deaths of infants, Bird-eye?’ Magda no longer smiled.

‘To my mind it is the parents who are punished by such a death, Magda, not the child. I have heard it said that such a child was too good to live; God chooses to take such children directly to Heaven so that the world might not taint their souls.’

A snort. ‘So thy god leaves only the unworthy on earth? Bah!’

Owen felt uneasily like agreeing with Magda. But was that not blasphemy? ‘We cannot always know the Lord’s purpose.’

Magda wagged her head. ‘Thou art not taken in by such nonsense. Thou wast wise to send thy children off to Freythorpe Hadden.’

‘Was I?’ Since the first rumours of pestilence, Owen’s wife, Lucie, had wished to get their children out of the city. Eight years earlier she had lost her first child to the plague – Martin, her only child with Nicholas Wilton, her first husband. So Lucie had conceived a plan to send Hugh and Gwenllian to her father’s manor in the countryside, where his efficient sister Phillippa was also in residence. But there was one problem: Lucie had still nursed their son Hugh, born the past winter, and as master apothecary she could not leave the city at such a time. How was one to find a reliable wet nurse in the midst of pestilence?

And then Magda’s granddaughter Tola had come down from the moors with her infant, Emma, and her two-year-old, Nym, grieving for her husband, who had been savaged by a wild boar. Lucie had befriended the young widow and asked her to be Hugh’s wet nurse.

Owen had not been easily persuaded that Tola should take his only son out of the city. It was true that when Death stalked a city, people changed, grew wild in their despair, unpredictable in their deeds. Perhaps the children would be safer in all respects in the country. But … ‘The country did not save the Ffulfords,’ he thought aloud.

Magda, who had let her chin drop to her chest again, opened one eye, squinted up at Owen and grunted in sympathy. ‘Tola and her young ones are best away from Magda’s house, where the sick are wont to come. ’Tis not so different at an apothecary.’

‘The sick are not brought to the apothecary.’

‘Nay. But those who care for them … Oft they succumb. Why dost thou yet debate thy decision? ’Tis done.’

It was difficult for any parent, this pestilence that seemed most fatal to children. But for Lucie it was doubly hard because of the loss of her first to the plague. The hope that her family was protected by God’s grace could not buoy her.

How much worse would it ever be for Alisoun Ffulford, having lost both parents and siblings?

‘Are there any more in Alisoun’s family, Magda?’

The Riverwoman jerked awake. ‘Eh?’ She shaded her sleepy eyes with a hand.

Owen repeated the question.

‘Nay. Parents, three children, ’tis all.’ Magda shifted, began to lay her head back down.

‘So what does she guard in the barn?’

Magda grumbled and rubbed her eyes. ‘Herself. Her valuable horse.’

‘Why did she run from us?’

‘Why should she trust strangers, eh? Be patient, Bird-eye. The child will come to Magda or thee in her own time.’

‘How do you know?’

Magda lay down her head, closed her eyes. ‘Some things cannot be otherwise, Bird-eye.’

As Owen rowed towards home, the fly-ridden farmhouse haunted his thoughts.

The boat rocked dangerously as Magda suddenly sat forward, eyes scouring the sky downstream. ‘Fire in the city. Dost thou smell it on the wind, Bird-eye?’

Owen was breathing deeply with the effort of rowing. But he smelled no more smoke than usual. ‘Even in summer folk tend their fires, Magda.’

The Riverwoman frowned up at the air. ‘Nay. ’Tis more than that, Bird-eye.’

T
hrowing the shutters wide, Bess Merchet stood with eyes closed, head back, hoping for a breeze to refresh her and clear the dust from her nose. Hardly more air than in her bedchamber. How was a woman to revive her spirit while cleaning? ‘May the Lord grant us an early autumn,’ she muttered as she moved away from the window.

But what was that? She paused, listened. There. She heard it again. Over the usual din of carts on cobbles, children screaming in play, hawkers crying out to the passers-by, a smithy’s clatter, over all these common sounds of a summer’s day in York, and, down below, the maids noisily cleaning the tavern kitchen, over all this were shouts and shrieks and the clanging of a bell signalling an emergency.

Bess returned to the window. And now, as she breathed deeply, she noted how dense with smoke the air was, more like the air in the dead of winter than in July. Squinting and shifting from foot to foot, making good use of her vantage point three full storeys above the ground, Bess at last saw, round the chimneys and gables of her neighbours’ houses, a plume of smoke rising over St Leonard’s Hospital.

Her immediate thought was that it was a funeral pyre. She remembered how in the time of the first pestilence, even on the windy coast of the North Sea, the air over Scarborough had some days been thick with smoke from the burning of the plague corpses. She had been heavy with her son Peter and fearful that the stench would turn him to a monster in her womb. But the deaths so far had been few compared with that time.

Her second thought was for her Uncle Julian, who had a small house within the hospital walls. He was a careless man with a lamp or a candle, especially when in his cups, which might be at any time of day or night now he no longer did an honest day’s work.

Bess glanced at her half-cleaned chamber and judged it tidy enough for tonight. Dirty it was not. She did not tolerate dirt in bedchambers, be they the guest chambers or her own. But organising the clutter must wait until she confirmed her uncle’s safety. With an impatient tug, she removed the scarf that protected her thick hair, the red dulled with the passing years, but still a full head of hair of which she was quite proud, and replaced the scarf with one of her starched and beribboned caps.

St Leonard’s Hospital stretched over a large area within the north corner of York’s city walls, bordered by Footless Lane, St Mary’s Abbey, and Lop Lane, and reaching almost to Petergate. The East Gatehouse stood at the top of Blake Street, with a high arch over the lane in which was set a statue of St Leonard. The church and the claustral buildings of Austin canons filled the north-east half of the precinct; the other half held the infirmary with two chapels, and extensive additional buildings for a grammar school, guest hall, tannery, malthouse, stables, workshops, kitchens, and dwellings of staff and corrodians. It seemed almost a self-contained town. St Leonard’s had been founded by Athelstan before William the Norman harried the north, and it was said by many to be the largest hospital outside London.

As Bess passed under the arch, she encountered a scene of chaos: people swarmed like frantic bees smoked from a hive, running hither and yon, bumping into each other as if blinded by the smoke; buckets and pots clanked and sloshed with water. Bess pushed through the crowd towards the infirmary, shaking herself loose from those who clutched at her and shouted gibberish. But she realised in short order that the infirmary and its chapels were intact; the smoke came from the north wall, from either the grammar school or one of the small houses for corrodians – which included her uncle’s dwelling.

With renewed urgency she pushed through the crowd, using her left shoulder as a battering ram, and was soon past the grammar school and forcing her way through an even louder throng. She was rewarded by the sight of Julian’s house, scorched on the left side, but intact. The house beside it, however, was a burned-out shell. Before it lay two bodies, one writhing beneath the ministering hands of two women, one of whom Bess recognised as Honoria de Staines, once her uncle’s servant and now a lay sister. The other man lay quietly beneath the bowed head of an Austin canon.

As Bess approached, she saw that much of the clothing on the motionless man had been burned away, and his body scorched – his face beyond recognition. Don Erkenwald solemnly prayed for his soul. Bess crossed herself, moved over to the one struggling to stand to escape the two women. ‘Uncle Julian! Praise God!’ She almost laughed, thinking how like him to be surrounded by fawning women. But when he turned to Bess and she saw his face bruised and cut, his mass of white hair singed on one side, both hands bandaged from fingertips to wrists, she saw how close he must have come to being the one lying still beneath the priest. ‘What happened, uncle?’

‘Tell Anneys and Honoria to see to Laurence.’ Julian’s voice was hoarse. He struggled to rise, pushing the two women aside.

‘Don Erkenwald is with him,’ Bess said. And glad she was, too, as she realised the dead man must be her uncle’s oldest friend, Laurence de Warrene. Erkenwald was a former soldier and knew death when he saw it. He would have found help for Laurence if there had been any hope.

‘Erkenwald knows nothing of physicks,’ Julian said, taking a step towards Bess. As he put his weight on his left foot he stumbled with a cry of pain.

Bess caught him, and with the help of the one called Anneys managed to lower him gently to the ground. ‘Sit and keep your peace, uncle.’ Bess shook her head at his singed sleeves, hem, and hair. ‘Were you in that house as it burned?’

Julian closed his eyes and put a bandaged hand to his forehead. ‘Laurence’s house.’

Bess caught sight of two men pushing their way through the crowd with a stretcher, motioned them over. ‘Get him to the infirmary at once.’

Julian growled at them. ‘See to Laurence.’

Honoria touched Julian’s cheek. He pushed her away.

‘Let the men lift him,’ Bess said, grabbing the woman by the shoulder and pulling her up. Hearing her uncle groan, Bess turned, shouted to the stretcher-bearers, ‘Be gentle with him.’

Honoria grabbed Bess’s arm. ‘I am a lay sister of this spital and not accustomed to such treatment.’

‘I know your station,’ Bess said. ‘And your previous calling.’ Folk said her husband had left her rather than compete with her lovers.

‘I took good care of Master Taverner when I served him.’

‘I am sure you did.’ Bess turned to the other woman, who was dressed in a similar dark, simple gown and white wimple. ‘You are a lay sister also?’

The woman nodded. She was older than Honoria – by her greying eyebrows and the lines around her eyes, Bess guessed her beyond her child-bearing days – and had a competent air about her.

But she was still a mere servant. ‘Where are your superiors?’ Bess demanded. ‘Does my uncle not deserve to have one of the nuns tending him?’ He had paid good money for his corrody at the spital, he deserved the best they had to offer.

‘We were near,’ Anneys said. ‘Dame Constance has gone before us to the infirmary to prepare Master Taverner’s bed.’

‘Ah.’ The Mother Superior. That was better. Bess watched as Honoria picked up her skirts and hurried after the stretcher. Even in her drab gown she managed to provoke stares from the men in the crowd.

Another stretcher had been brought for Laurence de Warrene. Don Erkenwald, relieved of his charge, joined Bess and Anneys. He was a muscular canon with the scars of his former life on his face. Bess had always thought him an odd one to be an almoner. ‘Both women have been trained by the sisters and are trusted with our patients, Mistress Merchet.’

‘Laurence was dead when you found him?’

Erkenwald gave a brief nod. ‘I believe he was so when your uncle pulled him from the house.’

‘He knows, then?’

‘It is difficult for him to accept that God has taken his friend and spared him.’