A Summer of Discontent

Glovere glared at the landlord, then stood reluctantly and made his way outside. There was a sigh of relief from several customers when the door closed behind him.

‘He is an evil fellow,’ said Leycestre fervently. ‘And Chaloner is not much better.’

‘There are a number of folk in this city we would be better without,’ agreed Barbour. He gestured to a lanky, greasy-haired man who lurched to his feet and clutched at a door frame to prevent himself from falling. ‘Haywarde is drunk again, which means his wife will feel his fists tonight. If there was any justice in the world, someone would take a knife to all three of them.’

Leycestre frowned, watching the other patrons give Haywarde a wide berth as they left. Haywarde was scowling angrily, and no one wanted to be on the receiving end of his quick temper. ‘What do you think of Glovere’s claims, Barbour? Do you believe that a townsman — like Chaloner — is responsible for these burglaries?’

The landlord shrugged as he set a tray of goblets on a table and began to dunk them in a bucket of cold water; he was relieved when Haywarde finally released the door frame and staggered away into the night. ‘Possibly. These are desperate times.’

‘But it is the gypsies, I tell you,’ insisted Leycestre. ‘The thefts started the day after they arrived in Ely. It is obvious that they are to blame.’

‘It is late,’ said Barbour flatly. He was tired, and had not silenced Glovere’s malicious diatribe in order to hear one from Leycestre. ‘And if you see Glovere on your way home, you can tell him that I meant what I said. You know I like a bit of gossip myself — what taverner does not like news to entertain his guests with? — but Glovere’s chatter is spiteful and dangerous, and I want none of it in my inn.’

He ushered Leycestre unceremoniously out of the door and barred it from the inside, walking back through his inn to exit through the rear door. He stood for a few moments, savouring the silence of the night before deciding he was too unsettled for sleep, and that he needed to stretch his legs. When he reached the main street, he saw that Leycestre and several of his fellow drinkers had also declined to return home when the night was too humid and hot for comfortable sleeping.

Meanwhile, Glovere was still angry as he slouched towards the river. Unlike the others, he was not obliged to rise before the sun was up to spend the day labouring in the fields. As steward to Lady Blanche de Wake, his only task was to watch over her small Ely manor while she was away. It was scarcely onerous, and he often found himself with time on his hands, and he liked to pass some of it by speculating about the private lives of his fellow citizens. He had risen at noon that day and was not yet ready for sleep. He reached the river and began to stroll upstream, breathing in deeply the rich, fertile scent of ripe crops and the underlying gassy stench of the marshes that surrounded the City in the Fens.

A rustle in the reeds behind him caught his attention and he glanced around sharply. Someone was walking towards him. He stopped and waited, wondering whether he had gone too far in the tavern, and one of the patrons had come to remonstrate with him or warn him not to be so outspoken. It was too dark to see who it was, so he waited, standing with his hands on his hips, ready to dispense a taste of his tongue if anyone dared tell him how to behave. A slight noise from behind made him spin around the other way. Was someone else there, or was it just the breeze playing among the waving reeds? Suddenly Glovere had the feeling that it was not such a fine evening for a stroll after all.

Chapter 1

Near the Isle of Ely, Cambridgeshire, August 1354

A light mist seeped from the marshes, and wrapped ghostly white fingers around the stunted trees that stood amid the wasteland of sedge and reed. In the distance, a flock of geese flapped and honked in panic at something that had disturbed them, but otherwise the desolate landscape was silent. The water, which formed black, pitchy puddles and ditches that stretched as far as the eye could see, had no ebb and flow, and was a vast, soundless blanket that absorbed everyday noises to create an eerie stillness. Matthew Bartholomew, physician and Fellow of the College of Michaelhouse at the University of Cambridge, felt as though his presence in the mysterious land of bog and tangled undergrowth was an intrusion, and that to speak and shatter the loneliness and quiet would be wrong. He recalled stories from his childhood about Fenland spirits and ghosts, which were said to tolerate humans only as long as they demonstrated appropriate reverence and awe.