The Hand of Justice

And then he was gone, leaving the grocer standing alone with his shoulders slumped in an attitude of defeat. Bosel pushed himself deeper into the shadows as Deschalers trudged past, sensing that this would not be a good time to make an appeal for spare change. The conversation was exactly the kind folk usually wanted to keep to themselves, and Bosel knew better than to reveal himself. He shuddered, supposing it was something involving money or power, neither of which Bosel knew much about. He decided to forget what he had seen. It was safer that way.

CHAPTER 1

Cambridge, March 1355

Thomas Mortimer the miller was drunk again. He had managed to climb on to his cart and take the reins, but only because his horses were used to his frequent visits to the town’s taverns, and knew to wait until he was safely slumped in the driver’s seat before making their way home. His fellow drinkers at the Lilypot Inn raised dull, bloodshot eyes from their cups to watch, but these were men for whom ale was a serious business, and the spectacle of an inebriated miller struggling into his cart did not keep their attention for long.

It claimed someone’s, however. Brother Michael, the University’s Senior Proctor and Benedictine agent for the Bishop of Ely, who taught theology at Michaelhouse when his other duties allowed, fixed the miller with a disapproving glare.

‘If Mortimer were a scholar, I would have him off that cart and imprisoned for driving dangerously, not to mention public drunkenness,’ he declared angrily. ‘But he is a townsman, and therefore outside my jurisdiction. The Sheriff and the burgesses will have to deal with him.’

‘They have done nothing so far,’ said Matthew Bartholomew, Master of Medicine at Michaelhouse, who strode at Michael’s side. ‘He knocked his rival miller across that snowdrift outside Bene’t College two weeks ago, and he will kill someone if he continues to drive when he can barely stand upright. The burgesses listened politely to my complaints about him, but said they do not want to offend the Mortimer clan by ordering Thomas off his cart.’

Michael shook his head in disgust. ‘They are afraid that if they do, then the Mortimers will refuse to donate money for repairing the Great Bridge.’

The two scholars had just left Merton Hall, where they had taken part in a lively debate on the neglect of mathematics in academic studies, and were on their way to Gonville Hall. They had been invited to dine there by William Rougham, one of Bartholomew’s medical colleagues. Bartholomew did not like Rougham, whom he found narrow-minded and dogmatic, but he felt obliged to suppress his feelings as well as he could, given that he and Rougham comprised exactly half of the total complement of physicians in Cambridge. So many medics had died during the plague that they were still in short supply, despite the best attempts of the University to train more.

It was a pleasant early spring day, with the sun dipping in and out of gauzy white clouds and trees beginning to turn green with buds and new leaves. A crisp breeze blew from the east, bringing with it the scent of freshly tilled soil from the surrounding fields. Bartholomew inhaled deeply, savouring the sweetness of the air at the northern outskirts of the town. A few steps ahead lay the Great Bridge, a teetering structure of stone and wood, and beyond this the air was far less fragrant. Fires from houses, Colleges, hostels and businesses encased Cambridge in a pall of smoke, almost, but not quite, strong enough to mask the stench of human sewage, animal manure and rotting rubbish that lay across the streets in a thick, fetid, greasy brown-black blanket.

The Great Bridge was heavily congested that morning. It was a Wednesday, and traders from the surrounding villages streamed towards the Market Square to sell their wares — sacks of grain and flour, noisy livestock, brown eggs wrapped in straw, winter vegetables past their best, and rough baskets and mats woven from Fenland reeds. Agitated whinnies, baleful lows and furious honks and hisses expressed what the animals thought of the tightly packed, heaving throng that jostled and shoved to cross the river.

It was not just farmers in homespun browns or brightly clad merchants who wanted access to the town that day. The sober hues of academic tabards and monastic habits — the blacks, browns and whites of Dominicans, Carmelites, Franciscans and the occasional Benedictine — were present, too. Scholars from Michaelhouse, Valence Marie, Bene’t College and countless other institutions were pouring out of Merton Hall to join the press, all anxious to be home in time for their midday meal.