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.’
‘Why?’ asked Bartholomew, turning to glance at the people whom the priest indicated with a careless flick of his hand. As far as he could tell, they were perfectly normal, and had no obvious infectious disease that might be passed from close contact. Two were young men, who wore sullen expressions and exuded the impression that they thought the world owed them a good deal more than they had been given; the third was Richard de Leycestre.
‘Just do as I tell you,’ said John irritably. ‘Stay by the pillar and keep quiet until I finish. However, in future I would rather you attended mass with the monks. My parishioners do not take kindly to having the priory’s spies in their midst.’
‘Spies?’ echoed Bartholomew, startled. ‘I am not a spy. And anyway, what could there be to report to the monks – or anyone else – about a mass held so close to them that they will be able to hear every word anyway?’
‘I am sure you do not require me to elaborate on that,’ replied John obscurely. ‘And now you must excuse me, before my parishioners decide they have better things to do than watch me chattering to you.’
He bustled away, leaving the physician feeling like an unwelcome interloper. Bartholomew saw he was the subject of several curious gazes, not all of them friendly. The three men he had been forbidden to speak to regarded him with unreadable expressions before turning away to watch Father John.
Flinging a few tawdry receptacles carelessly on to the altar, John took a deep breath and began to bellow the words of his mass at the top of his lungs. Immediately, the volume of the monks’ singing increased, so John yelled louder still. In reply, the monks notched up the volume once again, so that it was difficult to concentrate on either. The air rang with noise, frightening two pigeons that had been roosting among the rafters; the sounds of their agitated flapping, and the shrieks of a woman as one flew too close to her, added to the general racket. The lay-brothers, who had been talking quietly in the transept at the end of the nave, began to speak more loudly in order to make themselves heard, and John’s congregation, unable to understand the priest’s abominable Latin, started to converse among themselves. Bartholomew watched open-mouthed from the base of his pillar.
And so it continued, with John abandoning the usual format of the mass in favour of repeating those parts that would provide him with the opportunity to shout. He crashed the chalice and patens so hard on the top of the altar that Bartholomew was certain they would have broken had they been made from anything other than metal. That the sacred vessels made such satisfying clangs reiterated the fact that the dispute between monks and parish was not a new one, and Bartholomew wondered whether John had ordered iron vessels specially manufactured for the express purpose of allowing him to use them like gongs.
Eventually, the monks completed their devotions, and their unnecessarily loud footsteps could be heard leaving the chancel and stamping towards the cloisters. Doors were slammed, wooden pews banged and bumped, and psalters and prayer books snapped shut in one of the noisiest exits from a church Bartholomew had ever witnessed. He was surprised that Prior Alan, who had not seemed to be a petty man, permitted such churlish behaviour among his monks.
John’s mass was completed as soon as the door to the vestries slammed for the final time and the last of the monks had left. Bartholomew had expected that John would merely lower his voice and complete the service at a more reasonable volume, thus instilling at least some degree of reverence into his restless, bored parishioners. But John merely devoured the Host, gulped down some wine, and gathered his iron vessels together in anticipation of a speedy completion. He raised his hand to sign a benediction over his assembled flock, although Bartholomew saw that the priest was more interested in the doings of the lay-brothers who were lurking among the shadows of the north aisle than in blessing his people.
‘Did you enjoy our mass?’ came a soft voice at Bartholomew’s shoulder. The physician turned to see Richard de Leycestre; the two young men were at his side.
‘It was an interesting experience,’ replied Bartholomew guardedly. ‘I am used to masses conducted a little more quietly.’
Leycestre chuckled. ‘I imagine there are few who are not.’
‘I have been instructed not to speak to you,’ said Bartholomew, looking to where Father John’s determined advance on the chattering lay-brothers had been brought to a halt: Agnes Fitzpayne, the prodigious drinker in the Mermaid the night before, had intercepted him and had his arm gripped in one of her powerful hands. Thus occupied, John had not yet noticed that his earlier command was being ignored, and that Bartholomew was conversing with Leycestre and his companions.
‘By Father John, I suppose,’ said Leycestre, shaking his head. ‘He is always trying to prevent us from speaking to the strangers who pass through our city.’ He indicated the two young men with a wave of his hand. ‘These are my nephews, Adam Clymme and Robert Buk. They are of the same mind as me as regards the pitiful circumstances our peasants have been forced into by greedy landlords, but Father John dislikes us spreading the word.’