‘Look.’ Michael held something out to him, and Bartholomew saw it was a small twist of parchment containing a few innocuous hairs. St Botolph’s relic.
‘Where did that come from?’ asked Bartholomew wearily, having last seen it in Stoate’s possession. ‘Did your Bishop send his agents out after Stoate at your request, and drown him in the Seine as he was reading his Galen for the third time? Or did the boat in which he crossed the Channel mysteriously sink with the loss of all lives?’
‘You do have a lurid imagination, Matt,’ said Michael reprovingly. ‘You should eat fewer vegetables and more bread and meat. Stoate himself gave me this relic, as a matter of fact.’
Bartholomew sat upright. ‘Stoate? How? He will have fled the country by now!’
‘Apparently not,’ said Michael, infuriatingly smug. ‘According to him, he is sorry for the deceptions he embarked upon, but he knows he did no serious wrong – he still maintains the death of Unwin was a dreadful accident while Norys’s and Mistress Freeman’s desecrated corpses came to no harm, because they were properly buried afterwards. And the tainted mussels that killed them, of course, were not his fault at all.’
‘Of course,’ said Bartholomew. ‘So when did he tell you all this? Where did you meet him?’
‘He sought me out after the signing ceremony today,’ said Michael. ‘I confess I was a little startled to see him in Cambridge, particularly since he was wearing the habit of a Carmelite.’
‘He has become a friar,’ said Bartholomew heavily. ‘So, he escapes justice after all.’
‘I hardly think so, Matt,’ said Michael in a superior tone. ‘Can you imagine what living hell the life of a friar must be? Allowed to own nothing, begging for his food, and at the beck and call of every squalid peasant in the parish.’ He shuddered. ‘Such a life would be Purgatory itself! He is going today to join a community near Grimsby.’ He shuddered again. ‘I barely know where that is, but Stoate assures me that it will be far enough away, so that no one will know him and he can make amends for his mistakes in peace.’
‘Somewhere he can parade as an honest man seeking to devote his life to God, you mean,’ said Bartholomew bitterly. ‘He will be accepted into the Carmelite Order on a deception, and no one will ever know what a lying, cheating, vile desecrator they have in their midst. He may think he has killed no one, but what about all the patients who might have lived had he not prescribed his false cures? What about Norys, who he was happy to see hanged in his place?’
‘He will not be accepted on those terms,’ said Michael, gloating somewhat. ‘As soon as Stoate had gone on his way, I mentioned the matter to my Bishop. He will send a letter to the Prior of the House Stoate intends to join in a month or two, mentioning the fact that he is not all he appears. Your charlatan physician will not be allowed to forget his past crimes – indeed, he will atone for them in ways only a mendicant Order can dream up.’
‘Your Bishop has an astonishingly long arm when it comes to these sorts of things,’ said Bartholomew, rather distastefully. ‘God forbid that I should ever come under the scrutiny of his beady eye, or within reach of his vindictive fingers.’
‘Do not worry about that,’ said Michael with a peaceful sigh. ‘He knows how much you have done for the University and the College over the last few years. My lord the Bishop might not let a wrong go unpunished, but he does not forget those who have helped him, either. If ever you decide to become a Benedictine, Matt, he will find you a pleasantly lucrative position somewhere. Physician-priest to some lord perhaps, or even at the King’s court.’
‘No, thank you,’ said Bartholomew in horror. ‘The University is bad enough for politics and intrigue, but court must be even worse!’
‘I do not think so,’ said Michael with a happy beam of satisfaction. ‘In fact, I know so.’ He took a deep breath of river-tainted air, and settled back against the sun-warmed stones of the orchard wall. ‘And it is good to be back, Matt!’
Historical Note
On 6 MAY 1355 a licence was granted to Michaelhouse to appropriate the living of the Church of Our Lady at Grundisburgh. The final advowson was granted on 1 June 1353 by Walter Wauncy, and a copy of the document is in the Muniments Room at Trinity College, Cambridge, Michaelhouse’s successor. By this time, Michaelhouse held four other advowsons – Cheadle in Staffordshire, Tittleshall in Norfolk, Barrington near Cambridge, and, of course, St Michael’s Church in Cambridge.
Records show that Wauncy’s term of office as rector came to an end in 1353, and he was replaced by a man called John de Horsey, who remained until 1361. It is likely that Horsey was a Michaelhouse man, and that the College was practising its newly acquired rights by appointing a vicar of its own choosing to Grundisburgh. Wauncy, meanwhile, was associated with several court cases in Suffolk, one of which involved a manor at Wyverston near Stowmarket.
The reason the advowson was granted is not known, although they were popular ways of making friends and influencing people in medieval times. Whoever had the living of a parish church was entitled to collect the tithes – and Grundisburgh was a large village with a number of freemen who would be eligible to pay – and was permitted to donate two thirds of the revenue to the charity of his choice. Such a charity might well include a College, so the advowson would allow Michaelhouse to provide ‘jobs for the boys’ as well as making a handsome profit. The living of Grundisburgh remained in Michaelhouse’s hands until Henry VIII incorporated Michaelhouse into his new foundation of Trinity College.
In 1353, the Tuddenham family were lords of the manor, probably living in Wergen Hall, which is thought to have stood on or near the site of the present Grundisburgh Hall. There was a second manor in the village, possibly centring on a house called Bast’s. A document of 1339 records that a Robert Tuddenham, aged twelve, was Thomas Tuddenham’s heir, although it is not known who, if either, survived the plague.
In the neighbouring villages, several documents just predating the Black Death say that Roland Deblunville was lord of the manor in Burgh, while the knight Sir John Bardolf was lord of the manor of Clopton. A man called Robert Grosnold lived in Otley during the fourteenth century, although his fates are uncertain. One of the manors at Otley was called Ether Hall.
Stories and legends in this part of Suffolk abound. The Benedictine monks of St Edmundsbury Abbey did acquire the bones of St Botolph from a chapel thought to have been located in Grundisburgh in the eleventh century (one manuscript gives a date of 1095, although it probably occurred earlier than this), and there is a story that a golden calf was buried by the villagers near the site of the chapel for safe keeping. Legend also has it that the calf is still there. Unfortunately, St Botolph’s relics were cremated by a devastating fire that swept through the monastery in 1465.
There is also a story that a mysterious white dog called Padfoot is occasionally seen in the village, as a prelude to a great personal disaster. It is said that the last person to have seen the ghostly hound was an American airman during World War II, the night before his plane was shot down. Rings made from coffin handles were believed to prevent cramps, while setting the ninth pea in a pod on a lintel was supposed to secure a husband for unmarried village maidens.
Many villages were abandoned after the Black Death, and there are references to a nearby settlement called Barchester in some documents, although no trace of it survives today. Others, such as Coates in Lincolnshire and Thorpe-in-the-Glebe in Nottinghamshire survive as lumps and bumps in fields, known to archaeologists as DMVs (deserted medieval villages).