The Lost Abbot: 19 (The Chronicles of Matthew Bartholomew) Read online

  Also by Susanna Gregory

  The Matthew Bartholomew Series

  A Plague on Both Your Houses

  An Unholy Alliance

  A Bone of Contention

  A Deadly Brew

  A Wicked Deed

  A Masterly Murder

  An Order for Death

  A Summer of Discontent

  A Killer in Winter

  The Hand of Justice

  The Mark of a Murderer

  The Tarnished Chalice

  To Kill or Cure

  The Devil’s Disciples

  A Vein of Deceit

  The Killer of Pilgrims

  Mystery in the Minster

  The Thomas Chaloner Series

  A Conspiracy of Violence

  Blood on the Strand

  The Butcher of Smithfield

  The Westminster Poisoner

  A Murder on London Bridge

  The Body in the Thames

  The Piccadilly Plot

  Death in St James’s Park

  COPYRIGHT

  Published by Hachette Digital

  ISBN: 9781405516815

  All characters and events in this publication, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2013 Susanna Gregory

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.

  The publisher is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not owned by the publisher.

  Hachette Digital

  Little, Brown Book Group

  100 Victoria Embankment

  London, EC4Y 0DY

  www.littlebrown.co.uk

  www.hachette.co.uk

  Table of Contents

  Also by Susanna Gregory

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Map

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Epilogue

  Historical Note

  For Sheila Hakin

  PROLOGUE

  Peterborough, 1313

  Lawrence de Oxforde did not believe for a moment that he was going to be executed. A pardon would arrive from the King, the hangman would stand down, and Oxforde would live to fight another day. Or, to put it more accurately, he thought with a smirk, to burgle another house, because he had no intention of giving up the life that had turned him from a nameless clerk into the most celebrated outlaw in the region.

  It was a grey day, clouds hanging flat and low over the little Fenland town, and the threat of rain was in the air. The scaffold had been erected on the far bank of the River Nene, and it seemed to Oxforde that the entire population of Peterborough had turned out to trail after his cart as it trundled from prison to gibbet. There were toothless ancients, brawny labourers with sun-reddened faces, maidens, children and monks from the abbey. Oxforde allowed himself a small, self-satisfied smile. It was only natural that work should grind to a halt on this of all days. He was famous, so of course everyone would want to see him in the flesh.

  As the cart lumbered across the wooden bridge, he glanced behind him. Peterborough was a pretty cluster of red-roofed houses nestled among billowing oaks, all dwarfed by the mighty golden mass of the abbey church. Oxforde’s mouth watered – wealthy homes, shops loaded with goods, and a monastery bursting with treasure. It was a burglar’s dream, and he would certainly linger there for a few days once he was free to resume his life of crime.

  He swaggered as he alighted from the cart, and called brash witticisms to the spectators. He was puzzled when they only glowered at him, and wondered what was wrong. He was a legend, a man who had relieved more rich folk of their ill-gotten gains than any other thief in history. The town’s paupers should be all admiration that he had eluded capture for so long.

  ‘Murderer!’ howled young Joan Sylle, the abbey’s laundress.

  Oxforde was stung by the hatred burning in her eyes. ‘Only the rich,’ he snapped back at her. Surely she understood that he had had to dispatch the odd victim? What robber had not? The occasional slit throat was unavoidable in his line of business.

  ‘The potter was not rich,’ shouted Roger Botilbrig, a spotty lad who was never far from Joan’s side.

  ‘Neither was his wife,’ a deeper voice called out.

  ‘Nor his children,’ another added.

  A chorus of condemnation rippled through the crowd, and Oxforde slowed his jaunty progress. He had had no choice but to kill the potter and his family – they had stumbled across him as he was poring over his latest haul. Unfortunately, he had been less than thorough, and one had survived long enough to identify him.

  ‘That was different,’ he said, less resonantly than before. ‘It was hardly my fault they—’

  ‘Keep walking,’ interrupted the priest who was behind him. His name was Kirwell, and lines etched into his thin, pale face suggested that life had been a struggle. He was going blind, too, at which point he would lose his post as parish priest. It would not be easy for a sightless cleric to make ends meet, so Oxforde had decided to help him – and to help himself into the bargain. Kirwell had been unrelenting in his efforts to save Oxforde’s soul, and although the robber had scant time for religion, he thought Kirwell deserved some reward for his dogged persistence.

  ‘Do not worry about the future, Father,’ he murmured. ‘I have plans for you.’

  ‘It is not me you should be thinking about today,’ Kirwell whispered back, kindly but dismissively. ‘It is your immortal soul. Now ignore the crowd and keep moving. I shall stay at your side, so you will not die alone.’

  ‘I will not die at all,’ said Oxforde, loudly indignant. ‘My pardon will arrive soon, you will see.’

  He spoke with such confidence that some folk exchanged uneasy glances. Oxforde laughed, gratified by their disquiet. Doubtless they were afraid that he might visit them next. Well, perhaps he would, because although he had amassed a huge fortune and hidden it in a place where no one else would ever think to look, there was always room for more.

  The Sheriff stepped forward. ‘Hurry up,’ he ordered the executioner sharply. ‘Every extra moment he lives is an insult to God.’

  ‘And an insult to his victims,’ added Joan, while those around her nodded agreement.

  ‘Victims!’ spat Oxforde. ‘I am the victim here. A man has to make a living, you know.’

  ‘A little contrition would not go amiss,’ counselled Kirwell softly. ‘It would count for something when your sins are weighed. And they are many – too many to count.’

  Oxforde sniffed to indicate that he did not agree. He climbed the steps to the scaffold with jaunty defiance, then turned to the priest, supposing it was as good a time as any to put his plan into action.

  ‘I like you, Kirwell, so I am going to give you something. However, there is a condition: you must never show it to anyone else. If you keep it secret, you will enjoy a long and comfortable life. But if you sell it – or even let another person see it – you will die.’

  ‘I do not want
anything from you,’ said Kirwell, although not before hope had flashed in his eyes. He was terrified of the grinding poverty that lay ahead of him, a fear that Oxforde fully intended to exploit.

  ‘You will want this,’ he crooned enticingly. ‘It is the prayer I composed last night – the one thanking God for my pardon. You said it was beautiful, so I wrote it down for you.’

  There was no mistaking Kirwell’s disappointment, although he accepted the folded parchment graciously enough. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘But remember: show it to no one.’

  Kirwell nodded, but there were many who would pay handsomely for something scribed by England’s most famous thief, and the priest needed money desperately. Of course he would sell the thing. Indeed, Oxforde was counting on it.

  ‘It is time to think of more urgent matters,’ the priest said, shoving the parchment into his scrip. ‘Death is but moments away and—’

  ‘Rubbish!’ declared Oxforde. ‘The Sheriff will not execute a legend.’

  He continued in this vein until the noose was placed around his neck, then he became uneasy: the King was cutting it rather fine. He started to add something else, but the words never emerged, because the hangman was hauling on the rope.

  There was a ragged cheer from the spectators as he jerked and twisted, feet kicking empty air. Kirwell bowed his head to pray, but he was the only one who did: everyone else was too relieved to see the end of the man who had plagued the shire for so many years.

  When his struggles were over and the executioner had declared him dead, Oxforde was placed in a coffin. It was thicker and stronger than most caskets, and the hangman’s assistants fastened the lid with an inordinate number of nails. Most of the crowd followed as it was toted to the cemetery.

  ‘Are you sure it is right to bury him in St Thomas’s churchyard?’ the Sheriff asked Kirwell, as they joined the end of the procession. ‘He was impenitent to the end, and the Church does not normally let executed criminals lie in consecrated ground.’

  Kirwell gestured to the long line of people who walked silently behind the coffin. ‘They have a terrible fear that he might return from the dead to haunt them, and there is a belief that only holy soil will keep him in his grave. I think they deserve some peace of mind after living in fear of him all these years.’

  The Sheriff nodded his understanding, then gave a wry smile. ‘And there is a certain satisfaction in putting him in that particular hole.’

  Two months before, a silversmith had been interred in St Thomas’s cemetery, amid rumours that he had bought the plot next to it for bits of his favourite jewellery. Oxforde had been digging for them when he had been caught.

  So Oxforde was lowered into the pit he himself had made, and the hangman and his lads began to shovel soil on top of him: it landed with a muffled thud. Then there was a different kind of thump, one that caused everyone to start back in alarm. Had it come from inside the coffin?

  ‘Continue,’ ordered the Sheriff urgently. ‘Quickly now!’

  Several onlookers hurried forward to help, flinging great spadefuls of earth down so fast and furiously that even if another sound had emerged, it would not have been heard. They finished by stamping down the mound as hard as they could, and some folk brought heavy stones to pile over the top.

  When it was done, the Sheriff breathed a sigh of relief. ‘There! That should hold him.’

  The next morning was even more grey and dismal, with clouds so thick that it felt like dusk. Kirwell returned to the grave to petition the saints for the dead man’s soul, although he suspected he was wasting his time: Oxforde’s sins were too great and his victims too many. The prayer was on the table in his house, and he had already been offered a shilling for it. He was inclined to accept, because he did not believe for a moment that selling it would shorten his life.

  He dropped to his knees, but his thoughts soon went from his devotions to Oxforde’s scribbles. Perhaps someone might be interested in buying them for a higher price. The notion had no sooner crossed his mind when a shaft of sunlight blazed through the clouds and bathed the grave so intensely that it hurt his eyes. He fell backwards with a cry. And then, just as suddenly, the light vanished, leaving the little cemetery as dark and gloomy as before.

  ‘Did Oxforde do that?’ asked Botilbrig, running over to help Kirwell to his feet. The youth looked frightened. ‘Because you were nice to him?’

  ‘I do not know,’ replied Kirwell unsteadily, crossing himself. But one thing was certain. He would not sell the prayer now. Not ever.

  Suffolk, Summer 1358

  Cambridge and Clare were less than two days’ ride apart, but they could not have been more different. Cambridge was flat, busy, dirty and noisy, while Clare nestled amid gently rolling hills and was a tranquil, orderly village. Both possessed castles and priories, although Clare’s lacked the bustling urgency of Cambridge’s, and were smaller and quieter. But the biggest difference was that Clare had no University – no argumentative, arrogant, opinionated throng that antagonised the locals and was thoroughly resented for it.

  Matilde was not sure which of the two she preferred. Clare was her home now, but there were times when she missed Cambridge’s vibrancy. She had fled the University town three years before, certain in the belief that the physician she adored there would never ask her to marry him. Since then, she had found a modicum of peace in Clare. She later learned that she had been mistaken about Matt Bartholomew, and that he had actually intended to put the question to her on the very day that she had left. But by then, of course, it was too late.

  Or was it?

  Her heart had clamoured at her to dash back and hurl herself into his arms, but that would have been selfish, for it would have deprived him of the two things he loved most: his teaching and his impoverished patients. If he married her, he would have to resign his University post, as scholars were not permitted to wed; and providing for a wife would necessitate exchanging needy clients for ones who could pay.

  Staying away after she had discovered that he loved her as much as she loved him was not easy, but it had been the right decision – for him, at least, because the occasional report she received suggested that he was content. But then she heard that another woman had entered his life: Julitta Holm, trapped in a barren marriage to the town’s new surgeon.

  The news that he was ready to look elsewhere came as a shock to Matilde, and gradually she began to view her noble sacrifice as rather silly. This was reinforced when she met a wise-woman named Mother Udela, who informed her bluntly that she was a fool to sit back and watch while the only man she had ever really loved gave his heart to someone else. So Matilde started to consider ways in which she and Matt could be together.

  The main stumbling block was money. If they had some, he could continue to physick the poor, which would go some way to consoling him for losing his students. As he was unlikely to acquire any on his own – he invariably forgot to collect fees that were owing, and was less interested in wealth than any man Matilde had ever met – she saw it was up to her to secure the necessary fortune. She did not know if it was possible, but she was a resolute woman and the prize was her future happiness, so she was determined to try.

  She rode north that very day.

  CHAPTER 1

  Peterborough, August 1358

  Everyone was relieved when the towers and pinnacles of the great Benedictine abbey finally came into view. It had not been an easy journey, and misfortune had dogged them every step of the way – lame horses, flooded roads, accidents and a series of raids by robbers. And as none of the party had wanted to leave Cambridge in the first place, the litany of mishaps had done nothing to soothe ragged tempers.

  ‘At last!’ breathed Ralph de Langelee. ‘I thought we would never arrive.’

  ‘I told you we should not have come,’ said Father William, an unsavoury Franciscan who wore a filthy habit and whose thick hair sprouted in oily clumps around an untidy tonsure. ‘It is hundreds of miles across dangerous country
, and we are lucky to be alive.’

  ‘It is not hundreds of miles,’ countered Matthew Bartholomew, gripping the reins of his horse with fierce concentration. He was not a good rider, and had fallen off twice since the journey began; he was determined it would not happen again. ‘It is less than forty.’

  William only sniffed, declining to acknowledge that he might be wrong. Bartholomew did not blame him for thinking the distance greater than it was, when a journey that should have taken no more than two or three days had extended to almost a fortnight. He glanced at his companions.

  Langelee was in charge, not only because he was Master of Michaelhouse, the Cambridge College to which they all belonged, but because he had been a soldier before embarking on an academic career, and so knew what to do in the kinds of crises that had plagued them. Most of the University thought he should have stuck to warfare, because he was patently unsuited to scholarship, and his classes had a tendency to slide off into discussions about camp-ball, his favourite sport. But he was a just and fair leader, and his Fellows were content with his rule. Or they had been before he had decided that some of them should visit Peterborough.

  There were seven Fellows in his College, and he had picked three of them to travel with him, while a fourth had been ordered to go by no less a person than the Bishop of Lincoln. As all had hoped to spend the summer recovering from the rigours of an unusually frantic Easter Term, not to mention preparing work for the next academic year, the decision to drag them away had been unpopular, to say the least.

  ‘I do not see why I had to come to this godforsaken place,’ grumbled William, glaring at the monastery with dislike. ‘I will be unwelcome here – the Black Monks will mock me and make me feel uncomfortable. And they have no right, because everyone knows that the Franciscan Order is the only one God really likes.’

  ‘Is that so?’ asked Brother Michael coldly. He was a Benedictine himself, tall, generous of girth and whose ‘rough travelling habit’ was cut from the finest cloth. He had lank brown hair that was trimmed carefully around a perfectly round tonsure, and expressive green eyes. Besides teaching theology, he was also the University’s Senior Proctor, and through the years he had manoeuvred himself into a position of considerable authority. He had not found it easy to surrender his hard-won power to his deputy.