Roaring Twenties...

With no historical grounding in the subject the 1920s has always captured my imagination as a time of elegance and decadence...

I woke to the sound of music playing somewhere in the distance. The rhythmic jazz beat was accompanied by the chink of glasses and soft laughter. Opening my eyes I was momentarily disorientated by my unfamiliar surroundings and the alcohol fizzing through my system. The party was still, from the sound of it, in full swing downstairs and had begun to spill outside into the terraced garden. All the bright young things, the sons and daughters of the wealthy and titled, had been invited to the party. It was hosted by a friend of a friend who owned the elegant mansion which boasted a prolific number of bedrooms. It was in one of those that I found myself.

The room was stiflingly hot. The windows, though flung wide open, made little impact on the humidity of the summer night. They did however help to illuminate the otherwise darkened room allowing my languid gaze to study the scene around me. Two glasses lay carelessly discarded on the floor, any left-over champagne already soaked into the texture of the carpet. Our clothing was haphazardly draped across several pieces of antique furniture. My lips curved in pleasure at the remembrance.

The sheets clung to my heated body and I hooked my leg over the silk, luxuriating in the brief coolness which caressed my skin. I felt flushed and damp, my hair curled in disarray about my head, and any make-up had long since been smudged away. I wondered idly how long we had been lying there for and whether we had yet been missed. The drink was flowing freely meaning that most of the guests, including ourselves, were suitably inebriated.

The hand of my lover trailed distractingly up my thigh. I turned to face him admiring his handsome profile. His eyes were closed but his hand unerringly found me. I bit my lip against a sigh and then he was biting it for me. The shape of his ring left a hard imprint upon my skin and I flinched against it. Reason asserted itself above the overwhelming surge of sensation.

“Stop.” I murmured against the crush of his lips. He groaned; his hands fisted tightly in my hair.

“Don’t do this to me Freddie.”

“We’ve already taken a huge risk. Someone is bound to comment on our absence.” Firmly pushing him away from me I rolled off the bed. He sat up, watching me snatch a stocking from the arm of the gramophone and then slip it over my leg, amusement and appreciation dancing in his warm gaze. Pulling the dress over my head I heard several beads hit and bounce off the floor. It was a familiar routine from all our previous assignations.

“Until next time.” His words were as much a threat as a promise.

“See you later darling.” I blew him a kiss from the doorway. There was no need to ask when; he would send a note.

As I padded bare foot through a corridor of mirrors, my impractical shoes dangling from my fingers, I realised that I was lost. Earlier I had been too engrossed in untangling his necktie to note which staircases and corridors we had stumbled down.

After feeling like I had walked around in hopeless circles for long enough I stopped, leaning woozily against a gilded banister. It was then that I observed the body lying spread-eagled at the bottom of the stairs. At first I was amused by the antics of those whose faculties were more impaired than my own, but with dawning horror I noticed that her neck was tilted at a horrible angle and her eyes were fixed unblinking towards me.

The shock of my discovery combined with the alcohol I had consumed and I retched over the expensive rug.

“Freddie!”

I heard my name exclaimed loudly as my knees buckled. My vision wavered as black spots exploded in front of my eyes. His arms caught me as I fell, but I didn’t feel their comfort or safety. Instead my last fevered thought was – why had his wife come here?

Supernatural...

Interestingly ‘supernatural’ was a term only coined during the thirteenth century. (Latin – supernaturalis). It can be, as I have learnt this week, best defined as those things which are above, beyond or against nature...

He never thought it would end like this.

He expected a desperate, wretched end with fear clogging his veins and panic stealing his breath. He thought he would continue running until he was no longer able to stand. Instead calm enveloped him in a gentle caress. He remained still except for a slight shifting from foot to foot as he eased the aches that threaded through his muscles.

He had run at first. Instinct guiding him to flee. The sheer persistence of human nature stubbornly snatching at all remaining life.

It was fruitless though. And so now he waited.

Once his rapid flight had ended he became aware of the unnatural stillness of his surroundings. Not even a breath of wind stirred the leaves which created a dense canopy above him. He had long ago ceased to recognise the landscape. An unyielding line of upright trees spread anonymously before him.

Then he heard it. Softly at first, but increasing in proximity. And then he saw it. Gleaming strangely in the darkness.

He laughed.

Alone, but for the soft bleating and dense shifting of the beasts in his care, the shepherd was the first to feel it.

The wind tugged suddenly and strongly at his tunic. The icy exhalation rocked him back and forth on his perch at the crest of the hill. His skin puckered with gooseflesh and he instinctually rested his hand upon the wicked blade sheathed at his side. It was an unnatural cold. A cry pierced through the serenity of the early summer night. It reached a shuddering crescendo before stumbling into silence.

Turning his back to the familiar valley he did not have to wait long before he heard the answering howl.

The old monk carefully incised a small mark on the clay pot he held. He was checking his stores of herbs in preparation for the long summer days which would make his garden bloom. The door to his peaceful solitude suddenly burst open, clattering loudly as it bounced off the wall. Startled he fumbled the pot and winced as it cracked upon the stone floor. The leaves he had spent hours drying, crushing and preparing scattered messily around him. Sighing he turned, checking the door was still attached to its hinges, before addressing the novice who clutched the wooden frame.

“What is it?” He asked with mounting curiosity, any annoyance forgotten as he noted the waxen features of the young novice and the slight tremble of his fingers which rested upon the door.

“There’s been...They found...” The words stuttered out as the curly haired novice drew in great gulping breaths.

“Calm yourself Thomas. Here sit down.” The old monk gestured towards the little stool from which he cleared a number of miscellaneous items that he’d long ago forgotten the location of. Hesitating in the doorway the novice shook his head almost impatiently.

“I mustn’t. They said I was to fetch you directly.” He looked desperately towards the older monk, his eyes practically begging the stern figure to understand his incomplete message. With teeth firmly biting down on his lip it was only once he registered the metallic taste which filled his mouth that the young novice finally blurted out: “It’s just so unnatural!” Slumping against the sturdy support of the wooden door he finally uttered the dreaded words with a heaving sob -

“The beast has claimed another victim.”

Anticipation

The corpse was on its back, eyes fixed sightlessly on the sky above, arms flung out to the sides and legs dangling in the river. It was a youth with fair curls, a shabby tunic that had once been stylish, and ink on his fingers. It was a wicked shame, thought Matthew Bartholomew, physician and Doctor of Medicine at the College of Michaelhouse, that his life had been cut so brutally short.

'You can see why I called you,' said Richard Tulyet. He was Cambridge's Sheriff, a slightly built man, whose wispy beard and boyish looks led criminals to underestimate him; they never made the same mistake twice. 'His clothes and the stains on his hands ...'

'You think he is a scholar,' surmised Brother Michael. As Senior Proctor, it was his duty to determine whether the dead boy was a member of the University, and if so, to investigate what had happened. 'I do not recognise him.'

'I do,' said Bartholomew. 'His name is Adam, and he scribes for the University stationer.'

Michael shuddered. 'His throat has been cut from ear to ear.'

Tulyet turned away from the corpse. 'He is the third person to have been found with a slashed throat near the river over the last eight weeks or so.'

*

I doubt that anyone is quite as excited as I am about the release of the latest Matthew Bartholomew Chronicle written by Susanna Gregory, Murder by the Book.

Though admittedly after eighteen books a well versed reader can detect patterns and repetitions, I love these books so unreservedly that the repetitions are like old friends. I would feel distraught if the weather was not unseasonable or Brother Michael’s rich baritone was not appreciated in a passing comment.

St Michael's Church in Cambridge a regular setting for the Michaelhouse scholars.

St Mary's Abbey in York where Bartholomew and Michael stayed during Mystery in the Minster.

Ely Cathedral in Cambridgeshire where Bartholomew admired the architectural feat of the Octagon Tower in A Summer of Discontent.

When I think about the type of book I would wish to write, and the characters whom I would take on impossible journeys, I imagine something a little like these books. But until the time that my abilities match my enthusiasm I will be content with settling down with Matthew Bartholomew and Brother Michael for another adventure in medieval Cambridge. That is at least as soon as the post arrives.

The Monk's Garden

In the midst of a crisis of confidence, when spectacular failure seems the only possible outcome to my dissertation research, this image reminds me of why I love my work so much.

English Heritage reconstruction of the Infirmary Garden at Rievaulx Abbey