The Locked Room (Ruth Galloway #14)(17)

‘I haven’t got the results back from the lab,’ says Ruth, ‘but I think it’s a woman. Probably medieval. The graveyard of St George’s would have covered that area.’

‘I had a student of yours in yesterday asking about it,’ says Janet.

‘Really?’ says Ruth. ‘Which student?’

‘I can’t remember his name,’ says Janet, ‘but he had one of those Victorian beards. A Lytton Strachey beard.’

Ruth remembers the student asking her about the plague. Victorian is a very good description. She pictures an intense face, dark eyes above facial hair like a mask.

‘I wonder why he didn’t ask me,’ she says.

‘He said his personal tutor was David Brown,’ says Janet, as if this explains everything.

‘David said that you and he had been having some discussions,’ says Ruth.

Janet laughs. ‘That’s one word for it. He doesn’t agree with my ideas for the exhibition.’

Ruth now knows that Janet is planning an exhibition entitled Norwich: the plague years. Janet launches into a description now, leaving Ruth to concentrate on her lunch. They are in the modern refectory attached to the ancient cathedral. Ruth remembers the first time she met Janet, in this same café, when she had been on the trail of a long-dead archbishop. Janet had shown her the cleric’s statue, hidden in one of the mysterious alcoves of the church, and they had become friends. Ruth feels instinctively on Janet’s side against David.

Janet talks about the plague while Ruth eats falafels and salad. In defiance of Lean Zone, she has also bought a chocolate brownie.

‘There was an outbreak of the plague in Norwich in the thirteen hundreds. It’s thought that Julian of Norwich contracted it and that her near-death experience is what inspired the Revelations of Divine Love. An eighteenth-century historian called Francis Blomefield said that fifty-seven thousand people died in Norwich in 1349. That figure seems far too high. There were only about twenty-five thousand people living here then but some sources say that, by the end of 1349, only six thousand people remained. Some will have escaped to the country, of course. There was another outbreak in 1578 when Elizabeth the First visited with her entourage. This time there were officially 4,800 victims but the real figure could have been twice that.’

‘A royal visit to remember,’ says Ruth. She thinks: so much for singing ‘God Save the Queen.’

‘Your friend David Brown thinks we’re making too much of the plague,’ says Janet.

‘Well, he can’t deny it happened,’ says Ruth. She wonders if she can remind Janet that David is not her friend but her employee.

‘Can’t he?’ says Janet darkly. She takes a bite of her sandwich.

Ruth doesn’t know why she should defend David but, in fairness, feels she has to say, ‘I think David was just worried by the mention of plague pits because none have been found in Tombland.’

‘Where are all the bodies then?’ asks Janet.

‘It’s possible that they were all just buried in local churchyards,’ says Ruth. ‘You can see how high they are around here, St John Maddermarket, for example. They may have been raised to accommodate the extra dead. David makes a good point about Tombland being too busy, too full of people. The Maid’s Head was already a hotel in 1349. It seems unlikely that anyone would bury plague victims here. And, you know, even the so-called plague pits they discovered on the Crossrail dig in London were actually rather orderly. Nothing like the mass graves in Bosnia.’ She stops. She doesn’t often talk about the time when, as a graduate student, she had helped to unearth the remains of men, women and children, hundreds of them, thrown together into a ghastly human soup, but she knows she mentioned it quite recently. Oh yes, it was when she was talking to her students on Monday, excavating the skeleton beneath the roadworks. She remembers carrying the bones back to Ted’s van in the gathering twilight, Janet appearing out of the gloom.

‘Tell me about the Grey Lady,’ she says. ‘She seems to have come up a lot in conversation recently.’

Janet laughs. ‘She’s not very popular with David either. I think he thinks I’m obsessed with her. But it’s such a strange and awful story.’ She pauses. Ruth finishes her last falafel and thinks about her next course.

‘She haunts Augustine Steward’s House,’ says Janet. ‘You know, that crooked, timbered building opposite the cathedral? Next to Tombland Alley? I’ll show you on our way out. Well, in the sixteenth-century plague, the one supposedly caused by Elizabeth’s entourage, the house was boarded up. That’s what they did in those days. Sealed the house with the occupants still inside. They’d draw a cross on the door and sometimes the words “Lord have mercy” and they’d leave the household to die. I suppose it was a way of containing the outbreak. When they opened the house again, they found the bodies of a man, a woman and a young girl.’

‘How sad,’ says Ruth. It seems rather callous to eat her brownie now.

‘Very sad,’ says Janet. ‘But that’s not the worst thing. The man and the woman had teeth marks on their bodies. Human teeth marks. It was thought that they’d died first and the girl had kept herself alive by eating their flesh. Maybe she died by choking on it rather than of the plague.’

‘Oh my God.’ Ruth pushes her plate even further away.