慔e said his personal tutor was David Brown,?says Janet, as if this explains everything.
慏avid said that you and he had been having some discussions,?says Ruth.
Janet laughs. 慣hat抯 one word for it. He doesn抰 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 caf? when she had been on the trail of a long-dead archbishop. Janet had shown her the cleric抯 statue, hidden in one of the mysterious alcoves of the church, and they had become friends. Ruth feels instinctively on Janet抯 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.
慣here was an outbreak of the plague in Norwich in the thirteen hundreds. It抯 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.?
慉 royal visit to remember,?says Ruth. She thinks: so much for singing 慓od Save the Queen.?
慪our friend David Brown thinks we抮e making too much of the plague,?says Janet.
慦ell, he can抰 deny it happened,?says Ruth. She wonders if she can remind Janet that David is not her friend but her employee.
慍an抰 he??says Janet darkly. She takes a bite of her sandwich.
Ruth doesn抰 know why she should defend David but, in fairness, feels she has to say, 慖 think David was just worried by the mention of plague pits because none have been found in Tombland.?
慦here are all the bodies then??asks Janet.
慖t抯 possible that they were all just buried in local churchyards,?says Ruth. 慪ou 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抯 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抰 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抯 van in the gathering twilight, Janet appearing out of the gloom.
慣ell me about the Grey Lady,?she says. 慡he seems to have come up a lot in conversation recently.?
Janet laughs. 慡he抯 not very popular with David either. I think he thinks I抦 obsessed with her. But it抯 such a strange and awful story.?She pauses. Ruth finishes her last falafel and thinks about her next course.
慡he haunts Augustine Steward抯 House,?says Janet. 慪ou know, that crooked, timbered building opposite the cathedral? Next to Tombland Alley? I抣l show you on our way out. Well, in the sixteenth-century plague, the one supposedly caused by Elizabeth抯 entourage, the house was boarded up. That抯 what they did in those days. Sealed the house with the occupants still inside. They抎 draw a cross on the door and sometimes the words 揕ord have mercy?and they抎 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.?