A Deadly Brew

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The afternoon had been growing gradually darker as storm clouds massed overhead. The scholar glanced up at them and realised he would not be able to reach the abbey at Ely, still some nine miles distant, without getting drenched. In his saddle bags, he carried several finely illustrated manuscripts that had been given to him by the grateful parents of successful students; if they became wet, the ink would run and they would be ruined. He cursed softly to himself. The summer and autumn had been unusually dry, so why did the heavens have to choose now, while he was forced to travel, to soak the parched earth with rain? With an irritated sigh, he urged his horse into a trot along the raised causeway that snaked through the desolate marshes. Since the storm would break long before he could hope to claim refuge with the monks at Ely, he resigned himself to the fact that he would have to take shelter at the Franciscan convent of Denny Abbey, the ramshackle rooftops of which he could already see poking above the scrubby Fenland vegetation.

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