Mystery in the Minster

The Seventeenth Chronicle of Matthew Bartholomew

In 1358, the College of Michaelhouse at the University of Cambridge is in desperate need of extra funds – again. A legacy from the Archbishop of York, of a parish church close to that city, promises to be a welcome source of income. However, there has been another claim to its ownership, and it seems that the only way to settle the dispute is for a deputation from Michaelhouse to travel north.

Matthew Bartholomew is among the small party that arrives in the bustling city, where the increasing wealth of the merchants is unsettling the established order, and where a French invasion is an ever-present threat to its port. He is both impressed and appalled by what he finds in the teeming streets, the magnificent buildings and the behaviour of its citizens, but he and his colleagues are soon distracted by learning that several of the Archbishop’s executors have died in unexplained circumstances, and that the codicil naming Michaelhouse as a beneficiary cannot be found.

As they search the Minster’s chaotic library and evade the determination of those who believe the legacy should go elsewhere, it seems that even God is against their mission, sending a spring storm of such biblical proportion that the river waters surrounding the great city threaten its very fabric. But it is human wrath that is likely to spill their blood…