Harvey nodded, then said, ‘I’m sorry, I must seem terribly dense but… where does the connection with Black Death come in?’
‘Before Black Death swept over Europe, we estimate that the Delta 32 mutation was present in the general population at a frequency of about one in forty thousand.
‘And after?’ asked Harvey.
‘About one in seven.’
Harvey let out his breath in a low, silent whistle. ‘Now I see,’ he said. ‘So people without the mutation were much more susceptible to Black Death than those few at the time who had it.’
‘Precisely. It was clearly an enormous advantage to have the Delta 32 mutation,’ said Motram. ‘What, of course, is absolutely crucial from my point of view is that the mutation stops viruses from entering cells, not bacteria. Bacteria don’t need to enter cells. It makes absolutely no difference to them whether you have the Delta 32 mutation or not.’
‘So there we have it,’ said Harvey. ‘Game, set and match to you, it would appear. Black Death was caused by a virus, not a bacterium.’
‘I believe so.’
Harvey picked up on Motram’s guarded response. ‘So shouldn’t that be an end to the argument?’ he asked.
‘I’m afraid not. The old guard still insist Black Death was caused by plague and see the new findings as academic stuff and nonsense — Disraeli’s third kind of lie, if you like.’
‘Statistics.’ Harvey smiled.
‘Even those who’ve moved to the virus camp are now falling out over which virus it might have been. Smallpox is one of the favourites and it’s been shown that that could have exerted the selective pressure necessary for such a dramatic genetic shift in the population while plague certainly couldn’t. There are others who propose it could have been due to a combination of infections, and there is of course one other intriguing possibility, that it could have been caused by a completely different virus altogether — something that existed then but is unknown to us today.’
‘A killer from the past,’ said Harvey, raising his eyebrows. ‘Do pardon my ignorance, but isn’t it possible to find out what caused it simply by… digging up the past, so to speak?’
‘It’s been tried on a number of occasions,’ said Motram. ‘But we’re talking about seven hundred years ago. Mortal remains tend not to last that long.’
Harvey rested his elbows on his desk and formed a steeple with his fingertips as he appeared to gaze off into the middle distance. ‘You know, I seem to remember reading something about a group of workers claiming to have recovered plague from Black Death victims… somewhere in Europe, I think.’
Motram nodded. ‘France. They found plague bacilli in the dental pulp of an exhumed corpse. Trouble is, no one else has been able to reproduce their findings. Everyone else has drawn a blank.’
‘So the French findings are… doubtful?’
‘I wouldn’t go that far,’ said Motram. ‘There seems little doubt that the body they examined was a plague victim, but without wholesale corroboration you can’t really say that plague caused Black Death, only that plague caused the death of the body they were examining.’
Harvey nodded thoughtfully. ‘So, it would help enormously if you were to come across a number of victims of Black Death preserved in good condition?’
‘Indeed it would,’ said Motram, ‘but after seven hundred years the chances of that are-’
‘That’s really why I asked you here, Dr Motram.’
FIVE
The door opened and tea was brought in on a silver tray, leaving Motram to wonder if Harvey had a button behind his desk to press at an appropriate moment.
‘Milk or lemon?’
‘Neither,’ replied Motram. ‘Just as it comes please.’
‘Good man. A decent Darjeeling needs no assistance.’
Motram accepted the china cup and saucer from the pourer — the woman who had shown him in — and reflected on how long it had been since he had held a cup and saucer in his hands. A mug in need of some interior scrubbing sat on his own desk up north.
‘How much do you know about Balliol, doctor?’
‘I understand it’s probably the oldest college in Oxford.’
‘So old that the foundation date is uncertain but generally taken as about 1263.’
Motram smiled. ‘Even before Black Death.’
‘Indeed, even before that,’ Harvey agreed. ‘Our co-founders were John Balliol, a wealthy man with estates in both France and England, and his wife Devorgilla, the daughter of a Scottish nobleman and a truly remarkable woman in her own right. Their offspring, also John Balliol, became King of Scotland, although a completely unremarkable one it has to be said and perhaps best forgotten. Devorgilla, however, is well remembered. Apart from co-founding this college and giving it its first seal, which we still have today, she endowed a new Cistercian abbey in Dumfries and Galloway — a daughter house of Dundrennan Abbey. It was to be called New Abbey but, for reasons some people find macabre, it ended up bearing the name of Sweetheart Abbey.’
Harvey paused to take a sip of his tea. Motram reflected that the man knew exactly the right place to pause in a story.
‘When Devorgilla’s husband died in 1269, she was beside herself with grief. She had his heart removed and embalmed so that she might carry it with her in an ivory and silver casket wherever she went.’ Seeing the expression that appeared on Motram‘s face, Harvey said, ‘I see you are experiencing the same mixture of admiration and revulsion that many feel on hearing this tale.’
Motram smiled and said, ‘Sorry. Please, go on.’
‘When she had the abbey built in his memory in 1273, the monks decided to call it Dulce Cor — sweet heart — instead of New Abbey as had been originally intended, and so it has remained for well over seven hundred years. She and her husband lie buried there today, the casket clutched to her chest.’
‘Quite a story,’ said Motram, giving no indication that he was wondering what on earth it had to do with him.
‘Recently, the college has come into possession of something which adds a little more to the tale,’ said Harvey. ‘Some old papers rescued from a house in the Scottish Borders have shed light on the family responsible for the embalming of John Balliol’s heart, the Le Clerks. Apparently, they were renowned for their expertise in the preservation of the dead and passed down their skills through generations of the family. When Black Death…’ Harvey paused to enjoy the flicker of interest in Motram’s eyes when he seemed to be coming to the point, ‘affected England in 1346, the Scots were left largely untouched at first and, with ever an eye to the main chance, thought they saw an opportunity to invade. An army was raised and encamped in the forests around Selkirk awaiting the order to advance. It never came: Black Death arrived first. Men died in their hundreds in the woods of the Scottish Borders.’
‘I can imagine,’ said Motram, and he could. The image of Black Death breaking out in a hugely crowded military camp in the forest, turning it into a hell of squalor, filth and infection, filled his mind. Deserters would be running off in all directions but would only spread the infection rather than escape it. Bodies would pile up and be left to rot. The stench of filth and decomposition would fill the air, accompanying the moans of the sick, the groans of the dying…
‘When news spread north to the cities, the families of some of the more noble Scottish participants were adamant they did not want their loved ones left to be rolled and tumbled into the communal pits and pyres of the forest. The Le Clerk family were tasked with preserving the bodies of those of noble birth they could find and transporting them up to Edinburgh and beyond for proper burial.
‘This never happened: Black Death beat them to it. It had already spread north by the time the bodies had been preserved and was wreaking havoc throughout Scotland. The embalmed corpses remained in the Borders, where they were buried in a secret chamber at Dryburgh Abbey — the papers I mentioned earlier tell us where that chamber is. Sixteen Black Death victims, preserved by masters of the craft, lie waiting there. Are you interested, doctor?’