A Wicked Deed (50 page)
Authors: Susanna Gregory
Tags: #Mystery, #Historical, #blt, #rt, #Cambridge, #England, #Medieval, #Clergy
‘What do you mean?’ asked Michael, realising they were running out of time. Stoate would not spend a moment
longer than necessary before he made his escape, and Michael sensed that Stoate intended to shoot him anyway, just so that he would not be followed. ‘Or have you left him a purge that will expel his soul from his body as well as his evil humours?’
Stoate pulled an unpleasant face at him, and declined to answer. He finished checking the ground and then squinted up at the sky, abruptly turning his attention to Michael when the monk raised a hand to scratch his head.
‘So what happened in Mistress Freeman’s house?’ asked Michael, sweat breaking out on his forehead as he tried to think of something to say to delay what he knew was inevitable. ‘You presented her with mussels. Then what?’
‘I thought she could cook them for us to eat together, while I worked to convince her that it was Norys who killed Unwin – just as you believed.’
‘And when you arrived you found that she had shared her mussels with Norys instead,’ said Bartholomew. ‘You were lucky. You would have died, too, had you eaten them.’
Stoate shook his head, his eyes distant. ‘I had no idea what had happened – I will have a few strong words with that fishmonger when I next see him. There was no answer from her door, so I looked through the window, and there they were – Mistress Freeman and Norys, dead in each other’s arms. I was afraid I would be blamed, since people know I call on her from time to time, so I slashed her throat. I knew you would assume Norys did it.’
Seeing him distracted by his memories, Bartholomew slipped his hand in his medicine bag, groping for one of his surgical knives. He eased it up his sleeve, and quickly withdrew his hand.
‘But there was no blood, was there?’ he said. ‘Corpses do not bleed.’
‘I had forgotten that. I knew that someone like you would be suspicious of a slit throat with no blood, so I fetched
some from the slaughterhouse. Everyone knew a pig had been killed there for Hamon, so I guessed there would be blood in the vat.’
‘But you used far too much of it,’ said Bartholomew.
‘I had to make it look convincing,’ said Stoate. ‘Then I took some old clothes, dipped them in the blood, wrapped them in a long cloak that I found in my attic – along with Unwin’s purse – and flung the whole lot on Norys’s roof, where I knew someone would see them.’
‘But you kept the relic,’ said Michael, removing it from his scrip and waving it at Stoate. ‘That was what told us who had really killed Unwin. It fell out of your bag when you tripped up the chancel steps in the dark, rushing to help Tuddenham when he was ill.’
In a lightning-quick movement, Stoate darted across the room and snatched it from Michael’s hand. He had the crossbow pointed at the monk again before Bartholomew could do more than let the knife slip from his sleeve into the palm of his hand.
‘I will sell this when I reach somewhere it will not be recognised,’ said Stoate, pleased. ‘What is it exactly? A lock of the Virgin’s hair?’
‘It is St Botolph’s beard,’ said Michael, shocked. ‘What kind of hair did you think our Blessed Virgin had, man?’
Stoate looked quickly at the sky, then glanced along the road. Bartholomew’s fingers tightened on
the
knife, trying not to think about what might happen if he missed, and if Stoate were startled or angered into firing the crossbow. Stoate, however, was no fool.
‘Sit still,’ he ordered sharply. ‘And put your hands in front of you, where I can see them.’
While Michael sighed and puffed at the indignity, Bartholomew shoved the knife under his leg, and rested his empty hands in his lap, cursing himself for hesitating when he should have hurled the weapon.
‘And what did you do with Norys’s body?’ asked Michael. ‘Pay three louts to bury it in Unwin’s grave for you?’
‘No,’ said Stoate, still watching Bartholomew for hints of trickery. ‘That had nothing to do with me. I left his body in the woods near Barchester, and I have no idea how he managed to arrive in Unwin’s tomb. I do not desecrate graves.’
‘Just the corpses that lie in them,’ said Bartholomew, seeing Stoate glance up at the sky once more. It was now quite pale, and Bartholomew could make out individual leaves on the trees. A good horseman would be able to make reasonable time, if he were careful. Stoate took a deep breath and tightened his finger on the trigger, while Bartholomew let one of his hands drop to the floor, easing it toward the knife that pressed into his leg.
‘But I killed no one,’ insisted Stoate. ‘Unwin, Mistress Freeman and Norys were accidents – as it seems to me you had already reasoned anyway.’
‘But what about the man hanging at Bond’s Corner?’ asked Michael, desperately playing for time. ‘Did you kill him? And what about Alcote, or was that an accident too?’
‘I know nothing about Alcote or any hanged men,’ said Stoate, glancing up at the sky for the last time. ‘Now, gentlemen, pleasant though your company has been, it is time for me to be on my way.’
Before Bartholomew could grab the knife, Stoate had pulled the trigger on the crossbow, aiming at Michael. There was a click that sounded sickeningly loud. With a sharp intake of breath, Bartholomew gazed at Michael in horror. Michael stared at Stoate, then gave a bellow of anger, struggling to stand while Stoate looked stupidly at the jammed mechanism on his weapon. Bartholomew snatched up his knife and hurled it before Stoate could recover his wits. The wicked little blade sliced cleanly through one of Stoate’s flowing sleeves, and impaled itself in the door jamb, vibrating with the force of the throw.
Startled into action, Stoate heaved the crossbow at Michael. There was a whir and a snap as the mechanism unfouled, and the bolt was loosed. Michael dropped to the floor with a howl of pain. Seeing the monk fall, Stoate darted out of the door, and Bartholomew heard something thump against it as it was blocked from the outside. Stomach churning, Bartholomew scrambled to Michael, who lay clutching his chest.
‘I am hit, Matt!’ he groaned. ‘Murdered by a physician!’
‘Where?’ shouted Bartholomew, searching frantically for a wound, but finding none. He heard a clatter of hooves outside as Stoate mounted his horse.
Michael’s hand fluttered weakly over his side, but Bartholomew could still see nothing, not even a tear in his habit where the quarrel had sliced through it. Then his shaking hands encountered something hard, and Michael gave a gasp. He pushed his hand down the front of Michael’s gown, anticipating some dreadful injury, but then saw the crossbow bolt embedded in the wall above his head. With a sigh of relief, he sat back on his heels, and rubbed a trembling hand through his hair. Michael regarded him with frightened eyes.
‘Is it a mortal wound?’ he whispered.
‘You fell on your purse,’ said Bartholomew. ‘The quarrel missed you altogether. You are only bruised. That will teach you to carry so much gold.’
Michael sat up and prodded himself carefully. ‘Stoate is escaping!’ he exclaimed, when a quick examination convinced him he was unharmed.
He scrambled to his feet and joined Bartholomew at the barred door, jostling the physician out of the way to hit it with a tremendous crash that ripped the entire frame from the wall. Bartholomew raced out into the road to see Stoate disappearing round the corner in a thunder of hooves.
‘You will never catch him!’ yelled Michael as Bartholomew began to give chase. I am going to Tuddenham.’
In the distance Michael spotted Cynric, who had been searching for them. He shouted for the Welshman to follow Bartholomew, while he ran in the opposite direction to fetch help.
Bartholomew tore down the path Stoate had taken, running as hard as he could. As he rounded the corner, he could see the horse in front of him, galloping down the narrow track with its saddle bags bouncing behind it, and Stoate clinging on for dear life. Bartholomew ran harder, feeling the blood pound in his head and his lungs pump as though they would burst. Stoate turned another bend, and Bartholomew shot after him, hurling his medicine bag away when it threatened to slow him down. When he rounded the next corner, Stoate was out of sight. It was hopeless – he could never catch a horse on foot. Gradually, he stopped, breath sobbing in his chest as he fought for air.
‘He is long gone,’ said Cynric, appearing beside him, panting hard. ‘He will be in Ipswich before we can organise a chase, and then he will be on a ship bound for France or the Low Countries.’ He kicked at the ground furiously. ‘That damned Eltisley! Stoate would not have escaped if he had not damaged my bow.’
‘What has Stoate done to warrant shooting him down in cold blood?’ came Eltisley’s smooth voice from behind them. Bartholomew and Cynric spun round, and saw the landlord standing there with a bow of his own, flanked by three of his sullen customers, who looked a good deal more proficient with their weapons than he did.
‘You will not catch him on foot,’ said Bartholomew, thinking that Eltisley meant to help arrest a killer and a desecrator of corpses.
‘I have no intention of catching him at all,’ said Eltisley softly. ‘It is you I want.’
E
LTISLEY SCRATCHED HIS BLISTERED FACE – STILL
smeared with Stoate’s paste of crushed snails and mint in cat grease – with his free hand, and jabbed his sword into the small of Bartholomew’s back to make him walk faster. It was still not fully light, and Eltisley and three friends – those Bartholomew had seen hunched sullenly over their ale in the Half Moon – had directed Bartholomew and Cynric away from the village on a path that led west. Cynric had been stripped of his arsenal, and Bartholomew had no weapons anyway, not even the surgical knives that he carried in his medicine bag, which was now lying in the bushes on the Ipswich road. Eltisley bragged to his men about how he had the foresight to damage Cynric’s bow with one of his potions.
‘Do you have any of your medicine for blisters?’ he queried, scrubbing vigorously at a cheek that was red and running. ‘That remedy Stoate suggested does not seem to be working.’
‘You can ask him for another,’ said Bartholomew, ‘when you meet your partner in crime later.’
‘I do not know what you are talking about,’ said Eltisley. ‘I have no partner-and if I did, I would not choose a physician. Whatever caused Stoate to flee the village has nothing to do with me.’
‘He killed Unwin,’ said Bartholomew. ‘He opened a vein and allowed him to bleed to death.’
‘That was careless,’ said Eltisley. ‘So Norys did not kill the friar, as everyone believes? It was Stoate? Well, I never! But
do you have any of your lotion or not? My burns are itching and driving me to distraction.’
‘No, but I imagined you would have a remedy of your own,’ Bartholomew said, hoping that Eltisley would use one of his evil concoctions and make himself ill.
‘All my potions were destroyed with the Half Moon. It is a dreadful loss to the village.’
‘How did you manage to blow up your tavern without killing yourself?’ asked Bartholomew, stumbling as Eltisley poked him again. ‘Lay a trail of inflammable powder on the ground, so that you could light it from a safe distance?’
‘I experimented with that the other night, but it did not work. So, I invented another way – I soaked a piece of twine in saltpetre and lit it. Saltpetre is one of the ingredients I used to create my little bang – along with charcoal and sulphur, as you surmised. It was all rather more dramatic than I intended, however. I did not mean it to destroy my entire tavern.’
‘Just poor Alcote on the upper floor?’ asked Bartholomew coldly.
‘Now that was a waste. If I had to lose my tavern, I would have preferred that all you Michaelhouse scholars had gone with it, not just one. You were beginning to make nuisances of yourselves, with your near-completed advowsons and your meddling in village affairs. Still, I have you now.’
‘What is this all about?’ demanded Bartholomew, stopping and turning to face him. ‘I do not see why we should make killing us easier for you by walking somewhere conveniently secluded.’
‘At the moment, I am prepared to allow that dreadful friar to go free – he is not intelligent enough to pose a threat to me and my affairs. But if you make life difficult, I shall change my mind. The choice is yours.’
Bartholomew turned and began to trudge along the path again, Cynric following. He was thankful he had sent Deynman
and Horsey away to safety, and only wished he had done the same for the others.
It was a dismal morning, with low, grey clouds and a wetness in the air that made everything foggy and dull. Bartholomew tried to piece together the mess of facts that had accumulated to make sense out of his present predicament. Although he had always suspected that Eltisley was not all he seemed, to be captured by him and his henchmen at arrow-point so soon after the encounter with Stoate was still a shock, and he could not imagine what he and his colleagues had done to warrant Eltisley’s determination to kill them all.
‘What will you do now that you have lost your tavern and your workshop?’ he asked, initiating a conversation to see what he might learn. ‘Where will you perform your experiments?’
‘Another tavern will be provided,’ Eltisley said confidently. ‘I am too valuable to lose.’
‘Provided by whom?’ asked Bartholomew. ‘Tuddenham? Hamon? Or is it one of the other lords of the manor, such as Bardolf or Grosnold?’
Eltisley smiled gloatingly. ‘You do not have the wits to work it out, despite the fact that you have all the information at your fingertips.’
‘Such as what?’ asked Bartholomew, racking his brains. Eltisley, however, declined to answer and they trudged along in silence. Once they turned down a little-used trackway that cut north, Bartholomew knew exactly where Eltisley was taking them, and it did not surprise him in the least.
‘Barchester,’ he muttered to Cynric. ‘We are going to Barchester.’
Cynric faltered, and Eltisley gave him an encouraging poke with a dagger. Cynric spun round fast and had ripped it from Eltisley’s hands before the taverner realised what was happening. His men, however, were not so easily taken unawares,
and had their bows raised and their arrows pointed at Cynric before the Welshman could take a single step toward the trees that would mask his escape.
Eltisley snatched the dagger back, and pushed Cynric forward again. ‘That is exactly the kind of behaviour I recommend you avoid if you do not want William sent back to Cambridge in a wooden box. And your students – I will track them down and kill them, too. Now move, and no talking.’
Cynric began to walk again, his face expressionless, although Bartholomew knew he was seething with rage. One of the men, who carried a sword at his side, sported a painful-looking bruise on one cheekbone. It looked to Bartholomew exactly the kind of injury that might have been caused by a hurled heavy metal ring, and Bartholomew could only assume that it had been Eltisley and his henchmen who had been burying Norys in Unwin’s gave. But why? The pardoner was already dead, and had been dumped in the woods by Stoate.
‘If there is another chance, run,’ he muttered to Cynric, when Eltisley fell back to say something to his friends. ‘Get the others, and take them as far away from this place as you can.’
Cynric said nothing.
‘Please, Cynric,’ pleaded Bartholomew in a desperate whisper, when he realised Cynric had no intention of leaving him. ‘Eltisley intends to kill us anyway. This nonsense about letting William go free is just a ploy to gain our cooperation.’
‘No talking.’ Eltisley jabbed at Bartholomew with his dagger. Cynric spun round, his face dark with anger, but Bartholomew pulled him on, knowing that it would take very little for the unstable Eltisley to order his companions to shoot, and they looked like the kind of men to do it.
Eventually the tattered roofs of Barchester came into view,
sticking forlornly through their veil of trees. In the grey light of the overcast morning, with low, dirty clouds overhead, the deserted village looked even more miserable than usual with its broken doors, unstable walls and ruined thatches. Bartholomew walked cautiously, alert for the sinister growls and unearthly screeches that would precede the old woman and her mad dog hurtling out of the undergrowth to attack them. The woods, however, were as silent and as still as the fog that swathed them.
‘You are looking for Padfoot,’ said Eltisley, watching him. ‘You need not fear – he is not here today. Even spectres have business of their own to attend.’
‘What nonsense are you speaking?’ said Bartholomew, irritated that the man should take him for a fool. ‘Padfoot is no more spectre than you are. It is the crone’s tame dog. Do you pay her to stay here and frighten travellers so that they will not linger?’ He snapped his fingers as realisation dawned. ‘Of course you do! I found a bright new penny in one of the huts when we first came here.’
‘Mad Megin likes shiny things,’ said Eltisley. ‘Especially coins.’
Bartholomew continued, as certain things became clear. ‘When we first arrived, Tuddenham told us that it was you who discovered Mad Megin’s drowned body in the river last winter, and you who buried her in the churchyard. I see now that she is not buried at all.’
Eltisley smiled. ‘But I did find her drowned in the river. I brought her back to life, and now she is my servant.’
‘You did what?’ asked Bartholomew, startled despite himself.
Eltisley made an impatient sound. ‘I brought her back to life. I took her out of the river, pressed the water from her lungs, and gave her a few drops of one of my potions. Within moments, she was gasping for breath, and her life-beat was strong and sure.’
‘Then she was probably not dead in the first place,’ said Bartholomew.
‘She was dead,’ said Eltisley with absolute conviction. ‘She was not breathing when I first found her. And her experience changed her. She is not the same woman now as she was before she died – she does not even remember her name.’
‘You damaged her, then,’ said Bartholomew. ‘I have heard of cases where people have been dragged back from the brink of death and unless it is done immediately, the mind is impaired. It would have been kinder to let her die.’
‘You believe death is better than life?’ asked Eltisley, astonished. ‘But all my work has been devoted to prolonging life – creating potions to cure diseases, making wines that repel the evil miasmas that bring summer agues, concocting remedies to prevent shaking fevers and palsies. Life is always better than death.’
‘And how well did these potions work against the plague?’ asked Bartholomew.
‘Two in three survived thanks to my mixtures,’ said Eltisley. ‘Almost everyone who took Stoate’s red arsenic and lead died, but my boiled-snake and primrose water was far more successful.’
‘A third was about what most villages and towns lost,’ Bartholomew pointed out. ‘Your potion made no difference at all.’
‘That is not true,’ said Eltisley, nettled. ‘Many villages were completely wiped out, like Barchester, and most religious communities lost more than a third of their number. That Grundisburgh only lost a hundred souls to the Death was entirely due to me.’
‘Is that the essence of your experiments, then?’ asked Bartholomew. ‘To combat diseases?’
‘Not entirely. I am searching for the element that will raise the dead from their graves.’
‘What do you mean?’ asked Bartholomew uneasily.
Eltisley smiled at him as though he were a wayward and not particularly intelligent child. ‘I am going to find a cure for death.’
‘And did you succeed with that poor animal you had in your workshop the other night?’ asked Bartholomew, once he had recovered from his shock, recalling Eltisley with the dead dog the night Cynric stole the beef.
Eltisley frowned absently. ‘No, but I have made some adjustments, and I believe the balance of elements is correct now. Of course, I realise that a dog is different from a human – it is always better to experiment on humans. I was successful with Mad Megin, and I intend to continue my work until I have all the people in Grundisburgh churchyard walking among us.’
Bartholomew shuddered at the image. ‘But most of them will be nothing but bones. Will your potion restore their flesh, too?’
‘I can apply my mind to that little problem later,’ said Eltisley dismissively.
‘But do you want Grundisburgh to be full of people like Megin?’ asked Bartholomew, repelled.
‘Megin has served me well,’ said Eltisley carelessly. ‘If Padfoot does not succeed in chasing away intruders, she does it for me. Or my friends here. They go out at night wearing masks, and rob people on the Old Road – there is nothing like rumours of outlaws to deter unwanted visitors.’
‘They do more than deter,’ objected Bartholomew. ‘They kill. Alcote came across a group of travellers who had been attacked the day we arrived in Grundisburgh, and one of them was dying. He paid Alcote to say masses for his soul at St Edmundsbury.’
Eltisley sniggered nastily. ‘Alcote should have said them for himself. But there is no problem with the occasional traveller being dispatched on the Old Road – it merely means
that the danger is taken more seriously. They attacked you, I understand, when you first came here.’
‘And I shot one in the arm,’ said Cynric with satisfaction. ‘They fled into the bushes like frightened deer when they encountered a real fighting man.’
‘I know why you are keen to prevent people coming here,’ said Bartholomew quickly, before Cynric could incite the surly men to anger. ‘Barchester is where you conduct your experiments on the dead. Although I looked in the houses, and saw nothing unusual, I did not look in the church.’
‘Well, now is your chance,’ said Eltisley, gesturing that they should ascend the incline on which the church stood.
There was no sign of Mad Megin or her white dog as they walked up the rise. The building stood as still and silent as ever, with ivy darkening its walls and weaving through the broken tiles of its roof. Eltisley made his way to the small door Bartholomew had been about to enter when Megin had made her appearance, and pushed it open. It creaked on unsteady leather hinges, and sagged against the wall. He stood back, and indicated that Bartholomew and Cynric were to enter.
Inside, wooden benches held more phials, jugs, bottles and pots than Bartholomew could count. They were all around the walls, and more of them stood on the altar that had been dragged from its eastern end to the middle of the nave. Dark streaks up the walls and across the paved floor suggested accidents and miscalculations galore, and the whole church had a metallic, burned smell to it. Bartholomew was certain it could not be healthy.
Eltisley struggled with a ring set in a heavy stone slab in the chancel. With a spray of dirt, it came free, revealing a sinister black hole.