A Wicked Deed (54 page)
Authors: Susanna Gregory
Tags: #Mystery, #Historical, #blt, #rt, #Cambridge, #England, #Medieval, #Clergy
Trying to hold the candle still, he next concentrated his attention on the shelves and their sombre contents. As gently as he could, he moved the shrouded shapes to peer at the wall behind, looking for hidden doors. He coughed as the mouldering bodies began to crumble. The ones on the upper shelves released clouds of dust, while those on the lower ones broke apart because they were
damp. They smelled of ancient bone and rotting material, and Bartholomew felt himself becoming nauseous from the lack of clean air.
Just as he was about to give up, the final stack of bodies revealed what he had been looking for. The lords of Barchester had apparently been running out of space for their dead, and the most recent additions to the vault had been placed on shelves that were newer than the rest – and that rested against a blocked door. A rat eased through the rotting wood at the bottom of it even as he watched. He leaned down and grabbed at one of the broken timbers, relieved to feel it break off in his hand as he pulled. But there were three ancient corpses in the way.
With distaste, he eased the first one out of its niche and laid it on the floor. It was lighter than he had expected and smaller, suggesting it had probably been a child. He reached for another, revolted by the way a skeletal hand dangled out to touch him, some of the little bones clattering to the floor in a puff of dust. Coughing, he laid it next to the first, and reached for the last one. This was large and dense and, as he pulled, its shroud caught fast on the corner of the shelf. He tugged harder, struggling to support its weight. Nothing happened. With growing urgency, he hauled as hard as he could and, with a ripping sound, it tore out of its shroud and landed on top of him, so that its grinning head was no more than the width of his hand away from his face. He gave a yell and tried to thrust it away from him, but it was too heavy. Horrified, Bartholomew saw the mouth opening wider and wider until the jaw dropped clean from the skull.
Revulsion gave him the strength he needed, and with an almighty thrust he sent the thing flying away from him, so that it landed with a sickening smash against the wall near the altar. For a few moments he was able to do nothing but stand in the gloom, and try to control his trembling. But time was of the essence if he wanted to help Cynric
and Michael, and he thrust his disgust to the back of his mind and began to prise the wooden shelves away from the door. When it was clear, he hacked at the door itself. The rotten wood yielded quickly, and he soon had it open. With lurching disappointment, he saw that the passageway beyond was blocked by a pile of rubble.
Bartholomew closed his eyes and leaned back against the wall, almost oblivious to the rats that swirled around his legs and gnawed inquisitively at his boots. All he could think of was that he had failed. He opened his eyes, and saw a rat clamber over the top of the pile of masonry, and make its way into the vault. He frowned and scrambled up it, to try to peer through the gap between rubble and roof. Gingerly, he thrust the candle through it, and saw that the fall was not a large one, and that there was a flight of stairs beyond. Scarcely daring to hope, he began to claw away the rubble, until there was a space large enough for him to squeeze through.
Ignoring the way his clothes snagged on the sharp edges of stones, he squirmed over until he was on the far side, heart thumping in panic when he thought at one point that he might have misjudged, and trapped himself between the rubble and the roof. Then he was through, and skidding down the other side. His candle fizzled and went out.
There was nothing he could do but grope his way forward in the darkness, tripping and stumbling up the uneven steps, and flinching when his hands encountered something furry and warm rather than damp and smooth. Eventually, he reached another door. He felt it blindly, trying to locate the handle. Rats clawed at his boots as he grasped the metal and turned. Nothing happened. It was locked from the outside.
He forced himself to run his hands over the wood methodically to see if he could find the lock. What he found was a latch. Lifting it he pulled again, but the door remained firmly
closed. About to give up in despair, it occurred to him to lift the latch and turn the handle at the same time. With a sudden creak, the door began to open. With profound relief, he stepped out into the church.
He was in the chancel, having emerged through a small door that stood to one side of the altar. He could hear the voices of Eltisley and his henchmen further down the building, and hoped that did not mean that Michael and Cynric had swallowed whatever potion Eltisley had given them, and were already dead. Clutching the crossbow quarrel, he inched toward the screen that divided the nave from the chancel, and peered round it.
Eltisley was standing at one of his benches with Isilia by his side, while Michael and Cynric, white faced and nervous, were sitting together on stools. Eltisley’s friends – five of them – were ranged behind them, three with their swords drawn, lest Cynric should try to escape.
‘And who is the father of your brat, madam?’ Michael was saying. ‘Some village lad? Or do your tastes run to lords of the manor? Grosnold, perhaps, or Deblunville?’
‘That is none of your affair,’ said Isilia, shocked. ‘Hurry up, Eltisley. Sir Thomas will wonder where I am if I am here much longer, and I wish to ensure that these meddlesome scholars are dispatched once and for all. I do not want them writing the deed that will give Hamon the estates that rightly belong to my children –I have not lived three years with that old man to end up with nothing.’
‘Science takes time, my lady,’ said Eltisley, busily mixing something that smoked with something green. ‘I am working as quickly as I can, but this will not be rushed.’
The potion was green! And Norys’s lips had been green! Had Eltisley tried his brew on the pardoner, too? Bartholomew tried to think rationally. Stoate had found Norys and Mistress Freeman dead from eating bad mussels, and had dumped Norys in some trees near Barchester. Someone
had later moved him. Since few people, other than Eltisley, frequented Barchester, it stood to reason that the landlord had found the body, and stained its lips green in an attempt to test his elixir. Having experienced problems with burning and chopping up Freeman’s body, Eltisley had decided to bury Norys in the churchyard – and what more secure place than in the grave of the man Norys was accused of killing?
Eltisley was almost ready, and, judging from the thick gloves the landlord wore to protect his hands, once they had swallowed his concoction there would be very little Bartholomew could do for Cynric or Michael. He had to think quickly. He glanced around him. He was evidently in that part of the church where Eltisley kept his more volatile compounds. Large pots, crudely labelled, stood well apart from each other.
‘Do not pester him, Isilia,’ came another voice from the shadows of the nave. ‘Let him work in peace.’
Bartholomew froze as he recognised it. He heard Michael’s gasp of shock. ‘Dame Eva?’
The church was silent as Michael and Cynric gazed at the old lady in horror. In the chancel, Bartholomew’s mind whirled with unanswered questions and disconnected fragments of information. Eventually, Dame Eva spoke, amused by the monk’s shock at seeing her.
‘Of course it is me. Do you think Isilia could have managed this alone?’
‘But Eltisley …’
‘Eltisley does as I tell him. How do you think he finances his experiments? By selling ale to the local peasantry?’
‘I see,’ said Michael slowly. ‘That is why you ordered his release so quickly after Tuddenham arrested him for Unwin’s murder. You let him out so that he could continue to work for you.’
And that, thought Bartholomew, was why Dame Eva had
been so solicitous toward the landlord’s wife after the tavern had ignited. It had not been simple compassion that had prompted the old lady to give Mistress Eltisley her cloak and cross; it had been remuneration for damage done in her service.
Bartholomew crouched near the screen, and saw the old lady standing in front of Michael. A steely flint in her eye suggested that Eltisley would not be allowed to fail her by letting the Michaelhouse scholars escape a second time. Bartholomew needed to act fast if he wanted his friends to live. He moved back, and began reading the labels on Eltisley’s powders and potions.
‘So, it was you,’ said Michael to Dame Eva. ‘You stole the draft of the advowson from me in the churchyard; you ordered Alcote murdered; you told Eltisley to tamper with Cynric’s bow; you arranged for Mad Megin and her dog to live here, and frighten the living daylights out of any passers-by; you told Eltisley to kill Alice Quy with one of his potions, and stage Freeman’s death to strengthen the villagers’ fear of the Padfoot legend; and you killed Deblunville.’
‘I did not touch Deblunville. That was Eltisley acting on his own initiative.’
Eltisley gave his peculiar beaming smile. ‘I took a stone and replaced it carefully after I had brained him, so that it would appear that he had fallen and hit his head. You see, setting eyes on Padfoot does not mean people are murdered, it means they die in mysterious accidents.’
‘Deblunville did not think he saw Padfoot,’ said Michael. ‘He thought he saw a wolf.’
‘It did not matter what
he
thought he saw,’ said Dame Eva. ‘It mattered what other people thought he saw, and that he was seen to die because of it.’
‘Then it was you who attacked Alcote the night before the tavern exploded?’ asked Michael. ‘It could not have been Eltisley, because he was out killing Deblunville.’
‘Isilia and I tried to rid the world of the vile little man together. But one elderly woman and one pregnant one are not ideally suited for ambushing, and Alcote was stronger than he looked. We had intended to stab him, but Isilia dropped her knife, and I could not get a clear hit. In short, we made a mess of the whole business. My husband always said it was better to employ someone to do that sort of thing for you, and now I understand what he meant.’
Expecting to be discovered at any moment, Bartholomew found an empty barrel and dumped all the yellow powder into it that was in a smallish pot labelled salfar, hoping it really was sulphur, and not just something Eltisley had created. He looked around for charcoal, his mind refusing to face the possibility that anything he might do to harm Dame Eva and her cabal might also harm Michael and Cynric.
‘I told Eltisley to kill Freeman, not keep him alive to test his theories on,’ said Dame Eva giving Eltisley a reproving stare. ‘That was a mistake which might have proved costly. Fortunately, it turned out well in the end.’
‘But why?’ asked Michael, shaking his head. ‘What can you hope to gain from all this? What does it matter to
you
who inherits your son’s estates?’
Bartholomew found the charcoal powder, and poured it on the sulphur. He was about to stir it with a pewter spoon when he realised that the metal might produce sparks as it encountered the volatile mixture, so he looked around for something else to use. All he could find was a reed that had fallen from the roof. Immediately it snapped, and he froze with horror, expecting Eltisley’s men to come rushing in and catch him. But nothing happened, and the old lady continued to regale Michael with a list of her reasons for causing such chaos and misery in the village she called her home.
‘Hamon does not have the intelligence to run a large estate like this,’ she said. ‘He cannot even manage Peche
Hall properly, and that is tiny. If he had any sense at all, he would have killed Deblunville to prevent him from making a claim on our land in the courts.’
‘Is that why you consider Hamon inadequate?’ asked Michael. ‘Because he would not murder Deblunville for land?’
The old lady’s eyes became gimlet hard. ‘Is that not reason enough? How does he hope to keep his inheritance if he will not fight for it? And he is dallying with that manipulative Janelle again, now Deblunville is dead. Fool!’
‘He will keep his inheritance by using the law,’ said Michael. ‘That is why it is there.’
‘But he might lose his case.’
‘He might have lost his life, if he had tried to murder Deblunville. And then an estate would have been neither here nor there to him.’
The old lady made a sound of exasperation, and flounced towards the screen. Bartholomew, about to add saltpetre to his mixture, ducked back though the door to the vault, hoping his sudden movement had not been seen. The old lady walked into the chancel, and looked around her.
I told you not to tamper with these powders again,’ she said, seeing Bartholomew’s barrel in the middle of the chancel floor. ‘Last time, you destroyed the tavern – the tavern my husband had built – when it would have been easier and cheaper to slip some poison into the scholars’ food.’
‘I have not been tampering with them,’ said Eltisley sulkily.
‘Then get rid of them,’ she snapped. She kicked at Bartholomew’s barrel with her foot. ‘Or you will have us all gone the same way as that despicable Alcote. Did I tell you I caught him burning some of Thomas’s documents? Not important ones, true, but that is beside the point.’
‘I need those powders,’ protested Eltisley. ‘I will not bring back the dead with crushed flowers and honey, you know.
To combat a powerful force like death requires potent compounds.’
‘You said you would have that potion before the beginning of the summer,’ said Dame Eva, moving out of the chancel and heading back towards Eltisley in the nave. ‘You promised.’
‘I am almost there,’ said Eltisley eagerly. ‘In fact, I am about to perform an experiment on the fat monk and his servant. This elixir will temporarily deprive them of life, and then I will bring them back again with another potion.’
At that point, two more of Eltisley’s surly customers entered the church, looking nervous. It was clear they had failed to do something they had been ordered to do. Dame Eva’s eyes narrowed.
‘Where is he?’ she demanded. ‘You said you could find him.’
‘The friar has disappeared,’ said one of them, swallowing hard. ‘We looked everywhere, but he is no longer in the village. He must have fled.’
‘Damn!’ muttered Eltisley. ‘He would have made a good subject. What about the students?’
The man shook his head. ‘They never reached the leper hospital. We cannot find them, either.’
Dame Eva sighed impatiently. ‘I am surrounded by incompetents! Still, I suppose it does not matter – the friar is far too fixed on seeing heresy in the god-fearing to make sense of what he has learned here, and the students do not have the intelligence. I do not see that an institution like your University will survive long, given the kind of person it attracts. And I hear Oxford is worse.’