Murder by the Book (14 page)

‘The story about Doctor Bartholomew’s pact with Satan is a stupid rumour concocted by the ignorant,’ said Ruth spiritedly. Bartholomew regarded her with surprise, unused to people coming to his defence. He wondered whether she had been conferring with her sister about him.

‘Were Philip and John London in low spirits?’ asked Michael, changing the subject before Weasenham could argue. ‘Or did they ever discuss taking their own lives?’

‘No,’ said Ruth, shocked. ‘They were perfectly content.’

‘And excited about making paper,’ added Weasenham. ‘You do not commit self-murder if you have an enthralling
project to hand. You are wrong if you think they were suicidal, Brother.’

‘Everyone is experimenting these days,’ mused Ruth. ‘The Londons with paper, the White Friars with ink, Vale with his cure-all, the medical men with lamp fuel …’

Absently, Bartholomew imagined what her list might sound like to outside ears. People would assume that Cambridge was full of mad intellectuals, all busily hurling ingredients into cauldrons as they pursued their lunatic theories.

‘Yes – that deputation of scholars from Oxford back in January has a lot to answer for,’ muttered Weasenham unpleasantly. ‘We were more interested in reading books than in conducting experiments before they came along with the smug implication that they were better than us because of their scientific discoveries.’

Michael asked several more questions, but neither Bonabes nor Ruth could add anything more of interest, and Weasenham’s opinions were unreliable, so he and Bartholomew took their leave.

‘As we are here, we should look in the London brothers’ home,’ said Michael. ‘They have no next-of-kin to object to a search, and my beadle obtained the key last night.’

They walked to the cottage next door. It had been given an attractive wash of pale yellow, and was well maintained. Michael unlocked the door, and stepped inside. He gave a squawk of alarm when a shadow flitted across the room, and Bartholomew fumbled for his childbirth forceps. But then the figure stepped into the light, and both recognised it instantly. Bartholomew’s heart sank.

It was Michael’s formidable grandmother, Dame Pelagia. And if she was in Cambridge, then there was trouble afoot for certain.

‘Grandmother!’ exclaimed Michael, shoving past Bartholomew and going to take the old lady’s hands in his own. There was genuine delight in his voice.

Dame Pelagia was tiny, with a wrinkled face and white hair that was tucked decorously under a matronly wimple. She had unfathomable eyes that twinkled like shiny buttons, and an enigmatic smile. At a glance, she was an elderly gentlewoman, but appearances could be deceptive, and Bartholomew knew for a fact that she had spent the greater part of her life spying for the various monarchs through whose reigns she had lived. She was also ruthlessly skilled with knives.

‘It was you who saved me last night,’ he said in sudden understanding. ‘When those men cornered me.’

Pelagia inclined her head. ‘I thought you might appreciate a little help.’

‘Did you know them?’ asked Michael, surprised.

‘Unfortunately not, but dead men keep their secrets, so I took care only to maim them. They will be easy to identify from their limps, and then they can be arrested and questioned properly.’

‘Why are you here?’ asked Michael. ‘I am pleased to see you, of course, but I thought you had gone to southern France, to live in quiet retirement in a place where the sun shines every day.’

‘Paradise can be tedious,’ replied Pelagia. Bartholomew had no idea whether she was making a joke. ‘Besides,
France is not very friendly to the English at the moment. Not after Poitiers.’

Bartholomew regarded her sharply. ‘Do not tell me you were there? At the battle?’

Pelagia favoured him with one of her impenetrable smiles. ‘I may have been in the vicinity.’

‘Lord!’ muttered Bartholomew, staggered but not entirely surprised.

‘You have not answered my question,’ said Michael. ‘Why are you
here
?’

Pelagia reached up to pat his plump cheek with a wizened hand. ‘Can I not visit my favourite grandson without an inquisition? Besides, I am to celebrate living three score years and ten next week, and there is no one in the world with whom I would rather mark the occasion.’

‘I see,’ said Michael. ‘However, that still does not explain what you are doing in the home of two men who died in mysterious circumstances. How did you get in?’

‘The door was open.’ Bartholomew and Michael both knew it had been locked, but neither liked to contradict her. ‘And I heard that this cottage might be sold soon, given that its owners are dead. I have a mind to settle in this little town of yours, so I decided to inspect it.’

‘But it is dark in here,’ said Michael. ‘Why not open the window shutters? Or light a lamp?’

‘Because I have only just arrived,’ explained Pelagia evenly. ‘But you may kindle one now, and we shall explore the place together. Then you can decide whether you think it is suitable for me.’

She gestured imperiously that Bartholomew was to oblige with the lantern, then held out her arm for Michael to escort her to a bench. She leaned heavily on him, although Bartholomew could tell by the way she moved
that it was a pretence of frailty, and that she was probably as fit as her grandson, and almost certainly a good deal more agile.

The lamp illuminated a pleasantly furnished chamber with a sizeable hearth at its far end, and while Michael and Pelagia discussed family affairs, Bartholomew prowled, looking for something that might tell him why two respectable scribes should have died in an abandoned pond. Several books on alchemy lay on a table, and when he opened one he saw it had been heavily annotated. Some of the scribbles were in Northwood’s distinctively untidy hand, but others were neat, and he suspected they were the work of either Philip or John.

He conducted as thorough a search as he could, tapping floorboards, peering up the chimney and running his fingers along the backs of shelves, but found nothing of relevance. However, as he finished, it occurred to him that Pelagia had not offered to help – and he was sure it was not because she trusted his investigative skills. He could only suppose that she had already ascertained that there was nothing to find. Unless there had been something, and she had removed it, of course.

He shook his head in response to Michael’s questioning gaze, but Dame Pelagia said nothing, and he glanced warily at her. Could
she
have been responsible for the Newe Inn deaths? He knew she had taken lives before, and that she had done so without leaving a shred of evidence, but why would she want to dispatch two scribes, a Carmelite and a physician? He decided to ask her some questions, although he suspected he would be wasting his breath; Pelagia was not a woman who willingly shared information, or who incriminated herself with such replies as she did choose to give.

‘The men who attacked me last night wanted to know
the formula for a certain substance,’ he began, staring hard in an effort to read her. It was futile, of course. ‘Do you think the same villains might have killed Northwood, the London brothers and Vale?’

‘That is a wild leap of logic!’ exclaimed Michael, startled. ‘Why would—’

‘Hooded cloaks,’ explained Bartholomew tersely. ‘I know that virtually everyone in Cambridge owns one, but it is summer, and most people have packed them away. However, Clippesby told me that Northwood and the others wore them when they met. So did the men who ambushed me last night.’

‘It is a slender connection,’ said Pelagia, rather contemptuously. ‘I doubt that line of enquiry will take you very far. But what formula did they want from you? A recipe for a new medicine?’

‘It was meant to be lamp fuel,’ explained Bartholomew. ‘But instead, my medical colleagues and I discovered something that is highly flammable and difficult to douse once it is alight.’

‘Wildfire,’ mused Pelagia. ‘It has been around for centuries in various forms. But it is a nasty form of warfare, and you should have been more careful in your experiments, Matthew.’

‘Yes,’ agreed Bartholomew, chagrined. ‘Unfortunately, the incident was witnessed by Sheriff Tulyet’s talkative young son, and the other physicians have also spread the tale.
Ergo
, a lot of people know what we did, so I cannot be sure whether my attackers were local or strangers …’

‘They all should have kept their mouths shut,’ said Pelagia, and Bartholomew flinched at the sharp censure in her voice. ‘It is not something that should have been bandied about. We are at war, you know, and we cannot have that sort of secret falling into the hands of the French.’

‘Luckily, the
medici
were too drunk to recall what they did, so the recipe is lost,’ said Michael quickly. ‘Last night’s villains will never learn anything deadly from them.’

‘Is that so?’ Pelagia regarded Bartholomew icily, causing him to understand exactly why she had been feared by so many enemies of the English crown. ‘You had better take care the next time you are out after dark, because a secret of that magnitude will certainly warrant these rogues trying to get it again. It will be worth a lot of money.’

She stood and made for the door, moving with a sprightliness that belied her years. Once outside, she nodded a farewell to her grandson and turned towards Bridge Street. A cart blocked her from sight momentarily, and when it had passed, she was nowhere to be seen. Bartholomew realised that he had been holding his breath, uncomfortable as always in such a ruthlessly formidable presence.

‘Do you think the next attack on me will come from her?’ he asked, following Michael out of the house and watching him secure the door behind them. ‘She is not very pleased.’

‘No, she is not,’ agreed Michael. ‘And I do not blame her. What you did with your colleagues last winter was recklessly dangerous.’

‘Did she tell you why she is really here?’ asked Bartholomew, declining to dwell on it. ‘Because it will not be to celebrate her birthday with you.’

‘Not her seventieth, anyway,’ said Michael. ‘She passed that some years ago. All I can say is that if it is serious enough to warrant leaving her comfortable retirement, then it must be serious indeed. And it will involve some very powerful adversaries.’

There was more than enough time to visit Gonville Hall and the Carmelite Priory before they joined Dunning for dinner, so they retraced their steps along the High Street. Gonville was another wealthy foundation, and was in the process of building itself a chapel. Progress was slow, and although it had walls and a roof, it was still a long way from completion. Rougham chafed at the delay, because he had designed some stained-glass windows that he was eager to see installed, one of which depicted him in his physician’s robes.

They were conducted across a yard to the hall, where the Fellows were teaching. Bartholomew listened for a moment, unimpressed by the standard of the arguments in the mock-disputation that was under way. He sincerely hoped Rougham’s students would put on a better show when they took their final examinations, because otherwise they would fail.

After a while, Rougham became aware of the visitors, and came to greet them. The other Fellows started to follow, but Rougham, as Acting Master, waved them away.

‘I shall deal with this,’ he announced. ‘The rest of you can continue teaching. My students have just set the standard for which you must aim, and if yours are not as good as mine in a week, there will be trouble.’

Bartholomew felt his jaw drop, but snapped it closed when Michael elbowed him. The monk was right: Rougham was easily offended, and would not cooperate with their investigation if they fell out with him.

‘You look terrible, Bartholomew,’ Rougham said, peering at his colleague in concern. ‘Have you come to me for a remedy? Shall I whip you up a syrup of snail juice and frogs’ blood?’

‘No, thank you,’ said Bartholomew hastily.

‘He toppled into Newe Inn’s pond yesterday, trying to retrieve Vale and the others,’ explained Michael. ‘And inhaling corpse water is evidently not recommended for good health.’

‘Try drinking a quart of strong claret mixed with half a pound of salt, six raw eggs and a couple of bulbs of garlic,’ advised Rougham. ‘That should purge any cadaver-poisons from your system.’

Bartholomew felt sick just thinking about it.

‘I am deeply sorry about Vale,’ began Michael, after Rougham had escorted them out of the hall and into a comfortable solar, where they could speak without being disturbed.

‘So am I,’ said Rougham. ‘It was pleasant, having a fellow
medicus
with whom to converse. We did not always see eye to eye, but he was a stimulating companion, and I shall miss him.’

‘Do you know why he was in Newe Inn with the Londons and Northwood?’ Michael asked.

‘I do not,’ replied Rougham. ‘However, he was too superior a man to have dabbled in low company freely, so I can only assume that they seduced him there under false pretences.’

‘Northwood was not low company,’ objected Bartholomew. ‘He was an excellent scholar.’

‘Perhaps so, but he bullied the novice scribes in his scriptorium, and he was unpleasantly fanatical about his alchemy,’ replied Rougham. ‘He was not the genial philosopher-friar he liked everyone to see. He was ambitious and ruthless, and I think he led Vale astray.’