Murder by the Book (34 page)

Holm regarded him oddly. ‘We might. I have not decided yet.’

‘Let us go to the garden and begin our experiments,’ said Meryfeld, tiring of the discussion. ‘Time is passing, and I would rather not work in the dark, if it can be avoided.’

His apprentices had already set out a table and various ingredients, along with the large cauldron they used to mix their potions. It bore ominous stains, while parts of the rim had been blown away when trials had not gone according to plan. As usual, Holm, Rougham and Meryfeld sighed impatiently when Bartholomew insisted on measuring each ingredient and recording it in the ledger they had kept since the winter.

‘This is why it is taking so long,’ grumbled Holm. ‘We should just toss in whatever we like.’

‘But then if we do discover a good mixture we will not know what went in it,’ argued Bartholomew, just as he did every time they experimented together.

‘Honey,’ said Meryfeld, approaching with a jar and a wooden spoon. ‘Let us add honey. And if we do not produce decent fuel, I can decant the stuff and sell it as cough syrup.’

‘You cannot let anyone drink this!’ cried Bartholomew, shocked. ‘There is brimstone in it!’

‘Brimstone is not poisonous in small quantities,’ declared Meryfeld. He dipped his spoon in the mixture and took a sip before anyone could stop him. ‘See?’

The others watched him intently, but although he pulled a face to indicate the mixture did not taste pleasant, there was no other reaction.

‘Here is some lye,’ said Rougham, hurling a substantial dose into the basin. Bartholomew threw down the pen and folded his arms in disgust. Rougham had not allowed him to measure it, so the test was over as far as he was concerned. ‘Now you cannot give it to your patients, Meryfeld, because lye is definitely not good for people.’

The calculating expression on Meryfeld’s face suggested he might overlook that fact, and Bartholomew found himself wondering whether the man always declined to reveal what he included in his medicines because half of it was unsuitable for human consumption.

‘And here is some urine,’ said Gyseburne, producing a jar and adding a generous glug. Immediately, something began to fizz, and there was a terrible smell.

‘You have spoiled it!’ cried Meryfeld, hand over his nose. He scowled, and Bartholomew had the distinct impression that Gyseburne had just spared Meryfeld’s clients from being sold a very dangerous “cure”.

There was no more to be done once the mixture was ruined, so the
medici
left to go home. It was dark, and the streets were unusually deserted; neither townsfolk nor scholars wanted to be out when armed invaders were at large. Gyseburne went north, and Bartholomew found himself walking down Bridge Street with Rougham and Holm. The surgeon was holding forth about his skill with broken limbs, and Rougham was talking about his designs
for Gonville’s chapel windows, neither listening to the other, when Bartholomew heard a sound.

‘What was that?’ He cocked his head to listen.

‘The raiders?’ asked Rougham, fearfully. He increased his pace to what was almost a run. ‘We should not linger. It feels dangerous tonight, and we still have some way to go.’

He stopped abruptly when several figures materialised in the darkness ahead of them. He swallowed hard, and Holm whimpered.

‘You may have our purses,’ Rougham called unsteadily. ‘But you must leave us unharmed. We are physicians, on an errand of mercy.’

‘These two are physicians,’ bleated Holm. ‘But I am a surgeon. I heal people, whereas they only dispense expensive remedies and calculate horoscopes.’

‘God’s blood, Holm!’ breathed Rougham, shocked. ‘That was not comradely.’

‘You can go,’ said one of the figures to Holm. ‘We are not interested in you.’

Holm scuttled away without a backward glance, and Bartholomew hoped he would have the sense to summon help. The shadows approached, but he could not tell whether they were the same men who had waylaid him before. He slipped his hand inside his medical bag, fingers curling around the comforting bulk of the childbirth forceps.

‘Tell us the formula for wildfire,’ said one man softly, following a brief scuffle after which Bartholomew and Rougham were pinned against a wall with swords at their throats and the forceps lay on the ground. ‘Refuse, and you die. And do not expect rescue a second time, because it will not be coming.’

‘But we do not know it,’ squawked Rougham. ‘We hurled random ingredients into a—’

‘Then think. We know it involved brimstone, pitch and
quicklime, along with a lot of other substances that are irrelevant. But there was one other vital element. What was it?’

‘Rock oil,’ blurted Rougham, desperation in his voice.

‘No!’ cried Bartholomew, horrified. ‘It was not—’

The spokesman hit him with the hilt of his sword, hard enough to knock him to his knees. The next few words were a meaningless buzz as his senses swam.

‘Rock oil was the secret ingredient,’ Rougham went on weakly. ‘It was a gift from a patient, but I could not find a medical application for it, so I tossed it in the pot. That is why we will never recreate wildfire in our quest for lamp fuel. We have no more rock oil.’

‘What is rock oil?’

‘A black, jelly-like substance,’ replied Rougham. ‘It can be—’

‘Rougham, stop!’ gasped Bartholomew, appalled. He had honestly believed that he was the only one who had remembered the rock oil, and was shocked to learn he had been wrong.

‘Wait!’ cried Rougham, when the leader raised his sword to hit Bartholomew again. ‘I can tell you more. It is not found in England – you will have to order it from the Holy Land.’

‘If you are lying—’ began one of the others, taller and heftier than his companions.

‘He is not,’ said the first man. He turned to his cronies. ‘Now kill them.’

‘What?’ shrieked Rougham, shocked. ‘But I told you what you wanted to know!’

‘Yes, and we are grateful. But not grateful enough to spare you.’

Staggering to his feet, Bartholomew fumbled in his bag for one of his surgical knives, determined not to go without
a fight. He lashed out at the big man, causing him to howl in pain, but the others moved in quickly and the ‘weapon’ was dashed from his hand. He was groping desperately for another when there was a shout from farther down the street. Tulyet’s soldiers were coming.

The attackers promptly turned and shot down a nearby alley, pausing just long enough to roll a cart across its mouth. By the time Tulyet’s guards had scrambled across it, the ambushers had vanished into the night.

‘You told them about the rock oil, Rougham,’ breathed Bartholomew, making no effort to disguise his dismay. ‘How could you?’

‘Because I did not want to die.’ Rougham’s voice was unsteady, and he leaned heavily against the wall. ‘I was trying to save both our lives.’

‘Dying would have been preferable to revealing such a deadly secret to men like them!’

Rougham rubbed a hand across his eyes. ‘Do not rail at me, Bartholomew. I am not proud of what I did, but I was frightened. And all is not lost, anyway. As you no doubt know, rock oil comes from a wilderness far east of the Mediterranean, not the Holy Land. I misled them rather cleverly.’

‘It will not deter them for long. What have we unleashed on the world? What evil have we done?’

Rougham was silent, and Bartholomew knew there was no point in berating him further. He walked away, to stand alone and bring his temper under control. As he bent to retrieve his forceps and knife, he glimpsed the merest of movements in the shadows. Hands raised, he approached.

‘They have the secret,’ he told Dame Pelagia. ‘You alerted Tulyet’s men too late.’

‘Damn!’ she whispered. ‘I should have known you physicians were too dangerous to leave alive. Did I hear you
mention rock oil to Rougham just now? Is that the secret ingredient?’

Bartholomew started to deny it, but faltered into silence as her beady eyes bored into his – he was not good at lying at the best of times, but it was a lost cause with Pelagia.

‘What are we going to do?’ he asked numbly. ‘We cannot let them escape with this knowledge.’

‘No,’ agreed Pelagia. ‘But you have done more than enough tonight. Go home.’

And with that enigmatic remark, she slipped away into the darkness.

Breakfast that Tuesday was a dismal affair, and Bartholomew’s stomach churned with anxiety. He was appalled that Rougham had capitulated so easily, and was in an agony of worry over what Dame Pelagia might do with the information – not only that she might arrange for the attackers to die in order to prevent them from using the formula, but that she would pass what she had learned to the King, who might well order experiments of his own. And what of Rougham and Bartholomew himself? Would she take steps to ensure that
they
never revealed the secret again?

He was also concerned about Ayera, who had not appeared for church. A furtive glance into his colleague’s room showed that the bed had not been slept in, and Ayera’s students said they had not seen him since the previous night. Normally, Bartholomew would have reported his worries to Langelee, but the Master was also absent, and no one knew where he was, either.

Julitta troubled his thoughts, too, because she was about to bind herself to a man who was both a brash, conceited fortune-hunter and a coward, too – it had quickly become apparent that Holm had run straight home and barricaded himself in, making no effort to tell the soldiers and beadles he had passed en route that his colleagues were in danger.

‘Lord!’ breathed William, wiping pottage-spotted hands on his habit as they stood to leave the hall. Some of the lumps were large, and Bartholomew felt queasy when he saw them mashed into the already-filthy fabric. ‘That was
an unpleasant repast. I shall have to visit my brethren at the priory for victuals again. Would you like to come, Matthew? They have eggs on Tuesdays.’

Bartholomew shook his head. ‘I should see what my students—’

‘They are more than ready for their disputations,’ interrupted William. ‘There is no need to persecute them.’

‘Yes, let them be,’ added Michael, overhearing. ‘They will not disgrace you in the debating chamber, and I have need of you today, anyway.’

‘They speak the truth,’ said Thelnetham, the most academically gifted of the Fellows, and so someone whose opinion Bartholomew was willing to trust more than Michael, who just wanted his help, or William, who was not really qualified to say. ‘You have prepared them well.’

‘Set them some reading, and then we shall leave,’ ordered Michael.

Bartholomew’s anxieties were such that he hastened to comply, but Valence, who had accompanied him to see a patient before dawn that morning, waylaid him with a question.

‘You applied an ointment of elder leaves for that bruised hand earlier,’ the student said. ‘But Meryfeld’s apprentices told me that he uses a poultice of red lead.’

‘Then he will be angry with them – he likes to keep the contents of his concoctions to himself.’

Valence waved a dismissive hand. ‘There is nothing special about any of his potions – they are either the same as yours, or they contain inert elements that will neither harm nor benefit the taker. Except for the red lead that he adds to his remedy for contusions. It is because red lead is cold and dry in the second degree?’

Bartholomew did not want to denigrate his colleague by saying that Meryfeld probably had no idea what red
lead would do, other than perhaps provide a particular colour or smell.

‘You must ask him,’ he replied. Then he relented; it was not a helpful answer, and Valence was trying to learn. ‘I performed a series of tests on rats once, and concluded that any benefits accruing from red lead are outweighed by its toxicity. So I never use it in any of my medicines.’

‘I see,’ said Valence. ‘How did you determine that it is toxic?’

‘Because the rats suffered convulsions. When I looked inside them, their digestive tracts were inflamed, their brains were swollen and their livers …’ Bartholomew trailed off, suddenly realising that admitting to conducting dissections, even on rodents, was unwise.

Valence smiled. ‘Your secret is safe with me, sir. And now I shall go to read to the others.’

Bartholomew climbed the stairs to Michael’s room, hoping Valence could be trusted, because he did not like to imagine what would be made of the fact that he chopped up dead animals with a view to assessing the impact of poisons. He would be expelled from the University for certain!

The monk had been briefing his own students. They were by far Michaelhouse’s most diligent pupils, quite happy to work alone, which was fortunate, because his duties as Senior Proctor often called him away. He sighed when they left to read the texts he had recommended.

‘I had a busy night,’ he said, flopping on to his bed in a way that made it creak ominously, and Bartholomew fear it might crash through the ceiling into his own room below. ‘After the attack on you, Tulyet ordered every soldier and available beadle out on patrol.’

‘But nothing happened?’ Bartholomew leaned against the wall and folded his arms.

‘The town was as quiet as a tomb – except for a fight between Essex Hostel and Bene’t.’

‘Again?’ asked Bartholomew.

‘Yes, again. In case you had not noticed, your wretched library is still causing considerable discord among our scholars – discord that is intensifying as its opening draws nearer. If only I had a Junior Proctor to help me keep the peace … But never mind this. I have reached some conclusions about the raiders. It is obvious now what is happening.’

‘It is?’

‘They have been sneaking into the town for weeks to reconnoitre. Adam and the others must have seen them, and they were murdered to prevent them from telling the Sheriff that trouble was afoot. And Saturday’s raid was the culmination of all their spying.’

‘But it was unsuccessful,’ said Bartholomew. ‘They were driven off empty-handed.’

‘Quite, which means they will try again – they will not let all their efforts go unrewarded. My grandmother heard a rumour, one she believes, that says they will strike during the Corpus Christi pageant, when all our soldiers and beadles will be busy policing the crowds.’