A Wicked Deed

by Susanna GREGORY

  In the centre of the green, Grundisburgh’s children had been herded into a reluctant group to sing songs, while a group of men were engaged in a half-hearted tug of war over one of the fords, all of them more interested in the guarded food than in any other activities. Meanwhile, a baby on the opposite side of the green shrieked in delight as an adult in an amber cotte tossed him into the air and caught him again. The shriek turned to a startled howl when the man’s second attempt was not so successful, and the baby fell to the ground. Women rushed to soothe the resulting screams of outrage and shock; the clumsy man slunk away quickly.

  ‘I should return home,’ said Grosnold, surveying the scene critically. ‘My steward is presiding over Otley’s feast, but he is overly indulgent. Last year there were two rapes and a murder because I left him in charge.’

  ‘And you think Cambridge seethes with unrest,’ muttered Michael to Bartholomew.

  ‘We will discuss this shameful matter of Janelle’s marriage again tomorrow,’ said Tuddenham to his neighbour. ‘I will visit you in the morning.’

  The black knight nodded and, jamming a hat on his head, he spurred his horse across the village green. Obediently it thundered forward, causing people to scramble out of the way of its pounding hooves. Women screamed, and there was a huge crash as it knocked over one of the tables, sending hard-boiled eggs and bread bouncing across the ground. Bartholomew watched aghast, and looked at Tuddenham, expecting to see some anger at the cavalier manner in which his neighbour treated his villagers.

  ‘Fine beast that,’ said Tuddenham, observing it with an experienced eye as it ploughed through a small group of nuns. ‘Grosnold certainly knows his horses!’

  He strode to the canopied bench that had been set up for his family, and clapped his hands together. There was an instant, anticipatory hush among the people.

  ‘Please,’ he said, gesturing to the surviving trestle tables. ‘It is my privilege, as lord of the manor, to provide this feast to mark the end of our Pentecost Fair.’

  Bartholomew was not sure whether Tuddenham intended to say anything else, and it was irrelevant anyway. What happened next could only be described as a stampede. People leapt to their feet, and dashed to the tables in a solid mass of bodies. Hands reached, snatched and grabbed, and the mountains of food were reduced to molehills within moments. Children foraged desperately on the ground among the milling feet for the scraps that had been missed, while the old and the slow did not stand a chance. Bartholomew ducked backward to avoid a three-way fist fight that broke out over some kind of pie, while William only just managed to escape being drenched by the vat of broth that toppled over during the affray.

  To one side, someone was broaching barrels of ale. The sweet smell of the fermented drink mingled with wet grass, as people jostled and shoved to try to reach it. Bartholomew saw there was not a villager in the seething crowd who had not brought some kind of drinking vessel, although there were many who would not see them filled. The ground seemed to be receiving most of it.

  ‘My God!’ breathed Alcote, standing next to Bartholomew and watching in horror. ‘I have seen better manners in a pack of animals.’

  ‘That went well,’ said Tuddenham, rubbing his hands, and nodding towards the empty tables. ‘The villagers do so enjoy this particular festival. It is always a raging success.’

  ‘Did you manage to grab anything?’ Michael asked Bartholomew as they walked away. ‘I got a handful of meat and three eggs.’

  ‘You did well, then,’ said Bartholomew, not surprised that the monk had emerged from the mêlée with something, but astonished that he should enter it in the first place. ‘I did not even try. It was all over before I realised it had started.’

  ‘It was rather sudden,’ agreed Michael. ‘You can have one of my eggs. Or maybe you can ask someone to swap something edible for that bit of coffin in your pocket. Cramp ring, indeed! This place is most odd, Matt. The sooner we return to the normality of Cambridge, the better. There, at least, your patients usually pay you with something practical.’

  Bartholomew peeled the hard-boiled egg as they walked, appreciating the fact that Michael, who had eaten very little all day, was being unusually generous in sharing his spoils. ‘This business with the hanged corpse is odd. I suppose we shall never know what all that was about.’

  Michael shook his head, his mouth full of roast lamb. ‘Some thief stole Deblunville’s clothes, and was probably mistaken for him by one of his many enemies. I suspect we interrupted the killer, who then waited until we had gone, crept out and spirited the corpse away, so that no one could investigate further.’

  Bartholomew thought about it. ‘But the man who died was quite large. How could he have been mistaken for Deblunville, who is small? It is not as if the attack took place in the middle of the night.’

  Michael waved a piece of meat dismissively. ‘I doubt these lords of the manor do their dirty work themselves. They probably hired some louts to do it for them – louts who did not know Deblunville personally.’

  ‘But that explanation assumes that the lords gave the killers a description of Deblunville’s clothes, and Deblunville himself told us they were not ones he wore very often,’ said Bartholomew, finishing the egg, and wishing Michael would share his meat.

  ‘Well, as you said yourself, we will probably never know the answer to all this, so it is best you put it from your mind.’

  Bartholomew supposed he was right, and sat on the low wall that encircled the pleasant garden of the Dog, the inn that looked across the village green. Michael lounged next to him, finishing his meat and holding forth about the accuracy of his prediction that the food provided for the Fair’s grand finale was inadequate to feed the whole village.

  Bartholomew listened with half an ear, his mind wandering from the hanged man to Janelle’s morning sickness. He saw Tuddenham ensure that the attentions of his wife and mother were on the activities on the village green, and then seek out Alcote to present him with a handful of pens and a sheaf of parchment. The fussy scholar was escorted to one of the empty food tables and invited to sit, while Tuddenham peered over his shoulder as he began to write. Even at the Pentecost Fair finale, the advowson was not to be neglected, apparently.

  Time passed, the sun set and Bartholomew began to feel drowsy. He asked Michael where he thought they might sleep that night – Tuddenham had mentioned moving Michaelhouse’s scholarly deputation from the floor of Wergen Hall’s main chamber to one of the village’s two inns, where he said they would be more comfortable. Bartholomew did not much care – one straw pallet was very much like another, although he hoped one would be made available reasonably soon. He had found sitting in one place all day, reading and writing, far more tiring than teaching or visiting patients.

  Michael opened his mouth to reply, when frantic shouting caught their attention. Thrusting his way through the crowd that still hovered around the ravaged food tables came John de Horsey, the handsome student-friar whom Isilia had mistaken for Unwin. He was breathless, and his eyes were wide and staring.

  ‘Whatever is the matter?’ asked Michael disapprovingly. ‘You are making a dreadful spectacle of yourself.’

  ‘It is Unwin,’ Horsey gasped, trying to steady the trembling in his voice. ‘I think he is dying!’

  Chapter 4

  BARTHOLOMEW PUSHED HIS WAY THROUGH THE MILLING villagers, splashed through the ford, and ran as fast as he could to the church. Michael panted behind him, while Horsey urged them to hurry. The door to the church was closed, and Bartholomew struggled to open it, his haste making him clumsy with the heavy latch. It clanked ajar and he shot inside.

  Like many parish churches, Our Lady’s of Grundisburgh was shadowy and intimate, its narrow windows admitting little of the fast-fading light of day. It smelled of the beaten earth that formed the floor of the nave, of the old cobwebs that hung like tendrils of mist from the wooden rafters of the roof, and of cheap incense. Wooden benches were placed at the back for those not able to stand
during masses, and a single tallow candle burned on the altar at the eastern end. The walls were covered with paintings, some of them crudely executed with a good deal of black and red, others more delicate, like the one of St Margaret wearing a wimple and touching a hand to her heart.

  ‘Over here!’ yelled Horsey, grabbing Bartholomew’s sleeve and hauling him toward the chancel. ‘He is here.’

  Unwin lay face down in front of the altar. Unlike the nave, the chancel had been paved with patterned tiles, and blood seeped from under Unwin to form a smooth black pool across them. Bartholomew felt for a life-beat in the student’s neck, but there was nothing. He hauled him on to his back, and put his ear against Unwin’s chest, straining to catch the muffled thud of a beating heart.

  ‘Is he dead?’ demanded Michael. ‘What killed him? What happened?’

  ‘Michael!’ snapped Bartholomew, covering one ear to listen. ‘I cannot hear.’

  ‘Hear what?’ shouted Michael. ‘Is he dead?’

  ‘He must be dead,’ said Horsey in a horrified whisper. ‘Look at the blood!’

  Bartholomew snatched a candle from the altar, prised open one of Unwin’s eyes, and passed the candle back and forth near it, looking for some movement that would tell him there was still a spark of life left. The eye was flat and glassy, like that of a landed fish. He balled his fist, and gave the student a hefty thump in the middle of the chest, following a procedure his Arab master had taught him to make the heart start again.

  The door clanked, and Father William entered at a run with Alcote and Deynman behind him.

  ‘What has happened?’ the friar demanded. ‘I saw you three race in here as if the Devil was on your heels.’ He stopped when he spotted Unwin lying on the floor, and drew in his breath sharply. Alcote and Deynman stood next to him, gaping in shock as they saw the prone student and the blood on the tiles.

  Bartholomew tore open his bag and fumbled for the phial of foxglove juice he carried there. In large amounts the plant was a deadly poison, but it was possible to use a little to stimulate a heart into working. He lifted Unwin’s head, and poured some of the colourless liquid into his mouth, although his face had the pale, waxy look that suggested death had already won the battle.

  Bartholomew thumped the student’s chest again, and put his own face near Unwin’s mouth, hoping against all odds to feel the warmth of breath against his cheek. There was not even the slightest whisper.

  ‘He has gone, Matt,’ said Michael, touching the physician gently on the shoulder. ‘He was dead before we arrived.’

  ‘Not yet,’ muttered Bartholomew. He poured a few more drops of the foxglove into Unwin’s mouth, willing him to swallow them and start to breathe again.

  ‘It is over.’ Michael tugged at Bartholomew’s tabard to pull him away. ‘We were too late.’

  Bartholomew shrugged him off, thumped Unwin’s chest a third time, and then listened. The only sounds were the distant, angry voices of villagers arguing over food on the green, William’s prayers for the dying, and Michael still panting from his run. Bartholomew sat back on his heels, and felt for a life-beat in Unwin’s neck for the last time. The skin was still warm, but there was no pulse under his fingers. He rubbed a hand through his hair and looked up at Michael in despair.

  ‘Let him go, Matt,’ said the monk softly. ‘You have done all you can. Now it is our turn.’

  Horsey moaned and dropped to his knees, taking one of Unwin’s hands and cradling it to his chest. Michael crouched next to him and chanted a requiem, his strong baritone echoing around the church, while Father William began to anoint the body and grant it absolution. William, like many priests, believed that the soul remained in the body for a short time after death, and that giving a corpse absolution would help with the soul’s journey to wherever it was bound. Alcote’s reedy tenor joined in Michael’s dismal dirge, while Horsey wept silently.

  Bartholomew moved away and sat with his back against one of the pillars, watching his colleagues. He was suddenly reminded of the plague, when dying people were far more grateful for the absolutions and masses of Michael and William than any feeble, useless treatments Bartholomew had to offer. So engrossed was he in his morbid thoughts that he was not aware that Michael had finished his prayers until he was tapped smartly on the shoulder.

  ‘I need you to tell me what happened to him,’ said the monk. He peered at Bartholomew in the gloom. ‘What is the matter? You are as white as snow.’

  ‘I wish I could have done more to help him,’ said Bartholomew, scrubbing tiredly at his face with fingers that felt clammy and cold. ‘And that poor man at the gibbet. I am not used to losing two people in such quick succession – at least, not since the plague.’

  ‘Their hour had come,’ announced William, in a voice that was kinder than usual. ‘You did all you could to snatch them back, but even your heretic medicine cannot cheat Death of his prey.’

  Bartholomew supposed William was trying to be comforting, but to be reminded of his own mortality as well as the limits of his medical knowledge was not particularly consoling.

  ‘Come on,’ said Michael, holding out a hand to pull the physician to his feet. ‘We are all shocked by this, but we must try to understand what happened. Was Unwin stabbed? There is blood everywhere.’

  Reluctantly, Bartholomew went to look at the dead student. One sleeve was soaked with blood, and there was more of it on his stomach. Bartholomew knelt, and used one of his surgical knives to make a slit in Unwin’s habit. Below the ribs there was a puncture wound about the width of two fingers. Bartholomew probed it carefully. It looked deep, certainly deep enough to kill him.

  ‘Stabbed,’ he said in answer to Michael’s query, although the amount of blood and the gash should have made the cause of death obvious, even to a monk.

  ‘By someone else?’ asked William, somewhat indignantly. ‘He was murdered?’

  ‘I suppose so,’ said Bartholomew. ‘In my experience, most people driving knives into their own stomach use two hands –only one of Unwin’s is bloodstained. And the weapon seems to have disappeared.’

  ‘So,’ said William, when a quick search of the church failed to locate any knife or other sharp instrument, ‘we can conclude that someone murdered him, because had he killed himself the weapon would still be here?’

  Bartholomew nodded.

  ‘But why?’ demanded Alcote crossly, as though the murder of Unwin was a personal affront to his dignity. ‘Is it something to do with you cutting down that hanged man, do you think? Was it a villager who does not want Michaelhouse to be granted the advowson? Or was it just that someone did not like the look of Unwin for their parish priest?’

  No one could answer him, and they stood in silence around the dead student, looking down at him helplessly.

  ‘How did you come to find him?’ asked Michael of Horsey. ‘He is still slightly warm, and so has not been dead for long. Were you with him? Did you see anyone else in the church?’

  Horsey shook his head, tears glistening on his cheeks. ‘After the spectacle of that food frenzy, Unwin said he wanted to pray for the people who would soon be under his care. I think he was deeply shocked by their behaviour. I should have gone with him to the church, and then this would not have happened.’

  ‘You cannot know that,’ said Bartholomew gently. ‘How long was he in the church before you came to find him?’

  Horsey shook his head, distressed. ‘Not long. I was listening to Lady Isilia talking about her husband’s sheep. Sheep! While some vicious killer was slaying poor Unwin in a church!’

  ‘Easy,’ said Bartholomew, sensing Horsey was about to become hysterical. ‘So what made you decide to come to look for him?’

  Horsey swallowed. ‘Unwin is my closest friend, and I know he is terribly anxious about his future responsibilities here. I felt I should be with him, so I excused myself to Lady Isilia, and came to find him. There was no one else here – the church seemed empty. Then I saw him lying on the floor, and all that blood …
I just ran to fetch you. I thought you might be able to save him.’

  The last part held the hint of an accusation, and Bartholomew winced. But once a knife or a sword had been thrust deep into a man’s innards, there was very little that could be done to save him. Vital organs were ripped and punctured and they could not be repaired. If the damage did not kill him, the resulting infection would. Bartholomew’s Arab teacher had told him it was possible to suture organs, and that the victim might live to tell the tale, but Bartholomew had seen him try many times on battlefields, and never with success. Bartholomew’s attempts to start Unwin’s heart with punches and foxglove were as futile as had been Ibn Ibrahim’s struggles to mend the slippery intestines of injured soldiers.

  ‘Why is one sleeve drenched in blood?’ asked William. He answered his own question. ‘I suppose he fell on to his arm, and it leaked out from his stomach wound.’

  ‘No, he was lying just as you found him,’ said Horsey shakily. ‘Both arms were above his head, and he was resting on his face.’

  ‘He must have been moved, then,’ said Michael, frowning. ‘I noticed both arms were stretched above his head before Matt moved him, and yet the blood on his sleeve must mean that he lay in a different position immediately after his death. I can only conclude that he was killed elsewhere, then brought to the chancel.’

  Bartholomew pushed up Unwin’s sleeve, and pointed to a small gash near the elbow. ‘It looks as though he was injured defending himself, but the fatal wound was the one to the stomach.’

  ‘But we have not answered Roger’s question,’ said Michael, rubbing his chins thoughtfully. ‘Why should anyone kill Unwin? He has not been here long enough to make enemies, surely?’

  ‘Unlike Roger himself,’ muttered William, eyeing Alcote with dislike. He spoke aloud. ‘Perhaps Unwin caught some thieves trying to make off with the church silver.’

  ‘What silver?’ asked Michael, gesturing to the plain wooden cross and the rough table that served as an altar. ‘There is nothing here worth stealing. Anyway, Wauncy does not strike me as the kind of priest to leave valuables lying around –especially if that feast were anything to go by.’