A Wicked Deed

by Susanna GREGORY

  ‘You disappoint me, physician,’ said Deblunville, walking towards him, holding a flaring torch. He was wearing baggy hose and a shirt that dangled almost to his knees. ‘You seemed above all this subterfuge and trickery when we met the other day. I even gave you one of my cramp rings as an act of good faith.’

  ‘I am sorry we trespassed on your land,’ said Bartholomew. ‘We were attacked as we were riding through Barchester from Otley, and we ran the wrong way when we escaped.’

  ‘That is my land,’ interposed Bardolf coldly. ‘Barchester lies on my land – despite what Grosnold and Tuddenham might claim.’

  ‘Attacked?’ asked Deblunville, ignoring his father-in-law. He looked Bartholomew up and down. ‘What was stolen? Not my cramp ring, I hope.’

  ‘Nothing was stolen,’ said Bartholomew, although he would not have been dismayed to lose the funeral jewellery Deblunville had given him. ‘Cynric drove the robbers away with an arrow.’

  ‘He claims Padfoot ambushed him,’ said the archer with a grin. ‘It is strange how Padfoot always seems to chase people from Grundisburgh on to our land.’

  Deblunville nodded thougtfully and addressed Bartholomew. ‘Two people claim to have been chased on to my land by Padfoot within the last month: both are now dead, although I assure you that it had nothing to do with me. I personally believe that they were spies in the employ of one of my neighbours, who then executed them for getting caught – a cut throat and a childbirth fever were the official causes of death, I understand.’

  ‘We are telling you the truth,’ insisted Bartholomew. ‘Why should I want to spy on you?’

  ‘Look.’ The archer held up the gold coin Grosnold had given Bartholomew, discovered when he had searched Bartholomew’s bag. ‘If they were robbed, why did the outlaws leave them this?’

  ‘Who paid you to spy?’ demanded Bardolf of Bartholomew, pushing forward to stand next to his son-in-law.

  ‘Grosnold paid me for—’

  ‘There!’ exclaimed Bardolf triumphantly, interrupting Bartholomew and turning to Deblunville. ‘A confession! I knew these scholars would soon start to meddle in our affairs. Tuddenham summoned them from Cambridge, so that he could set their cunning minds to undermining our rightful claims to this land. You know how lawyers are with words, twisting and turning them, so that they can be made to mean the opposite of what was intended.’

  Janelle stepped forward and laid a hand on his arm. ‘All these accusations will get us nowhere, father,’ she said in a low voice. ‘The scholars are not unreasonable men, and if we explain to them why we do not want spies on our manors they will understand.’

  ‘You are ill,’ said Bartholomew, noting the tremble in her voice and the unhealthy pallor of her skin. ‘Is it the child?’

  She nodded, and then shook her head. Tears sprouted from her eyes, and Deblunville thrust the torch into Bardolf s hands, so that he could put his arm around her.

  ‘There is no child,’ he said bitterly. ‘Not any more. Master Stoate has killed it.’

  Bartholomew was bewildered. ‘Killed it how?’

  Deblunville sighed. ‘I sent a man to Ipswich for the cumin you said Janelle should have, but he has not yet returned. When Janelle was sick again this morning, we used Stoate’s old remedy, since there was nothing else. Then she had griping pains and a flux of bleeding. The child has gone.’

  ‘I am sorry,’ said Bartholomew gently. ‘But she should not be out here; she should be resting.’

  ‘Will you give her something to help her sleep?’ asked Deblunville. ‘I do not want to ask Stoate to come. I might feel obliged to wring his neck.’

  ‘Just a moment!’ cried Bardolf, grabbing Deblunville’s arm and swinging him round. ‘These scholars have been caught red-handed spying on your land. Will you now let them give potions to Janelle, potions that might kill her? Physicians are not to be trusted at any time, but especially not ones who are in the pay of Tuddenham, and who have already lied to you.’

  ‘What would he gain from hurting Janelle?’ said Deblunville, pulling away angrily. ‘And anyway, I believe him when he says he was attacked by Padfoot.’

  ‘What?’ Bardolf was almost screaming in disbelief.’ Padfoot is a story invented by Tuddenham to allow his spies to come and go at will.’

  ‘But Tuddenham does not believe in Padfoot,’ protested Bartholomew. ‘He told us it was superstitious nonsense.’

  Deblunville ignored him, but snatched the torch to thrust it so close that the physician winced, certain that he would have caught fire had his clothes not been so wet. ‘Look at his cloak, Bardolf. It is covered in white hairs!’

  Bartholomew sat on the edge of the bed in Janelle’s chamber, and replaced the covers carefully. She smiled up at him, her face so lovely in the candlelight that it made him feel suddenly lonely. He wondered what Matilde was doing back in Cambridge, and whether he, like Michael, was destined to spend the rest of his life without the joy of a female companion.

  ‘Are you really sure?’ she asked yet again.

  Bartholomew nodded. ‘I am certain. There was no child in the flux of blood, and everything suggests to me that you are still carrying it. The potions I have given you will help, but you must rest for the next few days – weeks, even – and no more betony and pennyroyal, no matter what Stoate tells you.’

  ‘You have been kind to me, despite the fact that we have been less than hospitable to you twice now.’ She looked at the flames in the health, her tiny fingers fiddling restlessly with the bed-covers. ‘In return, there is something I know that you might be interested to hear.’

  ‘About the murder of Unwin?’ he asked hopefully.

  She shook her head. ‘I am sorry, but no one seems to know anything about that. Usually, if a crime is committed, someone knows the culprit, and it does not take long for the truth to come out. But whoever killed Unwin has been very clever in hiding his tracks. I think you should not look to the common villagers for your killer; you should look higher.’

  ‘That has been suggested before,’ said Bartholomew, thinking about what Norys had told him. And then there was Eltisley’s claim to have seen Grosnold with Unwin in the churchyard shortly before the friar’s death, plus her father’s belief that Unwin might have been killed because of the strife among the lords of the manor and their priests, ‘Is that what you wanted to tell me?’

  ‘No, something else. About my husband’s clothes – the ones that you saw on the hanged man at Bond’s Corner.’ She paused again, and looked at the fire, its lights flickering in her eyes.

  ‘You know who took them?’ asked Bartholomew, gently prompting.

  ‘Yes.’ She looked up at him, and there was some of the grim determination in her face that he had seen when they first met. ‘But you must not reveal that I told you this, or use the information against my father.’

  ‘Your father?’ said Bartholomew, puzzled. ‘How is he involved?’

  ‘I gave him those clothes,’ said Janelle reluctantly. She shrugged at him. ‘I am the thief. I stole from the man who was going to be my husband.’

  ‘I see,’ said Bartholomew, not seeing at all.

  ‘Roland never wore those clothes; they sat in a chest all year round, gathering dust and slowly being eaten by moths. They were too big for him, and he did not like them. My father is not as wealthy as he would have you believe – his manor is small, and any spare money he has is spent on winter fodder for the cattle and extra grain for the village, not on clothes. He would be furious if I told you this, but he is so poor he does not even pay taxes.’

  That meant he was poor indeed, for there were few who escaped the greedy hands of the King and his tax collectors. Before an exemption was granted, all accounts were inspected rigorously by men who were neither generous nor sympathetic to hardship. Janelle continued.

  ‘So, a week or so ago, I took the clothes and the dagger, and I left them for him in a bundle near the Clopton – Grundisburgh parish boundary. Roland would not have been keen for me
to give them to my father had I asked, but he would not have demanded them back once they had gone. I wanted my father to wear them at our wedding, you see, so that he would not look shabby and old.’

  ‘And did your father ever receive these clothes?’ asked Bartholomew.

  She shook her head. ‘I had instructed one of his men to meet me there, but he was late. I did not want to waste the whole day waiting for a servant, so I left the bundle under a tree and went about my own business. By the time the servant arrived, the clothes had gone.’

  ‘So, someone else found them?’

  She nodded. ‘It could not have been a villager from Clopton, because the finder would have announced his luck, and then someone would have told him that the bundle was intended for my father. It must have been someone from Grundisburgh.’

  ‘So, someone from Grundisburgh found a bundle containing some clothes and a dagger, donned them and ended up hanged,’ said Bartholomew, trying to make sense of it.

  She nodded again. ‘So you see, whoever hanged the man you found probably did not believe he was hanging Roland, as you seem to think. The man you found must have been hanged because he found the bundle and was dishonest enough to keep it.’

  ‘But that makes no sense, either,’ said Bartholomew. ‘The man to judge that sort of crime would be Tuddenham, and he seemed to know nothing about anyone being hanged for theft.’

  ‘Perhaps he did not want to cast a pall of gloom over the Pentecost Fair, and so kept it quiet,’ she said with a shrug. ‘You should not believe everything he tells you.’

  ‘I will bear it in mind,’ he said with a smile. He was not surprised that she had kept the business of the stolen clothes to herself; the most obvious people who would avenge an act of finders-keepers would be either her father – an impecunious man who needed his daughter to steal him new clothes for her wedding – or her husband, perhaps startled to meet a man parading around in the finery he thought was safely packed away in a chest at home. Bartholomew frowned. Or was the real killer Tuddenham, the man whom Deblunville and Bardolf thought had been spreading tales of the mysterious white dog? ‘Padfoot’ was, after all, the word uttered by the dying man.

  He left Janelle in the care of her maidservant. Deblunville was waiting for him in the lower chamber, huddled near the fire, while Bardolf paced back and forth angrily. Cynric was folded into a corner with an untouched cup of ale at his side, staring morosely into the rushes.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Deblunville, standing to greet him. ‘This child means a great deal to her. She was afraid she might be too old to have children.’

  ‘You should find her a midwife in Ipswich,’ said Bartholomew. ‘Or better still, try to persuade Mother Goodman to come. She seems a competent woman.’

  ‘She is,’ said Deblunville. ‘But she is also loyal to Tuddenham. She will never attend Janelle.’

  ‘What are you going to do with him?’ demanded Bardolf of his son-in-law. ‘All this talk of midwives and infants is becoming tedious.’

  Deblunville turned on him angrily. ‘I will talk about midwives and infants from dawn until dusk in my own home if it so suits me.’

  He offered Bartholomew a stool near the fire. The physician sat gratefully, weary from his efforts to save Janelle‘s child, which had lasted through most of the night. Despite his tiredness, he felt more cheerful than he had done since they had arrived at Grundisburgh. He might have lost two battles with death – the hanged man and Unwin – but he was fairly sure he had won the third, and that Janelle would bear a healthy child if she followed his advice.

  ‘So,’ said Deblunville, passing him a goblet of wine. ‘A dog from Barchester attacked you, your servant drove it off, and you ran away as fast as you could to end up on our land.’

  Bartholomew nodded. ‘I felt a person’s hand grabbing my foot, although I did not see him. Cynric saw only the dog.’

  ‘And you think the motive was theft?’ pressed Deblunville.

  Bartholomew shrugged, sipping the wine. ‘Half the men in Otley saw Grosnold give me that gold coin, and any one of them could have slipped out and followed us.’

  However, since no attempt had been made to search him for it, Bartholomew was far from certain that the purpose of the ambush had been to steal. He thought it far more likely that Grosnold or Ned had followed them, seeking to silence him over the matter of the knight’s meeting with Unwin just before his murder, or perhaps to ensure he did not expose Grosnold’s lies about the acquisition of his manor. But he kept his suspicions to himself. The last thing he wanted was to be drawn deeper into the murky affairs of the squabbling Suffolk manors.

  ‘But no Otley villager owns a big white dog,’ said Deblunville, reaching out to pluck one of the pale hairs from Bartholomew’s cloak, set to dry by the fire. ‘All theirs are small, yellow mongrels with bad eyesight. Grosnold is bitterly envious of my fine hunting hounds, and would do anything to acquire one of the pups that has just been born.’

  ‘Perhaps it was a stray,’ said Bartholomew. ‘Unwin claimed to have seen a big white dog in Barchester, two days before he died.’

  ‘So I understand.’ Deblunville smiled at Bartholomew’s surprise. ‘This is the country. Rumours and stories spread faster here than rats through a granary.’

  ‘Then you should know there is also a rumour that you set eyes on the thing.’

  Deblunville shook his head, amused. ‘I saw a wolf that scurried off when I tried to shoot it. I expect one of my archers mentioned the episode to some kinsmen in Grundisburgh – for all our bickering and fighting, nearly all Burgh folk have relatives there – and the story was put out that I had encountered Padfoot.’

  ‘So, you do not believe Padfoot exists?’ asked Bartholomew.

  ‘I believe someone has resurrected a silly tale that dates back to pagan times, and that Tuddenham and Grosnold have capitalised on it to provide an excuse for their spies being found on my land. I also believe that the two Grundisburgh villagers, who died after supposedly seeing Padfoot, were killed by Tuddenham as a punishment, because they were caught red-handed by me trespassing on my manor. And I believe that someone in his cups heard I saw a wolf, and started the rumour that what I really saw was Padfoot.’

  ‘Do you honestly think that James Freeman and Alice Quy were sent to spy on you?’ asked Bartholomew. ‘A butcher and a woman with a new baby?’

  ‘I know they were,’ said Deblunville firmly.

  ‘Well, at least you have not completely taken leave of your senses,’ grumbled Bardolf, flopping down next to them. Bartholomew inspected the older man’s clothes covertly, and saw that they were almost as shabby and old as were his own. ‘I thought maybe you would accept that these scholars were on your land to pick wild flowers, or to watch the stars, or some other such nonsense.’

  ‘You are irritable today,’ said Deblunville mildly. ‘Take some wine to soothe your temper.’

  ‘Take some laudanum to soothe your back,’ said Bartholomew.

  ‘Do you have some?’ asked Bardolf eagerly. ‘Give it to me!’

  Bartholomew mixed some of the powder with the wine in his goblet and handed it to Bardolf, who almost snatched it in his desperation.

  ‘If this kills me, I will kill you,’ he warned.

  ‘Drink it slowly,’ instructed Bartholomew, ignoring the odd logic. ‘Or it will make you dizzy.’

  ‘Dizziness would be a blessing,’ muttered Bardolf. ‘I have no relief from this pain. My father was the same and his father before him. Stoate bleeds me each full moon, but it makes no difference.’

  Bartholomew could well believe it. ‘So, why are you so sure that Tuddenham wants to spy on you?’ he asked, still not certain that he understood all the twisted facts and reasoning behind the Padfoot legend.

  ‘Well, I suppose it is not really spying,’ said Deblunville, watching Bardolf sip Bartholomew’s potion with exaggerated care. ‘It is really searching.’

  ‘Searching for what?’ asked Bartholomew. He sat back, and gave a sud
den laugh of disbelief, recalling Tuddenham’s unpleasant questioning of Cynric at Unwin’s graveside. ‘The golden calf! He is looking for the golden calf! Is that what Janelle said you should tell us earlier tonight, so that we would understand why you do not want spies on your land?’

  It was Deblunville’s turn to look surprised. ‘Tuddenham told you about the calf?’

  ‘Of course he did,’ spat Bardolf. ‘That is what they were doing on our land – looking for it.’

  ‘I read about it at St Edmundsbury,’ said Bartholomew, ignoring the old man. ‘But it is a myth, a legend that is entertaining but that has no base in fact.’

  ‘That is not what Tuddenham believes,’ said Deblunville. ‘The lords of Grundisburgh have been hunting for the golden calf for as long as anyone can remember. They think it was hidden when the monks stole the bones of St Botolph, and that all they need to do is to dig until it is found.’

  ‘But no one knows where this chapel was supposed to be,’ said Bartholomew. ‘How can Tuddenham hope to find it by random digging?’

  ‘You are a scholar; your mind is too logical,’ said Deblunville. ‘Each time a tree is felled, Tuddenham or Hamon goes to pore over the roots; when a grave is dug, they sift through the soil; when foundations for a new building are laid, they pay men to dig a little deeper.’

  ‘But Tuddenham has decided that the chapel might not have been on his land after all,’ said Bardolf, drowsy from the laudanum. ‘So he is widening his search to Burgh, Clopton and Otley.’

  ‘Virtually every night, people from Grundisburgh slip out to poke around on their neighbours’ land to see what they can find,’ said Deblunville. ‘Grosnold does not object – he knows Tuddenham will share the profits with him if it is found on his manor – but Bardolf and I do not want our precious crops damaged by futile treasure-hunting.’