A Vein Of Deceit: The Fifteenth Chronicle Of Matthew Bartholomew (The Chronicles of Matthew Bartholomew)

by Gregory, Susanna

  ‘None that I could see,’ replied Michael, taking his usual place at Bartholomew’s side. Something felt strange about the procession – a change in something deeply familiar – and Bartholomew was momentarily confused when he glanced behind him to see Thelnetham next to Clippesby, where Wynewyk normally walked. ‘He is subdued, and refused the food my beadles took him, but that is understandable. Unfortunately, he still refuses to talk to us.’

  ‘I will examine him again today,’ said Bartholomew, trying to concentrate on what the monk was saying as grief for Wynewyk washed over him. ‘Perhaps he will tell me what happened.’

  ‘I doubt it, but you are welcome to try. So is Paxtone, Warden Powys and anyone else who will make him understand that declining to co-operate with the Senior Proctor is not a good idea. Even a half-baked explanation will only result in exile, given that he can claim “benefit of clergy”, but maintaining this ridiculous silence might well see him hanged.’

  The Sunday mass was an unusually gloomy affair, and Bartholomew was not the only one who kept glancing at the spot where Wynewyk had always stood. Some of the younger students cried, and the physician was obliged to escort several home early. Risleye, Valence and Tesdale accompanied him, the latter two clearly struggling to control their own distress.

  ‘Still,’ said Valence, attempting a smile, ‘at least he died happy. I would not mind going like that when my time comes – surrounded by friends, and laughing fit to burst.’

  ‘Perhaps he did,’ said Risleye with wide eyes. ‘Burst, I mean. Perhaps his innards exploded, because of all the choleric humours that bubbled when he was so full of mirth. It is a pity we cannot anatomise him, because I would like to test such a hypothesis.’

  For the first time ever, the physician found himself grateful that anatomy was illegal.

  ‘Hippocrates says laughing is good for you,’ said Tesdale. ‘He says nothing about it making you explode.’

  ‘I suppose you might be right,’ conceded Risleye, then added rather salaciously, ‘There was no blood. If Wynewyk had exploded, there would have been pots of blood.’

  ‘Enough,’ said Bartholomew sharply, aware that the graphic discussion was upsetting the younger students. ‘He died happy, so let us say no more about it.’

  ‘Did he die happy?’ asked Risleye. ‘Personally, I thought his guffaws had a strangely brittle quality to them – as if he did not really think the debate was funny, but could not help himself.’

  ‘I said, enough!’ snapped Bartholomew, although he found Risleye’s observation an uncomfortable one. If Wynewyk had been agitated, then perhaps he had eaten the nuts deliberately, fearing his days of manipulating the accounts were numbered. Or was Bartholomew wrong to doubt his integrity?

  ‘There is the breakfast bell,’ said Valence, brightening at the prospect of food. ‘It is Sunday, so perhaps there will be egg-mess, like there used to be before Wynewyk tightened the purse strings.’

  ‘You cannot blame him for that,’ objected Tesdale. ‘It is hardly his fault that food prices have risen and students are slow in paying their fees – or run off without paying at all, like Kelyng. He did his best with what he had. Still, some egg-mess would be nice …’

  The other students followed him to the hall, but Bartholomew did not feel like eating whatever Agatha had concocted, certain that eggs would not feature in it. And Risleye’s remark about Wynewyk’s ‘brittle’ laughter had unsettled him. He went to Langelee’s room instead, and spent the time reassessing the College’s finances. Surely he could find something to prove Wynewyk innocent?

  When the meal was over, Michael came to find him. He saw what Bartholomew was doing, and cleared a space on one of Langelee’s benches. Then he sat down and raised questioning eyebrows. Reluctantly, Bartholomew shook his head.

  ‘I have uncovered nothing new. Just confirmed what we already knew – that the questionable transactions are for three commodities bought from Suffolk: coal, wood and pigs. But I am sure Wynewyk was not cheating us, Brother. There must be an explanation that will exonerate him.’

  ‘So you keep saying. But I went through most of his personal papers this morning and found nothing to indicate what that explanation might be.’

  ‘Then we must look harder. My students need to hear Theophilus’s De urinis before I can give my next set of lectures, and Risleye has offered to read it aloud to the others. That means I am free to help you unravel this mess – and clear Wynewyk’s name.’

  Michael was pleased. ‘And in return, I shall help you hunt down your lost pennyroyal. I know it pales into insignificance when compared to Wynewyk, but it is still a toxic substance, and I will feel happier when we have satisfied ourselves that it did not end up inside Joan.’

  ‘I do not believe it did. Indeed, the more I think about it, the more I am convinced that there could not have been much left when I finished making the ulcer salve. Of course, it does not take much to kill a person …’

  ‘Well, the more I think about it, the more I am afraid that it might have been stolen at the same time that something else went astray,’ said Michael. ‘Namely the Stanton Cups.’

  Bartholomew frowned. ‘Why would Gosse take pennyroyal? I own far more expensive substances than that – and far more dangerous ones, too. Foxglove, mandrake, poppy juice …’

  ‘Even if he can read, he was probably in a hurry, and grabbed whatever he could reach.’

  ‘Should I talk to him about it, warn him of its dangers?’

  ‘That would be tantamount to accusing him of theft, and he will go crying to his lawyer about slander. Besides, if he does have it, your warning may encourage him to feed it to someone he does not like. No, Matt. We must devise another way to ascertain whether he is the culprit.’

  Bartholomew nodded acquiescence, although he was unsure whether or not to be concerned. Was his pennyroyal in Gosse’s hands? Or had someone from Michaelhouse taken it to help with some innocent task, and was now too frightened to own up? The physician rubbed a hand through his hair, and turned to yet another cause for concern.

  ‘Do the other Fellows know about the missing thirty marks yet?’

  ‘Langelee told them after breakfast. Predictably, they are all very upset.’

  ‘We could talk to Wynewyk’s friends,’ suggested Bartholomew. ‘They may know what he—’

  ‘We were his friends. He had acquaintances from other foundations – such as Paxtone and Warden Powys from King’s Hall – but his friends were here, at Michaelhouse.’

  Bartholomew tapped the accounts book with his pen. ‘The inconsistencies only arise when he made purchases from Suffolk. As far as I can tell, he paid a total of eighteen marks for coal, seven for wood and five for pigs. But none of these supplies have been received.’

  ‘I reached the same conclusion, and so did Langelee. Then I went back through the receipts and found the names of the three Suffolk men with whom he did business. Did you do that?’

  Bartholomew shook his head. ‘I just studied the figures.’ ‘The largest amount was paid to a man called Henry Elyan of Haverhill, who—’

  ‘Elyan?’ echoed Bartholomew, startled. ‘But he is Joan’s husband.’

  ‘The woman who died of pennyroyal?’ asked Michael. ‘What a curious coincidence!’

  Bartholomew’s thoughts were reeling. ‘Is it coincidence? Elyan came to collect his wife’s body on Saturday, which is the same day that Wynewyk died.’

  Michael considered the matter, but then shook his head. ‘I am as bemused by this strange happenstance as you are, but it cannot be relevant. It is impossible that Elyan is involved in whatever happened to Wynewyk. First, he cannot have gained access to our College, and second, he is a stranger to our town, so not in a position to hire someone else to do it for him. Besides, I thought we had agreed that Wynewyk died of a seizure brought on by laughter.’

  ‘We did not agree – you decided that was what we were going to tell people. However, the truth is that I have absolutely no idea why Wynewyk die
d. But to return to Elyan, do not forget that his wife travelled here with their household priest – Edith told me Neubold represented Elyan in his business dealings with King’s Hall. In other words, he is not as much a stranger to Cambridge as you think.’

  ‘He is, if he sends Neubold to do his work,’ Michael pointed out. ‘But we shall bear the possibility in mind. Meanwhile, there is another connection, too – Gosse’s lawyer is also called Neubold. Of course, we do not know if it is the same man.’

  Bartholomew frowned. ‘If they are one and the same, then it raises another question – namely, why did a respectable lady elect to keep company with the kind of man who has felons as clients?’

  ‘According to what Edith told me the day after Joan died, Joan simply took advantage of an opportunity to travel. She also said that Neubold failed to come when Joan was dying. That is odd.’

  ‘Perhaps Joan was not the only one with friends here,’ suggested Bartholomew, wondering whether Neubold had taken the opportunity to avail himself of a Frail Sister; prostitutes were not very readily available to priests in small villages, and Neubold would not be the first cleric to take advantage of what a large town could offer.

  The notion of Frail Sisters reminded Bartholomew of Matilde, and he tried to imagine what she would have said, had she heard of what Wynewyk stood accused. She had been fond of Wynewyk, and Bartholomew was sure she would have defended him.

  ‘… message did not reach Neubold in time,’ Michael was saying as the physician wrenched his thoughts away from two people he had loved and lost. ‘Although I doubt Elyan was pleased when he learned Neubold had failed his wife. But we are moving away from the real point here, which is that Wynewyk wrote in our accounts that Elyan sold him coal.’

  ‘But we do not burn coal. Did he mean charcoal? He uses the Latin carbo, which can mean either. And there is yet another coincidence: the Dominican whom Shropham killed was named Carbo.’

  ‘I once had a black horse called Carbo, and so did two of my sisters,’ said Michael tartly. ‘If you start seeing links between the name of a mad priest and the items Wynewyk bought, we will never get to the bottom of this mess, because we will be distracted by irrelevancies. Besides, Carbo was not the man’s real name.’

  ‘No. It sounded as though it was one he had picked for himself,’ Bartholomew agreed.

  ‘Actually, he claimed God gave it to him. But to return to more important matters, the accounts tell us that Wynewyk made large payments to two more Suffolk men, as well as Elyan: d’Audley for wood, and Luneday for pigs.’

  ‘D’Audley?’ Bartholomew was growing confused. ‘He is Elyan’s friend, who came with him to collect Joan’s body and take it home.’

  But Michael was not listening. ‘It makes no sense,’ he said, his voice a mixture of hurt and frustration. ‘Wynewyk must have known he would be caught eventually, so why did he do it?’

  ‘That is what we are going to find out,’ vowed Bartholomew. ‘He will have had his reasons.’

  ‘I do not know what to think. On the one hand, I feel betrayed. On the other, I cannot help but feel you are right, and there must be an explanation. It makes me sympathetic to King’s Hall, though: none of them believe Shropham is a killer, although the evidence says otherwise. Visit him, Matt. Now, this morning. Persuade him to tell you why he is putting his colleagues through this nightmare.’

  Shropham had been moved to the proctors’ gaol, a small, cramped building near St Mary the Great, and although it was not the festering hole used to secure prisoners in the castle, it was a dismal place nonetheless. When Bartholomew was shown into Shropham’s cell, the King’s Hall man was sitting disconsolately on the edge of a wooden bed. He had been provided with blankets, although he had made no effort to wrap them around himself. Bartholomew did it for him, after he had inspected the wound and found it healing well.

  ‘It will be sore for a few days,’ he said. ‘And you will have to favour it for a while, until the muscles mend. Do you want anything to ease the pain?’

  ‘I want something that will kill me,’ whispered Shropham, looking at him for the first time since he had arrived. ‘Something that will allow me to slip away without causing any more trouble.’

  There were a number of ways a prisoner could take his own life in prison – he could hang himself from the bars on his window, cut himself with the knife provided for slicing up his meat, or drown himself in the water left for drinking and washing – and the fact that Shropham had not tried any led Bartholomew to conclude he was not serious.

  ‘It would be a lot easier if you just told the truth,’ the physician said practically. ‘Carbo was not in his right mind, and while that does not give anyone the right to kill him, it might go some way towards explaining what happened. Your situation is not as hopeless as you seem to think.’

  ‘It is,’ said Shropham miserably. ‘Brother Michael will put me under oath, and if I make up a tale to exonerate myself, I shall have to do it with my hand on the Bible. My immortal soul …’

  ‘I said you should tell the truth, not lie,’ objected Bartholomew. ‘You must have a reason for what you did, so tell Michael, and let him help you.’

  ‘No,’ said Shropham in a low voice. ‘I would rather die than … Are you sure you cannot give me something to end it all? It would be for the best.’

  Bartholomew left feeling slightly soiled. Patients had pleaded with him to end their lives before, but they were usually dying of painful diseases, so their demands were understandable. He had never been asked to provide an easy way out for someone reluctant to tell the truth, and he had not liked it.

  He was lost in thought as he walked down the narrow lane that led to the High Street. Shropham did not seem like a cold-blooded killer, but Bartholomew struggled to remember him each time they met, which underlined the fact that he really did not know him at all. For all he knew, Shropham was a seasoned assassin, and this was just the first time he had been caught.

  He glanced up when he saw a flicker of movement in the shadows ahead of him, then stopped when two figures materialised. They were Gosse and Idoma. Bartholomew sighed. He was not in the mood for a set-to with felons.

  ‘Well?’ Gosse asked, nonchalantly drawing his dagger and using it to clean his fingernails. ‘Did you pass my message to your colleagues? About handing over what is rightfully mine?’

  ‘It slipped my mind,’ replied Bartholomew. ‘Partly because I have no idea what you were talking about. What do we have that you think is yours?’

  ‘Do not lie,’ said Idoma, fixing him with her peculiar eyes. Involuntarily, he took a step backwards. Michael was right: there was something unpleasantly charismatic about her, something that had compelled him to move against his will. ‘You know perfectly well what my brother means.’

  ‘I assure you, I—’ he began.

  ‘Perhaps he is telling the truth,’ said Gosse to his sister. ‘One can never tell with scholars, slippery creatures that they are. But that is no excuse for failing to act as my messenger.’

  He brought his gaze back to the physician, who slid his hand inside his medical bag and let his fingers close around his childbirth forceps. They were reassuringly heavy. The implement had been a gift from Matilde, and he wondered what she would say if she knew he used it more often as a weapon than he did to assist pregnant women. He was sure she would not approve, and rightly so.

  ‘But we shall give him another chance,’ Gosse was saying softly. ‘Because we are generous.’

  Idoma scowled, and Bartholomew was under the impression that she had hoped for a more violent end to the encounter. He recalled the rumour that she was insane, and thought the tale might well have some basis in fact; that day, everything about her bespoke barely suppressed aggression, from the odd twitching of her ham-sized hands to her peculiar eyes.

  ‘Give it back,’ she snarled. ‘Just tell them that.’

  ‘Give what back?’ asked Bartholomew, tightening his grip on the forceps.

  ‘Someone
will know,’ replied Gosse enigmatically. ‘And you can tell that monk something else, too. He will make no more disparaging remarks about us. If he does, he can expect to hear from our lawyer.’

  ‘He is not the only one to associate you with certain …’ Bartholomew decided at the last moment that ‘crimes’ would not be a wise choice of words ‘… certain incidents, and—’

  ‘Then you can pass them the same message,’ declared Gosse. ‘To keep their slanderous opinions to themselves. But we have wasted enough time here, Idoma. Come.’

  He spun on his heel and stalked away. Idoma watched him go, and when she turned back to the physician, there was a curious and far from pleasant expression on her face. Bartholomew forced himself to meet her eyes, fighting a deeply rooted instinct that clamoured at him to take to his heels. It was Idoma who looked away first. Unhurriedly, she turned and began to follow her brother. For someone so bulky, she had an uncannily light tread, like a large predator. Bartholomew leaned against the wall the moment she had passed out of sight, aware that his heart was racing furiously.

  He asked himself what it was about the pair that had inspired such a reaction – he was not a timid man, and they had not said or done anything overtly frightening. Had he been wrong to dismiss the notion that Idoma dabbled in witchcraft? Or were they just two powerful bullies who knew how to use the force of their personalities to good effect? Regardless, he was glad they had gone.

  Michael’s eyes narrowed when Bartholomew told him what had happened, and the physician was hard pressed to stop him from assembling his beadles and going to tackle the Gosses there and then.

  ‘They did nothing wrong,’ said Bartholomew. ‘Other than exude an air of menace, and I do not think that is illegal. If it were, you would be obliged to arrest yourself, because it is an art you have honed to perfection when dealing with recalcitrant undergraduates.’

  Michael grimaced. ‘That is different – I am on the side of right and justice. The Gosses are not.’