A Deadly Brew

by Susanna GREGORY

  ‘I do not care about smuggling and tax evasion,’ said Bartholomew gloomily. ‘I only want to make certain no more of this deadly claret is sold to our scholars.’

  Stanmore picked up his cup, but then set it back on the table without drinking. ‘Do you think someone is trying to foul University–town relations? It would be an easy matter to sell tainted goods to scholars and make them think someone in the town was trying to kill them. I hope that is not the case – it would be devastating for commerce!’

  ‘I understand that trade is very good for most merchants at the moment, which is unusual for winter,’ said Michael conversationally.

  Stanmore agreed. ‘The cloth trade is an exception – it is always better in the winter than in the summer because people need warm clothes in the colder months. Unfortunately for me, the open waterways mean that there are fewer travellers on the roads, and so my goods are more vulnerable. Two of my carts have been attacked on their way from London within the last month. The Sheriff is out daily looking for these outlaws, and I have had to place my merchandise under an armed escort.’

  Bartholomew glanced at him guiltily, thinking that he would be two guards short following the loss of Egil and Jurnet.

  Stanmore read his thoughts and patted his hand. ‘I do not blame you for their deaths, Matt. Egil came looking for work last autumn. He was an adequate guard, but hated life in the town. When I needed him here, he pleased himself whether he would come, and might spend the day fishing in the Fens if the mood took him. I was on the verge of dismissing him. And Jurnet has been with me only since Christmas. I needed a strong arm, and he served his purpose, but he was a lout. He bullied my apprentices, and I suspect his wife had good reason for not leaving her house in Ely to live with him here. I am sorry they are dead, and will help their families if I can, but I am not surprised either came to a violent end.’

  That Stanmore did not like the men who had died was of small comfort to Bartholomew. He stood to leave. ‘I am sorry anyway. And next time I will pay more attention to my friends’ misgivings.’

  ‘In that case, Matt, heed this. The attack on you sounded well organised and elaborate. It is not cheap to hire men to commit murder. Either drop this poisoned wine business, or solve it quickly, because men who have organised one such ambush will easily be able to arrange another.’

  Bartholomew did not need to be reminded. He gave his brother-in-law a weak smile and looked around for his cloak, before he realised he no longer had one. He picked up his gloves from where they had been drying near the fire and pulled them on.

  ‘Those are fine gloves,’ said Stanmore, regarding them with the eye of a professional. ‘Who gave them to you? I am sure you did not pay for them while there are still books in the world to be bought.’

  ‘Constantine Mortimer,’ replied Bartholomew, leaning down to retrieve his medicines bag from the floor. ‘Actually, he wanted to sell them to me, but his wife said they would compensate me for missing the installation.’

  ‘Then Mortimer must have felt wretched indeed,’ said Stanmore. ‘He rules that poor woman with a fist of iron and does not usually take heed of her suggestions. But how did he come to have such things to sell anyway? He is a baker not a glover.’

  ‘I have no idea,’ replied Bartholomew, uninterested. ‘I have not given it much thought.’

  ‘If I were you,’ said Stanmore, watching him stretch stiff limbs, ‘I would leave Cambridge until all this has died down. Come to Trumpington. Edith would love you to stay with her, and you know we will both fret over you until all this is resolved and you are safe again.’

  ‘They would find him,’ said Michael bluntly. ‘The more I learn about these men, the more I fear them. The only way we will be safe from another attack is to catch them and hand them to the Sheriff.’

  They left Stanmore to arrange for his steward to fetch Egil’s body, and collected Dame Pelagia from Deschalers’s house. She had borrowed a dark blue cloak from Julianna and removed part of her veil, so that she looked like any anonymous old crone and not a nun. Bartholomew was impressed that she had thought to disguise herself on the way to her hiding place, but then remembered that she was Michael’s grandmother and an agent of the Bishop. He glanced down at her and she gave him a beneficent smile, which made her look sweet and gentle. But when the smile faded and he looked at her again, he saw her hard green eyes taking in every detail as they walked and, although her progress was slow, there was nothing shaky or frail about her movements. Michael was walking awkwardly, stiff after his long walk, but Dame Pelagia showed no such weakness.

  Bartholomew led the way up the High Street towards the area known as The Jewry, which had been the domain of Jewish merchants until their expulsion from England in 1290. It was here that Matilde had her small, neat house. Michael realised where they were heading in an instant, and rubbed his hands together in glee.

  ‘Excellent, Matt! Who would ever think that we would secrete an elderly nun in the house of the town’s most exclusive prostitute?’

  ‘No one, I hope,’ said Bartholomew, casting an anxious glance at the old lady. He was already beginning to have second thoughts. ‘Perhaps this is not such a good idea.’

  ‘Nonsense. It is a superb idea. She will have the time of her life.’

  ‘Who? Matilde or your grandmother?’ asked Bartholomew, knocking at the door hesitantly.

  Before Michael could answer, the door was opened and Matilde stood smiling at them. To Bartholomew, she was one of the most attractive women in Cambridge, with long silky hair that almost reached her knees, and bright blue eyes. Known as ‘Lady’ Matilde for her fine manners and literacy, she and Bartholomew had struck up an unlikely friendship that was proving increasingly valuable to both of them.

  ‘Have you come to barter for my services?’ she asked pertly, continuing the ongoing battle in which she and Michael attempted to embarrass each other. To her great astonishment, she succeeded, and he blushed and studied his feet in abashed silence. Matilde looked at Bartholomew with a startled grin.

  ‘This is Dame Pelagia from Denny Abbey,’ said Bartholomew, hiding his amusement, and gesturing to the elderly nun. ‘She is Brother Michael’s grandmother and needs somewhere to stay for a few days.’

  For the first time since he had known her, Matilde was at a loss for words.

  ‘We wondered whether we might impose on your generosity for a brief while,’ Bartholomew continued, still doubtful about thrusting the two women together. Despite her dubious past, Dame Pelagia was still a nun, and Matilde, for all her courtliness and grace, was still a prostitute.

  Matilde recovered her poise and her customary charm returned. ‘Of course,’ she said, holding out a welcoming hand towards Dame Pelagia. ‘Please come in. May I offer you some ale?’ She looked appraisingly at the old nun. ‘Or perhaps you would prefer strong French wine?’

  Dame Pelagia’s beatific features broke into a acquisitive grin, looking so much like her grandson that the effect was disconcerting. She elbowed Michael out of the way and followed Matilde into the house. While Michael solicitously helped her to a chair, Bartholomew perched on a stool and edged closer to the fire. The biting Fen wind had chilled him just from walking the short distance from Stanmore’s house to Matilde’s, and he wondered again how he would manage the rest of the winter without his cloak.

  While Michael gave a brief, and not wholly truthful, explanation as to why an elderly nun was seeking refuge in the house of a prostitute, Bartholomew reconsidered the matter of the poisoned wine and the smugglers. He could see that the two might well be related, but since Michael had barely started to investigate the deaths of Armel, Grene and Isaac, he did not understand why someone should try to kill them because of it. He wondered whether they should interpret the incident in the Fens as a warning, and abandon the investigation altogether. But then, as Michael had pointed out to Stanmore, they would constantly be looking over their shoulders, waiting for the next attack. Bartholomew would not even be able to ans
wer summonses from his patients without his suspicions being aroused.

  ‘Julianna, did you say?’ Matilde was asking. ‘The niece of Deschalers the grocer?’

  Bartholomew dragged himself away from his thoughts, and concentrated on the conversation between Matilde and Michael.

  ‘The very same,’ said the monk. ‘How do you know her?’

  ‘Through the usual means,’ said Matilde, referring to the way in which she and the other prostitutes provided each other with information, so that they were almost as well informed of events in the town as was Stanmore from his spies. ‘I have heard she is a woman who knows what she wants and how to get it.’

  ‘That is certainly true,’ muttered Bartholomew. ‘She knew how to wrangle herself an escape from Denny Abbey, although I suspect she did not enjoy the journey.’

  Matilde seemed amused. ‘You do not like her, do you?’

  ‘Am I so transparent?’ he asked, unsettled that she should read his feelings with such ease.

  ‘Sometimes,’ said Matilde, regarding him with eyes that twinkled with mischief.

  ‘Like most men,’ put in Dame Pelagia with a wink, and the two women laughed uproariously together. Bartholomew and Michael exchanged a look of incomprehension. When he had first thought of leaving Dame Pelagia with Matilde, Bartholomew’s concerns had been whether the elderly nun would find Matilde’s occupation offensive. But now he felt more anxious that Dame Pelagia might have a corrupting influence on Matilde. He regarded the nun again, impressed at the way she was gulping the potent claret without grimacing – as he had done – and reappraising her sharp green eyes and intelligent face.

  ‘How long have you been a nun, Dame Pelagia?’ he asked.

  Matilde and Michael seemed startled at his question from out of the blue, but Dame Pelagia did not seem surprised at all. She looked him up and down shamelessly.

  ‘Since before you were born,’ she said, deliberately vague. ‘I led a somewhat different life before that.’

  ‘Really?’ asked Matilde with interest. ‘Do tell.’

  ‘Not now,’ said Michael quickly. ‘Matilde, what do you know about Julianna?’

  Matilde looked disappointed, but the old nun gave her a glance that indicated Matilde was in store for quite a story once Bartholomew and Michael had left. Matilde gave her a quick smile, and began to answer Michael’s question. ‘She is betrothed to Edward Mortimer.’

  ‘To Edward Mortimer – son of the baker who was greedy with his lemons?’ asked Michael, scratching at a spot on his face. ‘No wonder Deschalers is taking such an interest in him! Poor Julianna! Edward Mortimer is a pathetic specimen of manhood – there is no backbone to him.’

  ‘Apparently she feels the same way,’ replied Matilde. ‘Rumour has it that she prefers the attentions of another who lives in Cambridge.’

  ‘I suppose that is why she was so keen to escape from the abbey,’ said Michael. ‘To return to the arms of her paramour. Do you know the name of this fortunate fellow?’

  ‘Not for sure,’ said Matilde. She would not meet Michael’s eyes.

  ‘It would be helpful to know,’ pressed Michael. ‘It might help us with our investigation.’

  ‘I am not sufficiently certain to tell you,’ protested Matilde, uncharacteristically indecisive.

  ‘Please Matilde,’ said Bartholomew wearily. ‘We will be discreet.’

  She leaned forward and touched him on the knee. ‘I know you will,’ she said. ‘I am only reluctant to tell you because it may lead you down a false trail, and make you waste time, when it seems to be important that you solve this business quickly. I could not bear it if anything were to happen to you.’

  Bartholomew looked up sharply, but Matilde was staring down at her hands, long and graceful, which were folded demurely in her lap.

  ‘The rumour is that it was Ralph de Langelee, Michaelhouse’s new Fellow of philosophy, who took her fancy before she was sent away to Denny,’ she said reluctantly.

  ‘Langelee?’ exclaimed Michael in disbelief. ‘That great, stupid brute?’

  ‘He is a handsome man,’ said Matilde, fixing him with her steady gaze. ‘And he has not yet taken any vows of chastity that might put him out of a woman’s reach.’

  She and Michael exchanged a look that Bartholomew found impossible to interpret. Surely the monk would not have availed himself of Matilde’s services, he thought suddenly. For some reason, the notion disturbed him.

  ‘But Langelee is aggressive and arrogant,’ he said, forcing the unpleasant image of Matilde and Michael dishabille from his mind.

  ‘So is Julianna,’ Matilde pointed out. ‘I imagine they would be rather well suited.’

  ‘But you said she was betrothed to Edward Mortimer,’ said Michael, ‘so there can be no future in her yearnings for our loutish philosopher.’

  ‘Yearnings are not so easily cast aside,’ said Matilde. ‘Especially when one is young.’

  ‘Why does she not like Edward?’ asked Bartholomew. ‘He seems comely enough to me.’

  ‘But you are not a young woman of twenty-two, Matthew,’ said Matilde. ‘Edward is three years younger than Julianna, and probably seems like a baby to her. Given the choice, I would take Ralph de Langelee over Edward: Edward has not seen enough of the world to make him interesting, and he had been too long under the thumb of his father. Julianna doubtless wants to cast her net wider.’

  Did Matilde know Edward and Langelee so well? Bartholomew wondered, regarding her with renewed curiosity. Matilde’s customers were a subject that, by mutual consent, they did not discuss. He doubted she would have told him even if he asked. Not for the first time in their friendship, he found himself wishing she had chosen another profession, and that she was someone he might ask to walk with him in the meadows by the river, or take to the mystery plays in St Mary’s Church.

  The last time he had invited her to spend some time with him, she had felt obliged to disguise herself as an old woman to protect both their reputations. Despite the fact that they had laughed about it since, Bartholomew regretted that he had been unable to enjoy her company without her resorting to subterfuge and heavy cosmetics. He wondered what his sister would say if he took Matilde to Trumpington, so that they might see the early-born lambs together, or she might sit with him in the kitchen stealing hot cakes from the griddle.

  Reluctantly, he forced his thoughts away from Matilde, and began to consider Julianna. She was evidently not all she seemed. Could she be involved in the smuggling, perhaps escaping from Denny to warn her uncle that Dame Pelagia had incriminating evidence against him? Deschalers claimed he had discovered a way of storing lemons in his cellars that kept them fresh. But what if he were lying, and his lemons came from the illicit trading routes through the Fens, as Stanmore believed?

  ‘Deschalers might have made a worse match for Julianna than Edward,’ he said, standing and placing his unfinished wine on the table. ‘Old Master Cheney has been looking for a young wife ever since his own died during the plague. Julianna is lucky her uncle does not press Cheney on her.’

  ‘But Cheney knows about her past,’ said Matilde, rising to see him to the door. ‘Julianna was sent to Denny because Langelee was just one in a line of alliances completed within a matter of weeks that impresses even me.’

  Bartholomew supposed he should not be surprised to hear that Julianna had made the most of her time in Cambridge, and realised that Michael had been right – living in Michaelhouse was blinding him to the ways of the world. He smiled at Matilde and thanked her for her hospitality. Michael glanced at his grandmother, who appeared to be asleep, and made no move to leave.

  ‘Your grandmother has a habit of pretending to doze when she is fully awake,’ said Bartholomew tartly, reluctant to leave the fat monk alone with Matilde. ‘I would not tarry here if I were you, Brother.’

  Michael sighed, and levered his massive bulk from Matilde’s best chair to follow Bartholomew out into the street. As Matilde stood on the doorstep to bid them fare
well, Bartholomew saw Dame Pelagia snap awake and reach for the wine he had left in his cup.

  ‘Thank you for looking after my grandmother,’ said Michael. ‘You will find she will be no trouble, and will know when to make herself scarce.’

  Matilde looked through the half-open door at the old lady, who had drained the remains of Bartholomew’s wine, and was now looking to see if the other cups were empty. ‘I will enjoy the company,’ she said, smiling. ‘I have a feeling she has a great many fascinating stories to help pass the long winter evenings.’

  Bartholomew, watching the old lady settle herself comfortably by the fire with a cup in either hand, was sure she had.

  The rest of the day was spent at Michaelhouse, teaching in the chilly hall. Great grey clouds that threatened more rain had rolled in, and the room was dark and gloomy. In one corner, a student of Alcote’s strained his eyes to read Cicero’s Rhetoric in a flat monotone to a group of first years, while Alcote himself was relaxing by the fire in his own sumptuous quarters, having declined to grace the dismal hall with his presence. In another corner, Father William ranted about the Devil being in unexpected places to his little band of similarly fanatical Franciscans in a voice sufficiently loud to be heard in the High Street. At regular intervals, the other Fellows asked him to moderate the volume so that they could concentrate on their own teaching, his rabid diatribes distracting even the tolerant Master Kenyngham.

  In front of the empty hearth, Ralph de Langelee strutted back and forth, waving his meaty arms around as he expounded Aristotle to three bemused students who would fail their degrees if they repeated his peculiar logic in their disputations. John Runham was giving a lecture on the Corpus juris civilis in the conclave, a smaller and far more pleasant room at the far end of the hall, but since he had at least fifteen students hanging on his every word, there was no space for any of the other Fellows to share it with him. Bartholomew was not the only one who resented being excluded from the conclave: it was the only room in Michaelhouse with glass in the windows, and therefore was by far the warmest place in the College and easily the most popular spot after the kitchen.