A Deadly Brew

by Susanna GREGORY

  ‘At last!’ she cried, flinging herself into his arms. ‘I have been worried to death!’

  ‘Dame Pelagia is well following her unpleasant experience in the marshes,’ he said formally, startled by the intensity of her reaction. ‘Although we bungled our attempt to rescue her.’

  Matilde waved her hand in dismissal, still with one arm looped around his neck. ‘Pelagia knows how to look after herself. It was you I was worried about.’

  After Dame Pelagia had related their story in clear and unembellished phrases – so free of exaggeration that Bartholomew later wondered whether she and Langelee had even shared the same adventure – and Matilde had satisfied herself that he was unharmed, Bartholomew had taken the old lady to the Chancellor’s lodgings. Tulyet was to escort her back to the peace of Denny Abbey after a few days’ rest, when he would take the opportunity to arrest the Abbess for her role in smuggling the stolen treasure. Edward had confessed his part in the affair in a wailing voice all the way back to the town and, once again, Bartholomew wondered what Dame Pelagia had done or said to induce his almost frantic desire to confess.

  Absently he took a bite out of the cake, and the loud crack of a seed between his teeth wrenched his thoughts back to the present.

  ‘So Denny Abbey provided a storage place for Harling’s treasure,’ Michael was saying. ‘It was a perfect choice. Who would have thought of looking for stolen treasure in the cellars of a nunnery?’

  ‘Who would have thought of looking for treasure at all is more to the point,’ said Bartholomew. ‘If your grandmother had not overheard Harling’s conversation with the Abbess that prompted the King to place Langelee undercover here, we might never have guessed what the Vice-Chancellor was doing. We still would have been looking for pedlars of pomegranates and figs.’

  ‘I do not think so,’ said Michael, somewhat indignantly. ‘Do not try to give Langelee more credit than he deserves. You started to unravel the mystery when Harling tried to throw you in the mill race, and we both guessed about the treasure when we put all the clues – my new cross, the chalices at Valence Marie and the gold cake-plate at Denny Abbey – together. Neither Harling nor Langelee told us about that – we worked it out on our own.’

  ‘I suppose so,’ said Bartholomew. ‘It all happened so quickly, though. We had too little time to discuss it. We should have spent less time charging around and more time thinking.’

  Michael gave him a playful poke with his foot. ‘Enjoy your victory, and do not dwell on what might have been,’ he preached. ‘As far as King and Bishop are concerned, it is another job well done on our part.’ He looked distastefully to where Langelee still entertained the Fellows with his tale of daring and danger, the exploits becoming increasingly outrageous as the level of wine in his goblet fell, and sniffed. ‘It is a pity Langelee was not implicated in all this. I still do not like him.’

  ‘He is going to ask the Archbishop to release him from his service so that he can stay here to teach philosophy,’ said Bartholomew. ‘He finds a scholar’s life exciting compared to that of a mere agent. Perhaps we should exchange posts. I have had enough of spies and intrigue.’

  ‘You always say that,’ said Michael.

  As they had been speaking, the volume of the students’ singing had been gradually rising, and Bartholomew saw that Alcote and Father William would not countenance their vulgarity much longer. He left his fireside stool and went to warn them to keep the noise down. Gray stood on the high table with a rug shoved up his tabard and a piece of rolled up parchment in his hand, leading his friends in a grotesque parody of Michael conducting his choir. Bartholomew hid his amusement and watched Gray jump from the table somewhat sheepishly.

  ‘He looks just like Brother Michael, do you not think?’ piped Deynman, brightly. The other students groaned and Gray gave him a withering look. Bartholomew raised his eyes heavenward and went back to the conclave, closing the door behind him.

  ‘Langelee has just offered us a repeat performance of his adventures in the Fens,’ said Michael with a grin, watching the burly philosopher taking a break from his labours as he crammed one of Agatha’s cakes into his mouth.

  ‘What, again?’ asked Bartholomew without enthusiasm. ‘He has only just finished enthralling us the first time.’

  ‘He is not a man for false modesty, apparently,’ said Michael. ‘And so he will relate once more the tale of how he single-handedly saved the kingdom, starting as soon as Cynric has replenished the wine in his audience’s goblets.’

  ‘That is rash of him,’ remarked Bartholomew. ‘There will be discrepancies between the story he just told, and the one he will tell again. He will never recall all the lies he has already spoken. Father William will be on him in an instant, and will expose him as a fraud.’

  ‘I thought as much when I persuaded him to accede to the Master’s request for the tale to be repeated,’ said Michael smugly, stretching his hands to the fire.

  Bartholomew laughed. ‘Dame Pelagia would approve of that.’

  ‘No,’ said Michael, musing for a moment. ‘She would consider it too unsubtle.’

  Bartholomew laughed again, and looked back to where Langelee was raising a wine bottle to his lips – a bottle of smoked glass, just like the ones that had killed Armel, Grene, Will Harper and Katherine Mortimer, and had dragged Bartholomew and Michael into investigating the poisoned wine with such dire consequences.

  Bartholomew’s stomach began to churn as he realised, with absolute certainty, that Harling had been a good deal more clever than they had supposed. Michael was wrong: the horrible events of the past few days were not over! Harling had not been fooled for an instant by Langelee’s duplicity and had not been surprised in the least that he had been followed into the Fens – he had known Langelee would not kill Bartholomew and Michael! He had told Langelee to return to Michaelhouse to await payment. Part of the payment must have been a bottle of wine – in a smoked glass bottle – the last of the six that Sacks had stolen! Harling had lied, and it had not been smashed in the fight with Sacks at all. It was his insurance that Langelee would die, even if he escaped the final confrontation in the Fens.

  The students’ singing in the hall raised to a crescendo once more, drowning out Bartholomew’s warning shout. Langelee paused to listen to something Kenyngham was saying, and then brought the bottle to his mouth again to remove the cork with his teeth. The cork! Suddenly, the whole issue of the poison became horrifyingly clear. Grene and Armel had died instantly, yet Philius had merely become ill. The poison was not in the wine – it was soaked into the stopper! While Philius had ingested some of the poison washed from the neck of the bottle as it had been poured, Armel and Grene had either drawn the stopper from the bottle with their teeth, or had put their lips to the neck of the bottle to drink.

  Just as Langelee was about to do.

  ‘No!’ he yelled, leaping to his feet.

  Langelee paused again, but it was nothing to do with Bartholomew. He was paying attention to Kenyngham, and the physician’s voice was drowned out by the students laughing and cheering in the room next door. Michael watched curiously as Bartholomew tried to push past Father Paul to reach Langelee. The blind friar Paul stumbled, and grabbed at Bartholomew to steady himself. The bottle was inches away from Langelee’s mouth, and Bartholomew could not extricate himself from Paul’s grip.

  As he struggled to push Paul away, he felt something hard in his shirt pocket. Tulyet’s lemon! He drew it out and hurled it with all his might, aiming to strike the bottle from Langelee’s hand.

  The throw went appallingly wide and smashed through one of Michaelhouse’s newly installed, and much admired windows. The other Fellows leapt to their feet in shock, while Langelee dropped the bottle as he ducked away from the missile that sailed past his head. He gazed at Bartholomew in bewilderment, his mouth hanging open. Master Kenyngham turned to Bartholomew in horror.

  ‘Matthew!’ he cried. ‘Our lovely glass!’

  ‘Well done, Matt,’ mutter
ed Michael, sardonically, from his chair near the fire. ‘Our one chance to rid ourselves of the appalling Langelee, and you go and save his life!’

  The following day Bartholomew threw himself into his teaching to take his mind off the events of the previous week. He and Michael had successfully resolved the deaths of Armel, Grene, Philius and Isaac; removed any suspicion that the town was trying to kill the University’s scholars with poisoned wine; Harling was dead and his accomplices either killed or in Tulyet’s care; Rob Thorpe was under lock and key; and the merchant smugglers were suitably subdued. Yet Bartholomew felt anything but satisfaction. He fretted over Edith’s grief over Rob Thorpe, and was disturbed that a man like Harling, who had given the University his loyalty and energies for so many years, should suddenly turn on it with such bitterness.

  When the bell rang to bring an end to the day’s lectures, Bartholomew felt drained, and trailed apathetically after his students to the hall for dinner. Kenyngham was spending the day with Chancellor Tynkell and Langelee at St Mary’s Church, writing the official report about Harling that would be sent to the King, and Father William was due to preside over the midday meal. Bartholomew’s spirits sank at the prospect of food eaten in silence, and long graces, during which each of the Franciscans would take it in turns to say more than a few words. When he saw the friars carrying various books and scrolls with them from which to read, his appetite began to wane, and he decided to risk their displeasure and miss the meal altogether.

  He skulked in his room until all the scholars were in the hall, and then began to walk across the yard to the gate, intending to buy one of Mortimer’s pies and take it to eat in the deserted water meadows behind Peterhouse. He was startled to hear his name hissed urgently from Michael’s room on the floor above. He looked up, and saw Michael leaning out of his window, beckoning frantically to him.

  He climbed the wooden stairs to the room that Michael shared with three Benedictine undergraduates, and pushed open the door.

  Michael sat on his bed with a small strongbox open on his knees. ‘Is anyone about?’

  Bartholomew shook his head. ‘They are all in the hall. What are you doing?’

  ‘I had to pack up Eligius’s possessions this morning,’ said Michael. ‘They need to be returned to the Dominicans at Blackfriars in London. While I was in his room I came across this box. No one knows I have it, but I need a witness to what I have found.’

  ‘No!’ said Bartholomew vehemently, beginning to back away. ‘I have had enough of University politics! Choose someone else as your witness.’

  ‘Matt!’ exclaimed Michael in exasperation. ‘Look!’ He held up a handful of small scraps of parchment, each bearing a few words of writing. Bartholomew regarded them blankly. ‘The voting slips from the chancellorial election,’ Michael explained. ‘And almost every one of them bearing Harling’s name. Here is yours.’

  Curious, despite his reservations, Bartholomew stepped forward and saw that Michael was right. In the box on the monk’s lap were dozens of the small scraps of parchment that had been used by the University Fellows to vote for their favoured candidate as Chancellor. Bartholomew leaned down and took a handful of them, leafing through them quickly. He exchanged a glance of puzzlement with Michael, and then inspected the piece that bore his name and Harling’s.

  ‘So?’ he asked, nonplussed. ‘You said Eligius and Kenyngham counted the votes. Why should they not be in Eligius’s room?’

  ‘Because the ballot slips from chancellorial elections are stored in the University chest in St Mary’s Church tower,’ said Michael. ‘When you expressed doubts last week about the validity of the election, I went to look at them. Or I thought I did. I confess I was surprised when mine showed I had voted for Tynkell, when I distinctly remember writing Harling’s name. It crossed my mind that you might have changed it, since you took my vote to St Mary’s Church because I was ill. But of all the people I know, you are the last one to do something so dishonest. And you have always said you preferred Harling to Tynkell.’

  Bartholomew let the parchments fall from his fingers. ‘Eligius and Kenyngham falsified the election?’ he asked, stunned. He looked at the slips scattered on the floor. ‘You are saying that these are the originals, and that there is a second set – a forged set – in the chest at St Mary’s Church?’

  Michael nodded. ‘That is exactly what I am saying. And this subterfuge was no spontaneous act, either – writing out a new set of election slips must have taken considerable foreplanning. You remember I had a fever on the day of the election that you said was caused by overeating? The reason I had overeaten was because I had been sent three large apple pies the day before. By Father Eligius.’

  ‘You think Eligius doctored them somehow to make you ill?’

  Michael nodded. ‘With hindsight, yes, I think he did. Not with something very terrible, but with some potion to put me out of action for the day.’

  ‘I wondered why you were prepared to continue to consider him a suspect when all the evidence pointed to Bingham,’ said Bartholomew. ‘But why would Eligius want to cheat on the election results? And what of Master Kenyngham? Surely he would suspect something was wrong?’

  ‘Not necessarily,’ said Michael. ‘Usually, one person reads out the names, while the other keeps a tally. Eligius must have done the reading, while Kenyngham did the adding. If Kenyngham had expressed surprise at any of the votes, Eligius could simply have shown him the slip he himself had written out prior to the election. Kenyngham is far too much a man of integrity ever to have asked anyone why he voted in a certain way. He would have been the perfect partner for Eligius’s cheating.’

  ‘But why?’ asked Bartholomew again. ‘Did Eligius admire Tynkell so much?’

  ‘I imagine it was more a case that he disapproved of Harling,’ said Michael. ‘Harling was among those of us who exposed that business of the false relic at Valence Marie. Eligius believed that relic to be genuine right up to his death.’ He held up a scroll. ‘Here is Eligius’s diary. He bemoans the wrong done to his College by the discrediting of the relic only the day before he died. He even mentions that he proposed to discuss the possibility of its reinstatement with the Countess when she visited the following day. And here, in an entry made last autumn – just before the election that Harling lost – he records a discussion with Tynkell, in which Tynkell agreed to allow Valence Marie to display the relic if he were elected Chancellor. Essentially, Eligius arranged to have Tynkell elected so that the relic would be returned to Valence Marie.’

  Bartholomew sat on one of the beds in the cramped room and rubbed his eyes. ‘This is terrible, Brother! It means that just for the sake of those wretched bones – that we proved beyond a shadow of a doubt did not belong to a martyr – Harling was cheated out of a position that was rightfully his, and was led to all this murder and crime.’

  Michael nodded. ‘Poor Harling thought he did not have the support of the scholars. The reality is that he had a vast majority of votes. People liked him, and knew he would make us a good Chancellor.’

  Bartholomew sighed. ‘So what shall we do now? Harling is dead; we can hardly reinstate him.’

  ‘There is nothing we can do,’ said Michael. ‘Can you imagine what kind of scandal would ensue if it were known that our Chancellor of the past several months was fraudulently appointed? All the writs and charters issued by him would be rendered invalid, and the University would lose a fortune in property. And the students whose degrees were conferred by the Chancellor would have them deemed null and void. Chaos would ensue. All we can do is hope that either Tynkell makes a good Chancellor, or that he is so disastrous we can easily rid ourselves of him.’

  ‘But he obtained his office by cheating,’ said Bartholomew. ‘We cannot allow him to retain it.’

  ‘There is nothing to suggest that anyone other than Eligius knew of the deception,’ said Michael. ‘I feel certain that Tynkell is unaware of it. When it was declared that he had won, I am told he looked more startled
than anyone else in the church. He had agreed to stand only because it was necessary for there to be two candidates for an election. He had no real hopes for success and all he really wanted was the name of his poor hostel to become better known among the University community.’

  Bartholomew recalled Tynkell’s reaction as Kenyngham announced the result of the election, and was certain Michael was right. Tynkell’s face had registered a strange combination of horror and shock when he had been pronounced the winner. It was an expression that had been mirrored in the faces of many other scholars in the church, including Harling’s. ‘So are you suggesting that we should forget all this?’

  Michael nodded and closed the lid on the box, securing it with a large lock. ‘Only you and I know, so I think it best that we keep the knowledge to ourselves. Unless it serves our purpose to reveal it at some point in the future,’ he said with a conspiratorial grin.

  ‘Your grandmother is quite a lady,’ said Matilde to Michael, as he sat in her house with Bartholomew that evening drinking spiced wine.

  ‘I know,’ said Michael with pride. ‘Her aim was as true and strong as it was when she won a knife-throwing contest at the Tower of London – against some of the finest knights in the country – when she was only seventeen.’

  Bartholomew suppressed a shudder, and decided he would not want to make an enemy of a nun like Dame Pelagia.

  ‘Are you certain Harling is dead, Matthew?’ asked Matilde. ‘I would not like to think of him returning to wreak revenge on us all.’

  ‘I am certain,’ said Bartholomew. ‘The blade pierced his heart. And, anyway, I saw him buried today in St Michael’s churchyard. Of course, if he is the Devil Langelee claims him to be, that will not be much of an obstacle to him.’