A Bone of Contention хмб-3

by Susanna GREGORY

  ‘How did this happen?’ asked Master Kenyngham, shocked. ‘Who is he? And what is he doing in our College?’

  Bartholomew wondered how he could begin to explain, but at that moment Michael returned, his hands full of eggs and a pitcher of slopping vinegar. He sagged when he saw Edred’s half-closed eyes and waxen face.

  ‘Is he dead?’ he asked hoarsely.

  Bartholomew nodded. ‘Oleander is a powerful poison. There was nothing I could do.’

  Alcote elbowed him out of the way to look at Edred. ‘I wonder you ever have any patients, Matthew. You always seem to be losing them. First Mistress Fletcher, and now this friar.’

  Bartholomew flinched. While he had a better rate of success with his cures than most of his colleagues, he was only too aware that there were diseases and injuries when a patient’s demise was inevitable, no matter what treatment he might attempt. Knowing that his skills and medicines were useless in such cases was the part of being a physician he found most difficult part to accept.

  ‘You did not even consult his stars,’ Alcote was saying, kneeling next to the dead man, and preparing to give him last rites.

  ‘He had no time,’ Kenyngham pointed out, rallying to Bartholomew’s defence. ‘It all happened rather quickly. And how could the man answer questions about his birth date anyway, when he lay fighting for his last breath?’

  Alcote declined to answer, and traced vigorous crosses on Edred’s forehead, mouth and chest. The sudden movement created a puff of the white dust and Alcote raised his hand to his mouth as he prepared to cough.

  Bartholomew leapt forward and dragged him away.

  ‘Wash your hands, Roger,’ he said firmly. ‘Or you will be discovering first-hand how my medical skills cannot save a man from poisoning.’

  Colour drained from Alcote’s face and he scurried hastily from the room to act on Bartholomew’s advice.

  Kenyngham ushered everyone out and closed the door behind him.

  ‘There is nothing more to see,’ he said to the still-curious scholars. ‘Go back to your chambers. Fathers William and Aidan will pray for this man’s soul.’ He watched them disperse to do his bidding and turned to Bartholomew. ‘It is clearly not safe to be in your room with that white poison floating around, so we will deal with the friar’s earthly remains in the morning when we can see what we are doing. ‘

  Bartholomew leaned against the door wearily, wondering what nasty turn the investigation would take next, and whether he and Michael would live to tell the tale. Meanwhile, Michael was trying to explain to Kenyngham what had happened. The placid Gilbertine listened patiently to Michael’s brief summary of his inquiries into the death of Kenzie and the involvement of Lydgate, but refused to allow the monk to dwell too deeply on the details of Edred’s death. He took the distressed Benedictine firmly by the shoulder.

  ‘No goodwill come of thinking about the matter before we have made a thorough examination of the facts. You did not seek to kill this man, Michael: it was an accident.

  And who can say that if you had not thrown the poison jar, this friar would not have slain Matthew? Or both of you? It seems to me he was bent upon some kind of mischief. It grieves me to see such evil in a man of the cloth, but if you are determined to be a proctor you must inure yourself to such matters.’

  It was sound advice, although Bartholomew was surprised to hear it from Kenyngham, a man whose gentleness and reluctance to believe ill of anyone sometimes proved a liability to his College.

  Kenyngham continued. ‘It is too late and too dark to begin inquiries into this mysterious powder now. Sleep in Michael’s room tonight, Matthew. I will send a porter to inform the Chancellor of what has happened immediately.’

  Bartholomew followed Michael up the creaking stairs.

  Michael was strangely subdued, and Bartholomew’s mind whirled with questions as he lay under the coarse blankets of his borrowed bed. What had Edred been doing? Was his confession merely an excuse to get into the College to search Bartholomew’s room? What was so important that he had been prepared to kill? And perhaps more important to his own peace of mind, why had Edred died so quickly and violently from his slight exposure to the oleander powder?

  When Bartholomew awoke the next morning, the room was unfamiliar. The wooden ceiling was brightly painted and the bed was lumpy. He raised himself on one elbow, and in a rush the events of the previous night came back to him. Michael snored softly in his own bed, while Gray was on another, his tawny hair poking out from under the blanket. Gray had been concerned that some of the oleander might have landed on Bartholomew and had insisted on staying with him to be on hand lest he began to show symptoms of poisoning. After all, he had added, his blue eyes wide, Master Lynton and Father Philius had full classes already, so who would teach him and his friends medicine if Bartholomew were to die? Trying not to disturb them, Bartholomew stood up as quietly as he could.

  Michael, a light sleeper, woke immediately.

  Bartholomew pointed to the lightening sky. ‘It is time for us to be about our business,’ he whispered. ‘We have a lot to do today, and there may be a riot tonight.’

  Michael swung his large legs off the bed and sat up with a yawn.

  Their voices woke Gray, who uncurled himself and watched Bartholomew. ‘I will do a mask and gloves and clean the poison from your room,’ he offered, rubbing the sleep from his eyes.

  Bartholomew thanked him. ‘But do not let Deynman help – he is not to be trusted around poisons for his own safety. Ask Tom Bulbeck to assist you. I suppose someone will arrange for Edred to be returned to Godwinsson today?’

  Michael shook his head. ‘The Master heard from de Wetherset last night after you were asleep. He recommends that Edred be buried discreetly in St Mary’s churchyard. He is afraid that the death of a scholar in a college other than his own might start another riot, and I believe he is right. I do not trust Lydgate to be sensible about this and so he shall not be told. Not yet, anyway.

  Master Kenyngham will call a meeting of all our scholars this morning and order that last night’s events are not to be discussed outside Michaelhouse. He will appeal to their sense of College loyalty in dangerous times, and I am sure they will comply.’

  ‘But what did Edred want?’ asked Bartholomew, his bewilderment of the night before surging back to him. ‘What do I have that causes people to search my room – three times now – and lure us out in the depths of the night to attack us?’

  ‘Medicines? Poisons?’ suggested Gray, who had been listening with interest to their conversation.

  ‘I have nothing that Jonas the Poisoner, Father Philius or Hugh Lynton do not have,’ said Bartholomew, ‘not to mention the infirmarians at Barnwell Priory and the Hospital of St John’s.’

  ‘The rings in your sleeve?’ asked Michael, ignoring Gray’s look of incomprehension.

  Bartholomew shook his head. ‘Edred saw me take the broken ring from my sleeve in the kitchen. Why bother to look in my room when he knew where they were?’

  ‘Do you have letters from anyone, or documents?’ said Gray, racking his brains.

  ‘Not that I can think of,’ said Bartholomew. ‘I have records of the treatments given to patients and of medicines dispensed. But these cannot be important to anyone but me.’

  ‘Whatever it was, Edred was prepared to kill for it,’ said Michael. ‘And he died for it. Are you certain it was the oleander that killed him?’ Bartholomew saw the silent appeal in his friend’s eyes and looked away.

  ‘I am afraid so. He was most definitely poisoned, and I am sure the white powder that coated him was oleander from one of the jars you threw. His symptoms matched those usual in such cases, although Edred succumbed very rapidly to the poison’s effects.’

  ‘But why do you need such a foul powder?’ cried Michael, suddenly agitated. ‘You are a physician, not a poisoner! And you are usually so careful with toxins. Why did you leave this one lying so readily to hand?’

  ‘I use a diluted form of olean
der for treating leprosy,’ said Bartholomew. ‘It works better on some forms of the disease than other potions. But it is a very diluted form and, as I said last night, I used the last of it several days ago.’

  ‘You ordered more oleander from Jonas the Poisoner before your stars became so sadly aligned,’ said Gray helpfully. ‘It came yesterday while you were out. I could not lock it in the storeroom because you were out with the key, so I put it on the shelf in your chamber so it would not be lying around too obviously. But it was powerful stuff, this oleander – much more so than the stuff you usually use. It seems to me that this friar died more quickly than he would have done had he been killed with your normal-strength powder.’

  At his words, Bartholomew’s stomach started to churn with a sudden, vile realisation. He sat down abruptly and looked up at Michael with horrified eyes. ‘The Tyler family!’ he said in a whisper. ‘They are related to Jonas’s wife!’

  ‘So? Are you saying that the Tyler women are trying to poison you?’ asked Michael, astounded.

  ‘They may have sent me some kind of oleander concentrate, instead of the diluted powder I usually order from Jonas. It would be easy enough to do, given that they would look the same.’

  Michael thought for a moment and then sighed, raising his shoulders in a gesture of defeat. ‘It is possible, I suppose. They are involved in all this business somehow, through Joanna. Maybe they felt you were coming too close to the truth about her and wanted you out of the way.’

  ‘But I take great care with powerful medicines,’ said Bartholomew, thinking uncomfortably of how Eleanor had tried to dissuade him from looking any further into Joanna’s death. ‘I am unlikely to be poisoned by them.’

  ‘Perhaps they did not want to kill you at all,’ said Gray. He stiffened suddenly as a thought occurred to him. ‘Not me, either! I swear to you that I did not lay a finger on her! Well, perhaps a little kiss, but she was willing enough for that.’

  ‘What is this?’ asked Michael, bewildered.

  ‘Sam escorted Eleanor home after the Founder’s Feast,’ said Bartholomew. ‘Are you sure you did nothing to anger her? Or her mother?’

  ‘Nothing!’ cried Gray. ‘Honestly! I thought she had set her sights on you but you had put her off somehow during the Feast. I was singing your praises and she told me, rather sharply, to keep them to myself. That’s when I decided to make a move. Well, just a kiss. Perhaps they wanted you to dispatch one of your patients for them. That would make sense.’

  ‘But I only use oleander for treating leprosy,’ objected Bartholomew. ‘And all the lepers I attend are poor, pathetic creatures who have long since ceased to deal with affairs outside their own community.’

  ‘Why should the Tylers know what you use oleander for?’ said Michael. ‘None of them are physicians or even apothecaries.’

  Bartholomew spread his hands. ‘We may be wronging them terribly,’ he said. He thought back to the events of the previous night. ‘Did Edred say anything to you after he was stricken?’ he asked, recalling Michael kneeling next to the friar as Bartholomew attended to Cynric, before Michael realised that Edred’s sudden collapse was more serious than a jar breaking in his face.

  Michael rubbed his cheeks with his hands. ‘Nothing,’ he said softly. ‘Not so much as a whisper.’

  Gray stood to pour him a cup of watered wine from the supply on the window ledge. As he flopped back on the bed again, he winced as he sat on something hard. He pulled it from underneath him and shot Bartholomew a guilty glance.

  ‘Master Radbeche’s Galen,’ said Bartholomew, recognising the rough leather binding. ‘I must return that today.’

  ‘I saw it yesterday afternoon when I put the package from Jonas in your room,’ said Gray, defensively. ‘I thought I might borrow it since you were out. I brought it here to read last night, but I fell asleep,’ he finished lamely.

  ‘You should ask before you take things,’ said Bartholomew mildly, pleased that Gray was prepared to undertake voluntary reading, but concerned that he should borrow David’s Hostel’s precious tome without permission.

  ‘It is an interesting text,’ said Gray, detecting that Bartholomew’s admonition held an underlying note of approval and keen to turn it to his advantage. ‘Although I must say that the last chapter was the most interesting of all. And not by Galen,’ he said with a laugh.

  ‘How do you know it is not by Galen?’ asked Bartholomew.

  Although Gray was a quick student, he rarely used his intellectual talents to the full and was far too lazy to instigate a debate that would mean some hard thinking. ‘Are you so familiar with his style and knowledge of medicine that you are able to detect mere imitation from the master himself?’

  ‘Oh, no! ‘ said Gray hastily, knowing that he would never be able to take on Bartholomew in a debate about the authenticity of Galen. ‘But the last chapter is not about medicine at all. Have you not read it? It is a collection of local stories – like a history of the town.’

  Michael made a sound of irritation at this irrelevance and drained the wine from his cup. ‘So what? Parchment is expensive and scribes often use spare pages at the end of books to record something else so as to avoid waste. If you are surprised by that, Sam Gray, then you are revealing that you have read far fewer books than you should have done at this point in your academic career.’

  ‘I was not surprised by it,’ said Gray hotly. ‘I was just pointing out to you that the last chapter was considerably more interesting than boring old Galen.’

  He scrambled to his feet and brought the book over to Bartholomew. ‘Your marker is here,’ he said, indicating a point about three-quarters of the way through, where Bartholomew had reached. ‘And the interesting chapter is here.’

  He opened the book to the last few pages. The text was in the same undisciplined scrawl that characterised the rest of the book, complete with spelling errors, crossings out and ink blots. Gray was right about the content: there was nothing medical about the subject of the last chapter and parts were illustrated with thumb-sized sketches. The drawings were good, and Bartholomew suspected that the anonymous scribe derived a good deal more pleasure from his illustrations than his writing.

  ‘See?’ said Gray. ‘Here is a bit about how William the Conqueror came in 1068 and ordered that twenty-seven houses should be demolished so that the Castle could be built. And here is a description of the fire that almost destroyed St Mary’s Church. My uncle remembers that very well…’

  ‘Does he?’ asked Bartholomew, startled. The fire in St Mary’s, he knew, had been in 1290, and Gray’s uncle was certainly no more than forty years old.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ said Gray. ‘He often tells the story about how he dashed through the flames to save the golden candlesticks that stood on the altar.’

  ‘So, it runs in the family,’ muttered Michael, also aware of the date of the fire. ‘That explains a lot.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ demanded Gray. ‘My uncle is a very brave man.’

  ‘What else is in this history?’ asked Bartholomew quickly, before tempers could fray. While Michael’s sharp, sardonic wit might best Gray in an immediate argument, Michael would then be considered fair game for all manner of Gray’s practical jokes, not all of them pleasant or amusing.

  ‘There is a bit about the hero Hereward the Wake, who fought against William the Conqueror in the Fens,’ continued Gray, giving Michael an evil look. ‘And a paragraph about Simon d’Ambrey who was shot in the King’s Ditch twenty-five years ago and whose hand is in Valence Marie. The whole thing ends with a tale about some Chancellor called Richard de Badew who funded Clare College before the Countess came along and endowed it with lots of money in the 1330s.’

  Intrigued, now that the University and not the town was the subject of the text, Michael came to sit next to them, peering at the book as it lay open on Bartholomew’s lap.

  ‘The rest of the book is undoubtedly Galen,’ said Bartholomew, flicking through it. ‘I have read it before, although t
his is by far the worst copy I have ever seen.’

  ‘It was the book!’ exclaimed Gray suddenly, grabbing Bartholomew’s arm. ‘The attack in the street, your room searched. It was the book they wanted!’

  ‘Whatever for?’ asked Bartholomew, unconvinced. ‘It is a poor copy of Galen at best and certainly not worth killing for.’

  ‘Not for the Galen. For the bit at the end,’ insisted Gray, eyes glittering with enthusiasm. ‘Perhaps it contains information about the town that no one knows.’

  ‘Perhaps Hereward the Wake is alive and well and wants to read it,’ said Michael, laughing. ‘Or maybe this long-dead Chancellor, de Badew.’

  ‘It was no apparition that brained me in the High Street,’ said Bartholomew firmly. ‘That was Will, Huw, Saul Potter and Bigod. And it was Edred who searched my room.’

  He leaned back against the wall and began to study the book with renewed interest. Were the local stories significant, or was the copyist merely using up leftover paper at the end of his book, as Michael suggested?

  The leather covers of the tome were thick and crude, and inside, an attempt had been made to improve their appearance by pasting coloured parchment over them.

  Bartholomew ran his fingers down them and then looked closer. He was wrong – the parchment had not been placed there to make the inside cover look neater, but to hide something. He picked at it, uncertain. Michael watched silently. Both were scholars with a love of learning and of the books that contained it. Damaging one of these precious items was an act alien to both of them.

  Gray took it from him, and with a decisive movement of his hand, ripped the parchment away. Bartholomew and Michael, as one, winced at the sound of tearing, but looked with interest at what spilled out into Gray’s hands.

  While Gray performed a similar operation with the front cover, Bartholomew and Michael read the documents that had fallen from the back.

  Bartholomew felt sick. ‘These are copies of letters sent by Norbert to me after he fled to Dover,’ he said in a low voice. ‘They date from a few weeks after he left, to the last message I had about fifteen years ago and are signed with the name of his sister, Celinia.’