A Wicked Deed

by Susanna GREGORY

  ‘I do not like this at all,’ he said, looking about him nervously. ‘What if a dog barks, or there is a servant sleeping in the kitchen? How will we explain ourselves?’

  ‘Eltisley will understand if we tell him the truth,’ said Deynman.

  ‘Eltisley might, but our colleagues will not,’ said Bartholomew. He groaned. ‘There is a light coming from Eltisley’s workshop. He is awake – we will have to do this tomorrow.’

  ‘That might be too late,’ whispered Cynric. He patted Bartholomew on the shoulder in an attempt to steady his nerves. ‘You keep an eye on the workshop, young Deynman can watch the tavern, and I will get the meat.’ He gave Bartholomew an encouraging grin. ‘This is the easy part. Have you never burgled a house before?’

  ‘Of course not,’ said Bartholomew, genuinely shocked. ‘It is not something physicians are often called upon to do.’

  Heart thumping, he crept across to Eltisley’s workshop, and peered around a door that had been left slightly ajar. The landlord was there, his back to the entrance as he leaned over something that filled the room with a thick, pungent smoke. He was humming to himself, a contented sound that stopped abruptly when something exploded with a sharp pop. Shaking his head in disgust, Eltisley turned his attention to a pot that simmered on a brazier in one corner. He stirred it, lifted a spoonful to his nostrils and jerked back violently as the fumes were apparently stronger than he had anticipated. He began to hum again, and then turned toward the door.

  Bartholomew backed away in alarm, certain that the landlord must have seen his shadow. He glanced around desperately for a place to hide. There was nowhere: the yard was remarkably free from clutter, and Eltisley would see him long before he made it to the kitchen. He looked inside the workshop again. Eltisley was almost at the door, his hand reaching out to push it open. The only thing Bartholomew’s panic-stricken mind could think of was to slam it and lock Eltisley inside.

  Eltisley had reached the door, but Bartholomew found he was unable to move, or even shout. He fought to pull himself together, and jerked an unsteady hand forward to grab the handle. At the very last moment, the landlord changed his mind about leaving, and instead leaned down to retrieve something from the floor, almost at Bartholomew’s feet. It was a small dead dog. Eltisley picked it up by the tail and carried it to one of his benches, arranging it so it lay on its side. Bartholomew felt sick, partly from relief that he had not been discovered, but partly because he was certain the eccentric taverner was about to perform some ghastly experiment on the animal’s corpse. Fortunately, Eltisley had his back to the door, so all Bartholomew could see of the grisly operation was vigorously pumping elbows and a good deal of rising smoke.

  He almost yelled out when Cynric touched his arm, and he had to lean against the workshop wall for several moments until he was sure his legs had stopped shaking sufficiently to allow him to walk. He wondered what state he would be in by dawn, if he could not even help Cynric steal a sliver of beef without trembling and starting like a frightened fawn.

  It was no sliver Cynric had stolen, however. Hoisted over his shoulder was a lump the size of a small barrel. Bartholomew was appalled, nervousness giving way to shock.

  ‘Cut a piece off,’ he whispered hoarsely. ‘We do not need all that, and there will be hell to pay tomorrow when Eltisley finds it is missing.’

  ‘I need to make sure this works,’ Cynric whispered back. ‘Padfoot is a powerful beast, and needs a strong charm to beat him. A bigger piece is better than a small one.’

  ‘If you say so,’ said Bartholomew wearily, surrendering in the face of such rank superstition. ‘Let’s find an oak tree before someone sees us with it.’

  Anxious that they should not be seen, Bartholomew chose a tree well away from the village, near Barchester. He did not want the sounds of digging carrying on the still night air. While Cynric burrowed, Bartholomew sat to one side, wondering how he had allowed himself to be inveigled into skulking in the bushes in dead of night burying a piece of stolen beef in Michael’s newly acquired piece of linen. Eventually, Cynric completed his task, wiping sweat from his face and announcing with satisfaction that the first part of the charm had been successfully completed. A bird flapped suddenly in a nearby tree, and all three jumped.

  Dawn was still some way off, and Bartholomew did not want to return to the village and risk being seen by one of his colleagues. Instead, he led the way closer to Barchester, since they would need to be there at dawn anyway, and found a group of dense bushes near its overgrown path. In them, they settled down to wait, Bartholomew hoping that Deblunville’s archer was not out and about, because he was sure that carrying out Mother Goodman’s charm would not be considered a good enough reason for trespassing yet again on land that was probably not Tuddenham’s.

  Cynric was nervous now there was nothing immediate for him to do, and jumped at each rustle or squeak from the woods around them. Deynman was patient and kind, exhorting him to courage, and assuring him that the curse would soon be broken. Seeing his clumsy words of comfort went some way to calming the agitated Welshman, Bartholomew was glad the student had insisted on coming after all.

  The night was cool, but not cold, and Bartholomew was very tired. The litter of dead leaves was soft underneath him, and the silence of the woods was soporific. It was not long before he fell into a restless doze. He was woken abruptly when Deynman grabbed his arm in a painful pinch. People were walking along the path toward them. Cynric pulled Bartholomew and Deynman farther back into the bushes, and they watched a strange procession file past in the gloom.

  Six cloaked figures walked in a silent line that was led by a man whose height, build and swagger showed him to be none other than Hamon. Each person carried a spade. Bartholomew shook his head in amused disbelief. Deblunville had been right: the Tuddenhams did venture out at night to dig for the mythical golden calf! He thought back to earlier in the week, when he and Michael had questioned some of the labourers who toiled in the fields. No wonder the villagers were tired, if they worked all day and then spent their nights digging for gold. There was an anxious moment when Hamon paused and peered into their bushes, as if he knew someone was there, but he moved on when one of his diggers made an impatient sound.

  Once they had gone, Bartholomew dozed again, while Deynman played dice with Cynric to take the anxious Welshman’s mind off the agonisingly long wait. It was not long before more voices drifted along the path, and Bartholomew was woken a second time when Cynric clapped a hand over his mouth to ensure silence. As they waited to see who else was out in the woods in the dead of night, Bartholomew wondered whether there was anyone in Suffolk asleep in his own bed that evening, or whether the entire population was abroad with a spade or a piece of stolen beef.

  It was Deblunville and his archers. They were less furtive than Hamon’s band, and laughed and joked with each other as they walked. As they reached the thicket where Bartholomew, Cynric and Deynman hid, Deblunville stopped and wiped sweat from his face with his sleeve, while his archer poked around on the path with a stick. With horror, Bartholomew saw one of Deynman’s dice lying on the path inches from Deblunville’s foot. Now they would be discovered for certain! Cynric had seen it, too, and Bartholomew could feel him as taut as a bowstring.

  ‘Someone passed this way tonight,’ said the archer knowledgeably. ‘The track is all rucked up from milling feet. It was Hamon’s crew, probably. It would be good to catch them red-handed!’

  ‘We will get them,’ said another, a small man with no incisors and a ring of long, greasy hair straggling from a balding pate. He turned to Deblunville. ‘You go home to your wife.’

  ‘I do not care to go home,’ said Deblunville coldly. ‘When Janelle is not puking over the bed-covers, she is nagging me to end this feud with the Tuddenhams.’

  ‘She thinks we should sue for peace,’ explained the archer to the toothless man. ‘She is of the same mind as her father: he is always telling us to make a truce – although it does not stop him
from spreading gossip about the Tuddenhams and Grosnold.’

  ‘She does not approve of me going out each night trying to catch Hamon digging on my land for the golden calf,’ said Deblunville. ‘She says I should leave that to you, while I enjoy the pleasures of the wedding bed. She does not understand that I want to catch Hamon personally.’

  ‘Perhaps she has a point,’ said the toothless man with a lecherous grin. ‘It has only been a few days since Walter Wauncy married you, and I do not think you can have tired of her this soon.’

  ‘When you wed, you should hire Wauncy,’ said Deblunville. ‘He is cheaper than our own priest by three pennies. That was Janelle’s doing – she is always on the alert for a bargain.’

  ‘It would be like being wed by a corpse,’ said the archer with a dramatic shudder. ‘I would not want his skull-like features presiding over the happiest day of my life, three pennies cheaper or not.’

  They moved on, leaving Cynric reeling with relief that they had not been spotted and Bartholomew laughing softly to himself. So, Tuddenham’s priest had slipped away from his own flock to poach a little trade from his neighbour. Bardolf had said that the priests of the manors fought as much as their masters – and now it seemed as though they even stole each other’s business by offering competitive rates for weddings. No wonder the skeletal priest had stressed to Tuddenham that the union was a good thing, and had been so keen to know from Bartholomew what Deblunville and Janelle had said about their wedding – he probably feared Tuddenham’s displeasure if the knight discovered what he had done.

  The woods grew silent again, although Cynric claimed he could hear sounds of digging in the distance. So that he could see to gamble with Deynman, Cynric lit a candle, and Bartholomew spotted a patch of sea wormwood, a plant that did not usually grow so far from the coast. Delighted, he gave Deynman, who was far more interested in his game, an impromptu lecture on the benefits of the herb to rid small children of worms. Afterwards, lulled by the click of ivory and the occasional victorious snigger from Deynman, Bartholomew dozed again, waking damp and chilled later, when Cynric stood and stretched.

  ‘It is almost dawn, boy. You need to be in place to start reciting when the sun comes up.’

  Bartholomew glanced at the sky. Large thunderclouds had gathered, a deep, menacing grey in the faint glow of early morning. ‘Sunrise will be difficult to gauge. It is going to pour soon.’

  They left their hiding place and started to walk along the path that led to the deserted village. They had not gone far when Cynric stopped and put a finger to his lips, listening intently. Before Bartholomew could recommend that they use another route to Barchester, Deblunville’s archer came hurtling along the track and almost bowled into them. He recognised the physician and grabbed the front of his shirt, not seeming to care that it was an unusual place to meet.

  ‘It is Master Deblunville!’ he gasped, his eyes wide with terror. ‘There has been an accident!’

  Without waiting for a response, he hauled Bartholomew along the path. Disengaging himself so that they could move more quickly, Bartholomew followed, while Cynric muttered nervously about the passing time. They did not have far to go. After a few moments, they entered a glade in the woods, a pleasant place fringed with trees and with a moss-banked brook trickling through the centre. Deblunville’s archers stood in an uncertain circle with their hats in their hands, all looking at a figure that lay unmoving in the grass.

  ‘We just found him like this,’ said the toothless man, turning a white, shocked face to Bartholomew. ‘He died because he saw Padfoot!’

  Bartholomew glanced at Cynric, who was gazing at the figure in horror.

  ‘He said he saw a white wolf, but all the Grundisburgh folk said it was Padfoot,’ the archer added fearfully. ‘None of us believed them – we thought it was a story Tuddenham made up so that Hamon could dig for the golden calf on our land, but now it is clear that the story of Padfoot is true.’

  Bartholomew knelt in the dew-laden grass, and leaned down to inspect the figure on the ground. Deblunville’s eyes were closed as though he were sleeping. At first Bartholomew thought he might have had a seizure, but then he felt behind his head and his hand came away dark with blood. He turned the body over. The back of the skull was smashed, so that it was soft and soggy under his fingers. Deblunville would have died instantly, and was far beyond anything Bartholomew could do for him.

  Under Deblunville’s head was a stone, which had contours and edges that seemed to match the wound. When Bartholomew tugged at it, it came loose, but the deep, sharp impression in the earth suggested that it had been there for some time. So, unless someone had selected the stone, hit Deblunville with it, and then returned it to exactly the same place, it seemed the lord of Burgh had simply slipped on the wet grass, and had had the misfortune to crack his skull on an unfortunately positioned rock.

  ‘I will never doubt again,’ wailed the archer, watching the proceedings with a fear so intense that it was beginning to unnerve Bartholomew. ‘It was said Padfoot would come for him, and he has!’

  ‘Time is running on,’ muttered Cynric anxiously, glancing up at the sky. ‘We will miss sunrise if we do not hurry, and then this will be me!’

  ‘What happened?’ asked Bartholomew of Deblunville’s men. ‘Did any of you see?’

  ‘He went off alone into the trees,’ said the toothless man. ‘Too much ale at dinner. When he did not come back, we went looking for him, and found him like this.’

  ‘Did you see anyone else?’ asked Bartholomew, thinking uncomfortably that Hamon and his cronies were probably not far away.

  ‘No,’ said the toothless man. He gave a grim, gummy smile. ‘Believe me, nothing would give us greater pleasure than to blame Master Deblunville’s death on Hamon, but it is obvious it was an accident: he fell and hit his head. There are the torn weeds where his foot slipped, and you can see that stone is buried in the ground, and has been for years. If someone had killed him, it would be lying on top of the grass, not half hidden in the soil.’

  ‘It was Padfoot,’ said the archer in a whisper. ‘Why did we not listen? Why did we ever come out here? Maybe Padfoot is the calf's guardian, and he does not want the thing dug up.’

  All the men and Cynric crossed themselves hastily, looking about them as though the white dog might appear at any moment and drag them off to hell. Bartholomew stood up. There was nothing more he could do, and Cynric was becoming increasingly agitated about the time. Everything pointed to the fact that Deblunville’s death was simply a tragic accident, although coming so soon after the others, there was a nagging doubt at the back of Bartholomew’s mind.

  ‘Take him home,’ he instructed the waiting men. He thought about Janelle and her unborn child. ‘And you will have to inform his wife that she is now a widow. Be sure to do it gently – shocks like this will not be good for her.’

  ‘She will not be overly distressed,’ said one of the men, a skinny fellow with strangely pale eyes. He shrugged at his friends’ reaction to his indiscretion. ‘Well, it is true! I would say it took them about two nights to realise what a dreadful mistake they had made, and after ten days they are already at the point where they loathe each other.’

  ‘It was because of that Walter Wauncy,’ said the archer sagely. ‘I said it was not good luck to be married by a walking corpse, but Janelle insisted because of the saving of three pennies.’

  ‘She said last night that she was afraid she might go the same way as his first wife, Pernel,’ said the pale-eyed man, his expression knowing. The others nodded agreement, and looked expectantly at Bartholomew, who wondered what they wanted him to say.

  ‘I see,’ he replied noncommittally, aware of Cynric’s impatience to be away.

  ‘Master Bardolf has gone home now, you see,’ said the pale-eyed man. ‘Without her father to protect her, Mistress Janelle felt her husband was already making plans to dispatch her.’

  ‘That is why he died like this,’ said the archer, gazing at the
corpse as if it explained everything. ‘It is God’s judgement on a black soul.’

  ‘I thought you said his death was Padfoot’s fault,’ said Bartholomew.

  The assembly crossed themselves again, and peered nervously into the trees.

  ‘He pushed Pernel, you see,’ said the pale-eyed man. ‘He pushed her hard, and she hit her head on the stone windowsill and died. And now he has died in the same way – his brains dashed out on a stone. It is God’s judgement and Padfoot’s revenge.’

  ‘I suggested a convent for Pernel,’ said the archer, still gazing down at Deblunville. ‘It seemed a better way to deal with an unwanted wife than murder, but he said it was not necessary.’

  So Deblunville had killed his first wife, just as the Grundisburgh villagers had speculated, thought Bartholomew, surprised to learn that there was truth in what he had assumed was a piece of nasty gossip put about by Tuddenham. He supposed it was possible that Deblunville had not intended Pernel to die, but by all accounts she was a good deal older than him, and a man in his prime had no right to be pushing old ladies around, no matter what the provocation. He watched the men gather up their dead lord and bear him away through the dark forest. He turned to Cynric, fretting at his side.

  ‘Now for the prayer at sunrise,’ he said, wishing he was anywhere but at Barchester.

  Dawn that morning was just a case of the sky growing steadily lighter, and it was almost impossible to tell at what point the sun rose, since it was concealed behind a thick bank of clouds. In the distance thunder growled, and the air was thick and still, as it always was before a storm. Lightning zigzagged towards a faraway hill, and there was a red blaze as it struck a tree. Bartholomew did not relish the prospect of being caught in a cloudburst but he followed Cynric’s rapid pace through the trees without complaint.

  As they drew parallel to it, with the River Lark between them, Bartholomew could see the top of the church tower poking above the trees, and noticed that Cynric had drawn his sword.