A Wicked Deed

by Susanna GREGORY

  ‘I understand Master Alcote was paid two shillings to say masses for a man he found dying on the Old Road,’ said Walter Wauncy conversationally, raising his skull-like head from the book he had been perusing.

  ‘Yes,’ said Bartholomew, startled by the question. ‘When he took the wrong road to Grundisburgh after we found the hanged man at Bond’s Corner, he came across a party of travellers who had been attacked, and one of them had been fatally wounded. How did you know?’

  ‘He told me,’ said Wauncy. ‘He was to say these masses at St Botolph’s shrine at St Edmundsbury, but obviously he is not in a position to fulfil these obligations. Give me the two shillings, and I will say the masses instead.’

  Bartholomew gazed at him in disbelief. ‘You want us to give you Alcote’s money?’

  ‘Not his money,’ corrected Wauncy reproachfully. ‘Funds to rescue this unfortunate’s soul from Purgatory. It is not fair to keep it for yourselves.’

  Bartholomew made a disgusted sound, and declined to discuss the matter further. Not only had all Alcote’s possessions been destroyed in the fire, but he was unimpressed that Wauncy should already be trying to earn a profit from Alcote’s death.

  ‘Is Horsey keeping vigil over poor Master Alcote?’ whispered Isilia, looking up from her drowsing husband as Wauncy drew breath to argue.

  Michael nodded. ‘I will relieve him at midnight. If I live that long.’ He coughed meaningfully until his wine goblet was refilled by Siric.

  ‘So, what have you decided about my deed,’ asked Tuddenham, roused from his doze by their voices. ‘Is all lost as we feared, or can you salvage something from Master Alcote’s efforts?’

  ‘I think the stars are against this deed of yours,’ said Isilia. ‘First Unwin is killed for the relic in his purse; then Doctor Bartholomew and his servant are attacked by Padfoot; and now poor Master Alcote lies dead on the very eve that the advowson was to have been completed.’

  ‘I agree,’ said Dame Eva with a shudder. ‘This deed has been ill fated from beginning to end. It might be best to forget the whole business.’

  ‘That will not be necessary,’ said Michael smugly, holding aloft a piece of parchment. ‘Alcote was a cautious man, and left a copy of the draft he made here last night. It is virtually complete, and only needs a few loose ends tying here and there. I will work on the final version tonight, Master Wauncy can check it tomorrow morning, and by noon we can have it signed and be on our way.’

  That there was only one more night to spend in Grundisburgh cheered Bartholomew considerably. Had Alcote not been a cautious man, and had Michael deemed it necessary to begin work afresh on the complex legal documents, Bartholomew would have concurred with Dame Eva that the advowson was ill fated, and recommended that the surviving Michaelhouse scholars should escape the village while they still could.

  ‘Good,’ said Tuddenham with relief. ‘It would have been dreadful if all this had been for nothing. Have it ready by dawn, Brother, and tomorrow Michaelhouse shall have its deed, and everything will be completed.’

  Wearily, and looking pale and sick, he retired to bed, taking Isilia with him. Ill at ease with only his grandmother and the Michaelhouse scholars for company, Hamon was not long in following, and moments later Dame Eva also made her farewells and went to her own quarters. The Michaelhouse men were to sleep in Wergen Hall again that night, now that the Half Moon was out of commission, and Tuddenham’s servants had been relegated to the kitchens and stables. Most of them, however, had elected to remain in the Dog for as long as the knight’s generosity and the landlord’s barrels lasted.

  Exhausted by his efforts to extinguish the fire, and from resting so little the night before, Bartholomew lay on a mattress and was almost instantly asleep. But his dreams teemed with visions of Alcote’s blackened body rising from the flames of the tavern, while Eltisley in a warlock’s costume invoked all manner of pagan spirits. It was still dark when he awoke to find he was shaking, and he went to see if Michael had left any wine that would soothe his frayed nerves.

  The monk still wrote by the unsteady light of a candle, while Bartholomew sipped his drink and stared into the embers of the fire, thinking about Eltisley and his experiments. Michael saw his brooding expression, and set down his pen, rubbing his eyes tiredly.

  ‘What is wrong? Are you distressed over Alcote? You know, Matt, it would not surprise me to learn that the body we found in the rubble was not his at all, and that he staged his “death” so that no one would make any more attacks on him. Hemay, even now, be sitting in some inn laughing at how clever he has been. We would never know – the body was too charred for identification.’

  ‘Eltisley,’ said Bartholomew, still staring at the glowing logs. ‘The more I think about him, the more I am certain that the fire in his tavern was no accident.’

  Michael made an impatient sound at the back of his throat, and picked up his pen to begin writing again. ‘You are as mad as he is, Matt. Think about it rationally. Do you really think he would destroy his home, all his possessions and his workshop deliberately?’

  ‘I do,’ said Bartholomew slowly. ‘And I think his shock at seeing us had nothing to do with relief that we were still alive: I think he wanted us dead.’

  ‘No,’ said Michael firmly. ‘No one – not even a lunatic like Eltisley – would commit murder by igniting his house and destroying his livelihood in the process.’

  ‘I thought at first that the explosion – because that is what it was – had occurred in his workshop,’ Bartholomew continued, ignoring the monk’s scepticism, ‘and that it happened because he had left some volatile compound too near a badly banked fire. But, had that been so, the workshop would have been more badly damaged than the tavern. And it was not.’

  ‘It was burned to the ground,’ said Michael, dipping his quill in the ink and shaking it over the rushes so that it would not blot.

  ‘But only after the tavern was ablaze,’ said Bartholomew. ‘And Eltisley basically admitted to playing with a concoction of saltpetre, charcoal and sulphur, which anyone with even a passing knowledge of alchemy knows will ignite and explode. Furthermore, it is clear that he was not doing it in his workshop, he was doing it in the tavern.’

  ‘That still does not mean that he deliberately killed Alcote, or that he intended the rest of us to die with him,’ reasoned Michael, his attention fixed on his writing. ‘You are letting your dislike of the man interfere with your judgement, Matt. You saw how devastated he was after the fire: he was a broken man, to be pitied and comforted, not accused of murder.’

  ‘I am sure he was appalled at the destruction he caused,’ said Bartholomew. ‘I have no doubt he did not intend to blow up his entire domain and almost take the rest of the village with it. But I remain convinced that he set his powders to kill Alcote – and us, given that he believed we were changing our clothes in the upper chamber.’

  ‘This is all too ridiculous,’ said Michael. ‘Why? Why should a lowly Suffolk taverner want to kill his customers and be prepared to destroy his inn? Tuddenham was paying him good money to look after us.’

  ‘And there is another thing,’ said Bartholomew. ‘Because he survived to tell the tale suggests to me that the set the stuff to burn and then ran away. He made no attempt to shout a warning.’

  ‘We cannot know that,’ said Michael, looking up at him. ‘No one else was in the tavern except Alcote, and he will not be telling anyone whether Eltisley shouted an alarm or not. You will never be able to prove that Eltisley simply ran away and left Alcote to die.’

  ‘I think he broke that dish of gravy deliberately,’ Bartholomew went on, piecing together scraps of information that he was sure were related. ‘He wanted us upstairs in the bedchamber, changing our clothes, so that he could kill us all at once. It was an ideal time, because the tavern was empty of other guests, and he would not need to harm anyone else in the process.’

  ‘I see,’ said Michael, bending his head to his work. ‘But you have not answered my qu
estion. Why should a landlord want to kill his guests?’

  Bartholomew thought hard. ‘Perhaps it is something to do with Tuddenham’s deed. Perhaps Tuddenham paid Eltisley to kill Alcote, because Alcote found something dreadful in his household accounts. Alcote said he had uncovered irregularities, and that he was burning documents to hide them.’

  ‘You are being inconsistent: on the one hand you are saying that Tuddenham wants the advowson completed with indecent haste; on the other you claim that Tuddenham ordered Alcote killed because he found peculiarities in his affairs. Tuddenham would not have allowed Alcote to examine his documents at all, if there had been secrets in them worth killing for.’

  ‘But Alcote told us himself that Tuddenham’s affairs were complex, and not wholly honest.’

  ‘Whose affairs are, Matt? Go to sleep. You are tired and inclined to flights of fancy. In the cold light of day you will see Alcote’s death for what it is – a horrible, tragic accident.’

  Bartholomew sighed and Michael set down his pen, resting his fat elbows on the table and shaking his head at his friend’s stubbornness.

  ‘You are making an error you have made before, Matt: you are assuming that everything that happens to you, and everything you learn, is somehow connected. That is not the case here. Eltisley has absolutely nothing to do with Tuddenham’s advowson, and the fact that Alcote died when he was working on it is simple chance. He might equally well have been eating his dinner.’

  ‘But what if Alcote had found something in all those documents he read that Eltisley wanted no one else to know? What if Alcote confronted Eltisley, and tried to blackmail him? We both know that is the sort of thing Alcote might well have done.’

  ‘Matthew!’ admonished Michael softly. ‘The man is barely cold in his grave – in fact he is probably still quite hot, given how you singed your hands getting him out of the rubble – and you are accusing him of rank dishonesty. His soul might be being weighed at this precise moment, and you are asking me if I think he was falsifying documents and blackmailing people.’

  ‘I am sorry,’ said Bartholomew. He rubbed a hand through his hair, genuinely contrite. ‘I am.’

  ‘He is probably bribing his way through Purgatory at this very moment,’ said Michael with a nasty snigger. ‘Or offering his services to the Devil in exchange for a more pleasant stay.’

  ‘You should not jest about such things, either,’ said Bartholomew, glancing down the hall. ‘William can hear comments like that from across whole towns, let alone a silent room. He will accuse us both of heresy, and will harp on about it for weeks. But all this aside, I am still convinced that Eltisley killed Alcote deliberately.’

  ‘Which brings us back to that awkward little question you have so cunningly managed to avoid: why?’ said Michael. ‘Can you offer a single scrap of evidence – hard evidence, Matt, not supposition and conjecture – why he should want to harm Alcote?’

  ‘No,’ said Bartholomew, after a moment of serious thinking. He glanced up to see Michael looking victorious. ‘But that does not mean I am wrong. You said almost as soon as we arrived here that there was something odd happening in Grundisburgh. Well, I agree with you, and I think Eltisley lies at the centre of it.’

  ‘He is just a taverner, Matt. If there is something odd happening, as you insist, then it is no conspiracy, but simply a madman whose inflated opinions of his abilities are rendered dangerous because his thriving inn provides him sufficient wealth to buy the ingredients for his experiments. Now, unless you want to be in this miserable place for ever, let me do some work. Go to sleep.’

  Bartholomew was restless and unhappy. He had never particularly liked Alcote, but he had known him for years, and was distressed that he should die such a death. Each time he closed his eyes he could see the corpse he had extricated from the remains of the tavern, and could hear Deynman asking if that were all that was left. Deynman. Bartholomew walked to where the student slept, his dark hair tangled with straw from the mattress. Asleep, he looked young and vulnerable, and Bartholomew felt a sudden pang of fear for him. Deynman might not be the most able of students – and his behaviour in the affair of Agatha the laundress’s teeth had been reprehensible to say the least – but Bartholomew had grown fond of him, and the notion of anyone stabbing him in a church or blowing him up in a tavern horrified him.

  Making a decision, he crouched down, and touched the student’s shoulder. Stirring sleepily, Deynman opened his eyes and immediately smiled when he saw Bartholomew. It was a spontaneous reaction, and one that made Bartholomew more certain than ever that he wanted Deynman away from Grundisburgh and its nasty secrets.

  ‘Rob,’ he whispered, as the student sat up rubbing his eyes. ‘I need you to do something.’

  ‘Anything,’ said Deynman rashly. ‘What is it? Do you want me to help you with an operation? I can do the sawing if it is an amputation, leaving you to stop all the bleeding.’

  ‘No!’ Bartholomew suppressed a shudder at the thought of Deynman wielding a saw over some unsuspecting patient. ‘I want you to take Horsey to the leper hospital as soon as it is light.’

  ‘Does he have the disease, then? It does not show.’

  Bartholomew began to wonder whether his plan to place Deynman in charge of Horsey’s welfare was such a good idea after all. ‘I think neither of you is safe here. You must leave, and we will collect you when we return to Cambridge. You will be safe with the lepers.’

  ‘You mean I should leave you here alone?’ asked Deynman, appalled. ‘But you might need me!’

  ‘I do. I need you to take care of Horsey. Can you do it? Can you slip out of Grundisburgh with no one seeing you, and hide with Brother Peter until I come for you?’

  ‘Of course.’ Deynman’s face was a mask of worry. ‘But what about you?’

  ‘As soon as Horsey returns from Alcote’s vigil, I want you to go. Do not take anything with you – just make it appear as though you are going for a stroll. Do you need money? Take mine.’

  Deynman looked in disdain at the handful of coins Bartholomew offered him. ‘Perhaps I should lend you some. I have ten marks in my belt and two gold crowns in my boot.’

  Bartholomew smiled, feeling foolish for imagining that his wealthy student would need his inconsequential pennies. ‘Offer some to Brother Peter for the lepers. And please do not try to heal any of them – leprosy is incurable, and stripping some poor horse of its tail will not change that.’

  Solemnly, Deynman held out his hand to Bartholomew. ‘I am sure we shall meet again, but if not, I shall pay for masses to be said for your soul until we meet in heaven.’

  Deynman was probably the only person Bartholomew knew, other than William, who confidently assumed that the natural progress of his immortal soul would be up, and not down to join all the other sinners.

  ‘And I shall do the same for you.’

  Deynman smiled. ‘Do not worry about Horsey. I will look after him.’

  Bartholomew left him to go back to sleep, feeling a certain weight of responsibility lifting from his shoulders. Deynman was drowsing again almost before Bartholomew left him, showing a lack of anxiety that Bartholomew envied.

  He paced back and forth, oblivious to Michael’s irritable glances as the draught he created caused the candle to leap and flicker, making it difficult for him to see. Unaware of the monk’s disapproval, Bartholomew opened one of the window shutters, leaning out to inhale deeply of rich, clean air that was heavy with the scent of blossom. After a while, he closed it, and began to doze on the stone window-seat.

  The only sounds in the room were the scratch of Michael’s quill and Father William’s snoring. The embers in the hearth glowed a deep red, giving out little heat and virtually no light, so that the monk was hunched uncomfortably in the small yellow halo cast by a single candle that had been set in an inglenook. Eventually, he finished writing and looked up.

  ‘It must be almost time for nocturn,’ he whispered, shaking Bartholomew awake. ‘One of us should go to rel
ieve Horsey in the church.’

  ‘I will go,’ said Bartholomew, picking up his cloak. ‘Ask William to come at dawn, and then you and I will sit over Wauncy while he reads that deed you have just written. Tuddenham will sign and seal it, and we will be on our way as soon as the wax has set.’

  ‘That would be ungracious of us,’ said Michael, smiling at the image Bartholomew had produced. ‘It is not seemly to snatch the goods and run.’

  ‘It is not seemly for Unwin to be murdered, for Alcote to die in a bizarre accident, and for Cynric and me to be chased through the forest by savage white dogs,’ retorted Bartholomew.

  ‘Perhaps you are right,’ said Michael. ‘But there is nothing we can do about it now. Of course, I would feel a lot happier if that loathsome pardoner were under lock and key: I do not feel safe with him on the loose. If you want a suspect for murder, Matt, there is your man.’

  Bartholomew sighed. ‘If I am being unreasonably bigoted about Eltisley, then you are just as bad over Norys. We should be ashamed of ourselves.’

  ‘I shall leave the shame to you,’ said Michael smugly. ‘I have better things to do with my time – like going with you to relieve Horsey. If I accompany you to the church, I can walk back with Horsey, and no one will be out on his own in the dark. Alcote was attacked last night on this very path, after all.’

  On their way out of the hall, Michael leaned over the sleeping Cynric and muttered in his ear. Bartholomew saw something exchange hands, but was too engrossed in his own thoughts about Alcote to ask about it. Together, he and Michael left Wergen Hall, and began to walk quickly along the narrow track that led to the village. It was cloudy, and there was no light from the moon or the stars; all Bartholomew could see were the outlines of trees and the dark masses of houses. The village was quiet; not even a dog barked as they went past, and the only sounds were their own footsteps. As they reached the churchyard, the moon emerged from behind a cloud, bathing the village in a soft silver light.