A Wicked Deed mb-5

by Susanna GREGORY

  ‘He is,’ agreed Grosnold, pleased. ‘He served me well at Crécy. I fought at the side of the young Prince of Wales, you know. Now, there is a fine soldier!’

  ‘Really?’ said Bartholomew. He began to run out of things to say, since military chit-chat had never been a particular strength of his — especially considering that, in view of his lie about how he had come to own his manor, most of Grosnold’s was probably more wishful thinking than reality. ‘It must take a long time to train a horse like that.’

  ‘It takes time and patience to train any horse,’ said Grosnold. ‘But you are right: I did take extra care with old Satan.’

  ‘When you galloped it across Grundisburgh’s green the other day,’ said Bartholomew, choosing his words carefully, ‘were you not afraid that someone might do something to damage it — like lie in its way? I understand those things are expensive.’

  ‘Good destriers are very expensive. Satan cost me more than you will earn in your lifetime, by the look of you. But I like to give him his head now and then. I raced him right down the banks of the Lark until I reached the Old Road.’

  ‘Did you go back to Grundisburgh after that?’ asked Bartholomew, knowing it was unsubtle, but not knowing how else to ask.

  ‘No,’ said Grosnold suspiciously. ‘I did not go back. Why do you ask? Do you imagine you saw the talking to that priest, Unwin, or something?’

  ‘Of course not,’ said Bartholomew, wholly confused. He could not decide whether Grosnold was a complete buffoon and had just confessed that he had indeed returned to Grundisburgh and spoken to Unwin, or whether his words were a simple, truthful denial, and that he had mentioned Unwin because he knew Unwin’s death was the reason why Bartholomew was asking.

  He smiled at the knight in what he hoped was a reassuring manner. ‘I just asked because I thought a fine animal like yours might need more exercise than a mere trot to the Old Road.’

  ‘Did you?’ asked Grosnold, harshly. ‘Well, after I left Grundisburgh I came home. I sat by the hearth all night with Ned, cleaning my nails. Look.’

  His nails were reasonably clean, although thin red crescents under most of them suggested that he should not have used such a sharp knife. There was nothing more to be learned: Grosnold was now on his guard, and had said all he was going to. The physician bowed his farewell and walked over to Cynric who was holding his horse in the rain. He was almost out of the bailey when Grosnold stopped him with a tremendous yell.

  Because of the drizzle and the lateness of the day, most of the men Bartholomew had seen earlier were in the outbuildings, with the doors and shutters closed against the evening chill. White smoke from cooking fires seeped from thatched roofs and through windows that had been poorly blocked Bartholomew could glimpse men inside sitting in the flickering yellow of flames. A range of smells drifted out — stews of peas and beans, baked bread and boiling meat, all mingled with the acrid, comforting aroma of burning wood. At Grosnold’s shout, shutters and doors were eased open as the curious inhabitants came to see what was happening.

  ‘I did not pay you,’ Grosnold hollered, waving his purse in the air. ‘Here is gold for your troubles. I am pleased with that horoscope. I might have you come back and do me another.’

  Not, thought Bartholomew, if it could be avoided. Ned ran across the muddy yard, brandishing the coin aloft like a talisman until he reached Bartholomew and handed it over.

  ‘I never met a physician who forgot his money before,’ he said with a disbelieving grin. ‘Master Stoate would not.’

  Bartholomew thanked him, and turned towards Grundisburgh. The rain had brought an early dusk, and the daylight was fading fast. It was cold, too, and Bartholomew’s cloak, dried in front of the fire at Grosnold’s manor, was soon drenched again. The thick scent of wetness pervaded everything, and the downpour hissed gently among the trees. By the time they reached the Old Road it was gloomy, and Bartholomew would have taken the wrong path had Cynric not been with him. They rode in silence, travelling faster than Bartholomew felt was safe. He kept expecting his horse to stumble and deposit him in the thick, sucking mud through which they squelched.

  ‘It will be dark before we are back,’ said Cynric, glancing up at the sky. ‘I did not realise it was so late, or I would have hurried you.’

  ‘We must have taken the wrong turning at that sheep pen, Cynric,’ said Bartholomew, peering ahead through the trees. ‘There is Barchester in front of us. We are on the road that runs through it, rather than the one that passes around the outside.’

  ‘I suppose it does not matter,’ said Cynric, eyeing the hamlet nervously. ‘They both lead to Grundisburgh, after all.’

  ‘Is that a light?’ asked Bartholomew, straining his eyes in the gloom. ‘It looks as if someone has lit a lamp in one of the houses.’

  ‘Let’s find the other path,’ said Cynric abruptly, hauling his horse’s head round. ‘I want to see no ghostly gatherings in haunted hovels, thank you very much.’

  He had spurred his pony back the way they had come before Bartholomew could suggest that the light probably belonged to a traveller, using one of the houses as shelter for the night. With a sigh, realising that the detour would mean they would be out in the foul weather for longer than ever, he was about to follow Cynric when something launched itself at him with a tremendous screech that hurt his ears and turned the blood in his veins to ice.

  Bartholomew caught the merest glimpse of a shadowy figure coming at him from the trees before it thumped into his horse so hard that the animal reared and screamed in terror. He fought to control it, but something was clawing at the medicine bag that was looped around his shoulder, snatching at it to try to pull him from his saddle. Bartholomew kicked out blindly, hearing a grunt of pain as his leg made contact with something soft. His horse continued to prance, and Bartholomew felt his foot seized and hauled on. Immediately, he began to lose his balance. The horse bucked violently, and Bartholomew fell, landing in an undignified tangle in the wet grass.

  For a moment all he could hear was the sound of his horse’s hooves thundering back toward Otley. He looked around him wildly, trying to see his attacker in the darkness. The next assault came from behind. With another deathly howl, he was knocked forward so that he fell on his face. Mud splattered into his eyes, nose and mouth, so that he could not see or breathe. He struggled furiously, trying to free himself from the suffocating weight that pressed him into a soupy puddle.

  He succeeded in raising his head, and took a great gasp of air before it was forced down again. Hot breath gusted on to the back of his neck, and his ears were full of roars and grunts. He reached backward, trying to pull whatever it was off him. His fingers encountered something soggy and covered in wiry hair. Another howl split the air, and he twisted sideways, partly dislodging the thing from his back.

  The air around him was rank with the stench of animal. He could smell wet fur and warm, carnivorous breath. He squirmed and kicked with all his might, clawing at the ground in his desperation to escape. There was a rumbling growl that seemed to vibrate the very ground on which he lay, ending in a series of guttural grunts. He struggled more frantically when another snarl ended with the drip of hot saliva on his cheek. Revolted, he turned his face away.

  And then, suddenly, it was gone. He rolled on to his back and sat up, coughing and wiping the mud from his eyes with his sleeve. The village was deserted. The light in the house had been doused, and the squat black shapes of the huts stood immovable, like stones in the darkness. Rain pattered gently in the trees, all but drowned out by the sound of his rasping breathing and the thump of his heart.

  ‘Did you see it?’ came Cynric’s terrified voice at his ear. Bartholomew started backward at the sound of something so close, and tried to scramble to his feet. Cynric helped him.

  ‘No,’ said Bartholomew shakily. ‘Whatever it was attacked me from behind. I saw nothing other than a shadow. What was it? A wolf?’

  But Cynric was not of a mind to stand chatting in the f
orlorn village. ‘Come on, boy,’ he said, his voice uncharacteristically unsteady as he hauled on Bartholomew’s arm. ‘It might come back at any minute. The horses have fled, so we will have to run. Can you manage?’

  The notion of a second encounter with the smelly beast was enough to spur Bartholomew into action, and even his trembling legs could not prevent him from racing away from Barchester as fast as he could. Without waiting to see if Cynric followed, he took to his heels, tearing blindly past trees and scrub, through the river and across fields, and only stopping when he failed to see a ditch and went flying head over heels into someone’s lovingly tended barley. Cynric was right behind him.

  ‘That should be far enough,’ the Welshman panted, doubling over to rest his hands on his knees as he fought to catch his breath. ‘Did the beast bite you?’

  Bartholomew shook his head, looking around him wildly in anticipation of another attack. ‘It just sat on me and drooled. Did you see it? It felt like a bull with a wolfs breath!’

  ‘It was the white dog,’ said Cynric, swallowing hard. ‘I saw it. It was a big white dog.’

  ‘It was certainly big,’ gasped Bartholomew, drawing his knees up to his chest to ease the burning stitch in his side. ‘Can you see it now? Has it followed us?’

  Cynric shook his head, scanning the dark fields. ‘Maybe it does not stray far from the haunted village. Maybe it lives there, feeding on the souls of the people who died in the plague.’

  ‘Maybe someone set it on us,’ said Bartholomew more practically. ‘Someone who knew we would be travelling that way.’

  ‘Spirits have a way of knowing such things,’ muttered Cynric, crossing himself vigorously. He hesitated, continuing in a low whisper. ‘Will I die now that I have set eyes on it? Unwin did, and so did those two villagers — die suicide and the woman who died of childbirth fever.’

  ‘That was no ghost, Cynric,’ said Bartholomew with a shudder. ‘It slathered all over me. Spirits do not slather. Nor do they stink.’

  ‘They do so!’ said Cynric, with absolute conviction. ‘My mother always smelled almonds before my grandfather’s spirit appeared to her, and the next morning the floor was always wet where he had stood.’

  There was little Bartholomew could think of to say in answer to that. ‘Where are we?’ he asked eventually. ‘I am completely lost.’

  ‘So am I,’ admitted Cynric, something Bartholomew had never before known to happen, suggesting that their encounter with the white dog had unnerved Cynric more than the physician had appreciated. ‘It does not matter anyway,’ the book-bearer added gloomily, ‘since I am soon to lie in my grave next to Unwin.’

  ‘You are not going to die,’ said Bartholomew firmly. He grabbed the Welshman by the arm, and looked him in the eye. ‘That was not a ghost, Cynric, it was real. You saw all those men looking out of their houses as Ned ran across the bailey waving that gold coin in the air. One of them followed us with his dog, intending to steal it. Or perhaps it was Grosnold himself, because of my clumsy questioning of him about Unwin — or even because I know that he inherited his manor from his grandfather, and that the King and the Prince of Wales have probably never set eyes on the man.’

  ‘But it was horrible, lad,’ said Cynric, his dark eyes wide with fear. ‘It was huge — bigger than any earthly dog I have ever seen; more like a pony, with a thick white coat to protect it from the fires of hell. When I saw it crouching over you and making all those dreadful noises, I thought it was trying to suck the soul from your body!’

  ‘Did you see anyone with it? I am sure it was human hands that pulled me from my saddle — the dog came later.’

  Again Cynric crossed himself vigorously in the darkness. ‘No, thank the good Lord! All I saw was the beast. I fired an arrow at it, and it fled back to its lair in that ghostly village.’

  ‘Well, there you are, then,’ said Bartholomew reasonably. ‘A spectre would not run away from an arrow. It was a real dog and someone owns it.’

  ‘Then why did you run away?’ demanded Cynric. ‘It was a fiend from hell and you know it.’

  With hindsight, Bartholomew was rather ashamed of the blind panic that had prompted him to rush away from the village as fast as his legs could carry him, but the fact was that an earthly hound drooling in his ears was just as frightening as a spectral one would have been.

  ‘We can walk back to Otley and see which of those villagers has a white dog,’ he said, deftly side-stepping Cynric’s question.

  ‘No!’ exclaimed Cynric with a look of abject horror. ‘I never want to set eyes on the likes of that thing again. Although I will not have long to see anything now. I can feel it in my bones.’

  ‘It was just an ordinary dog,’ said Bartholomew, becoming exasperated in his battle against Cynric’s superstition. ‘Nothing is going to happen to you.’

  ‘No?’ said Cynric warily. ‘Then perhaps you should explain that to them.’

  Bartholomew spun round to see where Cynric was pointing. From the fields around them, men had materialised, some of them carrying bows with arrows already nocked, and others with swords that glittered dully in the darkness.

  ‘Who are you?’ one of them called. ‘Why are you trespassing here?’

  ‘They are the dead souls of Barchester, protecting their fields,’ groaned Cynric, clutching at Bartholomew’s arm. ‘They have come for us!’

  ‘For God’s sake, Cynric!’ snapped Bartholomew, the shock of his experience with the dog making him unusually irritable with his book-bearer. ‘Pull yourself together! We are probably on Bardolf s or Deblunville’s land, and these are their men wondering why we were racing across their crops in the middle of the night all covered in mud.’

  An arrow thumped into the ground nearby. Cynric closed his eyes and began to mutter incantations against the Devil.

  ‘I asked who you were!’ shouted the voice.

  ‘We are from Cambridge,’ Bartholomew called back. ‘We were returning to Grundisburgh from Grosnold’s manor, but we are lost.’

  ‘You are lost,’ agreed the man. ‘This is not the way from Otley to Grundisburgh. I suppose you were sent here to spy. Who paid you? Grosnold or Tuddenham? Or has that weakling Hamon finally become a man, and come out from behind his uncle’s skirts?’

  ‘Someone tried to rob us,’ said Bartholomew, lowering his voice as the man with the bow came closer. ‘Our horses ran away.’

  The archer gave a sneering laugh. ‘Is that so? Next you will be trying to tell us that these robbers had a big white dog.’

  ‘They did, actually,’ said Bartholomew, puzzled. ‘How did you know?’

  ‘Everyone claims to have seen Padfoot these days,’ said the archer with affected weariness. ‘They think fleeing from him is a good excuse to come sneaking on to our land. Come on. Master Deblunville will be wanting a word with you.’

  The archer refused to listen to anything more. He nodded to his friends, and Cynric and Bartholomew were searched roughly: Bartholomew lost his medicine bag, and Cynric was relieved of enough metal to start his own forge. Bartholomew was astonished: he knew the Welshman never went unarmed, but the number of knives, blades and even sharp nails that were removed from every available place in Cynric’s clothing was staggering.

  The archer jabbed Bartholomew with one of Cynric’s weapons, to indicate that they were to start walking. It was a miserable journey. Bartholomew’s body ached from his encounter with the dog, and he was wet and cold. Cynric seemed to have given up altogether, and trailed listlessly at Bartholomew’s side, more morose and apathetic than the physician had ever seen him. It seemed that, as far as Cynric was concerned, he was already a dead man.

  At last the bumps and ridges of Deblunville’s enclosure could be seen against the night sky, and Bartholomew and Cynric were prodded inside. They were directed through both sets of embankments and led into the inner bailey, where they were ordered to wait while someone went to fetch Deblunville. The wooden keep was in darkness, suggesting that Deblunville and his h
ousehold had already retired to bed. It was some time before the door opened and Deblunville appeared; his wife, Janelle, and her father, John Bardolf, were behind him. Janelle walked slowly and her eyes were red-rimmed and sad, a far cry from the confident defiance she had displayed a few days before, when she had announced her marriage to Tuddenham and his cronies.

  ‘You disappoint me, physician,’ said Deblunville, walking towards him, holding a flaring torch. He was wearing baggy hose and a shirt that dangled almost to his knees. ‘You seemed above all this subterfuge and trickery when we met the other day. I even gave you one of my cramp rings as an act of good faith.’

  ‘I am sorry we trespassed on your land,’ said Bartholomew. ‘We were attacked as we were riding through Barchester from Otley, and we ran the wrong way when we escaped.’

  ‘That is my land,’ interposed Bardolf coldly. ‘Barchester lies on my land — despite what Grosnold and Tuddenham might claim.’

  ‘Attacked?’ asked Deblunville, ignoring his father-in-law. He looked Bartholomew up and down. ‘What was stolen? Not my cramp ring, I hope.’

  ‘Nothing was stolen,’ said Bartholomew, although he would not have been dismayed to lose the funeral jewellery Deblunville had given him. ‘Cynric drove the robbers away with an arrow.’

  ‘He claims Padfoot ambushed him,’ said the archer with a grin. ‘It is strange how Padfoot always seems to chase people from Grundisburgh on to our land.’

  Deblunville nodded thougtfully and addressed Bartholomew. ‘Two people claim to have been chased on to my land by Padfoot within the last month: both are now dead, although I assure you that it had nothing to do with me. I personally believe that they were spies in the employ of one of my neighbours, who then executed them for getting caught — a cut throat and a childbirth fever were the official causes of death, I understand.’

  ‘We are telling you the truth,’ insisted Bartholomew. ‘Why should I want to spy on you?’