‘What will you do now that you have lost your tavern and your workshop?’ he asked, initiating a conversation to see what he might learn. ‘Where will you perform your experiments?’
‘Another tavern will be provided,’ Eltisley said confidently. ‘I am too valuable to lose.’
‘Provided by whom?’ asked Bartholomew. ‘Tuddenham? Hamon? Or is it one of the other lords of the manor, such as Bardolf or Grosnold?’
Eltisley smiled gloatingly. ‘You do not have the wits to work it out, despite the fact that you have all the information at your fingertips.’
‘Such as what?’ asked Bartholomew, racking his brains. Eltisley, however, declined to answer and they trudged along in silence. Once they turned down a little-used trackway that cut north, Bartholomew knew exactly where Eltisley was taking them, and it did not surprise him in the least.
‘Barchester,’ he muttered to Cynric. ‘We are going to Barchester.’
Cynric faltered, and Eltisley gave him an encouraging poke with a dagger. Cynric spun round fast and had ripped it from Eltisley’s hands before the taverner realised what was happening. His men, however, were not so easily taken unawares, and had their bows raised and their arrows pointed at Cynric before the Welshman could take a single step toward the trees that would mask his escape.
Eltisley snatched the dagger back, and pushed Cynric forward again. ‘That is exactly the kind of behaviour I recommend you avoid if you do not want William sent back to Cambridge in a wooden box. And your students — I will track them down and kill them, too. Now move, and no talking.’
Cynric began to walk again, his face expressionless, although Bartholomew knew he was seething with rage. One of the men, who carried a sword at his side, sported a painful-looking bruise on one cheekbone. It looked to Bartholomew exactly the kind of injury that might have been caused by a hurled heavy metal ring, and Bartholomew could only assume that it had been Eltisley and his henchmen who had been burying Norys in Unwin’s gave. But why? The pardoner was already dead, and had been dumped in the woods by Stoate.
‘If there is another chance, run,’ he muttered to Cynric, when Eltisley fell back to say something to his friends. ‘Get the others, and take them as far away from this place as you can.’
Cynric said nothing.
‘Please, Cynric,’ pleaded Bartholomew in a desperate whisper, when he realised Cynric had no intention of leaving him. ‘Eltisley intends to kill us anyway. This nonsense about letting William go free is just a ploy to gain our cooperation.’
‘No talking.’ Eltisley jabbed at Bartholomew with his dagger. Cynric spun round, his face dark with anger, but Bartholomew pulled him on, knowing that it would take very little for the unstable Eltisley to order his companions to shoot, and they looked like the kind of men to do it.
Eventually the tattered roofs of Barchester came into view, sticking forlornly through their veil of trees. In the grey light of the overcast morning, with low, dirty clouds overhead, the deserted village looked even more miserable than usual with its broken doors, unstable walls and ruined thatches. Bartholomew walked cautiously, alert for the sinister growls and unearthly screeches that would precede the old woman and her mad dog hurtling out of the undergrowth to attack them. The woods, however, were as silent and as still as the fog that swathed them.
‘You are looking for Padfoot,’ said Eltisley, watching him. ‘You need not fear — he is not here today. Even spectres have business of their own to attend.’
‘What nonsense are you speaking?’ said Bartholomew, irritated that the man should take him for a fool. ‘Padfoot is no more spectre than you are. It is the crone’s tame dog. Do you pay her to stay here and frighten travellers so that they will not linger?’ He snapped his fingers as realisation dawned. ‘Of course you do! I found a bright new penny in one of the huts when we first came here.’
‘Mad Megin likes shiny things,’ said Eltisley. ‘Especially coins.’
Bartholomew continued, as certain things became clear. ‘When we first arrived, Tuddenham told us that it was you who discovered Mad Megin’s drowned body in the river last winter, and you who buried her in the churchyard. I see now that she is not buried at all.’
Eltisley smiled. ‘But I did find her drowned in the river. I brought her back to life, and now she is my servant.’
‘You did what?’ asked Bartholomew, startled despite himself.
Eltisley made an impatient sound. ‘I brought her back to life. I took her out of the river, pressed the water from her lungs, and gave her a few drops of one of my potions. Within moments, she was gasping for breath, and her life-beat was strong and sure.’
‘Then she was probably not dead in the first place,’ said Bartholomew.
‘She was dead,’ said Eltisley with absolute conviction. ‘She was not breathing when I first found her. And her experience changed her. She is not the same woman now as she was before she died — she does not even remember her name.’
‘You damaged her, then,’ said Bartholomew. ‘I have heard of cases where people have been dragged back from the brink of death and unless it is done immediately, the mind is impaired. It would have been kinder to let her die.’
‘You believe death is better than life?’ asked Eltisley, astonished. ‘But all my work has been devoted to prolonging life — creating potions to cure diseases, making wines that repel the evil miasmas that bring summer agues, concocting remedies to prevent shaking fevers and palsies. Life is always better than death.’
‘And how well did these potions work against the plague?’ asked Bartholomew.
‘Two in three survived thanks to my mixtures,’ said Eltisley. ‘Almost everyone who took Stoate’s red arsenic and lead died, but my boiled-snake and primrose water was far more successful.’
‘A third was about what most villages and towns lost,’ Bartholomew pointed out. ‘Your potion made no difference at all.’
‘That is not true,’ said Eltisley, nettled. ‘Many villages were completely wiped out, like Barchester, and most religious communities lost more than a third of their number. That Grundisburgh only lost a hundred souls to the Death was entirely due to me.’
‘Is that the essence of your experiments, then?’ asked Bartholomew. ‘To combat diseases?’
‘Not entirely. I am searching for the element that will raise the dead from their graves.’
‘What do you mean?’ asked Bartholomew uneasily.
Eltisley smiled at him as though he were a wayward and not particularly intelligent child. ‘I am going to find a cure for death.’
‘And did you succeed with that poor animal you had in your workshop the other night?’ asked Bartholomew, once he had recovered from his shock, recalling Eltisley with the dead dog the night Cynric stole the beef.
Eltisley frowned absently. ‘No, but I have made some adjustments, and I believe the balance of elements is correct now. Of course, I realise that a dog is different from a human — it is always better to experiment on humans. I was successful with Mad Megin, and I intend to continue my work until I have all the people in Grundisburgh churchyard walking among us.’
Bartholomew shuddered at the image. ‘But most of them will be nothing but bones. Will your potion restore their flesh, too?’
‘I can apply my mind to that little problem later,’ said Eltisley dismissively.
‘But do you want Grundisburgh to be full of people like Megin?’ asked Bartholomew, repelled.
‘Megin has served me well,’ said Eltisley carelessly. ‘If Padfoot does not succeed in chasing away intruders, she does it for me. Or my friends here. They go out at night wearing masks, and rob people on the Old Road — there is nothing like rumours of outlaws to deter unwanted visitors.’
‘They do more than deter,’ objected Bartholomew. ‘They kill. Alcote came across a group of travellers who had been attacked the day we arrived in Grundisburgh, and one of them was dying. He paid Alcote to say masses for his soul at St Edmundsbury.’
Eltisley sniggered nastily.
‘Alcote should have said them for himself. But there is no problem with the occasional traveller being dispatched on the Old Road — it merely means that the danger is taken more seriously. They attacked you, I understand, when you first came here.’
‘And I shot one in the arm,’ said Cynric with satisfaction. ‘They fled into the bushes like frightened deer when they encountered a real fighting man.’
‘I know why you are keen to prevent people coming here,’ said Bartholomew quickly, before Cynric could incite the surly men to anger. ‘Barchester is where you conduct your experiments on the dead. Although I looked in the houses, and saw nothing unusual, I did not look in the church.’
‘Well, now is your chance,’ said Eltisley, gesturing that they should ascend the incline on which the church stood.
There was no sign of Mad Megin or her white dog as they walked up the rise. The building stood as still and silent as ever, with ivy darkening its walls and weaving through the broken tiles of its roof. Eltisley made his way to the small door Bartholomew had been about to enter when Megin had made her appearance, and pushed it open. It creaked on unsteady leather hinges, and sagged against the wall. He stood back, and indicated that Bartholomew and Cynric were to enter.
Inside, wooden benches held more phials, jugs, bottles and pots than Bartholomew could count. They were all around the walls, and more of them stood on the altar that had been dragged from its eastern end to the middle of the nave. Dark streaks up the walls and across the paved floor suggested accidents and miscalculations galore, and the whole church had a metallic, burned smell to it. Bartholomew was certain it could not be healthy.
Eltisley struggled with a ring set in a heavy stone slab in the chancel. With a spray of dirt, it came free, revealing a sinister black hole.
‘Perhaps you would wait in there,’ said Eltisley. ‘It is as secure a place as I know, and no one will hear you shouting for help — except Mad Megin, I suppose, but she will do nothing about it.’
‘What is it?’ asked Bartholomew, glancing down at the pitch darkness with a distinct lack of enthusiasm.
‘It is the old crypt, where the lords of Barchester and their families were buried before the plague ended their line,’ said Eltisley cheerfully. ‘They will reward me handsomely when they rise from the dead to reclaim their manor.’
‘Is that why you are doing all this?’ asked Bartholomew, looking around at the phials and bottles that lined the room. ‘You want to be rewarded for your efforts by the dead?’
‘I will be the richest man alive,’ said Eltisley gleefully. ‘And all those who have helped me will also reap the benefits. I can be a very generous man.’
‘And who has helped you?’ asked Bartholomew. ‘Tuddenham? Grosnold? Hamon?’
Eltisley smiled. ‘You can work that out while you wait. It will give you something to do.’
‘We cannot go into a tomb with victims of the plague,’ said Bartholomew, aghast. ‘Even opening this vault might cause the disease to spread again. Are you totally insane?’
Eltisley regarded him coldly. ‘I am not in the slightest insane. And no one who died of the plague is down there. Mad Megin buried all of those in a pit in the churchyard. Now, hurry up. Do not be afraid if you hear rustlings and voices, by the way. I have given the corpses several doses of my potions, and I anticipate some of them will show signs of life soon.’
Sceptical though he was about Eltisley’s talents in that area, sitting in a tomb with long-dead corpses that were expected soon to come alive was not the way Bartholomew fancied spending his morning.
‘No,’ he said firmly, folding his arms.
One of the sullen drinkers stepped forward quickly, and gave him a push that knocked him off balance. Eltisley stuck out a foot, and Bartholomew found himself tumbling into the blackness. He opened his mouth to yell, but had landed before he could make a sound, thumping down a set of cold, damp steps into a musty chamber veiled in cobwebs. Cynric followed him moments later, and the trap-door thudded shut. There was a rumbling sound as something was dragged over it so that they could not escape, and then silence. They sat absolutely still in the darkness.
Bartholomew looked around him, straining his eyes in the pitch black to try to make out what kind of place they were in. He could see nothing at all, and could not even hear the voices of Eltisley and his friends in the church above. It was indeed as silent as the grave. He shivered. It was cold, too, and smelled of wet bones, worms and rotting grave-clothes. He heard a faint rustle, and leapt to his feet, banging his head on the roof as he did so.
‘What was that?’ whispered Cynric shakily.
The rustle came again, slightly louder, and then something ran across Bartholomew’s foot. He forced himself not to shout, and scrambled up the steps to where he thought Cynric was sitting.
‘Just a mouse.’ He coughed. ‘We will suffocate in here.’
‘No,’ said Cynric. ‘I can see daylight around the edges of the slab. We will not lack fresh air.’
‘This is horrible,’ said Bartholomew, trying to move further up the stairs, away from the ominous scrabbling that came from the floor of the vault. ‘I am sorry, Cynric. I have dragged you into something dreadful yet again.’
‘You certainly have,’ agreed Cynric. ‘More dreadful than anything I could have imagined. How are we going to escape?’
Bartholomew glanced to the thin rectangle of light that outlined the trap-door. ‘We could open that.’
Cynric tried first, then Bartholomew, then both together, but the slab was heavy, and whatever had been placed over it rendered it totally immovable. Cynric slumped down, and Bartholomew could see his dejected silhouette in the faint light that filtered around the slab.
‘That mad landlord intends to use us for his vile experiments,’ he said in a low voice. ‘He will kill us, and then try to raise us from the dead. I do not know which I fear more.’
Bartholomew could think of nothing to say. He sat quietly, listening to the rustling growing louder, closer and more confident, and once he thought he heard a squeak. He thought about what Eltisley had told him, and tried to make sense of it all. Some details became clearer, but he was certain Eltisley was not the sole power behind the evil dealings at Grundisburgh, and that someone was leading him, encouraging him and providing him with the funds to continue his work.
Although it felt like an age, not much time had passed before there was a rumble from above, and they heard someone struggling to lift the slab once again. Cynric tensed, and flung himself out of the vault the moment the gap was large enough. He was so fast, that he had overpowered Eltisley before the landlord realised what was happening. Bartholomew reached out and seized the foot of one of the henchmen, pulling him off balance, and clambered quickly out of the hole to help Cynric wrestle with another. To one side he heard a yell, and saw Michael struggling between another two of Eltisley’s surly customers.
A crossbow quarrel snapped loudly as it hit the floor, bouncing off to disappear into the blackness of the vault. Bartholomew could hear Eltisley screaming in anger and frustration, and Michael fighting to free himself from his captors. But it was an unequal battle. Eltisley’s men had swords and daggers, and one of them was already rewinding his crossbow for another shot. Cynric was brought up short by a dagger at his throat, while Bartholomew lost his balance and was toppled back down into the vault by one of Eltisley’s wild pushes. Moments later, Cynric was thrust in after him, and then Michael, tumbling in a flurry of flailing arms and legs to land heavily on Bartholomew. The slab fell into place, and there was a rumble as it was secured once more.
‘That was lucky,’ said Michael, sitting up. ‘You broke my fall.’
‘And you broke my legs,’ mumbled Bartholomew, squirming to free himself of the monk’s immense weight. ‘Stand up, Brother. I cannot breathe!’
Cynric darted back to the steps, to sit as far away from the floor of the vault as he could. Michael picked himself up, and peered around him.
‘Now
what?’ he asked.
‘We cannot escape,’ said Cynric gloomily from his perch. ‘What you just saw was our only chance. They will not allow us to take them by surprise again. We are doomed.’
‘We are not,’ said Michael firmly. ‘I will not be dispatched by a loathsome maniac like Eltisley. If I am to die because another takes my life, it will be a worthy adversary, and not some madman who believes he can bring people back from the dead.’
‘He told you all that, did he?’ asked Bartholomew. ‘All about the riches he hopes to gain from granting dead people an unexpected new lease of life?’
Michael made a dismissive sound. ‘The man is a fool! The dead do not keep their earthly riches after they die — that is all inherited by the next of kin. What he will have is a lot of paupers, with nothing to give him but the rags in which they were buried.’
‘Did you explain that to him?’ asked Bartholomew. He started backward when he touched Michael’s hand in the darkness. It was cold and clammy, and felt like that of a corpse.
‘I did not bother,’ said Michael loftily. ‘Still, it would make for some intriguing legal precedents about the question of ownership.’
‘We should be thinking about how we can escape, not speculating on points of law,’ said Bartholomew, moving up the steps as the rustling began again.
‘What was that?’ demanded Michael, looking about him wildly. ‘I heard something. Is there someone in here with us? Has Eltisley succeeded in his ambitions, and raised Barchester’s dead?’
‘Do not be ridiculous, Brother,’ said Bartholomew, sitting with Cynric as far as possible up the steps. ‘Eltisley will never make the dead walk again. It is beyond the laws of nature.’
‘That man is beyond the laws of nature.’ Michael suddenly shot up the steps with an impressive spurt of speed for a man of his size. ‘Something touched my foot,’ he explained shakily.
‘Just a mouse,’ said Bartholomew.
‘A rat, boy,’ said Cynric ominously. ‘Rats live in tombs, not mice.’
Michael bowled Bartholomew and Cynric out of the way, and began heaving at the trap-door. It moved very slightly. Encouraged, Bartholomew helped, but although they could raise the slab the width of a finger, whatever was placed over the top of it was simply too heavy to move. Michael sat down, disheartened.
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