Bartholomew 10 - The Hand of Justice

by Susanna GREGORY

  ‘Who is she?’ asked Michael. ‘And why did you let her into our town, if you thought she might be dangerous?’

  ‘She is not dangerous,’ said Orwelle with great certainty. ‘And she did not kill Bosel, either. She came mumbling something about finding a lost lover. She is clearly out of her wits, and I thought she might be able to beg a few pennies here before she moves on, poor lass. She is too addled to know about poisons. But it is cold out here, and there is a fire in the gatehouse.’ Without another word, he turned and strode away, leaving the two scholars to complete the short journey alone.

  ‘Orwelle is right about your duties as Corpse Examiner,’ said Michael, as they passed Peterhouse and began to walk towards the mill, which was a black mass against the darkening sky. ‘In fact, I discussed the matter with Tynkell only last week, and we have decided to make the post a permanent one, with a proper stipend.’

  ‘Good,’ said Bartholomew with feeling. ‘You can offer it to Rougham. He can chase after you in the dead of night looking at sights no physician ever ought to be asked to see. He may even enjoy it.’

  ‘I do not want Rougham,’ said Michael. ‘I want you. Rougham’s mind is too closed to allow him to be of use to me – and do not suggest Paxtone, either. He is a pleasant fellow, but he is unimaginative, and would probably faint if I showed him a corpse.’

  ‘I will not do it,’ said Bartholomew firmly. ‘It would mean I am never free to refuse you.’

  ‘You never refuse me anyway,’ Michael pointed out. ‘So you may as well be paid for your trouble. The Chancellor is willing to provide fourpence for every corpse examined. At that rate, it will not take you long to earn enough to buy Roger Bacon’s De erroribus medicorum. You have wanted a copy of that ever since Paxtone lent you his, and I hear Gonville intends to sell theirs.’

  ‘Buy me the Bacon now, and I will inspect all the corpses you like for the next year,’ said Bartholomew, after a moment’s thought. ‘Rougham disapproves of De erroribus, because Bacon uses Arabic sources. He may destroy it, just to prevent student physicians from becoming tainted with ideas that did not originate with Christians.’

  ‘Have you pointed out that Aristotle, Plato and Socrates were not Christians either?’ asked Michael archly. ‘And that their philosophy forms the basis of nearly all our teaching?’

  ‘He says they are different, although he will not explain why. You know what zealots are like, Brother. They are so convinced that they are right they cannot – or will not – accept the validity of any arguments that contradict their beliefs.’

  ‘The word for them is “bigots”,’ said Michael. ‘And there are far too many of them in this University, especially among the religious Orders. It is astonishing how friaries attract those kind of men. There are fewer in monasteries, like those of my own Order, of course. But you say you will examine bodies for a year if I buy the Bacon for you?’

  ‘From now until next Easter.’

  ‘Done,’ said Michael, thinking that he had secured quite a bargain. ‘But we are at the King’s Mill, and it seems there is a sizeable deputation waiting to greet us.’

  ‘Listen,’ said Bartholomew as they made their way along the narrow path that led from the lane to the mill. ‘What can you hear?’

  ‘Nothing,’ said Michael, cocking his head on one side.

  ‘Quite,’ said Bartholomew. ‘The wheel is not turning. They must have hauled it clear of the river.’

  Considering it was late – well past eight o’clock – and a time when most folk were retiring to their beds, a large number of people were silhouetted against the torch-lit interior of the King’s Mill. Bartholomew saw that most of the men who invested in the venture – the Millers’ Society – were there, all apparently determined to know what effect the unwelcome presence of a corpse in the premises they rented might have on their finances.

  One figure stepped forward, evidently considering himself their spokesman. It was Stephen Morice, a sly, disingenuous man, who had enjoyed a recent short but disastrous reign as Sheriff. He was brazenly corrupt, and everyone had been stunned when he had been elected Mayor that spring. Bartholomew suspected that buying the requisite number of votes had cost him a good deal of money. Morice was a swarthy man, with bright blue eyes, and a black moustache and beard that concealed thin lips. He was slightly hunched, as though he spent a lot of time writing, but Bartholomew knew he would never bother with anything so unproductive when there were folk to be blackmailed and justice to be sold.

  ‘You took your time,’ Morice remarked unpleasantly, as they approached. ‘Why are you so late?’

  ‘Who else is here?’ asked Michael, peering into the gloom. ‘Why are they not by their firesides or in bed, like all honest folk at such an hour? Have guilty consciences lured them out?’

  ‘The Millers’ Society has a lot of money tied up in the King’s Mill,’ replied Morice testily. ‘How could we sleep without knowing what was going on? Would you retire to your feather mattress without first ensuring that your hard-earned gold was safe?’

  ‘Safe from what?’ asked Michael.

  ‘Safe from wicked men trying to prevent our mill from operating,’ snapped Morice impatiently, as though the answer should have been obvious. ‘The most serious crime committed here is not murder, Brother. It is sabotage.’

  ‘And we know exactly who is responsible,’ added Gilbert Bernarde the miller, coming to join them. Of all the Society, Bernarde had the most to lose, since his entire livelihood was based on the efficient running of the mill; for the others, it was simply a way of seeing a good return on money already made. Bernarde was of stocky build, and possessed far too many teeth for his mouth: they clustered against each other like drunken soldiers. The ball of his right thumb was flattened from years of testing the dressing of his millstones, and he had a persistent dry cough from the dust he inhaled on a daily basis. He always carried a large bunch of keys on his belt, as if he imagined flaunting such an impressive collection made him an important person.

  ‘Who do you think is responsible?’ asked Michael, always ready to listen to accusations that might lead to a speedy solution – although he would, of course, make up his own mind about their validity.

  ‘The Mortimers, of course,’ replied Bernarde, as if he considered Michael a simpleton for asking. ‘They want to put me and my mill out of business. Did you hear that Thomas tried to kill me with his cart last month? He knocked me right on top of that massive snow bank outside Bene’t College – before it melted, of course.’

  ‘There was a corpse inside that, you know,’ said Morice conversationally. ‘Sheriff Tulyet told me. A man died there around Christmas, and remained covered by drifts until Master Kenyngham of Michaelhouse happened to notice a hand sticking out. No one knows who he was.’ He shuddered. ‘A corpse on the High Street all those weeks!’

  Bernarde nodded. ‘They say his indignant soul cries out on windy nights, angry that it took us so long to find him. However, I heard no wailing when Mortimer knocked me clean off my feet and on to his frozen tomb. All I heard was my ears ringing from the impact of my head on the ice.’ He addressed Michael. ‘Did you know about this? It was attempted murder!’

  ‘It is a pity you did not tell the Sheriff, then,’ said Michael coolly. ‘It might have helped Lenne and Isnard. There was no icy bank to save them from Mortimer’s thundering wheels.’

  ‘A lone man does not take a stand against the Mortimers,’ said Bernarde. ‘Look what happened to Bosel the beggar, when he tried to speak out. But tonight’s business is different: I have the Millers’ Society on my side this time, and even Mortimer cannot silence us all. Besides me and Morice, there is Deschalers the grocer and Cheney the spicer. Cheney is over there.’ He indicated a portly man with a red hat and matching face, who was staring uneasily at the stationary waterwheel.

  ‘Do not forget Lavenham and his wife Isobel,’ added Morice, indicating the couple who stood next to the spicer. ‘Lavenham may be a newcomer to our town, but he is
a wealthy fellow.’

  Lavenham the apothecary was a tall, angular man with a weather-beaten face, keen grey eyes and silver hair. He was not, however, from the Suffolk wool village, but from Norway, and his name – selected randomly, as far as Bartholomew could tell – was intended to make people believe he was local, on the grounds that some folk declined to take their business to foreigners. Unfortunately for Lavenham, the ploy would never work as long as he continued to speak eccentric English with an almost unintelligible accent.

  His English wife Isobel was soft and voluptuous, with moist red lips and a predatory manner. Bartholomew’s students always argued about who should collect his medicines from Lavenham’s shop, and he knew it was not because they wanted to converse with the Norwegian. His own feelings towards her were ambiguous: he admired her spirit, but distrusted her sincerity. However, since she sold the ingredients he needed for his remedies, he was obliged to develop a working relationship with her, although it was sometimes difficult to repel some of her more determined advances.

  ‘So, what happened inside the mill?’ he asked. ‘Who is dead? Orwelle said it might be a scholar.’

  ‘We are not sure,’ replied Morice mysteriously. ‘Look for yourself.’

  He gestured that they should enter the mill, a sturdy affair with a reed-thatched roof and wattle-and-daub walls. About a third of the building held the machinery that drove the millstones against each other, and the rest was used for stacking waiting grain, or was given over to the bins and equipment employed for weighing and sifting the finished product. Bartholomew had once been inside when the wheel was running and had been almost deafened by the clanking of wooden gears and the gush of water, but now it stood eerily still. Only the hiss of the river through its centre broke the silence.

  He pushed open the door and stepped across the threshold. The instant he did so, dust caught at the back of his throat and made his eyes feel gritty. Next to him Michael sneezed. The mill was well lit, with several torches burning in sconces along the walls, ready for those occasions when the miller was obliged to operate in the dark in order to meet the demand for flour.

  ‘Will you show us the way?’ Bartholomew called to Bernarde, wanting someone to take them directly to the scene of the crime. He did not want to waste time blundering around a building he did not know in search of some undefined ‘incident’.

  ‘Look near the wheel,’ recommended Morice, making no move to comply. ‘We will stay here and wait for the Sheriff.’

  ‘I will lead you,’ said Bernarde unhappily, pushing past the Mayor to enter his domain. ‘Seeing them will serve to remind me to take care when I work among the wheels and cogs.’

  With considerable misgivings, Bartholomew and Michael followed him to the room that housed the machinery. Then the physician understood exactly why the others had been reluctant to accompany him. Two men lay tangled among the gears, both dead. It was not a pleasant sight, with skin split like overripe fruit and bones protruding from where they should not have been. Bartholomew heard Michael’s sharp intake of breath as he backed away.

  ‘That one is stuck between the pit wheel and the wallower,’ said Bernarde, pointing to the man caught near the shaft that connected the waterwheel to the mill’s internal workings. He indicated the other, who was trapped next to one of the two pairs of millstones. ‘And he is between that timber pinion and the bed-stone. God knows how it happened. I always disengage the machinery at night – I disconnect the wheel from the wallower. That means the wheel continues to turn, but the machinery itself does not operate. I never forget to do it, so someone must have re-engaged it later. It is not difficult to do, and requires no special skills – although inexperience cost these poor fellows their lives. However, while I can understand one man’s clothes becoming snagged and it dragging him in, two at the same time is almost impossible. I disengaged the machinery and stopped the wheel as soon as I heard it.’

  ‘Heard what?’ asked Michael. He moved back and sat on a pile of grain sacks, his face pale in the torchlight. ‘One killing the other?’

  ‘The difference in sounds,’ explained Bernarde. ‘There was a change in pitch as the wheel turned, which made me sure someone had engaged the machinery. And there were two odd thuds. I hurried from my house to investigate and I found them here, like this.’

  ‘Who are they?’ asked Michael.

  ‘I have not looked,’ replied Bernarde with a shudder. ‘No one should have been in here without my permission. Mills are delicate, and are not for anyone to wander around as they please.’

  ‘It does not look very delicate to me,’ said Michael, looking at the heavy stones and robust timbers.

  ‘It is very delicate,’ countered Bernarde firmly. ‘That is why it takes a miller with experience and skill to keep one functional. Not everyone can do it – you only need to see the inferior flour many others produce to know that!’ He shook his head and gave the corpses an angry stare. ‘Who knows what damage they have done to my wallower and pinions with their blood and guts!’

  ‘So, what happened?’ asked Michael hurriedly, declining to hear more on that particular topic. ‘There are two victims, so I suppose one killed the other, and then was dragged into the machinery as he gloated over his crime?’

  ‘That seems likely,’ agreed Bernarde. ‘Mills can be dangerous places for those who do not understand them. It is not unknown for a piece of clothing to be caught, and its owner pulled—’

  ‘I suppose the cause of death is obvious, at least,’ interrupted Michael hastily, taking a piece of linen from his scrip and wiping his face. ‘I do not need a Corpse Examiner to tell me that mill machinery and the human body do not make good bedfellows.’

  ‘Actually,’ said Bartholomew, leaning over the first body and trying to keep his tabard from trailing in the gore, ‘the cause of death is not obvious at all.’

  Michael sighed. ‘I know you have a penchant for grisly details, Matt, but I really do not need to know which part was crushed first. It will be irrelevant to my enquiries, and will provide me with information I would rather not have. I shall be haunted by this sight for nights to come as it is.’

  ‘I am not sure either died from crushing,’ said Bartholomew, clambering over a pile of empty sacks to reach the second body. ‘They may have been killed by this.’

  He held the head of the second corpse so that Michael could see what he had found. Protruding from the roof of the mouth was a long, thin nail, which had penetrated the palate and been driven deep into the brain above.

  Michael stared at Bartholomew, his eyes huge in the gloom of the mill. Bernarde pushed forward to see, too, then stood back, scratching his head in puzzlement.

  ‘Are you sure this is what killed them?’ asked Michael, eyeing the nail protruding from the first corpse’s mouth and then going to inspect the similar injury on the second.

  ‘The crushing wounds you see are mostly to limbs and, despite how they look, would not have been quickly fatal. You say you came as soon as you heard the change in the noise the wheel made, Bernarde, which suggests you were very quickly on the scene. If they had suffered these injuries alone – without the nail – you would have seen at least one of them alive.’

  ‘They were both dead,’ said Bernarde firmly.

  ‘So, what happened?’ asked Michael of Bartholomew. ‘Are you saying they died from stabbing, and fell into the machinery after?’

  ‘That would be my guess,’ said Bartholomew. ‘It could not have been the other way around, because the moving parts would have made it difficult for the killer to put the nail in the right place.’ He knelt next to the nearest corpse to assess how deep the metal pin had gone. It was embedded very firmly, and he supposed it had been applied with considerable force. ‘I have never seen anything like this before.’

  ‘Nasty,’ said Michael, looking away as Bartholomew tugged the nail clear. It was long and sharp, and there were several others just like it on a shelf near the door, so it was clear the killer had used w
hatever weapon was easily to hand. The monk indicated one of the bodies with the toe of his boot. ‘He is wearing the habit of a Carmelite. Do you recognise him?’

  Bartholomew took a torch from the wall and held it closely to the man’s face, to be certain before he spoke. There was a good deal of blood, and it was difficult to make out the features of either victim. ‘I thought so,’ he said sadly. There was only one man he knew who had taken holy orders so recently that his habit was new and unstained. ‘It is Nicholas Bottisham of Gonville Hall.’

  ‘No!’ exclaimed Michael, white-faced. ‘Bottisham? Are you sure? There must be some mistake!’

  ‘There is not, Brother,’ said Bartholomew quietly.

  Michael swallowed hard. ‘I liked him, despite the fact that his arguments were largely responsible for our defeat in yesterday’s Disputatio. I hope Gonville does not assume we killed him because we lost. I do not want a riot and more blood spilled. Who is the other?’

  ‘Deschalers,’ said Bartholomew, after a few moments with water and a cloth. ‘The grocer.’

  ‘Thomas Deschalers is a member of the Millers’ Society,’ said Bernarde, shocked. ‘But neither he nor the others ever come here. All our meetings are held in the Brazen George, because they dislike flour on their fine clothes – as you will find out tomorrow when you look at your own garments. I cannot imagine why Deschalers should be here.’ He rubbed his hand across his mouth, unsettled and distressed. ‘He has not been well recently. Perhaps sickness addled his mind.’

  Bartholomew recalled how ill the grocer had looked the previous day. ‘Rougham was his physician,’ he said, thinking about what Deschalers himself had told him. ‘I can ask whether the sickness was one that might lead a man to do odd things, but I doubt it was. It sounded more like a canker – agonising and debilitating, but unlikely to cause a loss of wits.’