Susanna GREGORY - A Vein of Deceit

‘Yet who knows what the future might bring,’ Elyan gabbled on, cursing himself for his thoughtless tongue as he struggled to make amends. ‘Joan is old to be having a first child, and the midwife says it will be a miracle if she delivers a healthy son.’

But d’Audley was not listening. He was staring at a nearby holly bush, eyes narrowed. ‘Is that a foot I see poking out from under those leaves?’

Elyan looked to where he pointed, then strode forward for a better view. Carbo began muttering to himself, rocking back and forth on his heels as he watched the two Suffolk lordlings with eyes that were too big in his pale, thin face. Elyan reached the bush and gingerly pulled back the branches, careful not to snag his beautiful russet-coloured tunic. A body lay beneath, half buried in leaf litter. It was that of a young man, who wore a black tabard over his shirt and hose. A reddish-brown stain on his chest indicated he had been stabbed or shot with an arrow.

‘That is academic garb,’ said d’Audley, stepping back smartly, and covering his mouth and nose with his sleeve. The weather was hot, and the corpse was far from fresh. ‘He must belong to one of the Cambridge Colleges – a student, perhaps. What is he doing here?’

‘I have no idea.’ Elyan was horrified. ‘He cannot have come to spy on my coal, because the only people I have told about it are my wife, my clerk, my grandmother, Gatekeeper Folyat…’

He trailed off, uncomfortably aware that this was a considerable list – and Folyat was a notorious gossip. Unfortunately, the gatekeeper had caught him crawling about in Haverhill’s bramble-infested woods and Elyan had felt compelled to offer him some explanation; he did not want his villagers thinking he was as mad as Carbo.

‘Have you told any scholars about the seam?’ asked d’Audley.

‘No.’ Elyan hesitated. ‘However, my clerk went to Cambridge last week. Perhaps he–’

But d’Audley was not interested in what Elyan’s clerk might have done. ‘This lad has been murdered,’ he declared, glancing around him uneasily. ‘Stabbed or shot. We had better hide the body before anyone sees it.’

Elyan gaped at him. ‘What? But surely, we should contact the Sheriff, and–’

‘No!’ D’Audley’s voice was loud and harsh. ‘The last time a Sheriff visited Haverhill, he liked it so much that he declined to leave, and we were obliged to feed him and his retinue for nigh on a month. I am not squandering money like that again, so we shall shove this boy in the ground and forget we ever set eyes on him.’

‘I will fetch a spade,’ said Elyan, after a moment of silent deliberation. His inclination had been to argue – to do what the law expected of him – but d’Audley had a point: entertaining Suffolk’s greedy Sheriff had been expensive, and he would rather they spent their resources on excavating what the mine had to offer.

‘And then we had better deal with Carbo,’ said d’Audley, gesturing to where the madman was humming to himself, eyes closed. ‘It is obvious that he is the killer, and he should be locked away before he turns on one of us. We should summon his brother, and–’

‘It is not obvious at all,’ interrupted Elyan, startled. ‘He may be a lunatic, but there is no harm in him. However, that sinister Osa Gosse has taken to haunting our parish of late, and he will commit any crime for the right price. It is far more likely that he killed this young man.’

D’Audley regarded him with an unreadable expression. ‘Perhaps this corpse is a sign – a warning that I should be wary of joining your venture. So you can bury it: this is your land, so it is your problem, not mine. Watch the mud on your fine clothes, though. It stains.’

And with that, he turned on his heel and stalked away. Elyan watched him go with an expression that verged on the murderous.

October 1357, Cambridge

The scream echoed along Milne Street a second time. Doors were opening, lights flickered under window shutters, and voices murmured as neighbours were startled awake. Matthew Bartholomew, physician and Doctor of Medicine at the College of Michaelhouse, broke into a run. Folk were beginning to emerge from their houses, asking each other why Edith Stanmore was making such an unholy racket in the middle of the night. The noise was coming from her house, was it not?

It was cold for the time of year, and Bartholomew could see his breath pluming in front of him as he sprinted along the road; it was illuminated by the faint gleam of the lamp his book-bearer, Cynric, was holding. There was rain in the air, too, spiteful little droplets carried in a bitter wind that stung where they hit. He glanced up at the sky, trying to gauge the hour. Other than the disturbance caused by the howls, the town was silent, and the velvety blackness indicated it was the darkest part of the night, perhaps one or two o’clock.

‘What is happening?’ called one of Milne Street’s residents, peering out of his door. It was Robert de Blaston the carpenter; his wife Yolande was behind him. ‘Who is making that awful noise? Is it your sister? I can see from here that her lamps are lit.’

Bartholomew sincerely hoped it was not Edith howling in such agony. She was his older sister, who had raised him after the early death of their parents, and he loved her dearly. Stomach churning, he forced himself to slow down as he negotiated his way past Blaston’s home. The recent addition of twins to the carpenter’s ever-expanding brood meant they had been forced to move to a larger property, and he was in the process of renovating it; the road outside was littered with scaffolding, wood and discarded pieces of rope. Bartholomew’s instinct was to ignore the hazard and race as fast as he could to Edith’s house, but common sense prevailed – he would be no use to her if he tripped and knocked himself senseless.

‘It is not Edith – it is a woman in labour,’ said Yolande, seeing his stricken expression and hastening to reassure him. Bartholomew supposed she knew what she was talking about: the twins brought her number of offspring to fourteen. ‘Edith must have taken in a Frail Sister.’

Bartholomew faltered. A lady named Matilde had coined that particular phrase, as a sympathetic way of referring to Cambridge’s prostitutes. He had been on the verge of asking Matilde to marry him, but had dallied too long, and she had left the town more than two years before without ever knowing his intentions. It had been one of the worst days of his life, and even the expression ‘Frail Sisters’ was enough to make him reflect on all that his hesitancy had caused him to lose. But he came to his senses sharply when he blundered into some of Blaston’s building paraphernalia and became hopelessly entangled.

‘There are more Frail Sisters than usual,’ Yolande went on, watching her husband try to free him – a task not made any easier by the physician’s agitated struggles. ‘Summer came too early and spoiled the crops, so a lot of women are forced to earn money any way they can.’

Another cry shattered the silence of the night. In desperation, Bartholomew pulled a surgical knife from his medical bag and began to hack at the rope that had wrapped itself around his foot. He could not really see what he was doing, and the carpenter jerked away in alarm.

‘I cannot imagine why you are in such a hurry,’ Blaston muttered, standing well back. ‘You are not a midwife, so you are not obliged to attend pregnant–’

‘He is different from the other physicians,’ interrupted Yolande briskly. ‘The Frail Sisters trust him with their personal ailments, because Matilde said they could.’

Suddenly, Bartholomew was free. He began to run again, aiming for the faint gleam ahead that represented his book-bearer’s lamp. Cynric, of course, was far too nimble to become enmeshed in the carpenter’s carelessly strewn materials. There were two more wails before the physician reached Edith’s house, and without bothering to knock, he flung open the door and rushed inside.