Susanna GREGORY: An Order for Death

‘You should all be ashamed of yourselves,’ said Edith, taking another cloth and trying without much success to wipe the blood from the friar’s limp hands.

‘I know,’ said Bartholomew with a sigh. He felt the life-beat again, half expecting to find it had fluttered away to nothing. ‘The current debate between the nominalists and the realists is a complicated one, and I doubt half the lads throwing stones at us really believe that nominalism is the ultimate in philosophical theories: they just want to beat the Carmelites.’

Edith continued to tend the unconscious man. Bartholomew had administered a powerful sense-dulling potion before he had started the messy operation of repairing the slippery organs that had been damaged by the knife, and did not expect the Carmelite to wake very soon – if at all. He laid the back of his hand against the friar’s forehead, not surprised to find that it was cold and unhealthily clammy. So he was surprised when the friar stirred weakly, opened his eyes and began to grope with unsteady fingers at the cord he wore around his waist.

‘My scrip,’ he whispered, his voice barely audible. ‘Where is my scrip?’

Edith looked around her, supposing that the leather pouch friars often carried at their side had fallen to the floor. ‘Where is it, Matt?’

Bartholomew pointed to a short string that had evidently been used to attach the scrip to the friar’s waist-cord. It was dark with dirt, indicating that it had served its purpose for some time, but the ends were bright and clean. It did not take a genius to deduce that it had been cut very recently. Bartholomew could only assume that whoever had stabbed the friar had also taken his pouch, probably using the same knife. Bartholomew had found the injured friar huddled in a doorway surrounded by Dominicans; the scrip must have been stolen by one of them.

‘Easy now,’ he said gently, trying to calm his patient as the search became more frantic. ‘You are safe here.’

‘My scrip,’ insisted the friar, more strongly. ‘Where is it? It is vital I have it!’

‘We will find it,’ said Bartholomew comfortingly, although he suspected that if the friar’s pouch had contained something valuable, then the chances of retrieving it were remote.

‘You must find it,’ breathed the friar, gripping Bartholomew’s arm surprisingly tightly for a man so close to death. ‘You must.’

‘Who did this to you?’ asked Bartholomew, reaching for his bag. His patient’s agitated movements were threatening to pull the stitches apart, and the physician wanted to calm him with laudanum. He eased the friar’s head into the crook of his arm and gave him as large a dose as he dared. ‘Do you know the names of the men who attacked you?’

‘Please,’ whispered the friar desperately. ‘My scrip contains something very important to me. You must find it. And when you do, you must pass it to Father Paul at the Franciscan Friary.’

‘Do not worry,’ said Bartholomew softly, disengaging himself from the agitated Carmelite and easing him back on to the bench. ‘We will look for it as soon as we can.’

He continued to speak in the same low voice, sensing that the sound of it was soothing the student. It was not long before the Carmelite began to sleep again. Bartholomew inspected the damage the struggle had done to the fragile stitching, and was relieved to see that it was not as bad as he had feared. Still, he realised it would make little difference eventually: the friar was dying. His life was slowly ebbing away, and there was nothing Bartholomew could do to prevent it.

Outside in the street, the Dominicans continued to lay siege to the Carmelite Friary opposite, although their voices sounded less furious and the missiles were hurled with less intensity and frequency. Bartholomew risked a quick glance out of the window, and saw that the beadles – the law enforcers employed by the University – had started to arrive, and that small groups of Dominicans were already slinking away before they were caught. There was only so long they could sustain their lust for blood when the Carmelites were safely out of sight inside their property, and common sense was beginning to get the better of hot tempers.

‘It will not be long now,’ said Bartholomew, moving away from the window and kneeling next to his patient again, where his sister still sponged the pale face. ‘The Dominicans are going home. We may yet be able to secure a Carmelite confessor to give this man last rites.’

‘He will die?’ asked Edith in a low whisper. ‘There is nothing you can do to save him?’

Bartholomew shook his head. ‘I have done all I can.’

Edith gazed in mute compassion at the friar’s face. Bartholomew did not know what to say, and was frustrated that for all his years of training at Oxford and then in Paris, his medical knowledge still could not prevent a young man from dying.

‘Richard is right,’ said Edith bitterly. ‘We always summon physicians when we are ill, but they make little difference to whether we live or not.’

‘Richard has changed,’ said Bartholomew, thinking about Edith and Oswald’s only son. ‘He is not the same lad who left for Oxford after the plague five years ago.’

‘It is good to have him home again,’ said Edith, declining to admit that her son had returned home lacking a good deal of his former charm. ‘He plans to remain here for a while, to assess the opportunities Cambridge has to offer. He says he may have to go to London, because he is a good lawyer and he wants to work on expensive land disputes and become very rich.’

‘He said that?’ asked Bartholomew, startled by the young man’s blunt materialism. He felt for the friar’s life-beat again. ‘I do not know why he wants to stay here anyway; he has done nothing but criticise everything about Cambridge ever since he returned.’

Edith did not reply, but Bartholomew sensed that she was as unimpressed by her son’s behaviour as was Bartholomew. Richard had gone to the University of Oxford to study medicine, but had returned with a degree in law instead, claiming that a legal training would provide him with the means to make more money than a medical one. Although he disapproved of Richard’s motives, Bartholomew knew the young man was right. Since the plague, there was work aplenty for those who were able to unravel the complexities of contested wills and property disputes arising from the high number of sudden deaths.

His lessons in legal affairs had done nothing to improve Richard’s character, however. Although he could hardly say so to Edith, Bartholomew had preferred the cheerful, ebullient seventeen-year-old who had set off determined to learn how to heal the sick, than the greedy twenty-two-year-old who had returned.

‘The streets are almost clear,’ he said, glancing out of the window and then resting his hand on the Carmelite’s forehead. ‘I will leave in a few moments to fetch a confessor. Will you stay with him?’

‘Of course,’ said Edith immediately. ‘This poor boy can remain here as long as necessary. Oswald will not mind.’

‘He will,’ said Bartholomew, imagining his brother-in-law’s disapproval. ‘He will not be pleased to return from his business meeting to learn that I endangered his wife by bringing an injured Carmelite to her, or to see that his panes have been smashed by vengeful Dominicans.’

He edged nearer the window, so that he could see into the muddy road below. There were definitely fewer dark-robed Dominicans in Milne Street now, and he wished the remainder would hurry up and return to their own quarters on Hadstock Way.

‘Look at him, Matt,’ said Edith softly, sponging the hands of the injured Carmelite. ‘He is about the same age as Richard.’

Bartholomew glanced down at his patient and saw that she was right. He had barely noticed the man’s face. When he had first caught sight of the wounded student, clutching his stomach in a spreading stain of blood, all Bartholomew’s attention had been taken with brandishing a hefty pair of childbirth forceps at the surrounding Dominicans and dragging the injured friar to the nearest safe haven. Then, once they had reached Stanmore’s property, Bartholomew had concentrated on tending the wound and ducking the splinters of glass.