Susanna Gregory: A Wicked Deed

‘I told Eltisley to kill Freeman, not keep him alive to test his theories on,’ said Dame Eva giving Eltisley a reproving stare. ‘That was a mistake which might have proved costly. Fortunately, it turned out well in the end.’

‘But why?’ asked Michael, shaking his head. ‘What can you hope to gain from all this? What does it matter to you who inherits your son’s estates?’

Bartholomew found the charcoal powder, and poured it on the sulphur. He was about to stir it with a pewter spoon when he realised that the metal might produce sparks as it encountered the volatile mixture, so he looked around for something else to use. All he could find was a reed that had fallen from the roof. Immediately it snapped, and he froze with horror, expecting Eltisley’s men to come rushing in and catch him. But nothing happened, and the old lady continued to regale Michael with a list of her reasons for causing such chaos and misery in the village she called her home.

‘Hamon does not have the intelligence to run a large estate like this,’ she said. ‘He cannot even manage Peche Hall properly, and that is tiny. If he had any sense at all, he would have killed Deblunville to prevent him from making a claim on our land in the courts.’

‘Is that why you consider Hamon inadequate?’ asked Michael. ‘Because he would not murder Deblunville for land?’

The old lady’s eyes became gimlet hard. ‘Is that not reason enough? How does he hope to keep his inheritance if he will not fight for it? And he is dallying with that manipulative Janelle again, now Deblunville is dead. Fool!’

‘He will keep his inheritance by using the law,’ said Michael. ‘That is why it is there.’

‘But he might lose his case.’

‘He might have lost his life, if he had tried to murder Deblunville. And then an estate would have been neither here nor there to him.’

The old lady made a sound of exasperation, and flounced towards the screen. Bartholomew, about to add saltpetre to his mixture, ducked back though the door to the vault, hoping his sudden movement had not been seen. The old lady walked into the chancel, and looked around her.

I told you not to tamper with these powders again,’ she said, seeing Bartholomew’s barrel in the middle of the chancel floor. ‘Last time, you destroyed the tavern — the tavern my husband had built — when it would have been easier and cheaper to slip some poison into the scholars’ food.’

‘I have not been tampering with them,’ said Eltisley sulkily.

‘Then get rid of them,’ she snapped. She kicked at Bartholomew’s barrel with her foot. ‘Or you will have us all gone the same way as that despicable Alcote. Did I tell you I caught him burning some of Thomas’s documents? Not important ones, true, but that is beside the point.’

‘I need those powders,’ protested Eltisley. ‘I will not bring back the dead with crushed flowers and honey, you know. To combat a powerful force like death requires potent compounds.’

‘You said you would have that potion before the beginning of the summer,’ said Dame Eva, moving out of the chancel and heading back towards Eltisley in the nave. ‘You promised.’

‘I am almost there,’ said Eltisley eagerly. ‘In fact, I am about to perform an experiment on the fat monk and his servant. This elixir will temporarily deprive them of life, and then I will bring them back again with another potion.’

At that point, two more of Eltisley’s surly customers entered the church, looking nervous. It was clear they had failed to do something they had been ordered to do. Dame Eva’s eyes narrowed.

‘Where is he?’ she demanded. ‘You said you could find him.’

‘The friar has disappeared,’ said one of them, swallowing hard. ‘We looked everywhere, but he is no longer in the village. He must have fled.’

‘Damn!’ muttered Eltisley. ‘He would have made a good subject. What about the students?’

The man shook his head. ‘They never reached the leper hospital. We cannot find them, either.’

Dame Eva sighed impatiently. ‘I am surrounded by incompetents! Still, I suppose it does not matter — the friar is far too fixed on seeing heresy in the god-fearing to make sense of what he has learned here, and the students do not have the intelligence. I do not see that an institution like your University will survive long, given the kind of person it attracts. And I hear Oxford is worse.’

Bartholomew wondered where William and the students could possibly be, but there was no time for speculation. He eased out of the doorway, and located the saltpetre, an evil-smelling whitish substance that could be dangerous in the wrong hands. Closing his eyes, and expecting to be blown sky high at any moment, he dumped it on top of the charcoal and sulphur, giving it a very cautious stir with his reed and fervently hoping he had remembered his alchemy lessons correctly, and had the proportions right — three parts saltpetre to one part charcoal and sulphur. In the nave, Eltisley was heading toward Michael.

‘And who is it that you would like brought back from the dead?’ asked the monk of Dame Eva, in a futile attempt to delay the process. ‘A loved child? Your husband? A lover?’

‘I never needed any lover!’ the old lady spat. ‘My husband was all I ever wanted.’

Bartholomew scratched his head as he considered how he could ignite his concoction without blowing up Michael and Cynric, as well as Eltisley and his cronies. He had to put it somewhere it would cause sufficient damage to allow him to help his friends, but not enough to bring down the already fragile church roof. The powder needed to be placed in a confined space, where the explosion would give him a few moments to act — perhaps to grab a sword and create havoc. But where? He was beginning to despair, when his eye fell on the piscina in the chancel. Piscinas were sinks with drains that allowed holy water to be poured away into the foundations, mainly so that unscrupulous people could not steal it to sell.

He found a wooden bowl, and began to scoop the powder down the hole. Sweat broke out on his forehead when the bowl bumped against the stone sill of the piscina, making the conversation in the nave falter for a moment, until Michael restarted it with yet another question. As the level of powder in the barrel fell with agonising slowness, Bartholomew saw a length of carefully coiled twine on one of Eltisley’s benches. It was white and crusted, and Bartholomew supposed that it was one of the pieces that Eltisley had soaked in saltpetre and used as a slow-burning fuse to ignite the tavern in the blast that had killed Alcote. He picked it up carefully, and inspected it. He was right. He hefted up the barrel, now less than half full, and continued to empty its volatile contents into the drain.

‘Do you think this half-mad landlord will bring you your husband back?’ Michael was asking Dame Eva incredulously. ‘Is that what all this is about?’

Hands shaking, Bartholomew began to unravel Eltisley’s twine, hoping it, unlike most of the landlord’s devices, would work properly. One of the men who leaned against the wall ambled toward the screen, and began to pick idly at the peeling paint. Bartholomew ducked back into the chancel door, willing the man to go away. He could not light the fuse with him there — it would hiss and splutter and attract his attention, at which point Eltisley could extinguish it by stepping on it. Bored, the man blew out his cheeks in a sigh, and gazed at the patches of yellow-grey powder on the chancel floor that Bartholomew had accidentally spilled.

‘Eltisley will succeed,’ said Dame Eva, as though failure was not an option. ‘And then all will be as it was when we were lord and lady of the manor. Hamon and my son will be dispatched to the wars in France, and our heir will be the child Isilia carries.’