Susanna Gregory: A Deadly Brew

‘The Gonville cat,’ said Bartholomew. ‘It smashed the bottle and drank the wine with no ill effects, yet the rat died. That detail had been bothering me for some time. When I saw Langelee tip the bottle to draw the stopper with his teeth, I realised that I had made the assumption that both cat and rat had drunk the wine. They had not. The rat had gnawed at the cork stopper. Mortimer had been about to pull the stopper from the bottle with his teeth, too, and Armel, the apprentice down the well, and Grene did the same — or drank from the bottle itself. That was why Philius did not die: he drank wine that had been poured and diluted with other ingredients for the weekly purge that Isaac made for him.’

‘It was lucky you happened to have a lemon in your pocket,’ remarked Michael. ‘A fig or a handful of currants would not have worked nearly as well.’

‘But a handful of currants would not have smashed Master Kenyngham’s beloved window,’ said Bartholomew ruefully. ‘And I would not have to pay for its repair.’

‘True,’ said Michael archly. ‘So next time perhaps you will be a little more selective before you attempt to save someone’s life so selflessly. Langelee is a lout. Harling did right to leave him a gift of his wine. But I still cannot believe Langelee was so stupid, or so greedy, as to have attempted to drink it after all that had gone on.’

‘Did Langelee not offer to pay for the window?’ asked Matilde, surprised. ‘It would have been the least he could do.’

‘He did not,’ said Bartholomew. ‘He will not even agree to re-examine Bulbeck on account of his being ill when he took his disputation.’

Michael’s eyes gleamed with humour. ‘Just before we left to come here, he asked me if I would persuade you to let him borrow your copy of Aristotle’s De Caelo for his debate.’

‘I hope you told him to go and buy his own,’ said Matilde indignantly.

‘I said its hire for a week would cost him the price of a window,’ said Michael, leaning forward to refill his cup with spiced wine. ‘He said he would seek another copy.’

Bartholomew sighed. ‘What a nasty business! And what has been gained from it? The town is in disgrace for smuggling; Edward Mortimer and Rob Thorpe are awaiting trial; I have lost my cloak and gloves; and we are stuck with Langelee — unless Julianna can come up with a plan to spirit him away. Perhaps I should have a word with her and see what we can devise.’

Matilde stood and presented him with a neatly wrapped package. ‘Edith gave me some cloth to sew this for you.’

Bartholomew looked at the warm, dark cloak with surprised pleasure, but then tried to pass it back.

‘I cannot take such a fine thing from you,’ he said reluctantly.

Her face fell. ‘Why not? Can you not accept a gift from a friend?’

‘That is not what I meant,’ said Bartholomew quickly when he saw he had offended her. ‘I am not good at looking after clothes — you heard what happened to the cloak Paul lent me. I would be afraid to wear it lest I damaged it.’

She smiled. ‘If you tear it, you will just have to come to me to have it mended. And at least it is long enough to hide that dreadful red patch on your leggings.’

Later, as they walked down the High Street on their way back to Michaelhouse, Michael poked Bartholomew in the ribs.

‘She likes you,’ he said.

‘She likes you, too,’ replied Bartholomew.

Michael shook his head impatiently. ‘You know what I mean.’

‘Michael, she is a prostitute,’ said Bartholomew quietly. ‘There could be no future in such a relationship. An occasional indiscretion might be overlooked, but a longstanding affair with one will do more than raise a few scholarly eyebrows.’

‘Where is your evidence of her harlotry recently?’ asked Michael. ‘She is said to be particular in her customers, but I have discovered no one who has secured her favours for a long time now. Edith believes Matilde allows the rumours to persist because she finds them amusing, but that there is no truth in them any longer.’

‘But what about all the other prostitutes she mingles with?’ asked Bartholomew. ‘How would she know them if she were not in the same business?’

‘I imagine they come to her for advice,’ said Michael. ‘They trust her: she is a sensible woman. My grandmother has a great respect for her. You might do a lot worse, Matt.’

Bartholomew stopped and looked back up the road to Matilde’s small house. On the upper floor, lamplight gleamed yellow through the shutters before it was doused. He turned away and walked back to Michaelhouse.

As the days passed, the memories of the unpleasant events with Harling and his smuggling empire began to fade in Bartholomew’s mind. He immersed himself in his teaching, determined that his students would pass their next disputations — even Deynman, if that were humanly possible. He taught each morning, visited his patients in the afternoons, while evenings were taken up with writing his treatise on fevers by the light of some cheap candles John Runham sold him — probably the remnants of his brush with the smuggling trade.

The mild weather ended abruptly and winter staked its claim with a vengeance. The river froze, and children made skates from sheep leg-bones to skid across a surface that was pitted and uneven from the rubbish that had been trapped in the ice. And then the snow came — tearing blizzards that turned the countryside from brown to white in the course of a day, and buried whole houses beneath drifts so deep that they were like rolling white hills. The country was paying dearly for the mild start to the year.

One afternoon, as the light was beginning to fade and cosy glows could be seen through the gaps in the window shutters of the houses in the High Street, Bartholomew finished setting the broken arm of an old man — who had been sufficiently drunk to believe he could still skate like a child across the King’s Ditch — and made his way back towards the College. The smells of stews and baking bread followed him as he walked, because the frigid temperatures suppressed the stench of sewage and rotting rubbish that usually pervaded the town.

The first flurry of snow, heralding yet another storm, tickled his face, and he drew his cloak more tightly around him, grateful to Edith and Matilde for their thoughtfulness. The wind stung his ears and blew his hood back, making his eyes water. He hurried down St Michael’s Lane, into Foul Lane and ducked through the wicket-gate into Michaelhouse. As he strode across the yard to his room, he was intercepted by Cynric, who gave him a message that Thomas Deschalers was ill and needed to see him immediately.

Since Philius’s death Bartholomew had received a number of calls from the wealthy merchants who had been under the care of the Franciscan physician. He anticipated, with some relief, that they would not retain his services for long when they realised he had no time for malingerers and refused to leech his patients on demand or indulge them in time-consuming astrological consultations.

By the time he arrived at Deschaler’s house, it was snowing in earnest, great penny-sized flakes that drifted into his eyes and mouth as he walked, and that promised to settle and cover once again the filthy slush that lay thick across the town’s streets. Shivering, he knocked on the door, and waited a long time before it was opened the merest crack.

‘There you are!’ said Julianna, opening the door a little further. ‘I sent for you ages ago. Where have you been? I might have died waiting for you!’

‘I have other patients to attend,’ said Bartholomew shortly. ‘And you do not appear to be at death’s door to me.’

‘How would you know that?’ she demanded. ‘You have not consulted my stars. Anyway, do not keep me out here in the cold with your idle chatter. Come in before you let all the heat escape.’