Susanna Gregory: An Unholy Alliance

Frances gave a short bark of laughter. 'He cannot,' she said, and would elaborate no further. Bartholomew assumed the father must already be married.

'Do you have money?' he asked. Frances nodded, hope flaring in her eyes, and she showed him a heavy purse.

'You have relatives in Lincoln. Tell your father you are going to stay with them. If you can trust them, have the baby there. If not, there are convents that will help you.'

The hope in Frances's eyes faded. 'You will not help?' she said.

Bartholomew swallowed. 'Think about going away to have the child. Come to talk to me again tomorrow, but do not go to Mistress Woodman for a solution.'

Frances sighed heavily, and turned to leave. "I will give it thought,' she said, 'and I will come tomorrow. But my mind is already made up.'

As she left, Agatha sank down in her chair. 'Poor child,' she said. 'One rash act will cost her everything, while her paramour lives on to sully another.'

'That is not fair, Agatha,' said Bartholomew. 'Frances is twenty-four years old, and has been married. She is no green maiden taken unawares.'

'But the outcome is the same,' growled Agatha. 'The woman suffers, and may even die, while the man merely selects another for his attentions. Perhaps I will tell her how to rid herself of the baby.'

'How?' demanded Bartholomew disbelievingly. Agatha never ceased to amaze him with her assertions.

'You take two parts of wormwood to one part of crushed snails, add a generous pinch of red arsenic, and grind it into a poultice. You then insert the paste into the private regions, and the babe will sicken and die.'

'And so might the mother,' said Bartholomew, cringing.

'Where did you learn such a dangerous recipe?'

Agatha grinned suddenly and tapped the side of her nose. Bartholomew wondered whether she might have made it up, but the use of wormwood was common to effect cures of women' s ailments, and crushed snails were also popular. The thought of medicines reminded him that he was supposed to be teaching. Thanking Agatha for her help, he walked quickly back through the kitchen, and up the wide spiral staircase that led to the hall on the upper floor. Father William, the dour Franciscan teacher of theology, was holding forth to a group of six or seven scholars on the doctrine of original sin, his voice booming through the hall to the distraction of the other Fellows who were also trying to teach there. Piers Hesselwell, Michaelhouse's Fellow of Law, was struggling valiantly to explain the basic principles of Gratian's Decretum to ten restless undergraduates, while Roger Alcote, probably tired of competing with William's voice, had ordered one of his scholars to read Aristotle's Rhetoric to his own class. As Bartholomew passed him on his way to the conclave at the far end of the hall, Alcote beckoned him over.

'What is the news?' he asked. 'Are these rumours true about dead friars in the chest?'

Bartholomew nodded, and tried to leave, reluctant to engage in gossip with the Senior Fellow. He was a tiny, bitter man who fussed like a hen and had a fanatical dislike of women that Bartholomew thought was abnormal.

'What House?' Alcote asked.

'Dominican,' answered Bartholomew, guessing what was coming next.

Alcote shot him a triumphant look. 'Dominican! A mendicant!' Bartholomew gave him a look of reproval.

If the Fellows harboured such unyielding attitudes, what hope was there that the students would ever forget their differences and learn to study in peace?

Alcote had recently taken major orders with the Cluniacs at Thetford, and had immediately engaged upon a bitter war of attrition with the mendicant Franciscans. Michaelhouse had been relatively free from inter-Order disputes until then; Brother Michael, the one Benedictine, picked no quarrel with the strong Franciscan contingent there, while those who had taken minor orders, like Bartholomew, had no quarrel with anyone.

Most scholars at the University took religious orders.

This meant that they came under the jurisdiction of Church, rather than secular, law. This division between scholars and townspeople was yet another bone of contention, for secular law was notoriously harsher than Canon law: if Alcote or Bartholomew stole a sheep, they would be fined; if a townsman stole a sheep, he was likely to be hanged. Being in minor orders meant that Bartholomew had certain duties to perform, such as taking church services, but the protection it offered was indisputable. Other scholars, like William, Michael, and now Alcote, had taken major orders, which forbade marriage and relations with women.

Bartholomew left Alcote to his nasty musing, and made for the conclave. It was a pleasant room in the summer, when the light from the wide arched windows flooded in.

The windows had no glass, and so a cool breeze wafted through them, tinged with the unmistakable aroma of river. The coolness was welcome in the summer, but in the winter, when the shutters had to be kept firmly closed against the weather, the conclave was dark and cold. The lime-washed walls were decorated with some fine wall-hangings, donated by a former student after a fire had damaged much of the hall two years before, and, at Bartholomew's insistence, there were always fresh rushes on the floor.

Bartholomew's students were engaged in a noisy dispute that he felt certain was not medical, and they quietened when he strode in. He settled himself in one of the chairs near the empty fireplace and smiled round at his students, noting which ones smiled back and which ones studiously avoided his eye because they had failed to prepare for the discussion he had planned.

Sam Gray was one of the ones looking everywhere but at his teacher. He was a young man in his early twenties with a shock of unruly, light-brown hair. He looked tired and Bartholomew wondered what nocturnal activities he had been pursuing. He was certain they would not have had much to do with trepanation, cutting the skull open to relieve pressure on the brain, the subject of the day.

Bartholomew had been taught how to perform a number of basic operations by Ibn Ibrahim, and was considered something of an oddity in the town for knowing both surgery and medicine. He believed that medicine and surgery could complement each other, and wanted his students to have knowledge of both, despite the fact that most physicians looked down on surgical techniques as the responsibilities of barbers.

Another problem he faced was that those students who had taken major orders were forbidden to practise incision and cautery by an edict passed by the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215.

'What is trepanation?' he asked. He had described the operation the previous term, but was curious to know who had remembered and who had not.

There was a rustle in the room as some students shuffled their feet, and one or two hands went up.

Bartholomew noted that the first belonged to Thomas Bulbeck, who was his brightest student.

'Master Gray?' Bartholomew asked maliciously, knowing that Gray would not have the faintest idea what trepanation was because he had missed the previous lecture.

Gray looked startled. 'Trepidation,' he began, his usual confident manner asserting itself quickly, 'is a morbid fear of having your head sawed off.'

Bartholomew fought down the urge to laugh. If these young men were to be successful in their disputations, there was no room for levity. He saw one or two of the students nodding sagely, and marvelled at Gray's abilities to make the most outrageous claims with such conviction.

Secretly, he envied the skill: such brazen self-assurance in certain situations might give a patient the encouragement needed to recover. Bartholomew was a poor liar, and his Arab master had often criticised him for not telling a patient what he wanted to hear when it might make the difference between life and death.