Susanna Gregory: An Unholy Alliance

He walked over to her, feeling his legs turn weak from the shock, and sank down on the grass.

'Why?' he asked.

She turned a tear-stained face. 'She saw you ride off after de Belem and Janetta last night and heard Master Buckley telling the Sheriffs men that de Belem was the high priest. She thought she was safe. She said she was going to the Sheriffs house to tell him what she had seen so that she could be a witness for him. She was killed on her way there.'

Bartholomew rubbed a hand across his face and stared at the cart containing Sybilla's body. She had jumped to the same conclusions that he had done, but for her they had proved fatal. He suddenly felt sick, as the exertions of the previous night's activities caught up with him.

Matilde rested a hand on his arm. 'There was nothing you could do, Doctor. You were kind to her and I will never forget that.'

As he looked from Sybilla's body to Matilde's grieving face, Bartholomew's despair began to turn to anger. He stood slowly.

'Do you know which house belongs to Master Jonstan, the Proctor?' he asked softly.

Matilde stood with him. 'Yes. It is a two-storey house with a green door on Shoemaker Row. Why do you want to see him? He will not help you for our sakes. He was always calling us whores and bawds. Each morning, he would prop his bed-ridden mother near the window so that she could yell abuse at us as we walked past her house.'

'They did not like prostitutes?' asked Bartholomew.

He thought of when they had drunk ale with Jonstan at the Fair and he had told them his belief that the plague would return if people did not amend their sinful ways.

'Few people do,' said Matilde. 'At least not openly.

But Master Jonstan is perhaps one of our most hostile opponents.'

Bartholomew waited to hear no more. Leaving Matilde staring after him, startled, he raced across the road and made for Shoemaker Row. He ignored the shouts of Michael and Tulyet behind him and ran harder, almost falling as he collided with a cart carrying vegetables to the Fair. He leapt over the fence surrounding Holy Trinity Church and tore across the churchyard, bounding over tombstones and knocking over a pardoner selling his wares on the church steps. When he emerged in Shoemaker Row, he pulled up, shaking off the angry hands of the pardoner who had followed him.

Then he saw the house, near the lower end of the street. He set off again at a run and pounded on the door of Jonstan's house. There was no answer and the shutters were firmly closed. Bartholomew grabbed one and shook it as hard as he could, drawing the attention of several passers-by, who stopped to watch what he was doing.

'Try the back door, love,' said an elderly woman kindly. 'He never uses the front door now his mother has gone.'

Bartholomew muttered his thanks and shot around the side of the house to where a wooden gate led into a small yard. Finding the gate locked, Bartholomew stood back and gave it a solid kick that almost took it off its hinges. He heard shouting in the lane and guessed that Michael and Tulyet had followed him.

The yard was deserted so Bartholomew went to the door at the back of the house. He grabbed the handle and pushed hard with his shoulder, expecting that to be locked too, and was surprised to find himself hurtle through it into Jonstan's kitchen. The Proctor was there, sitting at the table eating some oatmeal, his injured foot propped in front of him. He looked taken aback at Bartholomew's sudden entry, his blue eyes even more saueer-like than usual.

Behind Bartholomew, Michael elbowed his way in, his large face red with exertion and his breath coming in great gasps.

'Matt has come to see to your foot,' he said, his chest heaving.

"I have not!' retorted Bartholomew. He was across the kitchen in a single stride. 'So, you could not walk to the High Street last night!' he said, seizing the front of Jonstan's tabard and wrenching him from the chair. 'And you had to kill Sybilla here, where it was not so far for you to go. You were lucky, were you not, Jonstan? Most of the prostitutes have been off the streets for the past two days, but then Sybilla appeared.' "I have no idea what you are talking about,' said Jonstan. He appealed to Michael with Tulyet behind him. 'He has gone insane!'

Bartholomew dropped Jonstan back into his chair.

'Where are your bloodstained clothes, Jonstan?' he said. He began to look around the kitchen. 'I have seen the bodies of your victims. You must have been covered in blood when you came home. What were you wearing?' He grabbed a bucket and upended its contents onto the floor, and then began to open the doors to the cupboards.

Jonstan rose unsteadily to his feet, favouring his injured ankle. 'Stop him!' he said to Tulyet. 'He cannot barge into my home and start going through my possessions!

Arrest him! Brother, he is your friend. Stop him before I decide to press charges!'

Tulyet took hold of Bartholomew's shoulder, but was shaken off angrily. Michael made a half-hearted attempt to stop his friend as he went towards the small scullery.

Jonstan limped across the floor after Bartholomew.

'Stop!' he almost screamed. 'You have no right!'

Bartholomew grabbed something and pushed it into Jonstan's face. It was a bloodstained hose. 'What is this?' he snarled.

Jonstan's face was an unhealthy colour. "I cut myself,' he said. "I was going to wash that this afternoon.'

'Show me where you cut yourself, Master Jonstan,' said Bartholomew, clenching his fists to stop them from grabbing the Proctor by the throat.

"I will do no such thing. I am a Proctor of the University and you are under my jurisdiction. Brother, take your colleague back to his College and lock him away where he can do no more harm,' said Jonstan, pushing Michael towards Bartholomew.

Bartholomew wrenched the doors open on another cupboard and rummaged inside. He held up an assortment of women's shoes. The victims Bartholomew had seen had their shoes removed so that the little circle could be painted on their feet.

'Where did you get these?' he demanded, hurling one at Jonstan.

'They belong to my mother, not that it is any of your business,' said Jonstan.

Bartholomew continued his prowling and bent to retrieve another article of clothing from where it had been hurled into a corner. He held it up so that Michael and Tulyet could see the huge dark blotches that stained Jonstan's tabard.

"I told you I cut myself,' said Jonstan. 'You go too far, Doctor. Leave my house at once!'

'Show me the cut that produced this much blood, and I will leave,' said Bartholomew.

Tulyet looked from the bloodstained tabard to Jonstan and began to move towards him. Jonstan made a sudden dive into the scullery, slamming the door closed, locking Michael and Tulyet in the kitchen. He turned to Bartholomew and brandished a knife coated thickly with clotting blood. He lunged towards Bartholomew, who countered his blow with a small stool he had grabbed.

One of the legs bounced to the floor and Bartholomew began to back away.

'Harlot-lover! 'Jonstan hissed. "I knowhowyou visit that filthy Matilde, and I know how you secreted the ditcher's daughter away, thinking to keep her from me!'

A great crash shook the kitchen door as Michael and Tulyet began to batter it down. Jonstan ignored it.

'My mother warned me about men who go with whores,' he said, limping closer to Bartholomew. 'And she told me the Death would come again as long as we did not learn from our sins and continued to allow the whores to roam.'

There was another crash from the kitchen door.

Jonstan darted forward and made a feint to his right with the knife. Bartholomew swung wildly with the stool, and remembered that Jonstan was well trained in hand-to-hand fighting. He was not a Proctor, prowling the streets at night for miscreant scholars, for nothing.