Susanna GREGORY - A Poisonous Plot

‘No, but someone will be if you brandish that thing around,’ said Michael in alarm. ‘What are you going to do?’

Langelee used it to prick the back of Bartholomew’s hand, and his eyebrows shot up in astonishment when the only response was a twitch. ‘I have never known that not to work before! I used to do it all the time when I was in the Archbishop of York’s employ. Of course, I usually applied my blade to the throat …’

‘No!’ snapped Michael, as the Master leaned down purposefully. He grabbed a bowl of water and splattered some on the physician’s face. Bartholomew sat up blinking.

‘Rougham gave me a soporific,’ he said defensively, surmising that it may have required some effort to wake him. He struggled to clear his muddy wits, then frowned when he saw the bead of blood on his hand and the blade that Langelee was putting away. ‘Did you stab me?’

‘No, I nicked you. You barely moved, so I should have jabbed harder.’

Bartholomew eyed him coolly. ‘You will never win wealthy benefactors if word gets out that you spear your Fellows while they sleep.’

‘On the contrary, I will probably win their approbation. They will all wish they had the courage to do the same to lazy minions. Besides, it was only a poke with a letter-opener.’

‘So that explains why I did not feel it,’ muttered Bartholomew, well aware of what the Master had done to what had once been an innocent little implement. ‘Blunt blades always hurt more than sharp ones.’

He rose and dressed quickly when the bell sounded again, and had to run to catch up with the procession, much to the delight of his students. He barely heard William’s Mass, overcome as he was with the frequent and annoying urge to yawn. As they walked home, Michael confessed that Nigellus’s arrest had done nothing to calm troubled waters.

‘Meanwhile, Anne is refusing to drop her case against Segeforde’s estate, and King’s Hall is just as stubborn about Frenge and the brewery.’

‘What about the Austins?’ asked Bartholomew, trying hard to concentrate. ‘Do they still aim to sue Hakeney for snatching Robert’s cross?’

Michael nodded. ‘I did suggest to Dick Tulyet that we put an end to the nonsense by arresting Hakeney for robbery, but Dick insists that the fellow is not in his right wits, and thinks putting him in custody would ignite a major riot. Unfortunately – as it galls me to see Hakeney strutting free after so brazen a crime – I suspect he is right.’

‘The Austins suing a townsman might ignite a major riot, too.’

‘Yes, but not immediately, and who knows what Dick and I might be able to achieve for the cause of peace in the interim?’

‘Stephen,’ said Bartholomew bitterly. ‘I wager anything you like that it was he who encouraged the other priors to bully Joliet into suing Hakeney – and all so he could win himself another client.’

‘Of course it was Stephen,’ growled Michael. ‘And I shall visit him first thing this morning, and demand to know why he is so eager to see his town in flames.’

They ate a hasty breakfast in the hall, listening to William grumble about the fact that Wauter had selfishly abandoned him the previous day, leaving him to supervise the entire College alone.

‘He just disappeared! He was there one moment and gone the next, without so much as a word of explanation. And he has not been seen since.’

‘Where has he gone?’ asked Bartholomew. It was curious behaviour for a Fellow, especially one who was new and so still needed to win the respect of his colleagues.

‘I have no idea, but we should have known better than to recruit an Austin,’ spat William. ‘They are all the same: lazy and unreliable.’

‘That is untrue, Father,’ objected Clippesby, who had a toad on the table and was trying to feed it pieces of meat. ‘Prior Joliet and Almoner Robert have worked extremely hard on our behalf, and my students say their lecture yesterday was a masterpiece.’

‘I would not know,’ said William acidly. ‘I did not hear any of it because I was trying to control a lot of unruly medics. Moreover, it is not the first time that Wauter has played truant. He vanished on All Souls’ Day, too, when the rest of us clerics were frantically trying to prepare the church for our founder’s Requiem Mass.’

‘Oh, yes,’ recalled Michael. ‘He returned breathless and dishevelled, and made that odd remark about us being “perceived as having an unstained soul despite our many blemishes”. I did not know what he meant then, and I do not know now.’

‘This toad heard Kellawe say–’ began Clippesby.

‘Kellawe!’ said William in distaste. ‘My Order should never have accepted him. And now he has a licence to absolve scholars from acts of violence. It is not fair! He will only use it on men from Zachary, leaving the rest of us stained with sin.’

‘You will not be stained with sin if you commit no crimes,’ Bartholomew pointed out.

‘ This toad ,’ repeated Clippesby loudly, cutting across William’s tart response, ‘heard Kellawe say that Wauter left the town on horseback yesterday. Wauter had a fat saddlebag, and it appeared as though he intended to be gone for some time.’

‘Without asking his Master’s permission?’ demanded Langelee angrily. ‘Well, when he returns he will learn that Michaelhouse is not Zachary – we do not permit Fellows to trot off in the middle of term. What about his teaching? Ah! Here is Prior Joliet and his helpers. We shall ask them about their fellow Austin’s antics.’

‘But where would he go?’ asked Prior Joliet worriedly, when Langelee explained what had happened. His arm was in a sling – a scrap of orange material that was very bright against the sober habit of his Order. ‘He has no family, and all his friends are here.’

‘I will ask our brethren,’ offered Robert. ‘Perhaps one of them will know.’

‘Will you teach his classes?’ asked William belligerently. ‘Because I am not doing it.’

‘Of course,’ replied Joliet. ‘Robert and I shall lecture on St Augustine’s Sermones while Hamo tries to finish the mural. And finish we must, as we start work in King’s Hall next week.’

‘Your Hallow-tide celebrations did much to secure us new commissions,’ said Robert with a smile that held the hint of a gloat. ‘I hope fortune shone on you as brightly.’

‘Of course it did,’ lied Langelee, unwilling to admit that it had not.

Assuming he was no longer needed now that Nigellus was in custody – Michael was more than capable of finding the evidence needed to prove the medicus ’s crimes himself – Bartholomew informed his students that he planned to test them on Galen’s De ossibus that morning. He was irked by the relief on their faces when Michael announced that the investigation was still a long way from over, and that the physician could not return to his regular duties just yet.

‘A terrible thought struck me earlier,’ the monk confided, once it had been agreed that Robert would read the relevant passages to the medics on the understanding that they would have them verbatim by the end of the week.

‘That my students will never become physicians as long as you keep tearing me away from my teaching?’ asked Bartholomew sourly.

Michael’s expression was bleak. ‘I am serious, Matt. A lot of things are going wrong at the moment – the various lawsuits, the murders, the assault on Anne, the trouble at the dyeworks. And now Wauter has vanished.’

Bartholomew regarded him blankly. ‘I do not understand–’

‘I have assumed they are all unrelated, a random collection of nasty events. But there are so many of them, and they all do one thing: damage the relationship between town and University. In short, I think someone is orchestrating the whole lot – someone who wants the situation to explode into violence.’