Susanna GREGORY: A Poisonous Plot

‘You are wrong, as I told you earlier. However, something odd is happening, or Robert would not have trapped us in here. Let us out and we shall work together to find the truth. Hurry!’

‘Is there another key?’ called Bartholomew urgently, after a quick inspection told him that the chapel door was rather more robust than the gate and was unlikely to fall to pieces if he charged at it. ‘Think quickly! We need your help to search the grounds.’

‘For Robert?’ asked Joliet doubtfully. ‘You think he is here?’

‘I think he may have taken Michael prisoner.’ Bartholomew’s voice cracked with tension. ‘And the Senior Proctor is desperately needed if we are to avert a riot. Please – the key!’

‘Robert has the only one.’ There was a brief pause before Joliet asked in an uncertain voice, ‘Have you seen Wauter today?’

‘No, why?’

‘Because he sent me his Martilogium to mind an hour ago, which means he is back in town. But why give us his work to look after? Do you think he has an inkling that Michaelhouse might be destroyed in these riots? But how would he know such a thing, unless …’

Bartholomew closed his eyes in despair. So Wauter was involved after all. He turned frantic attention to the lock, but he had no idea how to pick one, so it was no surprise when he failed. Dickon jabbed at it frenziedly with his sword, but met with no more success than the physician.

‘Climb through the windows, Father,’ called Bartholomew. ‘Or is there another door?’

‘Just this one,’ replied Joliet. ‘And the windows are too narrow.’

‘We will have to smash the door down,’ said Dickon, eyes gleaming. ‘With a battering ram.’

‘Then fetch one,’ snapped Joliet. ‘Quickly! I am sure your father has one at the castle.’

‘We should find Michael first,’ replied Dickon, loath to be sent on an errand that would take time and might mean missing more fun. ‘Where would Robert take him?’

Joliet ignored him. ‘Please, Matthew! Time trickles away with this jabbering. Go to the castle and fetch the battering ram. But do not ask anyone for help. It is impossible to tell friend from foe at the moment, and we do not want someone deciding that an entire convent of trapped friars would make for an interesting pyre.’

‘Which it would,’ declared Dickon gleefully. ‘And what a sight it would be!’

As Joliet and his brethren were in no immediate danger, Bartholomew thought that freeing them was far less urgent than rescuing Michael. He began to search the priory himself, Dickon at his side, but it did not take him long to ascertain that the dormitory, refectory and outbuildings were empty. He stood in the grounds, trying to quell the panicky roiling of his stomach – the fear that Michael was already dead, and that if so, nothing would stop the town from erupting into violence from which it might never recover.

‘Go back to the main entrance and waylay some soldiers,’ he told Dickon, racking his brain for other places where Robert might be. ‘I am sure they can break down the chapel door without resorting to war machines.’

‘The back gate,’ whispered Dickon, ignoring the order. ‘The one that opens on to the King’s Ditch. Robert got away with murder there once, so he will think he can do it again. That is where he will have taken the fat monk.’

He had a point, although Bartholomew was disconcerted that a child should have such a clear notion of the way killers thought. They set off towards it, although moving quietly in the pitch dark took longer than when they had been there in daylight. They reached the rear wall, and groped their way along it until they found the gate. Outside it, voices came from the direction of the pier.

‘I told you so.’ Dickon could not resist a gloat.

‘Your plan will not work, Robert,’ Michael was saying. ‘Someone will come.’

Bartholomew and Dickon inched forward. A lantern illuminated the scene. The Austins’ boat had been pushed three or four feet out into the King’s Ditch, and Michael had been made to sit on the central thwart – the seat that spanned the middle of the craft – to which he was bound securely. Morys stood in front of him, holding an axe, while Robert and two Zachary students watched from the bank. The students were large, sturdy lads armed with swords, and Bartholomew supposed he should not be surprised that the hostel was involved in Robert’s machinations.

‘They are going to hack a hole in the boat, so it will sink and drag Michael to the bottom,’ whispered Dickon, as if he imagined Bartholomew might not understand what he was seeing. ‘Clever! It will keep the corpse hidden for ages, and no one will ever know what happened to him.’

Bartholomew stared at the little tableau with a sense of helplessness. He might have managed to overwhelm Robert and Morys, but he could not defeat the students as well, and Dickon was still a child for all his vicious bluster.

‘Fetch help,’ he whispered. ‘There will be scholars in the streets. Go!’

‘How will I know if they are on our side?’ asked Dickon, not unreasonably. ‘You heard what Prior Joliet said about not trusting anyone. Moreover, they might kill me for being the Sheriff’s son. So you do it, while I stay here and watch.’

Bartholomew was halfway to the gate when he had second thoughts. It might be some time before he managed to waylay scholars who would help him, and it was clear that Morys and Robert intended to kill Michael quickly before moving on to the next part of their plan. He stopped and hurried back again. He would just have to devise a way to best four armed and cunning men using a set of childbirth forceps and an unpredictable boy.

‘I would not have stopped you from leaving, Robert,’ Michael was saying. There was a tremor in his voice: he could not swim, and had a mortal terror of drowning. ‘There was no need to destroy the town and tear the University apart.’

‘Of course there was,’ retorted Robert shortly. ‘The Colleges enjoy a comfortable existence here, and will never abandon it willingly. But after tonight, the town will be so enraged by the University’s antics that no scholar will be able to stay.’

Morys smirked. ‘It will not be long now before all our dreams are realised.’

Robert nodded to Morys, and the axe began to rise. Bartholomew braced himself to race forward, regardless of the unfavourable odds, but Michael spoke quickly to delay the inevitable. Desperately, Bartholomew tried to think of a rescue plan, but his mind was frighteningly blank, and all he could do was listen with mounting horror.

‘So you poisoned Frenge,’ Michael said. ‘A townsman killed on University property was sure to cause discord, especially one who had already invaded King’s Hall.’

‘And it did cause discord,’ said Robert smugly. ‘Although that was not why we did it. The truth is that he came to bring Father Arnold some sucura – unlike you, we guessed it came from the brewery, and I secured a good price for the stuff in return for keeping Peyn’s little secret.’

‘Which explains why Frenge sneaked across the King’s Ditch in the boat,’ surmised Michael. He glanced down. ‘This boat. You did not buy his brewery’s ale, so he could not come here openly, claiming you as customers. He was obliged to visit slyly, using the back gate …’

‘Where he overheard Morys and me discussing our plans. The fool tried to blackmail us – to raise the money he would need to buy lawyers to defend him from King’s Hall, ironically.’

‘So we agreed to pay and offered wine to seal the pact.’ Morys took up the tale. ‘Wine dosed with a toxic substance taken from the dyeworks. Unfortunately, one sip was not enough, so we had to force him to finish the rest. Then we left him here, where his corpse proved very useful in furthering our designs.’