Susanna GREGORY - Murder by the Book

‘You had better work up a thirst, then,’ said Bartholomew coolly, ‘because the riverfolk would never kill. Or smuggle.’

Holm sneered. ‘Shall we have a bet on it? Five marks?’

It was a colossal sum, and one Bartholomew did not have, but he found himself shaking hands to seal the wager anyway. He sincerely hoped his faith was not misplaced, especially in Isnard, who was hardly a model citizen.

‘I shall not need your money when I marry Julitta, because she comes with a big dowry,’ said Holm smugly. ‘But I am not averse to having more. Did I tell you how I met her? I was visiting my friend Walkelate in Newe Inn, admiring the progress he had made on his library, when Julitta and her father arrived. She fell in love the moment she saw me, being a woman of impeccable taste.’

‘I see.’ Bartholomew was not sure what else to say in the face of such unabashed conceit. ‘Have you been betrothed long?’

‘Ever since I realised how wealthy her father is,’ replied Holm with a smirk. ‘I rejected her at first, because I wanted to snare someone more worthy of me. But I made enquiries about Dunning’s assets, and decided she would do. The family is not particularly venerable, but it suits my purposes.’

‘And what about your family?’ Bartholomew was the last man to denigrate surgeons, but it was a lowly profession, and Julitta would certainly be his social superior.

‘I am related to the Holms of Norfolk,’ replied Holm haughtily. ‘We are a highly respected clan already, but I still intend to make the name known throughout the civilised world.’

‘How?’ asked Bartholomew, forbearing to say that he had never heard of the Holms of Norfolk.

‘I have not decided yet, although it will be easier when I have a wealthy wife. I shall be able to leave the cautery to you and concentrate on more interesting matters. Perhaps I shall invent a special paste for whitening teeth or develop a pill for gout.’

Bartholomew felt his spirits sink. He should have known that having a surgeon in Cambridge was too good to be true, even if it was one with mediocre skills.

‘The lamp fuel represents my best chance of fame, though,’ Holm went on. ‘And fortune, because whoever discovers it will be fabulously rich – everyone will want to buy some. I shall conduct my own experiments when I am married and can afford to buy the ingredients myself. Then there will be no need to share the profits with the rest of you.’

Bartholomew laughed. ‘I imagine our colleagues will have something to say about that.’

‘They can say what they like: I shall not give them a penny.’ Holm was silent for a while, and so was Bartholomew, stunned by the bald promise of future betrayal. Eventually, the surgeon spoke again. ‘It is a pity about Vale. He was the best of all the physicians, and I wish it had been Gyseburne, Rougham or Meryfeld who had died. Or you, for that matter.’

Once again, Bartholomew could think of no reply to such a remark. He found himself beginning to dislike the man.

Suddenly, Holm smiled. ‘I love the tales of when you and the others first started experimenting with lamp fuel – when you almost blew yourselves up.’

Bartholomew winced. ‘We produced a substance that was explosive, very sticky and impossible to extinguish once it was alight. In the end, we had to bury it, to deprive it of air.’

‘Interesting,’ mused Holm. ‘Tell me more.’

‘None of us can remember what went in it – we had been to a wake, and had imbibed too liberally of our host’s claret. But thank God our minds are blank, because the stuff was akin to the “wildfire” mentioned in the battle accounts of the ancients, and–’

‘Wildfire is not used these days,’ interrupted Holm. ‘I was at the Battle of Poitiers, and while I heard plenty of bombards and ribauldequins being deployed, there was no wildfire.’

Bartholomew had been at Poitiers, too, because bad timing had put him there during his quest to find Matilde. It had been a dreadful experience, and still haunted his dreams. Thus he disliked discussing it, and was disinclined even to address the curious coincidence that Holm should have been on the field, too.

‘That is because wildfire is banned,’ he explained instead. ‘The Second Lateran Council declared it “too murderous” a weapon for war.’

Holm guffawed his disbelief. ‘But war is murderous! And I would have used it, had I had some in my arsenal at Poitiers. I did not enjoy being on the losing side.’

Bartholomew blinked, not sure he had understood correctly. ‘You fought for the French ?’

Holm nodded blithely. ‘I thought a military campaign would be a good way to gain experience of wounds. Of course, most of the injuries were too severe to bother with, but I was pleased with an ear I managed to sew back on. I would have preferred to stay with the English army, of course, but the French offered me a lot more money.’

‘Oh,’ said Bartholomew, feeling that a larger salary should have been immaterial at such a time.

‘I understand you were there, too. Did you see the ribauldequins at work? Unfortunately, they produced so much smoke that I could not really tell how effective they were.’

‘I do not believe any of their missiles found a target. However, there were injuries galore when one exploded – all to its own crew.’ Bartholomew spoke quietly. The wounds had been horrific, even to a man inured to such sights, and he did not want to dwell on them so late at night. ‘They are evil devices, and I cannot imagine what was in the mind of whoever invented them.’

‘On the contrary,’ argued Holm, ‘their presence on the battlefield may mean an early capitulation by an enemy, thus saving lives. If the French had owned a few, loaded with some of that unquenchable substance you created, there would never have been a battle at Poitiers, because the Prince of Wales would have surrendered.’

‘I do not want to discuss this,’ said Bartholomew, the very notion of a ribauldequin that hurled wildfire bringing him out in a cold sweat. ‘It will give me nightmares.’

‘I wish you could recall how you made it,’ said Holm wistfully. ‘The formula would be worth a fortune to a military commander.’

‘No doubt,’ said Bartholomew. ‘But even if we could remember, we are physicians. We save lives: we do not invent ways to cut them short.’

‘You were not drunk that night,’ pressed Holm. ‘I wager you know what went in that pot.’

‘It was dark,’ said Bartholomew curtly. ‘And Rougham, Gyseburne and Meryfeld were hurling ingredients around without bothering to read the labels. Even if I could recall what was added, I would have no idea how much was used. The experiment is unrepeatable – and I thank God for it.’

Bartholomew parted from Holm near All-Saints-in-the-Jewry. He bade the surgeon goodnight, then paused for a moment outside the house in which Matilde had lived, hoping that thoughts of her would dispel the bad memories his conversation with Holm had awakened. They did, yet failed to make him any happier. He still loved her with a passion that was painful, and he wondered whether he was destined to feel the pangs of loss for the rest of his life.

To take his mind off it, he pondered the bodies that had been found in Newe Inn’s pond. Their discovery meant that there had been seven suspicious deaths in Cambridge, counting the three that Tulyet was investigating. Were they connected? He was inclined to believe not, partly because of what Michael had said – that Vale and the others were unlikely to have stumbled across smugglers in Newe Inn’s garden – but mostly because they had not had their throats cut.

So had the four scholars been together when they had died, or had someone brought their corpses to the pond to hide them? And if the former, what had they been doing? They had all liked experimenting – the brothers with paper, Vale with his universal cure-all, and Northwood with any kind of alchemy – but how could that be relevant? With a sigh, Bartholomew supposed that some of his questions might be answered when he examined them properly the following day.