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  An Order for Death

  ( Хроники Мэттью Бартоломью - 7 )

  Susanna GREGORY

  The Seventh Chronicle of Matthew Bartholomew.

  Cambridge, March 1354, and the cause of murder is once more on the minds of physician Matthew Bartholomew and his colleague Brother Michael.

  It is a time of division and denomination at the great University. The Carmelites and the Dominicans are at theological loggerheads, so much so that the more fanatical members are willing to swap rational judgement for a deadlier form of debate. And no sooner is Carmelite friar Faricius found stabbed than a Junior Proctor is found hanging from the walls of the Dominican Friary.

  What was Faricius doing out when he had not been given permission to wander? How are the nuns at the nearby convent of St Radegund involved? And who is brokering trouble between Cambridge and its rival University at Oxford? The longer their enquiries go on, the more Bartholomew and Michael realise that the murders are less to do with high-minded academic principles, and more to do with far baser instincts.

  Susanna Gregory

  AN ORDER FOR DEATH

  2001

  To Isobel Hopegood

  Prologue

  Cambridge, Christmas Eve 1353

  YULETIDE WAS ALWAYS A MAGICAL TIME OF YEAR FOR Beadle Meadowman. He liked the crisp chill of winter evenings and the sharp scent of burning logs and of rich stews bubbling over fires in a hundred hearths. He loved the atmosphere of anticipation and excitement as the townsfolk streamed from their houses to attend the high mass in St Mary’s Church at midnight, and he adored the candlelit naves and the heady smell of incense as it drifted from the chancel in a white, smoky pall.

  He was in a happy mood as he strolled along Milne Street, holding his night lamp high so that he would not stumble in a pothole or trip over the mounds of rubbish that had been dumped by the people whose houses lined the road. A distant part of his mind registered that the gutters were blocked again, and that an evil yellow-brown gout of muck formed a fetid barrier that stretched from one side of the street to the other. He jumped across it, his mind fixed on the festivities that would begin when the bells chimed to announce that it was midnight.

  He barely noticed the stench of rotting vegetable parings that were slippery with mould, or the odorous tang of animal dung and rotting straw that clogged the air. Instead, he heard the voices of excited children and saw lights gleaming from under the doors of homes that would usually be in darkness, and longed for his evening patrol to finish, so that he could join his family for the Christmas night celebrations. His sister had made a huge plum cake, which would be eaten with slices of the creamy yellow cheese he had bought earlier that day, and there would be spiced wine to wash it down. And then there would be games – perhaps even a little dicing if the parish priest turned a blind eye – and the singing of ancient songs around the fire.

  He reached the high walls of the Carmelite Friary and gave the handle on the gate a good rattle to ensure it was locked. Satisfied that all was in order, he walked to where Milne Street ended at Small Bridges Street and watched the glassy black waters of the King’s Ditch for a moment. Only a few weeks before, a student-friar called Brother Andrew had thrown himself into the King’s Ditch in a fit of depression, and Meadowman seldom passed the spot where the body had been found without thinking about him.

  In the bushes at one side of the road, a man in a dark cloak waited until Meadowman had gone, and then emerged to walk purposefully towards the friary. He tapped softly on the gate, and was admitted at once by someone who owed him a favour. The same person had also been persuaded to leave inner doors unlocked and had arranged for the porter to be enjoying an illicit cup of Christmas ale in the kitchen. Without wasting time on pleasantries, the man in the dark cloak pushed past his unwilling accomplice and headed across the courtyard towards the chapel. Inside, a flight of steps led to a comfortable chamber on the upper floor, and at the far end of this was a tiny room with a heavily barred door and no windows. With a set of keys taken from the Chancellor’s office in St Mary’s Church earlier that day, the intruder opened the door and slipped inside.

  Not many people knew that the University kept copies of its most valuable documents and deeds, and fewer still knew that these were stored in the large iron-bound box that stood in the locked room at the Carmelite Friary. Three years before, someone had broken into St Mary’s Church and ransacked the University’s main chest, which held its original deeds; since then the Chancellor and his clerks had been even more careful to ensure that the Carmelites received duplicates of everything. Aware that the bulging chest in St Mary’s was an obvious target for thieves, the Chancellor had even taken to storing the odd silver plate and handful of gold at the friary, too. His proctors approved wholeheartedly of his precautions.

  The man in the dark cloak knelt next to the chest in the Carmelite strong-room and lit a candle. The locks were the best that money could buy and would have been difficult to force, but he had the Chancellor’s keys, and the well-oiled metal clasps snapped open instantly. Inside were neatly stacked rolls of parchment, bundles of letters tied with twine, and several priceless books. He sorted through them quickly, taking what he wanted and discarding the rest. Underneath the deeds and scrolls was a small box, the inside of which lit with the bright gleam of gold and silver when it was opened. The intruder glanced briefly at it, then flipped the lid closed and began packing his acquisitions into a small sack; he had not come for the University’s treasure, but for something with a far greater value than mere coins.

  He left the way he had entered, watchful for beadles or the Sheriff’s soldiers, who would be suspicious of someone carrying a heavy bag around the town at the witching hour. But it was almost Christmas Day, and, for that night at least, most of the patrols were more interested in finishing their duties than in scouring the town for law-breakers.

  Meanwhile, Beadle Meadowman had continued his rounds, and had passed through the Trumpington Gate in order to check the Hall of Valence Marie. Opposite was the dark mass of Peterhouse, while further up the road were the Priory of St Gilbert of Sempringham and the gleaming lights of the King’s Head tavern. Meadowman had been called to the King’s Head earlier that night, when a fellow beadle named Rob Smyth, full of the spirit of approaching Christmas, had drunk more than was wise. Smyth had picked a fight with a surly blacksmith, and Meadowman had been obliged to calm his colleague down and resettle him in a corner with another jug of ale.

  Meadowman cocked his head and listened, but although drunken voices could be heard on the still night air, the patrons of the King’s Head sounded more celebratory than antagonistic, and he saw no need to ensure that Smyth was behaving himself. He turned to cross the street. Ditches ran along each side of the Trumpington road, intended to prevent it from flooding, although in reality, the Gilbertine friars and the scholars of Valence Marie and Peterhouse tended to block them by filling them with rubbish, and they were really just a series of fetid, stagnant puddles. Storms sometimes washed them clean, but it had been a long time since there had been a serious downpour, and they were more choked than usual.

  A dark shadow on the ground outside Peterhouse caught Meadowman’s eye. He went to inspect it, and was vaguely amused to see a man lying full length on his front, arms flung out above his head, as though he had caught his foot in a pothole and had fallen flat on his face. As he knelt, Meadowman was not at all surprised to detect the powerful, warm scent of ale. One of the patrons of the King’s Head had apparently had too much to drink, stumbled on the uneven road surface, and then gone to sleep where he had dropped. Meadowman recognised the greasy brown hood of Rob Smyth and, shaking his head in tolerant res
ignation, he turned his colleague over.

  Water dripped from Smyth’s face, drenching the fringe of fair hair that poked from under his hood and trickling down the sides of his face. Meadowman gazed at the blue features and dead staring eyes in sudden shock. Then he slowly reached out a hand to the puddle in which Smyth had been lying. It was shallow, no deeper than the length of his little finger. Meadowman realised that Smyth had drowned because he had been too drunk to lift his face away from the suffocating water when he had stumbled.

  At Smyth’s side was a pouch containing a letter. Meadowman frowned in puzzlement, wondering why his colleague should be carrying a document when he, like Meadowman, could not read. It was written on new parchment, not on old stuff that had been scraped clean and then treated with chalk, so Meadowman supposed it was important. He pushed it in his own scrip to hand to the proctors later, then covered Smyth’s body with his cloak. He stood, and began to walk back to the town, where he would fetch more beadles to carry the corpse to the nearest church, and where he would break the shocking news to Smyth’s family. As he went, he reflected grimly that some people would not be celebrating a joyous Christmas that night.

  The fields east of Cambridge, a few days later

  A sharp wind gusted across the flat land that surrounded the Benedictine convent of St Radegund, rustling the dead leaves on the trees and hissing through the long reeds that grew near the river. The friar shivered, and glanced up at the sky. It was an indescribably deep black, and was splattered with thousands of tiny lights. The more the friar gazed at them, the more stars he could see, glittering and flickering and remote. He pulled his cloak tightly around him. Clear skies were very pretty, but they heralded a cold night, and already he could feel a frost beginning to form on the ground underfoot.

  Against the chilly darkness of the night, the lights from St Radegund’s Convent formed a welcoming glow. The friar could smell wood-smoke from the fires that warmed the solar and dormitory, and could hear the distant voices of the nuns on the breeze as they finished reciting the office of compline and readied themselves for bed.

  And then the others began to arrive. They came singly and in pairs, glancing around them nervously, although the friar could not tell whether their unease came from the fact that robbers frequented the roads outside Cambridge, or whether they knew that it was not seemly to be seen lurking outside a convent of Benedictine nuns at that hour of the night. He watched them knock softly on the gate, which opened almost immediately to let them inside, and then went to join them when he was sure they were all present.

  The Prioress had made her own chamber available to the powerful men who had left their cosy firesides to attend the nocturnal meeting. It was a pleasant room, filled with golden light from a generous fire, and its white walls and flagstone floors were tastefully decorated with tapestries and rugs. The friar was not the only man to appreciate the heat from the hearth or to welcome the warmth of a goblet of mulled wine in his cold hands.

  The nuns saw their guests comfortably settled, and then started to withdraw, leaving the men to their business. The Prioress and her Sacristan were commendably discreet, not looking too hard or too long at any of the men, and giving the comforting impression that no one would ever learn about the meeting from them. However, a young novice, whom the friar knew was called Tysilia, was a different matter. Her dark eyes took in the scene with undisguised curiosity, and she settled herself on one of the benches that ran along the wall, as if she imagined she would be allowed to remain to witness what was about to take place.

  ‘Come, Tysilia,’ ordered the Prioress, pausing at the door when she saw what her charge had done. ‘What is discussed here tonight has nothing to do with us.’

  Tysilia regarded her superior with innocent surprise. ‘But these good gentlemen came here to visit us, Reverend Mother. It would be rude to abandon them.’

  The friar saw the Prioress stifle a sigh of annoyance. ‘We will tend to them later, if they have need of our company. But for the time being, they wish to be left alone.’

  ‘With each other?’ asked Tysilia doubtfully. Looking around at the eccentric collection of scholars and clerics, the friar could see her point. ‘Why?’

  ‘That is none of our affair,’ said the Prioress sharply. She strode across the room to take the awkward novice by the arm. ‘And it is time we were in our beds.’

  She bundled Tysilia from the room, while the Sacristan gave the assembled scholars an apologetic smile. It did little to alleviate the uneasy atmosphere.

  ‘I hope she can be trusted not to tell anyone what she has seen tonight,’ said the man who had called the meeting, anxiety written clear on his pallid face. ‘You promised me absolute discretion.’

  The Sacristan nodded reassuringly. ‘Do not worry about Tysilia. She will mention this meeting to no one.’

  ‘Tysilia,’ mused one of the others thoughtfully. ‘That is the name of the novice who is said to have driven that Carmelite student-friar – Brother Andrew – to his death.’

  ‘That is hardly what happened,’ said the Sacristan brusquely. ‘It is not our fault that your students fall in love with us, then cast themselves into the King’s Ditch when they realise that they cannot have what they crave.’

  ‘It seemed to me that Tysilia knew exactly what she was doing,’ said the friar, entering the conversation. He disliked Tysilia intensely, and felt, like many University masters, that pretty nuns should be kept well away from the hot-blooded young men who flocked to the town to study. ‘Her sly seduction of him was quite deliberate.’

  ‘You are wrong,’ said the Sacristan firmly. ‘Poor Tysilia is cursed with a slow mind. She does not have the wits to do anything sly.’

  ‘I do not like the sound of this,’ said a scholar who was wearing a thick grey cloak. ‘If she is so simple, then how do we know she can be trusted not to tell people what she saw here tonight?’

  ‘Her memory is poor,’ said the Sacristan, attempting to curb her irritation at the accusations and sound reassuring. ‘By tomorrow, she will have forgotten all about you.’

  ‘That is probably true,’ said the man who had called the meeting. ‘She certainly barely recalls me from one visit to the next.’ He nodded a dismissal to the Sacristan, who favoured him with a curt bow of the head and left, closing the door behind her.

  ‘We did not come here to talk about weak-witted novices,’ said the grey-cloaked scholar. ‘We came to discuss other matters.’

  Despite the warmth of the room, several men had kept their faces hidden in the shadows of their hoods, as if they imagined they might conceal their identities. The friar shook his head in wry amusement: Cambridge was small, and men of influence and standing in the University could not fail to know each other; they could no more make themselves anonymous in the Prioress’s small room than they could anywhere else in the town. The friar knew all their names, the religious Order to which they belonged, and in some cases, even their family histories and details of their private lives.

  The man who had called the meeting cleared his throat nervously. ‘Thank you for coming, gentlemen. I am sorry to draw you from your friaries, Colleges and hostels at such an hour, but I think we all agree that it is better no one sees us gathering together if we are to be effective.’

  There was a rumble of agreement. ‘There is altogether too much plotting and treachery in the University these days,’ said the grey-cloaked scholar disapprovingly. ‘God forbid that anyone should accuse us of it.’

  The friar forced himself not to smile. What did the man imagine he was doing? Secret meetings with the heads of other religious Orders, to discuss the kind of issues they all had in mind when most honest folk were in bed, sounded like plotting to the friar.

  An elderly man finished his wine and went to pour himself more, glancing around him as he did so. ‘I do not imagine Prioress Martyn has allowed us the use of this chamber out of the goodness of her heart. Who is paying for her hospitality?’

  The man in ch
arge grinned, and held a gold coin between his finger and thumb, so that everyone could see it. ‘I happened to be in the Market Square a few weeks ago,’ he said enigmatically.

  The others nodded their understanding, some exchanging smiles of genuine amusement as they recalled the incident when half the town had profited from an unexpected spillage of treasure in the stinking mud near the fish stalls.

  ‘I saw it all,’ said the old man bitterly. ‘But I was not nimble enough on my feet to take advantage of the situation.’

  The scholar in grey laughed from the depths of his hood. ‘I wish I had been there! It is not that I have any special desire to take part in undignified mêlées and grab myself a handful of gold – although I confess I would not have declined the opportunity had it arisen – but I would like to have seen the effigy of Master Wilson of Michaelhouse dropped in the Market Square muck by irate peasants.’

  ‘Wilson was an odious fellow,’ agreed the old man. ‘And his cousin Runham was no better. It was satisfying to see Wilson’s effigy and Runham’s corpse so roughly manhandled by the townsfolk. And it was even more gratifying to see the wealth that pair had accumulated through their dishonest dealings pour into the filth of the town’s streets.’

  ‘Not as gratifying as it was to seize some of it,’ said the man in charge. ‘And now I propose to put it to good use. It will pay for meetings such as this, so that we will all benefit from it.’

  ‘Get on with it, then,’ said the old man, refilling his cup from the wine jug yet again. ‘I have other business to attend tonight.’

  ‘I brought you here to discuss a murder,’ said the man in charge. He gazed at each one of them, his eyes sombre. ‘The murder of one of the University’s highest officials.’