A Wicked Deed Read online

  He made his way back to where his colleagues waited for him. Alcote moved away as he approached, holding a large pomander to his nose. It was not the first time the pomander had made its appearance on the journey: Alcote was terrified of the plague returning, and he invariably had the thing clasped to his face the moment they entered a village or a town. It was stuffed with cloves, bayleaves, wormwood and – if the students were to be believed – a little gold dust mixed with dried grasshoppers. Alcote had used it during the pestilence, and attributed his survival to its efficacy, although Bartholomew suspected that him locking himself away in his room had more to do with his escaping the sickness than the mysterious assortment of ingredients in the now-filthy pomander.

  ‘There was nothing there,’ he said in answer to his colleagues’ anxious looks.

  ‘Was the hovel full of skeletons?’ whispered Deynman fearfully. ‘Victims of the plague?’

  Bartholomew shook his head. ‘No, just some old clothes.’

  Michael looked at the skirt and shuddered, memories of the plague in Cambridge surging back to him. There were villages all over England like Barchester, where the plague had struck particularly hard, either killing every inhabitant or driving the few survivors away to seek homes elsewhere. To Michael, the deserted settlements were eerie, haunted places where, as Cynric had suggested, he imagined he might hear the cries of the dead echoing from their hastily dug graves if he listened long enough.

  ‘What was that?’ Unwin exclaimed suddenly.

  ‘What?’ asked Deynman, twisting in his saddle to look around. ‘I saw nothing.’

  ‘Something white,’ said Unwin, pointing off into the trees. ‘A massive white dog.’

  ‘Probably a stray,’ said Bartholomew, mounting his horse with an inelegance that made Michael wince. ‘There have been lots of strays since the plague.’

  ‘Strays do not live in deserted settlements,’ said William knowledgeably. ‘They live near villages and towns where there is rubbish to scavenge.’

  ‘Perhaps it buried a bone here,’ said Bartholomew without thinking.

  The others regarded him, aghast. ‘That is an unpleasant suggestion, Matt,’ said Michael eventually. ‘I thought you said there were no skeletons here. Do you really think that dead villagers were left here to rot, and to be eaten by the wild beasts of the forest?’

  ‘Come on,’ said Alcote, spurring his horse forward decisively. ‘This place has an evil air about it, and whatever secrets are here should be left well alone. The wild dog Unwin saw has gone now, and we should leave before it comes back and tries to savage us all.’

  ‘It was a horrible thing,’ said Unwin with a shudder. ‘Huge, and with a dirty white coat.’

  ‘Perhaps it was a wolf,’ said Deynman, easing his horse after Alcote. ‘My brother told me that there are wolves in this part of the country.’

  ‘Listen,’ said Michael softly, as the others rode away. ‘It is completely silent here. The birds are not singing, and even the wind has dropped, so that the trees are as still as stones. It is almost as if the souls of the dead are walking here, inhabiting these houses and drifting along these paths.’

  No one heard him, and Michael found himself alone in the main street. Not wanting to be left too far behind, he urged his horse into a trot, so that he could ride next to Bartholomew.

  ‘Are you ill?’ Bartholomew asked, noting the monk’s pale face in concern.

  Michael shook his head. ‘These eerie Death villages unnerve me, Matt. This is the fourth we have seen since we left Cambridge.’

  ‘You sound like Cynric,’ said Bartholomew, surprised by the monk’s uncharacteristic sensitivity. ‘When you consider how many people died of the plague, it is no wonder that there are so many abandoned settlements. But that is no reason to give your imagination free rein.’

  ‘There speaks the man of science,’ said Michael. ‘Always with a practical explanation to offer.’

  ‘Better a practical explanation than believing all that rubbish about tormented souls,’ said Bartholomew. ‘But the plague has gone now, and we should look forward not back.’

  ‘But it has not gone, Matt!’ said Michael with sudden vehemence. ‘There are abandoned hamlets everywhere; there is livestock still unattended and roaming wild; there are disused churches wherever you look, because even if there are congregations, there are too few priests alive to serve them. And people talk about it all the time – either as we are doing now, or just as a reference point – “before the Death” or “after the Death”. It is here with us now, just as much as when it was killing us with its deadly fingers.’

  Bartholomew could think of nothing to say, suspecting the monk was right, but unwilling to admit that the most devastating and terrifying episode in their lives still had the power to affect them so deeply. They rode in silence. Michael’s bad temper had become gloom, while Bartholomew thought about the friends and colleagues he had lost to the Death. Then he recalled the people he had met since, particularly the beautiful prostitute, Matilde. He glanced behind him to make sure the students could not hear.

  ‘The Master did not really send me to Suffolk because of Matilde, did he? I can assure you he had no cause.’

  Michael chuckled softly, grateful to be thinking of something other than the pestilence. ‘I can assure you he did. Ever since your fiancee abandoned you for a wealthy merchant a couple of years ago, you have done nothing but make a nuisance of yourself among the town’s women.’

  ‘I have not!’ objected Bartholomew, startled by the accusation. ‘I—’

  ‘Do not try to deceive me, Matt. I have known you too long, and I have seen the way you look whenever Matilde speaks to you. Then there was that Julianna.’

  ‘That Julianna set her sights on Ralph de Langelee, as well you know,’ said Bartholomew tartly. ‘And she and I have never had the slightest liking for each other.’

  ‘I wonder what Langelee is doing now that Michaelhouse’s four most senior Fellows are away,’ mused Michael, changing the subject abruptly. ‘It would not surprise me if he took advantage of our absence somehow. Perhaps we will find that we have a new Master by the time we return.’

  ‘I wish Julianna had persuaded him to marry her,’ said Bartholomew. ‘Since Fellows of Colleges are not permitted to marry, it would have been an excellent way to rid ourselves of him without the need for violence.’

  ‘Funny you should mention that,’ said Michael. I heard a rumour that a certain ceremony involving those two took place recently in Grantchester Church. So far, I have been unable to verify it, but I can assure you I will look into the matter most carefully when we return. We do not want that belligerent lout as our next Master.’

  They had not travelled far before they reached a crossroads, where the others waited for directions to Grundisburgh. Bartholomew’s attention, however, was on something else.

  Gibbets were commonplace at crossroads, and the one near Grundisburgh was a stark wooden silhouette against the sky, comprising a central post with two arms, one of which had a corpse dangling from it. But it was not the sight of a hanged criminal that caught Bartholomew’s eye – he had lost count of the number of felons he had seen along the way, who had been executed and whose remains had been displayed to serve as a deterrent for anyone else considering breaking the law – there was something unusual about the body that made him want to take a closer look. First, the hands were not bound as was usual, but hung loosely at the sides; and second, the corpse was fully clothed. Ignoring William’s gusty sigh of irritation, and Alcote’s vocal revulsion at the physician’s unseemly interest, he dismounted and made his way to the foot of the gibbet.

  It was high, and the hanged man’s feet swung near Bartholomew’s shoulders. The shoes were of good-quality leather, with strong, almost-new soles, and a pair of gleaming silver-coloured buckles. The hose were made of soft-woven red wool, and the shirt was of fine linen, although the cuffs were beginning to fray. A handsome blue doublet embroidered with silver thr
ead, and a thick belt, from which dangled a bejewelled dagger, completed the outfit. There was plenty of wear left in the garments, while the dagger would have fetched a good price, so why had no one relieved the corpse of them? Such items were usually considered the perks of the hangman’s trade, and to find clothes so casually abandoned in these times of acute need was curious to say the least.

  As Bartholomew looked upward, a flicker of movement caught his eye. At first he thought he had imagined it, but when he looked harder he saw it again. The hanged man’s mouth had moved: he was still alive!

  ‘He is still breathing!’ Bartholomew yelled, making his colleagues jump. He grabbed the hanged man’s legs, trying to lift him to relieve the pressure around the throat. ‘Help me, Michael!’

  ‘What are you doing?’ asked Alcote, watching him in horror. ‘Leave him alone, Matthew, and come away before you land us all in trouble.’

  ‘He is alive!’ Bartholomew shouted, struggling to bear the man’s weight ‘Cynric, cut the rope! Quickly!’

  Cynric hesitated, but then moved forward. Before he could act, Michael intervened, raising an imperious hand that stopped the Welshman dead in his tracks.

  ‘He is a convicted felon, Matt,’ said the monk firmly. ‘You cannot go cutting down criminals whenever you feel like it. You are likely to end up swinging next to him.’

  ‘He is not a criminal,’ Bartholomew gasped, desperately trying to support the body. ‘Or, at least, he has not been lawfully executed. The hangmen would have taken his clothes had they been legally employed to kill him, and they have not.’

  ‘Perhaps the nature of his crime was too heinous,’ said Alcote with a shudder. ‘Come away from him, before someone sees what you are trying to do.’

  ‘Cynric!’ pleaded Bartholomew.

  The Welshman glanced uneasily at Michael, but then stepped towards the gibbet. He climbed up it before anyone could stop him, and sawed quickly through the rope. Bartholomew staggered as the body was suddenly freed and its weight dropped on to him. He laid the man down in the grass and loosened the noose, peering into the face for any signs of life. With a raw, rasping sound, the man drew breath.

  ‘This is outrageous!’ exclaimed Alcote, watching Bartholomew work. ‘I am not staying here to be charged with helping a felon evade justice!’

  He grabbed the reins of his horse and waved them, expecting the animal to know which way he wanted to turn. When nothing happened, he gave it a sharp slap on the hindquarters that made it trot down the right-hand track in agitation. Michael motioned for the students to go with him – it was not safe for a man to travel alone – and dismounted with a sigh.

  ‘You will be the death of me,’ he mumbled to Bartholomew under his breath. ‘I very much doubt whether the Bishop of Ely’s authority will carry much weight here. We are likely to be hanged for tampering with the King’s justice first, and questions asked after.’

  William watched Alcote disappearing down the road with the students at his heels, and it seemed as if he would follow. Instead he raised one leg to let the exhausted donkey go free, and went to stand next to Michael, breathing heavily to signify his disapproval of what Bartholomew had done.

  ‘You have endangered us all by interfering with the course of justice,’ he said angrily to the physician. ‘This is not Cambridge, you know. There is no friendly Sheriff Tulyet here to look the other way while you break the law.’ He paused in his tirade. ‘Well? Will he live?’

  Bartholomew shook his head. ‘I think his neck is broken.’

  While William dropped to his knees and began intoning prayers for the dying in a voice loud enough to wake the dead, Bartholomew put his ear to the stricken man’s mouth, listening to the faint rustle of breath that whispered there. Whether he was conscious of what was happening to him, Bartholomew could not tell. His eyes were half open, but were dull and glazed. There were blood clots around his lips, and his face was a deep red, suggesting that his death was as much due to strangulation as to the damaged vertebrae.

  ‘Padfoot.’

  Bartholomew looked sharply at him, but his breathing had faltered into nothing. He was left wondering whether he had imagined the man uttering a word with his dying breath, or whether the barely audible syllables were simply involuntary contractions of the tongue as the life went out of him. With William bellowing at his side, it had been difficult to hear much anyway. He sat back on his heels, puzzled.

  ‘Now what?’ asked William, finishing his prayers, and looking at the dead man in concern. ‘Do we put him back as we found him?’

  ‘I hardly think so!’ said Michael, raising his eyebrows in horror. ‘What if someone sees us?’

  ‘It cannot be any worse than someone seeing us now, having cut him down,’ retorted the friar. He sighed irritably, sketching the sign of the cross on the dead man’s forehead, mouth, chest and hands. ‘There, I have finished. Now we should follow Alcote’s example, and leave while we still can. I do not want to be granting absolution to anyone else today, particularly if it is one of us.’

  ‘This is all very odd,’ said Bartholomew, still kneeling in the grass next to the dead man. ‘His neck seems broken, yet his purple face suggests he died of strangulation.’

  ‘Your interest in this sort of thing is most unnatural,’ said Michael with a shudder. He reached out and plucked at Bartholomew’s tabard, urging him to stand up.

  ‘And whose fault is that?’ demanded Bartholomew, shaking him off. ‘Who is it who has dragged me into all sorts of unsavoury investigations for the University, and forced me to learn about murder and suicide?’

  ‘Murder?’ echoed Michael, gazing down at the dead man in dismay.

  ‘Suicide?’ asked William, equally shocked. ‘I sincerely hope you are wrong, Matthew! I have just granted this man absolution, which suicides are not entitled to have.’

  ‘This man has not been murdered,’ said Michael firmly, recovering quickly from his shock. ‘And he has not committed suicide, either. He has been executed perfectly lawfully for some crime.’

  ‘Then why have his executioners not remained here to ensure he died?’ demanded Bartholomew. ‘Why did they not take his belongings? Why did they not tie his hands and feet, as is common practice among hangmen? And look at the clothes he is wearing. This is no common thief, but a man of some wealth.’

  ‘Men of wealth are just as liable to be punished under secular law as are common thieves,’ said Michael pompously.

  ‘It looks to me as though someone strung him up and he started to choke,’ said Bartholomew, his attention still fixed on the corpse that lay in front of him. ‘Look at how his fingernails have been broken as he struggled to tear the noose away from his throat, and how the blood has clotted around his lips. Then, I imagine, his killer tugged on his feet to snap his neck.’

  ‘I have seen people doing that,’ said William, nodding. ‘When I was with the Inquisition in France, we had occasion to dispense with a number of heretics. If the drop did not kill them instantly – and it seldom did – their friends would jump on their legs to put them out of their misery.’

  Bartholomew and Michael stared at him. ‘For a man of God, you have some nasty tales to tell, Father,’ said Bartholomew.

  William regarded him coolly. ‘Hardly worse than you enthusing over whether a man has died from a broken neck or suffocation, Doctor. Now, I suggest we leave this poor sinner where he is, and head for Grundisburgh before Alcote tells anyone what we have been doing.’

  ‘You mean, just leave him here?’ asked Cynric, appalled. ‘We are not heathens to leave our dead for the carrion birds.’

  ‘Someone will be back for him,’ said William. He started to walk toward his donkey, which saw what was coming and began to back away. ‘It will just look as though the rope has snapped naturally, and deposited him on the ground.’

  He captured his mount, and they began circling each other in a curious dance-like motion, showing that William was as determined to sit on the beast’s back as the donkey wa
s to avoid it. Meanwhile, Michael took Bartholomew’s arm and pulled him to his feet with surprising strength for a man so fat and unhealthy. He brushed dead leaves from the physician’s black tabard, and slapped the reins of his horse into his hand, glancing nervously up and down the trackway as though he expected a vengeful throng from the local Sheriff to bear down on them at any moment.

  ‘Just lead the thing,’ he snapped to William, still embroiled in the war of wills with his donkey. ‘The poor animal is exhausted; you are far too large for it.’

  Deciding it was less undignified to yield to the donkey’s wishes than to continue chasing it in ever-faster circles, William began to walk toward the path Alcote had taken.

  ‘Not that way,’ said Cynric, watching Bartholomew hop with one foot in the stirrup as he struggled to mount a horse that was every bit as mobile as William’s donkey. ‘The right-hand turn leads to Ipswich; we need to carry straight on.’

  William gave a wolfish grin, revealing large, strong brown teeth. ‘It was kind of you to share that information with Alcote, Cynric. He has taken the wrong path.’

  ‘Will he be safe?’ asked Michael anxiously. ‘He has all our money.’

  ‘There is another village three miles down the Ipswich road,’ said Cynric, displaying remarkable memory for a man who had travelled to Suffolk only once, some twenty years before. ‘He can ask for directions there. The diversion will not take him too far out of his way.’

  ‘And it will be pleasant to escape his company, even if only for a little while,’ said William, smiling with glee. He hauled his donkey toward the Grundisburgh path, but the animal did not want to be led by the friar, either, and there began an angry duet of brays and curses.

  ‘God’s teeth!’ exploded Michael, as he watched Bartholomew continue to do battle with his horse. ‘Am I completely surrounded by imbeciles? Hold the reins near the bit, man! Cynric, help him, or we shall be here all day.’