A Deadly Brew (18 page)

With infinite care Bartholomew stood, forcing his numb legs to bear his weight. He swayed unsteadily, and for a moment thought he might be unable to move at all, let alone disappear silently into the undergrowth. He gritted his teeth against the ache of cramped muscles, and took a step forward. His knees wobbled dangerously and he had to hold the tree for support. The man in the cloak was near the lode, doing something to Jurnet’s body – probably stripping it of clothes and belongings. Bartholomew took another step, and then another. And then he trod on a rotten branch that gave way under his weight with a soggy crunch.

Bartholomew saw the man spin round in a crouch and face him. Without waiting to see what he would do, Bartholomew was off, stumbling through the undergrowth as blindly as the horse had done the previous day. Branches of leafless trees scratched and tore at him as he ran, and the blood pounded in his ears at the sudden exertion. A yell from behind told him that the man was following. Bartholomew ran harder, but it was like the nightmare he had occasionally where he was being chased, but could move only in slow motion. His legs simply would not obey him and move faster. The man behind was catching up!

The breath went out of him as he went sprawling over the exposed root of a tree. Desperately he scrambled to his feet and stumbled on. The man behind him was gaining ground, and Bartholomew could hear him coming closer and closer. Breath coming in ragged gasps, he forced himself forward, raising his hands to protect his face from the clawing branches. But then he fell a second time, tumbling into a morass of thick, sticky mud.

The man was on him in an instant, pinning him to the ground. Bartholomew fought back with every ounce of his failing strength, but the man was too strong for him. Eventually, seeing the situation was hopeless, he stopped struggling and looked up into the face of his captor.

‘Cynric!’

Bartholomew awoke to warmth, and a gentle crackling sound and moving yellow lights on the ceiling told him there was a fire in the room. He raised himself on one elbow and looked around. He recalled little of the journey back through the Fens that morning, only trudging behind Cynric along a tortuous path that meandered past the dank pools and endless reed and sedge beds that characterised this mysterious, forbidding part of the country. Cynric had explained what had happened when they had been attacked, but Bartholomew remembered none of it, except that the wily Welshman had escaped and had later found Michael.

Nearby was the convent at Denny, an ancient building that had once belonged to the secretive Knights Templar. Now it was in the hands of a community of Franciscan nuns, endowed by the wealthy Countess of Pembroke, who had also founded the Hall of Valence Marie. Bartholomew had vague memories of being given hot broth and shedding his wet clothes, but was asleep as soon as he lay on the bed provided for him in the guesthall.

He sat up and peered into the darkness. The shutters were drawn and the room was unlit except for the flickering fire. It was night, and he had evidently slept away the entire day. A gust of wind hurled splatters of rain against the windows, and Bartholomew hauled the blanket round his shoulders gratefully as he recalled the bitter chill of the previous day in the Fens. On the bed next to him was the unmistakable bulk of Michael, stomach rising majestically ceilingward. Cynric slept near the door, fully clothed, and with his long Welsh hunting dagger unsheathed near his hand.

The guesthall was a long, spacious room on the upper floor over what had been the Templars’ church. There was a garde-robe set in the thickness of the wall at one end, and a great fireplace at the other. A table stood under one of the windows, laden with blankets, a bowl of water and some bread covered with a cloth, while a pile of straw mattresses lay heaped in a corner in readiness for more visitors. Bartholomew was impressed at the degree of luxury for a foundation located in the inhospitable Fens, but recalled that the Countess of Pembroke was said to spend a considerable amount of time in the convent, and had even had her own set of apartments built. When she came, her household would also need to be accommodated, hence the sumptuous guesthall.

Bartholomew’s throat was dry and he needed a drink. As he eased himself out of bed, Michael woke immediately and sat up.

‘What is wrong?’ he demanded loudly. ‘Where are you going?’

On the other side of the room, Cynric’s eyes glittered in the firelight as he watched.

‘Thirsty,’ said Bartholomew. He padded across the hall in his bare feet to the water jug, filled a cup and took it back to bed with him. As he sipped it, he looked at the fat monk. ‘Tell me again what happened to you,’ he said.

‘What now?’ asked Michael irritably. ‘It is the middle of the night; Cynric and I have already told you all there is to tell.’

‘I cannot remember what you said,’ replied Bartholomew sheepishly. He took another sip of the water. It tasted peaty and brackish, like the stuff in the lode in which he had almost drowned, and he put it aside with distaste.

‘You have not told us your story yet,’ said Michael. ‘Cynric heard the mercenaries tell Alan they had seen you drown. How did you come to rise from the dead?’

Briefly Bartholomew told them, sparing much of the detail, not because he thought they would not be interested, but because it was a memory that would need to fade before he would feel comfortable recounting it for others. ‘What about you?’ he asked when he had finished.

Cynric left his bed and came to sit near the fire. His face took on a dreamy expression, and Bartholomew was reminded of the times that Cynric had entertained him by reciting ancient tales of Welsh heroes and great battles when he had been an undergraduate at Oxford – before he had gone to Paris to study with the Arab Ibn Ibrahim – and Cynric had first become his book-bearer.

‘I was riding last in the line, and the path was narrow,’ Cynric began. ‘I had my suspicions about the expedition from the start – there were things that did not seem right, but mainly the timing. If the Chancellor had been attacked on Saturday on his way to the installation, then there would not have been time for the news to have been carried back to the Bishop and the Bishop to dispatch messengers to arrive in Cambridge so early on Sunday morning. And others used the Cambridge to Ely road to attend the installation, but none reported the attack on the Chancellor.’

‘Why did that not occur to me?’ asked Michael, putting his large arms behind his head and staring up at the ceiling. ‘It is obvious now that you mention it.’

‘When I heard Jurnet scream,’ continued Cynric, ‘I guessed exactly what was happening. Fortunately, I was able to engage one man in a fight, which blocked the way for the others.’

‘Cynric is too modest to tell you, so I will,’ interrupted Michael. ‘He knew I was unarmed, and so he engaged this soldier long enough to allow me to escape. He saved my life.’

Cynric flushed with embarrassment and resumed his tale. ‘When I thought I had allowed Michael sufficient time to flee, I killed the mercenary and ran away myself. There were another five soldiers and Alan, and I knew I would not be able to fight them all. I set my horse to lay a false trail and doubled back to see what I could do for you. That was when I heard the northerner tell Alan you had drowned. It was a terrible moment, boy,’ he added, falling silent.

‘For me too,’ said Bartholomew, his eyes straying to the peaty water in the cup.

‘By the time I judged it safe to stop running, I was hopelessly lost,’ said Michael, taking up the story. ‘I took the saddle off the poor horse and discovered that someone had put burrs under it. Yours was probably the same, which accounts for their unruly behaviour. It was probably a ploy intended to exhaust us so that we would be less able to fight them when the time came. Anyway, I wandered aimlessly for the rest of the day until Cynric found me just before dusk. He brought us to the causeway and I suggested we claim sanctuary here at Denny. I knew the nuns would not refuse a monk in distress, even though they are usually wary of accepting unknown men inside their walls.’

‘At first light yesterday, I set off to look for Egil,’ continued Cynric. ‘I have no idea what happened to him. I was searching for clues when I found you.’

‘You were lucky, Matt,’ said Michael, stating the obvious. ‘You would not have survived much longer out there.’ He shuddered and drew the blankets up under his chin. ‘The Fens are a foul place to be in the winter. It is the one thing about my abbey at Ely that I do not miss.’

‘I wondered why Alan was so averse to having Cynric, Egil and Jurnet accompany us,’ said Bartholomew. ‘He knew it would be more difficult to murder five people than the two he had originally envisaged.’

‘Yes,’ said Michael thoughtfully. ‘Yet even so, I would have expected experienced mercenaries to have put up a better show. It was seven against five. I was unarmed, you are useless in armed combat, yet they allowed three to escape.’

‘Two – they thought they saw him drown,’ said Cynric, indicating Bartholomew. ‘And I am sure they believed you and I would go the same way, lost and alone in the marshes.’

‘That is beside the point,’ said Michael. ‘The soldiers Oswald Stanmore employs to guard his cloth carts would not have been so incompetent.’

Cynric mused for a moment and then nodded slowly. ‘You are right – they were poor fighters. Perhaps they were not soldiers at all.’

‘I wonder if they were the outlaws the Sheriff has been chasing this winter,’ suggested Michael. ‘They could be, you know. He told me they use the Fens like a stronghold, disappearing down little-known pathways when his men close in on them. And Alan did seem to know his way around when he took that short cut.’

‘Perhaps they are, but what do we do now?’ asked Bartholomew, standing and beginning to pace as he did when he was restless.

Michael watched him. ‘Nothing. It is late, and while you may have slept all day, we did not. I have been hearing the nuns’ confessions – and that was an eye-opener I can tell you; I should come here more often! – and Cynric has been searching for Egil. Go to sleep, Matt. We will talk again in the morning.’

He heaved his bulk onto its side and huddled down under the blankets as the wind rattled the shutters. Cynric did likewise, while Bartholomew lay back on his bed and stared up at the ceiling. He wondered what had happened to Egil, and dreaded telling Stanmore that his two men had been lost. Edith said that Egil was a Fenman. If by some remote chance he had not been killed by the mercenaries, he was one of the few people who might escape the treacherous marshes alive. There was thus a glimmer of hope, although Bartholomew suspected it was not a realistic one.

He listened to the patter of rain against the windows, watched the firelight flickering on the walls and felt a chill settle in his stomach. Stanmore’s men were murdered, Grene and Armel were dead from poisoned wine, Isaac was hanged and someone had been to some trouble to ensure he, Michael and Cynric died in the marshes. What vile plot was being hatched this time?

By the following day, the rain had abated and there were patches of blue sky among the grey clouds. Bartholomew rose at dawn, woken by the sound of the nuns’ chanting in the church. Michael opened a bleary eye, but grunted irritably and pulled the blankets up over his head to try to block out the noise. Bartholomew washed and shaved near the hearth, relishing the luxury of hot water and a warm room, and dressed in the clothes that Cynric had cleaned the day before. They were bone dry and crisp from being near the fire, something he had never experienced in Michaelhouse, even in the summer. He inspected the tear in his leggings, surprised, and not entirely pleased, to see that someone had repaired it using a patch of brilliant red.

‘I did that,’ said Cynric, not without pride. ‘One of those nuns wanted to do it, but I did not like to think of your clothes in
their
hands.’ He gave Bartholomew a meaningful look that the physician did not understand at all.

‘Why not?’ he asked, convinced that the nuns would have done a better job than Cynric, and most certainly would not have used a scarlet patch to mend the brown garment.

Cynric pursed his lips and would be drawn no further. Michael was listening from his bed and gave a sudden roar of laughter.

‘You are right to be cautious, Cynric my friend,’ he said, green eyes glittering with amusement. ‘And if you had heard their confessions, Matt, you would understand why!’

‘Michael, this is a convent,’ said Bartholomew, suspecting that the monk was simply trying to unnerve his prudish book-bearer. ‘What could nuns possibly do to pique your lecherous interests out here in the Fens?’

Michael laughed again, but whatever reply he had been about to make was forgotten at a knock on the door. He hauled the blankets around his chin primly, as Bartholomew admitted a lay sister who carried a tray bearing barley bread, some slivers of cheese and a jug of ale, and told them the Abbess wished to see them later that morning. When she had gone, Michael hauled himself reluctantly from his bed, and donned his habit, nodding approvingly at Cynric’s efforts to remove the black, clinging mud from it.

Bartholomew fretted while they waited for the Abbess’s summons. ‘I need to return to Michaelhouse,’ he said, pacing in front of the window. ‘We have wasted two days already with this miserable business, and I am worried about Gray’s disputation. We should go home.’

‘What do you plan to do?’ Cynric asked of Michael. Bartholomew’s steps faltered: it had not occurred to him that Michael would want to do anything other than return to College.

Michael mused. ‘I am undecided. It is tempting to continue to enjoy the Abbess’s hospitality, and a few days would give us the opportunity to think and to recover from our ordeal. But I would like to speak to the Bishop, and so am inclined to travel to Ely. Yet I also believe that the answer to this riddle we seem to have stumbled upon lies in Cambridge, and the sooner we return, the quicker we will have it resolved.’

‘I see no reason to go to Ely,’ objected Bartholomew nervously. ‘We know the Bishop’s summons was false.’ He hesitated. ‘At least, I suppose we can assume it was.’