An Order for Death

Susanna Gregory is a pseudonym. Before she earned her Ph.D. at the University of Cambridge and became a research Fellow at
one of the colleges, she was a police officer in Yorkshire. She has written a number of non-fiction books, including ones
on castles, cathedrals, historic houses and world travel.

She and her husband live in a village near Cambridge.

Also by Susanna Gregory

A PLAGUE ON BOTH YOUR HOUSES

AN UNHOLY ALLIANCE

A BONE OF CONTENTION

A DEADLY BREW

A WICKED DEED

A MASTERLY MURDER

A SUMMER OF DISCONTENT

Published by Hachette Digital

ISBN: 978-0-748-12443-5

All characters and events in this publication, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Copyright © Susanna Gregory 2001

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.

Hachette Digital

Little, Brown Book Group

100 Victoria Embankment

London, EC4Y 0DY

www.hachette.co.uk

To Isobel Hopegood

Cambridge, Christmas Eve 1353

Y
ULETIDE 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 resignation,
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.