The Hand of Justice (64 page)

‘But Quenhyth does not open the chest with his teeth,’ reasoned Michael. ‘And you said henbane needs to be ingested to do
its work. How did the poison go from the lock to his innards?’

Bartholomew gestured to Quenhyth’s hands. ‘He bites his nails. The poison went from the chest to his hand, then into his mouth
when he chewed his fingers. You can see the stains on them now.
And
he has started to store his personal food supplies in the box – to keep them safe from you.’

Quenhyth was beginning to shake, although his skin was burning. ‘I have been feeling unwell since Julianna first insisted
I took the box from her, but I became far worse after I tried to clean the excess oil from the lock. How will you save me?
Will you give me charcoal, to counteract the acidity? Or will a purge expel the sickness from within? Give me a clyster! That
heals most ills.’

His pulse was dangerously fast, and he was rapidly losing control of his muscles. Bartholomew knew no clyster, purge or medicine
could help now that the poison had worked so deeply into his body. He lifted him from the floor and placed him on the bed,
making him comfortable with cushions and blankets.

‘Drink this,’ he said, mixing wine with laudanum and chalk for want of anything else to do. ‘It will ease the burning in your
mouth.’

‘But it will not cure me?’ asked Quenhyth in an appalled, breathless voice. His face was shiny with sweat, and deadly pale.
‘I will die?’

‘Yes,’ said Bartholomew, who was never good at lying. ‘The wine will only ease your passing.’

‘You have committed grave crimes,’ said Michael, pulling chrism and holy water from his scrip, ready to give last
rites. ‘You murdered Deschalers, Bottisham, Bosel, Warde, Bess and Bernarde.’

‘I did not mean to kill Bernarde,’ said Quenhyth tearfully. ‘When I set the fire I wanted Lavenham to die and his shop to
be destroyed, so no one would associate me with the missing Water of Snails and henbane. Tulyet saw me as I ran away, but
I know he did not recognise me.’

‘And Warde?’

‘Because I wanted Rougham to suffer. Everyone knew Warde was ill with his cough, and that Rougham was his physician. It was
too good an opportunity to overlook and Rougham deserved it. He should not have embarrassed me and Redmeadow in public. Nor
should he have slandered you.’

‘What about Bosel?’ asked Bartholomew.

‘Blackmail,’ whispered Quenhyth. ‘He heard Bess’s tale and threatened to tell, unless I paid him lots of money. But I do not
have lots of money. I offered him a skin of wine as down-payment.’

‘And it contained quicklime or some such thing?’ asked Bartholomew.

‘It was horrible,’ breathed Quenhyth, tears coursing down his face. ‘And noisy. I decided not to use such a substance again.
But you keep your poisons locked away, so I had to go to Isobel instead.’

‘You hurt Bess in some way, and it made Deschalers angry. He asked Rougham to prepare something for his “rats”, but he had
a change of heart as he became more ill, and decided to reprieve you. Julianna said he intended to clean the chest, presumably
to remove the poison. But you murdered him before he could do so, and brought about your own death in the process.’

‘So, what did Bess tell him?’ asked Michael. ‘That you and she were lovers?’

‘We
should
have been lovers,’ said Quenhyth feebly. ‘I
adored her for years. But she met a messenger called Josse, and fell in love. Josse came to Cambridge to deliver some missive
and never returned, so she came to look for him. But grief had turned her wits.’

‘Josse,’ said Michael thoughtfully. ‘The man under the snowdrift.’

‘What happened to him?’ asked Bartholomew. But he had already guessed. ‘I suppose you were arguing when the snow dropped on
him? And then you walked away, leaving him to suffocate?’

Quenhyth swallowed with difficulty. ‘It was an act of God, nothing to do with me. Besides, there was the danger of another
fall. I did not want be buried as well.’

Bartholomew looked away, not caring to imagine what Josse must have gone through as he had died, knowing the only man who
could help him was Quenhyth – and Quenhyth bore a grudge. ‘I suppose Bess recognised you, and drew her own conclusions. What
did she do? Confront you in front of Deschalers?’

Quenhyth nodded. ‘I thought he did not believe her, because he gave her money and sent her on her way – and he dictated the
deed leaving me the chest the same night. But he was a changed man in the days before he died – making another will to help
Bottisham, giving more coins to Bess and being generous to the poor.’

‘Dying can do that to a man,’ remarked Michael. He glanced at Quenhyth. ‘To some men.’

‘She was comely once,’ said Quenhyth with the ghost of a smile. ‘I did not love her as you knew her – filthy, addled and full
of lice. Deschalers said she reminded him of someone called Katherine.’

‘But you did not kill Bess until two days ago,’ said Bartholomew. ‘Why wait so long, when she had already told Bosel and Deschalers
her story, and might have confided in others?’

‘I did not
want
to hurt her. I am not a bad man, and she became less inclined to gabble after her first couple of days here. I hoped she
would just move on, but then Sheriff Tulyet showed her Josse’s hat, and she came after me again. I
had
to kill her then.’

‘Tell me about Deschalers,’ said Michael. ‘You followed him to the King’s Mill and found him in agony, waiting for Bottisham
to arrive. Then what?’

Quenhyth closed his eyes. ‘I had given him pain-dulling potions before – because that bastard Rougham would not. I stole some
from Isobel.’

‘I thought someone had taken pity on him,’ said Bartholomew. ‘He could not have ridden his horse that Saturday if someone
had not stepped in to do what Rougham should have done.’

‘He was so grateful for my sudden appearance in the mill that night that he did not even ask why I happened to be there. He
died within moments.’

‘And Bottisham caught you with the body, I suppose?’ asked Bartholomew.

‘He came early and started to screech. I did not know what to do, so I grabbed a nail from the floor and jerked it upwards
as I came to my feet. He was leaning over me, and I ended up stabbing him in the mouth. I did not mean to hit him there, but
it was effective.’

‘Then you stabbed Deschalers, to make the deaths appear identical. You did not want us to know he had been poisoned, lest
we connect you with what had been stolen from Isobel. You dropped both bodies into the machinery, in the hope that the resulting
mess would confound us. But there is one thing I do not understand: how did you escape from the mill without Bernarde seeing?’

Quenhyth looked at Michael. ‘I need absolution. Will you hear my confession?’

Michael nodded, and indicated that Bartholomew
should leave. The monk was busy for a long time, and the physician began to wonder what other crimes Quenhyth had on his conscience.
He went to the fallen tree in the orchard and sat, waiting for Michael to come and tell him it was all over.

He thought about the people who had died, and why. Bottisham had perished because he was willing to extend the hand of peace
to a dying enemy. Bess had died because she guessed her man had been left to freeze in the winter snows, and Bosel because
he had attempted to blackmail a killer. Deschalers had been murdered because he had rescinded on a promise to give Quenhyth
a chest and because Bess had confided her secret to him – and because a madwoman had borne such a close resemblance to the
lady he had loved that he had been prepared to listen to her. Warde had been dispatched because Quenhyth intended to teach
Rougham a lesson. And Bernarde had been incinerated because Quenhyth wanted Lavenham and his workshop destroyed.

None of the deaths were connected to the King’s Commission or the mill dispute, and Rougham, the Mortimers and Thorpe were
innocent of everything except offensive behaviour. Thomas was gone, too, killed because he was too drunk to understand the
dangers of looting burning houses. And Paxtone and Wynewyk were guilty only of curious meetings and perhaps the theft of a
book or two – although Bartholomew was careful not to think about Paxtone’s confession to Wynewyk that Rougham ‘foiled’ him
at every turn. He did not want to know what the two men were plotting against the unpleasant Gonville physician.

‘He is dead,’ said Michael, coming to sit next to his friend at last. He sighed wearily as he leaned forward and rested his
head on his hands. ‘His confession chilled me, Matt. His selfish righteousness will haunt my dreams for a long time.’

‘But it is over,’ said Bartholomew. ‘He cannot harm anyone else now.’

Bartholomew woke the next morning with an uneasy feeling in the pit of his stomach, but it was a moment before he understood
why. Then the events of the last two weeks came flooding back to him, and he felt like turning over and going back to sleep,
so he could blot it from his mind for a little longer. It hurt to think that someone so close to him had committed such wicked
crimes, and for such paltry reasons.

‘It was not your fault,’ came Redmeadow’s voice from the other side of the room. He had heard his teacher moving, and knew
he was awake. Bartholomew assumed that he had also spent a restless night, reflecting on what Quenhyth had done. ‘Or mine.
We had no idea what kind of man he was.’

‘I should have been alerted by the fact that he was so ready to kill the cat and Bird.’

Redmeadow nodded slowly. ‘Perhaps. Shall we return his chest to Julianna this morning? I do not want it in here.’

‘I do not think so!’ said Bartholomew, heaving himself out of his bed and rubbing his eyes. ‘Edward might claim we are trying
to kill his wife by giving her a poisoned box. We will burn it.’

Just then, a piercing scream rent the air. They regarded each other in alarm, before dashing into the yard to see what had
happened. Deynman was standing near the porter’s lodge with something under his arm. Walter was with him, and the surly porter’s
face was split with a grin of savage delight. Bartholomew saw bright blue-green feathers trailing from the bundle Deynman
held.

‘Deynman felt sorry for Walter when Quenhyth killed Bird,’ whispered Redmeadow. ‘And he promised to buy
him a replacement. It is not a cockerel, though. I do not know what it is. I have never seen its like before.’

‘It is a peacock,’ said Bartholomew heavily. ‘They are rare in England, although common in the East. They are very expensive.’
Another shrill shriek rent the air as the peacock made its presence known. Scholars were beginning to emerge from their rooms
in a panic, wondering what was making such an unholy racket. ‘And noisy,’ he added.

‘Walter will like it, then,’ said Redmeadow. ‘He only loved Bird because the thing caused so much aggravation. Let me help
you carry the chest outside, so we can burn it before we go to church.’

A number of scholars followed Bartholomew and Redmeadow as they hauled the unwieldy object into the orchard. Bartholomew insisted
the fire should be at the very end of the garden, where no stray sparks could fly into the air and cause trouble in the town.
He wrapped the chest with straw from the stables, and set about making a fire. Several students exchanged amused glances when
Walter’s peacock screeched again, although Bartholomew suspected they would not find it funny for very long.

No one spoke as the kindling caught and flames began to lick up the sides of the chest, hissing and spitting when they reached
the deadly grease on the lock. Bartholomew had refused Redmeadow’s request to open the box and retrieve what was inside it
first. It crossed his mind that Deschalers might have poisoned other parts, too, and he did not want to find out by losing
another student.

When the blaze died down most of the scholars wandered away to ready themselves for their devotions, but Bartholomew lingered,
waiting for the last flames to die out. He wanted to make sure the chest was totally consumed and the embers raked away, so
no trace of Deschalers’s inheritance would remain. He felt that the little tongues
of gold were purifying something unclean, and the cremation left him in better spirits than when he had awoken. William hovered
at his elbow, watching him prod the glowing embers with a stick.

‘The Lavenhams have gone,’ the friar said quietly. ‘But they left you this.’

‘No, thank you,’ said Bartholomew, eyeing the proffered package suspiciously. He could not imagine why the apothecary should
give him a gift, and was certain it would not be anything he would want to own.

‘I know what it is inside,’ said William. ‘And you will like it, I promise.’

Donning a pair of heavy gloves, and ignoring William’s indignation that the physician should question his assurances, Bartholomew
opened the parcel, making clumsy work of untying the twine that bound it. Inside was a small book. He gazed at it in astonishment.

‘It is by Ibn Ibrahim!’ he exclaimed. ‘My Arab teacher. I knew he had written a tome containing his various theories, but
I did not think I would ever see a copy. But why did Lavenham have it? And why did he give it to me?’

‘You have good friends to thank for that,’ said William. ‘Paxtone saw it in their shop, and he knew this Ibrahim was your
teacher. He and Wynewyk have been negotiating to purchase it for you for the past month or so. They never succeeded – Lavenham
did not want to part with it because it came from his father. But yesterday he decided he needed the money, so I arranged
the sale.’ He turned and gestured to someone who was standing a short distance away, smiling shyly. It was Wynewyk.

Bartholomew was seized with abject guilt. ‘Is that why they have been acting so strangely of late?’

‘They did not want you to know what they were doing,’ explained William. ‘They suspected Lavenham would not sell it, and did
not want you to be disappointed when they
failed. They met in the orchard, because Wynewyk said no one ever uses it except him. I should have mentioned your penchant
for that old apple trunk, I suppose. He said they were discussing Rougham’s accusations against you once, and were appalled
to imagine the conclusions you must have drawn.’