To Kill or Cure
Susanna Gregory is the pseudonym of a Cambridge academic who was previously a coroner’s officer. She lives in Wales with her
husband.
She is also the author of the Thomas Chaloner mysteries, set in Restoration London.
Visit the author’s website at
www.susannagregory.co.uk
The Matthew Bartholomew Series
A PLAGUE ON BOTH YOUR HOUSES
AN UNHOLY ALLIANCE
A BONE OF CONTENTION
A DEADLY BREW
A WICKED DEED
A MASTERLY MURDER
AN ORDER FOR DEATH
A SUMMER OF DISCONTENT
A KILLER IN WINTER
THE HAND OF JUSTICE
THE MARK OF A MURDERER
THE TARNISHED CHALICE
The Thomas Chaloner Series
A CONSPIRACY OF VIOLENCE
BLOOD ON THE STRAND
THE BUTCHER OF SMITHFIELD
Published by Hachette Digital
ISBN: 978-0-748-12449-7
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 © 2007 Susanna Gregory
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
For Barbara Sage
PROLOGUE
Ash Wednesday (early March) 1357
When Magister Richard Arderne first arrived in Cambridge, he thought it an unprepossessing place, and almost kept on driving.
It was pretty enough from a distance, with a dozen church towers standing like jagged teeth on the skyline, and clusters of
red-tiled and gold-thatched roofs huddled around each one. There were other fine buildings, too, ones that boasted ornate
spires, sturdy gatehouses and forests of chimneys. Arderne supposed they belonged to the University, which had been established
at the beginning of the previous century. From the Trumpington road, in the yellow blaze of an afternoon sun, with the hedgerows
flecked white with blossom and the scent of spring in the air, the little Fen-edge settlement was picturesque.
However, when Arderne drove through the town gate, he saw Cambridge was not beautiful at all. It was a dirty, crowded place,
full of bad smells, potholed lanes and dilapidated houses. The reek of the river and ditches, which provided residents with
convenient sewers as well as drinking water, was overpowering, and he did not like to imagine what it would be like during
the heat of summer. The churches he had admired from afar were crumbling and unkempt, and he suspected there was not a structure
in the entire town that was not in need of some kind of maintenance or repair. The so-called High Street comprised a ribbon
of manure and filth, trodden
into a thick, soft carpet by the many hoofs, wheels and feet that passed along it, and recent rains had produced puddles that
were deep and wide enough to have attracted ducks.
Arderne surveyed the scene thoughtfully as he directed his cart along the main road. The servants who sat behind him were
asking whether they should start looking for a suitable inn. Arderne did not reply. Was Cambridge a place where he could settle?
He was weary of travelling, of feeling the jolt of wheels beneath him. He longed to sleep in a bed, not under a hedge, and
he yearned for the comforts of a proper home. He wanted patients, too – anyone glancing at the astrological configurations
and medicinal herbs painted on the sides of his wagon would know that Arderne was a healer.
Like any
medicus
, the prerequisite for his success was a population that was either ailing or willing to pay for preventative cures. Arderne
glanced at the people who walked past him, assessing them for limps, spots, coughs and rashes. There were scholars wearing
the uniforms of their Colleges and hostels, with scrolls tucked under their arms and ink on their fingers. There were friars
and monks from different Orders; some habits were threadbare, but more were made of good quality cloth. And there were finely
clad merchants and foreign traders, smug, sleek and fat. Arderne smiled to himself. Not only were Cambridge folk afflicted
with the usual gamut of ailments that would provide his daily bread, but there was money in the town, despite its shabby appearance.
Now all he had to do was rid himself of the competition. No magician–healer wanted to work in a place where established physicians
or surgeons were waiting to contradict everything he said.
He reined in and flashed one of his best smiles at a
pleasant-faced woman who happened to be passing, knowing instinctively that she would be willing to talk to him. Ever since
he was a child, Arderne had been able to make people do what he wanted. Some said he was possessed by demons, and that his
ability to impose his will on others was the Devil at work; others said he was an angel. Arderne knew neither was true; he
was just a man who knew how to use his good looks and unusually arresting blue eyes as a means to getting his own way.
He beckoned the woman towards him. As expected, she approached without demur. He asked directions to the town’s most comfortable
inn, and was aware of her appreciative gaze following him as he drove away. Most women found him attractive, and he was used
to adoring stares. Indeed, he expected them, and would have been disconcerted if Cambridge’s females had been different from
those in the many other towns he had graced with his presence.
The landlord of the Angel tavern on Bene’t Street was named Hugh Candelby. He was not particularly amenable company, but Arderne
soon won him round, and it was not long before they were enjoying a comradely jug of ale together. Arderne’s pale eyes gleamed
when Candelby described how the plague had taken most of the town’s medical practitioners, leaving just four physicians and
one surgeon. The physicians were all University men, and were saddled with heavy teaching loads on top of tending their patients.
Arderne almost laughed aloud. It was perfect! Now all he needed was a house where he could set up his practice, preferably
one that reflected his status as a man who had tended monarchs and high-ranking nobles, and a week or two to reconnoitre and
rest his travel-weary bones.
And then, he determined, Cambridge would never be the same again.
* * *
Cambridge: three weeks later (Lady Day)
Walter de Wenden was not a good man. As a priest, he had been appointed rector to several different parishes, but he never
visited them. He did not care about the welfare of the people he was supposed to serve, and he did not care about his crumbling
country churches. He hired vicars to perform the necessary rites, of course, but the plague had taken so many clergy that
it was difficult to find decent replacements, especially for the pittance he was willing to pay. So, his flocks were in the
hands of half-literate boys and dissolute rogues who would have been defrocked had the Death not created such a desperate
shortage of ordained men. But, as long his parishes paid the tithes they owed him, Wenden seldom gave them a moment’s thought.
He was not a man given to introspection, but he was reflecting on his life as he walked home from visiting his friend, Roger
Honynge of Zachary Hostel. Hostels were buildings that contained a handful of students and a Principal who taught them, and
were invariably poor. Honynge was better off than most – he could afford a fire when he wanted, and there was always food
on the table – but even so, the flaking plaster and mildew-stained cushions made the fastidious Wenden shudder.
He
was a Fellow of Clare, a College that enjoyed the patronage of the wealthy Lady Elizabeth de Burgh, granddaughter of the
first King Edward.
His
room was tastefully furnished, and
he
could afford the best meat, decent wines and dried fruit imported at great expense from France. He allowed himself a self-satisfied
smile.
He thought about the evening he had just spent. Honynge and his students had been discussing Blood Relics, an issue so contentious
that it was threatening to
tear the Church in half, with Dominicans on one side and Franciscans on the other. Wenden was not particularly interested
in the debate – he was not very interested in scholarship at all, if the truth be known, and was only allowed to keep his
Clare Fellowship because he had promised to leave them all his money when he died. He had tried to change the subject – usually
he and Honynge talked about mundane matters, such as the gambling sessions they both enjoyed on Friday nights or the slipping
of standards among bakers since the plague – but Honynge was an excellent teacher and his students were bright lads; Wenden
had become intrigued by the complex twists and turns of the various arguments, despite his natural antipathy to anything that
involved serious thought.
Unfortunately, it meant he was later leaving Zachary Hostel than he had intended. It was already dark, and most people were
asleep in their beds. He glanced around uneasily. He was not worried about being fined by beadles for being out after the
curfew had sounded – it would be annoying to give them fourpence, but he was a wealthy man and would not miss it – but Cambridge
was an uneasy town, and he did not want to be attacked by apprentices who would love to corner a lone scholar and teach him
a lesson.
It was not far to Clare, so he lengthened his stride, aiming to be home as quickly as possible. He had just reached the overgrown
tangle that was the churchyard of St John Zachary when a shadowy figure emerged from the bushes. It was a moonless night,
so Wenden could not tell whether the cloaked shape was scholar or townsman, male or female. He was about to order the person
out of his way when there was a blur of movement. He felt something enter his stomach, but there was no pain, just a cold,
lurching sensation. He dropped to his knees, aware of something
protruding from his innards – an arrow or a crossbow bolt. He toppled forward slowly. The last thing he heard was the rustle
of old leaves as his assailant melted back into the undergrowth.
Easter Day (April) 1357
Michaelhouse was not the University at Cambridge’s most wealthy College. It suffered from leaky roofs, faulty gutters, rising
damp and peeling plaster. Worse yet, its Fellows and students were sometimes obliged to endure the occasional shortage of
food when funds had to be diverted to more urgent causes – such as paying carpenters and masons to stop some part of the ramshackle
collection of buildings from falling down about their ears.
Yet life was not all scanty rations and dilapidated accommodation. When Michaelhouse had been founded some thirty years before,
one benefactor had predicted that its scholars might appreciate an occasional chance to forget their straitened circumstances.
He had gifted them a house, and stipulated that a portion of the rent accruing from it was to be spent on special Easter foods
and wines; in return, the scholars were to chant masses for his soul each morning in Lent.
The Michaelhouse men had kept their end of the bargain and, after the Easter Day offices had been sung, they hurried home
to see what the bequest had brought them that year. Unexpected subsidence under the hall – which had proved expensive to rectify
– meant the Master had been obliged to enforce the Lenten fasts more rigorously than usual, and everyone was eagerly awaiting
the feast. Matthew Bartholomew, the College’s Master of Medicine,
had never seen his colleagues move so fast, and any semblance of scholarly dignity was lost as they raced through the gate
in anticipation of their benefactor’s generosity.
However, the meal was not quite ready. Agatha, the formidable laundress who had taken it upon herself to run the domestic
side of the College, tartly informed the Master that the servants so seldom cooked such monstrous repasts, they had miscalculated
the time it would take and there would be a short delay. Technically, Agatha should not even have been inside the College,
let alone allowed to wield so much power – the University forbade relations between its scholars and women, on the grounds
that such liaisons were likely to cause problems with the town. But Agatha had been employed there for more than two decades,
and it would have taken a braver soul than anyone at Michaelhouse to oust her now.
