A Poisonous Plot (39 page)

‘Why, when the sender clearly means me well? He must be a scholar, though, because who else knows Latin and has access to writing materials?’

‘Lawyers,’ replied Bartholomew promptly. ‘Town priests and vicars. Wealthy merchants with their own clerks.’ There was no reply, so he went on. ‘Are you sure you have no idea who sent them?
Please
tell me if you do – it is important.’

‘Well, no one from Michaelhouse or Gonville Hall,’ said Stephen drily. ‘It deprived them of a generous gift. Perhaps it was someone from the hostels, jealous of your good fortune.’

The obvious suspects would be from Zachary, thought Bartholomew, wondering if it was enough to exonerate Wauter. But would they really be so petty? Then the faces of the hostel men paraded through his mind – Kellawe, Nigellus, Segeforde, Morys – and he knew they would.

‘Tell me one more thing,’ he said. ‘What did you and Frenge discuss shortly before his death? You claimed earlier that he wanted your advice about gifts for Anne.’

Stephen looked away miserably. ‘He came to bring me some sucura.’

Bartholomew turned back to
De architectura
, and found the answer he was hunting in the eighth volume, just as Michael returned with the broth and young Bell, who had volunteered to feed it to the patient and sit with him afterwards. Briefly, Bartholomew told Michael what he had reasoned, speaking in a low voice so as not to be overheard by the loose-tongued lawyer.

‘But are you
sure
the brewery is to blame for the
debilitas
?’ the monk asked worriedly. ‘Because if you are wrong, there will be a rift between us and the town that will never heal – Shirwynk will not let it.’

‘I cannot be absolutely certain until I have inspected his vats, but it makes sense.’

‘Does it mean he is the strategist, too? His hatred of the University gives him a powerful motive, and Peyn would not be beneath penning sly letters to greedy lawyers – although he must have had help, given that his Latin is poor and his handwriting worse.’

‘They could have hired a scribe. However, all this means that the dyeworks are innocent.’

‘That is what worries me, Matt. You have a vested interest in proving that the
debilitas
is not Edith’s fault, and I am afraid it might have clouded your judgement.’

Bartholomew was too fraught to be indignant that his professional opinion should be questioned, or to remark that Michael should know him better than to think he would fabricate or misread evidence where matters of health were concerned.

‘There is only one way to find out,’ was all he said.

Bartholomew was astonished to find the beadle who had been sent to Barnwell waiting for them when he and Michael emerged from Stephen’s house – not enough time had passed for the man to have run all the way there, spoken to the canons and trotted back.

‘Prior Norton is in town,’ the beadle explained. ‘So I was saved a journey. He was reluctant to admit to buying sucura at first, but confessed when I told him why I needed to know. He said Canon Wrattlesworth, who was the first to become ill, stirred some into a cup of elderflower wine one night, because he thought the priory’s brew was overly sour—’

Bartholomew groaned. ‘That would not do it – the exposure needs to be continuous over a period of weeks or even months.’

‘You did not let me finish,’ said the beadle. ‘He declared his sweetened drink so much nicer than the usual vintage that he added a massive dose of sucura to every vat made this year. Everyone agreed it was better, and it was quickly consumed. Wrattlesworth was the cellarer, and Norton thinks that he and his friend Canterbury – the other dead canon – had far more than anyone else.’

‘What about the cook and the gardener?’ asked Bartholomew.

‘The same, because both spent a lot of time in the kitchen. Moreover, Norton gave several casks to Birton the reeve, who thought it too sweet, but his frail wife and elderly uncle loved it. And they are the other two who died.’

‘So you were right, Matt,’ said Michael. ‘The sucura
is
to blame, and we were wrong to accuse Nigellus. Damn! He will not let us forget this in a hurry. Still, Stephen will not represent him – unless he wants to be deprived of your healing Royal Broth.’

‘Prior Norton also told me that
Shirwynk
uses a lot of sucura in his apple wine,’ the beadle went on. ‘Shirwynk offered him some once, and being a man who knows his beverages, he was able to tell exactly what was in it. He says it is loaded with the stuff.’

‘Go to the castle and repeat all this to the Sheriff,’ ordered Michael. ‘Then ask him to come to the brewery as soon as he can. Matt and I will meet him there.’

Unfortunately, he and Bartholomew reached Shirwynk’s domain to find a cart piled high with boxes and a horse already in harness – Peyn was about to leave for Westminster. The apprentices were waiting, ready to make their farewells when he emerged.

‘No!’ whispered Bartholomew urgently, as the monk prepared to stride through them. ‘We should wait for Dick. There are too many of them, and if the situation turns ugly—’

‘We have no choice,’ Michael hissed. ‘Peyn is just as much to blame as his father, and we cannot risk losing him. And we certainly cannot have him appearing for work at the Treasury!’

Unhappily, Bartholomew followed him inside, the apprentices a menacing presence at their heels. They were just in time to see Shirwynk hugging his son. The brewer was furious, mortified that strangers should witness the unmanly tears that glittered in his eyes.

‘What do you want?’ he snarled. ‘Get out!’

‘We have reason to believe that your apple wine is giving people the
debilitas
,’ began Michael briskly. ‘It is—’

‘Do you see what they are doing, Peyn?’ asked Shirwynk angrily. ‘They want me to drop my case of trespass against Morys, so they aim to bully me into submission by attacking my wares. It is sly and mean, but that is to be expected of the University.’

‘The architects of ancient Rome knew not to use lead containers for making wine,’ said Bartholomew, walking to the nearest vat and inspecting it closely. ‘But you ferment yours in these metal tanks, which you recently bought from—’

‘Ancient Rome?’ echoed Shirwynk in disbelief. He addressed Peyn a second time. ‘They must be desperate indeed if they are forced to quote examples from ancient Rome!’

‘Listen to me,’ said Bartholomew quietly. ‘Vitruvius was a very wise man, and he recommended clay for storing foodstuffs, because lead has compounds that leach—’

‘There is nothing wrong with my wine,’ snapped Shirwynk, and to prove it, he went to the nearest vat, dipped a beaker into it and drank deeply. ‘Delicious! But am I dead? No, I am not. Now leave, before my lads toss you out.’

‘Wine is acidic,’ persisted Bartholomew, jigging away from the burly youth who tried to grab his arm. ‘It
dissolves
lead. You must have noticed the white granules that grow where—’

‘No,’ interrupted Peyn shortly. ‘We have not.’

Bartholomew ran his finger down the tank, then held it up so they could see the whitish powder that adhered to it. ‘Lead salts – formed when the acid from the fermenting apples eats into the metal. They are sweet to the taste, which is why your wine has a sickly flavour. It is not the kind of sucura you can buy in London, imported from Tyre and taxed at ninety per cent, but something else altogether.’

‘Most of Cambridge does not call my apple nectar sickly,’ said Shirwynk dangerously. ‘It is extremely popular.’

‘I am sure it is – far more than the sour stuff you could brew in wooden barrels. But you bought these metal ones from the Austin Priory this year—’

‘Then it is their fault, not ours,’ Peyn interrupted again. ‘Not that it matters, because you are wrong anyway. You say our wine is causing the
debilitas
, but my mother died of that disease, and she never touched wine of any description.’

‘But she ate food made with your “sucura”,’ argued Bartholomew. He raised his finger again. ‘And this is it – a by-product of brewing apple wine in lead tanks. It is not smuggled into the town, but manufactured here.
You
are the ones who have flooded Cambridge with it.’

‘We most certainly are not,’ declared Shirwynk indignantly. ‘Yes, there is usually a white crust in the vats, but not enough to “flood” an entire town. As everyone knows – except you, it would seem – sucura comes through the Fens.’

‘No, it does not, which is why the Sheriff has never been able to catch anyone bringing it in. You have complained several times that someone steals your wine at night, yet Peyn stays here to keep guard, so how can thieves break in? But I know the answer.’

‘Do not listen,’ Peyn instructed his father nervously. ‘He is just jealous that I am about to become a successful Treasury clerk. He wishes it was him that was going to Westminster.’

‘I will hear no slander against my son, Bartholomew,’ warned Shirwynk. He nodded to his apprentices. ‘Throw him out.’

‘He has been boiling the wine down while you are tucked up in bed and he is here alone,’ said Bartholomew, ducking behind the vat to escape the hands that came to lay hold of him. ‘A process that sees it crystallise as white powder – which he passes off as sucura. I wager anything you please that it will no longer be available once he leaves home.’

Peyn was shaking his head, but he wore a heavy bag looped over his shoulder, and his hand kept dropping to it in a very furtive manner. Michael made a lunge for it. Peyn tried to jerk away, and the ensuing tussle saw several packets drop out on to the floor.

‘Those are mine,’ shouted Peyn. ‘I bought them to … to bake my father a farewell cake.’

‘And when do you propose to do that?’ demanded Michael archly. The apprentices stopped trying to seize Bartholomew and stared at Peyn instead, equally unconvinced by the claim. ‘On the open road? And that is enough for twenty cakes, anyway.’

Shirwynk’s open mouth and pale face suggested that he had no idea what his son had been doing, but he rallied quickly. He ordered his apprentices out and told them to close the door behind them, unwilling for them to hear more of the discussion.

‘Peyn is a good lad,’ he said, when they had gone. ‘If he says he bought the sucura, then he did. It is illegal, but we all do stupid things from time to time, and one foolish mistake should not cost him his Treasury career. I am sure we can come to an arrangement.’

Michael reached under a table and retrieved something from the floor – several pieces of parchment that had been folded to make tiny envelopes, all of which were identical to the ones Cynric had given the Michaelhouse Fellows to protect them against restless spirits.

‘Then why is there a lot of unused sucura wrapping here? And I imagine the Sheriff will find even more evidence once he starts looking.’

‘We will make good on the tax,’ blurted Shirwynk, capitulating abruptly as the case against Peyn went from strength to strength. ‘We will offer Tulyet a settlement he cannot refuse. However, it is none of the University’s concern so—’

‘Oh, yes it is,’ said Michael sternly. ‘Scholars are dead because
you
have been selling contaminated wine, while your greedy son has been manufacturing lead salts and calling them sucura.’

‘Lead salts are not poisonous,’ said Peyn, licking dry lips. ‘Physicians and apothecaries use them in medicine. Even if you can prove these charges, we have harmed no one.’

‘They may have benefits in small doses,’ acknowledged Bartholomew. ‘But people have been swallowing lots of them.’ He turned to Shirwynk. ‘Including you, probably. Can you honestly say that you have not recently suffered from headaches, a metallic taste in your mouth, dizziness, stomach cramps, insomnia, loss of appetite, weakness in the limbs or nausea?’

‘I might have felt a little shabby of late,’ conceded Shirwynk. ‘But you cannot prove it is because of my wine or sucura.’

‘Yes, I can,’ countered Bartholomew. ‘All it needs are a few simple tests.’

‘You have been listening to that imbecile Nigellus,’ sneered Shirwynk, although a tremor in his voice revealed his growing fear that the physician might actually be right. ‘He does not know what he is talking about either.’

‘Other symptoms of lead poisoning include irritability and increased aggression,’ said Bartholomew. ‘Which may explain why so many people have been unusually short-tempered these last few weeks. Yourself among them.’

Shirwynk stared at him. ‘If I am angry, it is because your University tries my patience. It has nothing to do with any so-called lead salts.’

‘Peyn has told us twice now that he does not touch apple wine or sweet foods,’ said Bartholomew. ‘And he has exhibited none of these symptoms. He—’

He stopped speaking when Shirwynk whipped around and grabbed a long metal hook from the wall. He jabbed at the scholars with it, forcing them to retreat or risk being disembowelled.

‘Put that down,’ ordered Michael imperiously. ‘Or I shall—’

‘You are in no position to make threats,’ snarled Shirwynk. ‘And I have heard enough. I cannot allow you to harm Peyn as he stands on the brink of his new life. I am afraid you must die.’

The cold determination in Shirwynk’s eyes told Bartholomew and Michael that he meant to kill them where they stood. Peyn knew it, too, and his face was hard with savage glee as he drew the long knife he carried at his side, aiming to lend a hand.

Bartholomew pulled a pair of heavy childbirth forceps from his medical bag. They were not much of a weapon, but they did serve to deflect Shirwynk’s first blow, although he knew it was only a matter of time before the hook found its mark.

‘I know why you hate the University,’ the monk said, wholly unfazed by the danger. ‘Peyn made such a point about not wanting to be a scholar that I looked in our records. And what did I find? That he
did
apply, but was soundly rejected. You are both bitter—’

Bartholomew only just managed to counter the furious swipe that Peyn aimed at the monk’s vitals, although Michael did not flinch, perhaps because there had been no time. The resulting clash made Peyn yelp in pain and he fell back, nursing a wrenched elbow.