A Poisonous Plot (44 page)

He had a point, although Bartholomew was disconcerted that a child should have such a clear notion of the way killers thought. They set off towards it, although moving quietly in the pitch dark took longer than when they had been there in daylight. They reached the rear wall, and groped their way along it until they found the gate. Outside it, voices came from the direction of the pier.

‘I told you so.’ Dickon could not resist a gloat.

‘Your plan will not work, Robert,’ Michael was saying. ‘Someone will come.’

Bartholomew and Dickon inched forward. A lantern illuminated the scene. The Austins’ boat had been pushed three or four feet out into the King’s Ditch, and Michael had been made to sit on the central thwart – the seat that spanned the middle of the craft – to which he was bound securely. Morys stood in front of him, holding an axe, while Robert and two Zachary students watched from the bank. The students were large, sturdy lads armed with swords, and Bartholomew supposed he should not be surprised that the hostel was involved in Robert’s machinations.

‘They are going to hack a hole in the boat, so it will sink and drag Michael to the bottom,’ whispered Dickon, as if he imagined Bartholomew might not understand what he was seeing. ‘Clever! It will keep the corpse hidden for ages, and no one will ever know what happened to him.’

Bartholomew stared at the little tableau with a sense of helplessness. He might have managed to overwhelm Robert and Morys, but he could not defeat the students as well, and Dickon was still a child for all his vicious bluster.

‘Fetch help,’ he whispered. ‘There will be scholars in the streets. Go!’

‘How will I know if they are on our side?’ asked Dickon, not unreasonably. ‘You heard what Prior Joliet said about not trusting anyone. Moreover, they might kill me for being the Sheriff’s son. So you do it, while I stay here and watch.’

Bartholomew was halfway to the gate when he had second thoughts. It might be some time before he managed to waylay scholars who would help him, and it was clear that Morys and Robert intended to kill Michael quickly before moving on to the next part of their plan. He stopped and hurried back again. He would just have to devise a way to best four armed and cunning men using a set of childbirth forceps and an unpredictable boy.

‘I would not have stopped you from leaving, Robert,’ Michael was saying. There was a tremor in his voice: he could not swim, and had a mortal terror of drowning. ‘There was no need to destroy the town and tear the University apart.’

‘Of course there was,’ retorted Robert shortly. ‘The Colleges enjoy a comfortable existence here, and will never abandon it willingly. But after tonight, the town will be so enraged by the University’s antics that no scholar will be able to stay.’

Morys smirked. ‘It will not be long now before all our dreams are realised.’

Robert nodded to Morys, and the axe began to rise. Bartholomew braced himself to race forward, regardless of the unfavourable odds, but Michael spoke quickly to delay the inevitable. Desperately, Bartholomew tried to think of a rescue plan, but his mind was frighteningly blank, and all he could do was listen with mounting horror.

‘So you poisoned Frenge,’ Michael said. ‘A townsman killed on University property was sure to cause discord, especially one who had already invaded King’s Hall.’

‘And it
did
cause discord,’ said Robert smugly. ‘Although that was not why we did it. The truth is that he came to bring Father Arnold some sucura – unlike you, we guessed it came from the brewery, and I secured a good price for the stuff in return for keeping Peyn’s little secret.’

‘Which explains why Frenge sneaked across the King’s Ditch in the boat,’ surmised Michael. He glanced down. ‘This boat. You did not buy his brewery’s ale, so he could not come here openly, claiming you as customers. He was obliged to visit slyly, using the back gate …’

‘Where he overheard Morys and me discussing our plans. The fool tried to blackmail us – to raise the money he would need to buy lawyers to defend him from King’s Hall, ironically.’

‘So we agreed to pay and offered wine to seal the pact.’ Morys took up the tale. ‘Wine dosed with a toxic substance taken from the dyeworks. Unfortunately, one sip was not enough, so we had to force him to finish the rest. Then we left him here, where his corpse proved very useful in furthering our designs.’

‘You helped, Brother.’ Robert’s smile was gloating. ‘With the tale about him being a cattle thief – an accusation that infuriated the town. And another truth will circulate tomorrow – one that will reveal it was poison from the dyeworks that claimed his life.’

‘It will be our parting gift to the town,’ said Morys. ‘A story that will see that place closed down once and for all.’

Bartholomew’s stomach lurched at the notion that Edith should be so used, and he looked around frantically for something that might help him defeat them. There was nothing.

Robert’s expression turned earnest. ‘But you must see we are right, Michael. The town has never wanted us. Its residents fight us constantly, despite all we have done to win their affection – such as starving ourselves last winter so that the poor could eat – but still they hate us. And their antipathy turns our scholars aggressive, arrogant and overbearing.’

‘So you set out to make it worse,’ said Michael in distaste. ‘You identified folk with grudges and manipulated them – to add fuel to the fire.’

Robert nodded. ‘It was easy. I persuaded Shirwynk that his son had suffered an injustice when he was rejected from the University; I wrote letters to the greedy and selfish Stephen; I sent Kellawe, Gilby and Hakeney to stir up trouble at the dyeworks …’

‘Using Stephen was a clever touch,’ bragged Morys. ‘He gossiped, as we knew he would, and made scholars think that a move to the Fens was being discussed at the very highest levels.’

Michael ignored him and addressed Robert pleadingly. ‘How can you think of abandoning the paupers who rely on you? And what about the commissions for the murals that you have won? I thought you were pleased by them?’

‘We shall still execute those,’ said Robert. ‘But on buildings in the marshes. And I am afraid the poor will have to manage without us. It might have been different if they had sprung to our defence when the trouble started, but they stood back and watched in delight.’

‘The cross that created such a rumpus,’ said Michael quickly, as Morys fingered the axe. ‘
Did
you buy it in London?’

‘Of course not,’ replied Robert scathingly. ‘My documents are forgeries. I took the thing from Hakeney solely to demonstrate how the town will always side with one of their own, regardless of the “evidence”. I also knew he would refuse to have the case judged by the Bishop – again showing the town’s disinclination to be reasonable and fair in its dealings with us.’

‘And there was Anne,’ said Michael, unable to keep the resignation from his voice. ‘She would have overlooked Segeforde’s assault, but you were there to mention compensation …’

‘Which I suspected would snag her avaricious interest,’ smirked Robert.

Michael turned to Morys. ‘Are you sure you want to go to the Fens with a man who has murdered four Zachary scholars? Who is to say that you will not be next?’

Robert laughed. ‘I did not kill them.
He
did.’

‘Not Irby.’ Morys’s wasplike face was bright with spiteful triumph. ‘He died of disease. And not Kellawe either. Why would I? He was one of our most fervent supporters. But Yerland and Segeforde began to have second thoughts about our scheme, so I fed them fatally large doses of sucura – one in some apple pie and the other in Lombard slices. And before you ask, yes, we know all about lead salts.’

‘But you gave them to Arnold!’ cried Michael, addressing Robert. ‘A fellow Austin!’

‘To end his suffering,’ explained Robert. ‘He was old and in pain, so why not hasten his end? It was an act of mercy, as he would have been the first to agree.’

There was a roar of angry voices on the High Street, and Robert nodded at Morys a second time to smash the boat, but Michael had another question.

‘Which of you will be Chancellor of your University in the Bogs?’ he asked contemptuously.

Robert smiled enigmatically. ‘Neither. We are followers, not leaders.’

Bartholomew frowned. Did that mean Robert was not the strategist? Then who was? Wauter? He glanced behind him uneasily, half expecting the geometrician to be standing there listening, but the priory was deserted and eerily still. The scent of rain was in the air, and a distant part of his mind wondered how long it would be before there was a downpour.

‘Our Chancellor will be a better man than Tynkell,’ said Morys with a moue of distaste. ‘What a weakling! Frightened of his mother!’

‘I know you killed Hamo, Robert,’ gabbled Michael as the axe went up again. ‘When we came here on the night of his murder, you were the only friar who was unarmed – you had no knife because you had used it to stab him. But you should have made sure he was dead – he lived to write your name under the altar. It is still there, and your brethren are looking at it as I speak.’

Robert’s reply was lost in a sudden frenzy of yells from the street, and footsteps hammered along outside – townsfolk, judging by their voices. Bobbing torches lit the night, so many that it seemed the whole of Cambridge had turned out to make mischief. Then there was a boom that sounded as though it came from the priory’s front gate.

‘Looters,’ said Morys in satisfaction. ‘Just as we expected. The last stage of our plan is about to unfold.’

The axe cracked down and water began to fountain into the little craft. With a yell of victory, Morys dropped the axe into the boat and leapt for the safety of the pier.

No ingenious scheme to save Michael had occurred to Bartholomew, so he did the only thing he could – he leapt up and powered forward, bowling into the plotters and managing to carry Robert and one of the students into the King’s Ditch with him.

His world went dark as he hit the water, the lamp’s frail gleam unequal to penetrating its filthy blackness. It was shockingly cold, and he tried not to swallow, suspecting it would kill him if his opponents did not. His hands touched the soft sludge on the bottom, so he kicked upwards – and was startled to find himself standing in water that barely reached his waist.

‘No!’ cried Robert in dismay, also on his feet. ‘The ditch has silted up! The boat will not sink far enough to hide the monk’s corpse!’

Michael, struggling frantically against the ropes that held him as the boat began to sink, did not seem very comforted, and was looking more frightened than Bartholomew had ever seen him. Then a clash of metal drew the physician’s eyes to the bank. Dickon was fighting the remaining student. Bartholomew watched in horror. Dickon was large for his age, but he was still a child, and could not possibly win a battle with a full-grown man.

While he hesitated, not sure whether to rescue Dickon or Michael first, he heard a splash and whipped around to see Morys wading towards him. He tried to back away, but mud and weeds snagged his feet, and he could not move quickly enough. Morys grabbed his tabard, but Bartholomew jerked it back, pulling Morys off balance. While the Zachary man floundered, Bartholomew seized his hair and forced Morys’s face so deeply under the water that he felt it squelch into the slime on the bottom.

Meanwhile, the boat was sinking fast, and even with the silt, Bartholomew knew that Michael’s head would not clear the surface once the vessel settled on the bottom. He surged towards it, but a hand caught his shoulder. It was the student he had knocked into the ditch. Bartholomew lashed out with a punch that hit home more by luck than design, then resumed his agonisingly slow journey towards Michael.

‘Matt!’ shrieked the monk in terror. ‘Cut me free!’

Bartholomew reached for his medical bag where he kept several surgical blades, only to find he no longer had it – in the panic following Nigellus’s confession he had left it on the High Street. Then he remembered the axe – Morys had dropped it into the boat before leaping to safety. He plunged beneath the surface, cold-numbed fingers groping wildly in the blackness. It was not there! Had it fallen out? Then his questing fingers touched the handle. He took hold of it and stood.

‘Hurry!’ howled Michael. The water had reached his chin.

Both took breaths at the same time, Michael as the ditch surged towards his nose, and Bartholomew as he dived, desperately hoping that the axe would be sharp enough to hack through the ropes. He found Michael’s legs, then groped for the cords, sawing frantically at one that was stretched taut from the monk’s frenzied struggles to break free. He could not tell whether it was working, and was about to surface for air when he was thrust down so hard that his head cracked against the gunwale.

He tried to push upwards, but someone was holding him down. He struggled, violently at first, but with decreasing vigour as he felt himself begin to black out. Then, just when he thought his lungs would explode, he was released. He surfaced, gasping, to see that he must have cut enough of the rope to let Michael snap the rest, because the monk was standing up.

He looked around wildly, and saw it had been the student who had tried to drown him; Michael had knocked him away with his shoulder, and the lad was floating face-down nearby. Morys was clawing at the mud that filled his eyes and nose, while Dickon and the other student were still engaged in their deadly dance. Bartholomew looked for Robert.

‘Behind you, Matt!’ howled Michael.

Bartholomew spun around to see that the almoner had managed to grab the axe. With a vengeful grin, Robert raised it above his head in readiness for the fatal blow. Bartholomew threw up an arm to defend himself, but then came an imperious voice.

‘What is going on?’

Bartholomew sagged in relief. It was Prior Joliet. Robert lowered the axe, while on the bank, Dickon and the student stopped fighting.

‘You are making too much noise,’ said Joliet angrily. ‘Do you
want
the beadles to rush in and see what is happening?’

Numbly, Bartholomew noticed that the Prior’s arm was no longer in its orange sling, and there seemed to be nothing wrong with it.