Authors: Susanna Gregory
Tags: #Mystery, #Historical, #blt, #rt, #Cambridge, #England, #Medieval, #Clergy
Bartholomew wondered where William and the students could possibly be, but there was no time for speculation. He eased out of the doorway, and located the saltpetre, an evil-smelling whitish substance that could be dangerous in the wrong hands. Closing his eyes, and expecting to be
blown sky high at any moment, he dumped it on top of the charcoal and sulphur, giving it a very cautious stir with his reed and fervently hoping he had remembered his alchemy lessons correctly, and had the proportions right – three parts saltpetre to one part charcoal and sulphur. In the nave, Eltisley was heading toward Michael.
‘And who is it that you would like brought back from the dead?’ asked the monk of Dame Eva, in a futile attempt to delay the process. ‘A loved child? Your husband? A lover?’
‘I never needed any lover!’ the old lady spat. ‘My husband was all I ever wanted.’
Bartholomew scratched his head as he considered how he could ignite his concoction without blowing up Michael and Cynric, as well as Eltisley and his cronies. He had to put it somewhere it would cause sufficient damage to allow him to help his friends, but not enough to bring down the already fragile church roof. The powder needed to be placed in a confined space, where the explosion would give him a few moments to act – perhaps to grab a sword and create havoc. But where? He was beginning to despair, when his eye fell on the piscina in the chancel. Piscinas were sinks with drains that allowed holy water to be poured away into the foundations, mainly so that unscrupulous people could not steal it to sell.
He found a wooden bowl, and began to scoop the powder down the hole. Sweat broke out on his forehead when the bowl bumped against the stone sill of the piscina, making the conversation in the nave falter for a moment, until Michael restarted it with yet another question. As the level of powder in the barrel fell with agonising slowness, Bartholomew saw a length of carefully coiled twine on one of Eltisley’s benches. It was white and crusted, and Bartholomew supposed that it was one of the pieces that Eltisley had soaked in saltpetre and used as a slow-burning fuse to ignite the tavern in the blast that had killed Alcote. He picked it up carefully, and
inspected it. He was right. He hefted up the barrel, now less than half full, and continued to empty its volatile contents into the drain.
‘Do you think this half-mad landlord will bring you your husband back?’ Michael was asking Dame Eva incredulously. ‘Is that what all this is about?’
Hands shaking, Bartholomew began to unravel Eltisley’s twine, hoping it, unlike most of the landlord’s devices, would work properly. One of the men who leaned against the wall ambled toward the screen, and began to pick idly at the peeling paint. Bartholomew ducked back into the chancel door, willing the man to go away. He could not light the fuse with him there – it would hiss and splutter and attract his attention, at which point Eltisley could extinguish it by stepping on it. Bored, the man blew out his cheeks in a sigh, and gazed at the patches of yellow-grey powder on the chancel floor that Bartholomew had accidentally spilled.
‘Eltisley will succeed,’ said Dame Eva, as though failure was not an option. ‘And then all will be as it was when we were lord and lady of the manor. Hamon and my son will be dispatched to the wars in France, and our heir will be the child Isilia carries.’
‘But you do not know who the father of that child is,’ Michael pointed out, jerking his head away as Eltisley made a grab for him. He tried to stand, but two of the men stepped forward, and held him down. Cynric was similarly secured. There was nothing for the man near the chancel to do, so he stayed where he was, watching the scene without interest, still picking at the peeling paint, while Bartholomew fretted.
‘You are lying to worm your way out of this,’ said Dame Eva. Isilia carries Thomas’s child.’
Isilia looked distinctly uneasy, although Dame Eva did not seem to notice. She continued.
‘And he will be better than Thomas or Hamon with
their squeamish principles, and their silly notion of giving lucrative livings away to greedy men in distant Colleges.’
‘Thomas believes Michaelhouse will pay for a mass-priest to pray for his soul,’ said Isilia scornfully, glad to change the subject from that of the father of her child.
‘He thinks their clever minds will prevent my grandson from inheriting what he wants Hamon to have,’ said the old lady. ‘The deed Alcote wrote had a clause saying that a Michaelhouse Fellow was to be the executor of his will. Thomas expects you to outwit any lawyers we can hire to act on behalf of the child. He is probably right. And I have recently come to think that he is not so healthy as he would have us believe. Since his will stipulates that no child of Isilia’s born after his death will inherit, I cannot allow it to be written.’
‘But there will be no advowson now,’ said Isilia with satisfaction. ‘Michaelhouse will take nothing from the village that killed every last member of its scholarly deputation.’
‘You are wrong there, madam,’ said Michael, struggling furiously. ‘Michaelhouse will take anything it can get its hands on.’
The man near the screen finally moved away, and went to help his friends hold Michael. Bartholomew darted out from his doorway, and finished uncoiling the twine. Now what? he thought. How could he distract everyone from the hissing long enough to allow the powder in the piscina to ignite? He had deliberately cut a short fuse, but it would still take several moments to burn.
Meanwhile, Eltisley had succeeded in pinning Michael down, and was tipping the green potion toward his mouth.
‘I will not drink that,’ gasped Michael defiantly, through clenched teeth. ‘I do not allow things that are green to pass my lips.’
‘You have no choice,’ said Eltisley, swearing under his
breath as some of the liquid spilled on to his own tunic. Smoke appeared as the stuff burned through the fabric.
It was too late for caution. Bartholomew crouched down and struck Cynric’s tinder over a small pile of dried leaves and reeds from the roof.
‘What was that?’ demanded Dame Eva sharply, glancing towards the chancel.
Bartholomew struck the tinder again, but it was damp and refused to ignite. Sweat broke out on his forehead in oily beads.
‘Someone else is in here,’ said Dame Eva, pointing at the screen. ‘Eltisley!’
‘No!’ yelled Michael, as Eltisley tipped his flask towards his face. Green liquid slopped from it.
Bartholomew’s tinder finally struck, and the spark ignited the pile of grass. He blew on it, and hurled the burning handful on to Eltisley’s twine. There was a hiss like a furious cat, and nothing happened. Dame Eva glared in the direction of the chancel, and began to walk purposefully toward it herself. In desperation, Bartholomew grabbed a pot and hurled it as hard as he could at the fragile ceiling. It smacked into the rotting thatch, and fell to the ground in a shower of reeds and dust, landing just behind Eltisley, and making the landlord jump in alarm. Dame Eva changed direction, peering toward the back of the church.
‘I tell you, there is someone in here!’ she shouted. ‘Do not just stand there. Go and look.’
Bartholomew lit the fuse a second time, filling the chancel with a sharp hissing and the stench of burning. And then it went out again. Bartholomew gazed at it in dismay, cursing Eltisley for his dismal inventions. Dame Eva swung back toward it, eyes narrowed.
‘No, not there,’ she yelled at Eltisley’s men, who were busily searching the back of the church. ‘In the chancel!’
She began to hobble towards it, moving faster than Bartholomew would have thought possible for someone who had always seemed so frail.
‘Bartholomew!’ she exclaimed, seeing him kneeling on the ground.
Behind her, two men stepped forward to seize him.
Bartholomew gazed at the fuse in resigned disgust, realising that he had come very close to foiling the women’s attempts to kill him and his friends. But, with two of Eltisley’s sullen customers already pushing their way past Dame Eva to get at him, he saw that his feeble rebellion was finally over.
Suddenly, the twine fizzed into life again. Startled, Bartholomew scrambled to his feet, and flung himself into the passage that led down to the vault. There was an insane whistling sound, and then the loudest bang Bartholomew had ever heard as the powder sought to expand in the confined hollow in the wall. One moment he was on his feet, the next he was flat on his back, surrounded by swirling smoke. Dust and pieces of plaster crashed down from the ceiling, and he sensed the whole thing was about to fall. He picked himself up, and raced into what remained of the chancel. Dame Eva and the two men were nowhere to be seen. The screen had gone completely, and where there had been a roof of sorts, was now grey sky. The remains of the rotten thatch in the chancel had caught fire, and were burning furiously.
‘Michael!’ he yelled, clambering over the rubble into the nave. A cold fear gripped him. Had he used too much of the powder when Michael and Cynric were sitting so close? Had he done exactly what he had accused Eltisley of doing with Alcote, and used a mallet to crush a snail?
The nave roof had collapsed, and he could see nothing moving. Frantically, he began to tear the smouldering thatch away, trying to remember exactly where it was that his friends
had been seated. He saw a leg in the rubble, and hauled it free, half-relieved and half-disappointed to see it was not Michael. It was Eltisley, his eyes wide and sightless, and a piece of wood piercing him clean through. He looked surprised, as if death was not something he imagined would ever happen to him. Beside him was one of his surly cronies, also dead, while to one side lay the severed foot of another.
‘Matt!’ A flabby white hand waved at him from further back. Weak with relief, Bartholomew grasped it, and hauled the monk from the wreckage. Michael was covered in fragments of reed and white dust from the plaster, but he was basically unscathed.
‘Eltisley was standing in front of me, and I think he saved my life,’ said Michael, looking around him wildly. ‘He is as dead as I would have been, had he not protected me from the blast. Where is Cynric?’
‘Here, boy,’ said Cynric, emerging from under a large piece of thatch, his face black with soot. ‘I realised what you were doing, and threw myself backward just in time.’ He glanced up, and grabbed Michael’s arm. ‘Come on! This old church will not stand a shock like this.’
As if to prove the truth of his words, there was a groan, and what had once been a fine wooden gallery at the back of the building collapsed, sending a puff of dust and smoke rolling down the nave. The fire in what remained of the roof burned ever more fiercely, dropping pieces of blazing thatch all around them. Cynric led the way out, leaping over piles of rubble and hauling Michael behind him. Bartholomew followed, but then stopped as the south wall of the church began to teeter inward.
‘No!’ he yelled to Cynric. ‘That is going to topple. Come this way.’
Cynric glanced up, and wrenched Michael back as the top part of the wall tumbled slowly, depositing great slabs of stone in the nave to smash the tiles. Bartholomew scrambled
back the way they had come, heading for a window in the north wall that was less choked with weeds than the others. Cynric pushed him on, slapping a piece of burning thatch away as it landed on his shoulder.
With a rending groan, the south wall eased further inward, sending Eltisley’s potions and bottles crashing to the ground. More stones fell, landing with ear-splitting crashes, so close behind him that Bartholomew could feel their draught on the back of his neck. He reached the window and stopped to help Michael, heaving and shoving at the monk’s heavy body for all he was worth. It was taking far too long. More masonry fell, closer this time, and the south wall tipped further.
Finally, Michael was through, and Cynric was after him like a rabbit into a bolt-hole. Bartholomew glanced at the south wall. It was now falling in earnest, moving slowly at first, then picking up speed as the whole thing toppled toward him. He saw Michael’s hands reaching in through the window, and jumped toward them, his toes scrabbling against the peeling plaster as he fought to gain a foothold. For a heart-stopping moment, he thought he would not make it, and he felt something strike the sole of his foot as it fell. And then he was through, hauled unceremoniously across the sill and out into the long grass and bushes behind.
Gasping for breath, he scrambled to his feet and followed the others through the bushes, aiming to get as far away from the collapsing church as possible. There was an agonised screech of tearing timbers, and the south wall finally fell, smashing forward to land heavily on the north wall opposite. That, too, began to collapse. Hindered by the dense bushes, Bartholomew began to fight his way to safety, feeling as though he was moving far too slowly. He glanced up and saw that he was still in the wall’s shadow, and that it was already falling.
At last he was out of the undergrowth, and into the area of long grass that formed the churchyard. He was about
to run across it, when there was an ominous growl. Cynric had stopped dead and Bartholomew barrelled into the back of him.
‘Padfoot!’ gasped Cynric in horror, gazing at the great white shape that blocked his path.
The choice between being savaged by Padfoot or crushed by masonry was not one Bartholomew had anticipated. But the wall gave another sinister rumble, and the animal looked old, mangy and rather pathetic in the cold light of day. Shoving Cynric out of the way, he snatched up a piece of stick and raced toward it. The animal opened its mouth in a toothless roar of surprise, and gave a half-hearted swipe as he ran past, its pink eyes watering in the glare from the fire. A sharp snap from the flames startled it and it cowered backward, sniffing at the air with a snout that was battered and balding. It looked more bewildered than frightening.
‘Come on!’ Bartholomew howled to the others.
Seeing him unharmed, Cynric followed with Michael at his heels. There was another tearing groan and the north wall finally gave way, landing in the bushes with a thunder of falling stones, ancient mortar and blackened timber. The shabby beast that had been Padfoot was enveloped in a cloud of swirling dust from which it did not emerge.
‘What in God’s name was that?’ panted Michael, snatching at Bartholomew’s arm to make him stop. Together they looked back at the column of smoke that was pouring from the building and the pall of white dust that splattered the trees as if it were snowing.
‘It was a bear,’ said Bartholomew. ‘Just an ancient bear with no teeth and no claws. If I had ever managed to get a good look at it, I would have seen it for what it was – a poor, harmless thing.’
‘Bears are not white,’ gasped Michael. ‘They are black or brown.’