A Wicked Deed (57 page)

‘But some good has come of this,’ protested Michael mildly. ‘Horsey is now parish priest of Grundisburgh, and we will never need to concern ourselves about his welfare again. And he will make a much better parish priest than Unwin ever would have done.’

‘Why did he volunteer to do that, do you think?’ asked Bartholomew. ‘The rest of us were only too keen to leave Suffolk and return to Cambridge.’

‘I think his few days in the leper hospital with Deynman may have swayed him. There is always the possibility in the Franciscan Order that he might be sent to work in one, and I think he thought a job as a priest in a pretty rural village like Grundisburgh was far preferable. He will be well paid – especially with all those masses for the dead to say – and relatively safe from diseases.’

Bartholomew did not reply. He had been concerned when there had been no sign of Deynman and Horsey at Brother Peter’s leper hospital, and had spent some days traipsing across the county with Cynric searching for them. They were finally unearthed at a leper hospital in Ipswich. Somehow –although Bartholomew could not imagine how, given that the Old Road was almost completely straight – Deynman had managed to lose his way. Unconcerned, he had merely made the decision that one leper hospital was very much like another, selected a suitable institution in Ipswich, and settled in comfortably to wait for Bartholomew to collect him.

Unlike Horsey, who had apparently had doubts about the venture from the very beginning, Deynman had not been in the least surprised when Bartholomew eventually tracked them down, although his teacher’s exasperation had clearly puzzled him. But it had been one of the few times when Deynman’s inability to complete even the most basic of tasks had worked to his advantage.

Michael was still talking about Horsey. ‘Or perhaps it was some kind of calling. Some priests do have a vocation to make the lives of others better, you know, despite what you think of us monks and friars. I once knew a Benedictine who was prepared to work three months of every year among the poor.’

‘Really?’ asked Bartholomew dryly. ‘That must have caused some consternation about his mental health.’

Michael glanced at him quizzically, but then went on to other matters. ‘William tells me you settled Mad Megin with Brother Peter in the leper hospital.’

Bartholomew nodded, ‘He will look after her, and she can help him in the laundry. No one else would take her – Eltisley took too long to revive her when she tried to drown herself, and her mind was impaired. She was grief-stricken over the death of the performing bear and distress is making her act more oddly than ever.’

‘And you healed her sore eyes?’

Bartholomew nodded again. ‘Eltisley had been experimenting on her with his potions. What kind of man takes a sick old woman and uses her like some kind of animal to test wild theories?’

‘A man like Eltisley,’ said Michael with a shrug. He leaned back, and a slow, comfortable smile spread across his flabby face. ‘I have the answers to two outstanding questions about this mess. Guess what they are.’

‘I have learned more than I ever wanted to know about this miserable affair,’ said Bartholomew, refusing to take the monk’s bait. ‘The best thing we can do now is put the whole thing behind us, and concentrate on our teaching.’

‘You will want to know this,’ said Michael, gloating.

‘Well, come on then,’ said Bartholomew irritably. ‘All that fuss over the formal signing of the advowson today has left me exhausted. I am going to bed soon.’

‘The father of Isilia’s child,’ said Michael. ‘I know who he is.’

‘How?’ asked Bartholomew suspiciously. ‘Tuddenham would not tell us, and no one else seemed to know.’

‘Mother Goodman knew,’ said Michael, infuriatingly smug. ‘She said she would tell me if I gave her your Suffolk cramp ring.’

‘So that is what happened to it,’ said Bartholomew. ‘I have been looking for that. Cynric wanted it to present to Rachel Atkin as a betrothal gift.’

‘It is the kind of thing that would appeal to Cynric and his superstitious mind,’ said Michael. ‘Speaking of whom, has he told you where he hid the copy of that deed yet?’

‘Yes,’ said Bartholomew, smiling. ‘And I also know he has wagered you a shilling that you will not guess where he put it. So, do not think I will tell you where it is, so you can claim his money.’

‘This is a matter of honour, Matt, not money,’ said Michael reproachfully. ‘You cannot allow a servant to outwit one of us scholars.’

‘Then you had better do some serious thinking,’ said Bartholomew.

‘I have,’ said Michael. ‘But he has me completely confounded. I would hate that man to be on the wrong side of the University, and become an adversary rather than an ally.’

‘Give him his shilling, then,’ said Bartholomew, laughing. ‘And do not try to cheat him by trying to worm the answer out of me.’

‘Give me a clue. Is it somewhere logical? Is it somewhere I will be angry at myself for not guessing?’

‘No, Brother,’ said Bartholomew. ‘You will never guess – just as Cynric said.’

‘We will see about that,’ said Michael, stiffly. ‘But to go back to what we were discussing: the father of Isilia’s child was Walter Wauncy.’

‘I do not believe you,’ said Bartholomew, too amused to be surprised. ‘The man looks like a corpse, and is as old as her husband. Mother Goodman was spinning you improbable yarns to entertain the villagers with later.’

‘That is what I thought,’ said Michael. ‘But apparently he has fathered a number of children in the village – strange for a man who is supposed to be celibate. He is said to be something of a devil for pretty girls.’

Bartholomew laughed out loud. ‘So he might regard himself, but I doubt any of the village women would agree. There is no earthly way a man like Wauncy could inveigle himself an invitation to the room of a beautiful woman like Isilia.’

‘He has distinctive ears – large and transparent,’ said Michael. ‘When I looked at some of the village children, I counted at least five with the same feature. None of their fathers seemed to have ears like that. Anyway, Isilia told Mother Goodman about Wauncy herself. It happened one day when Tuddenham was out, and Isilia was becoming rather desperate for manly attentions.’

‘Desperate is the word,’ said Bartholomew, still laughing. ‘But I suppose Tuddenham’s condition might have made it difficult for him to provide his wife with these “manly attentions”, as you put it.’ He frowned, recalling something else. ‘I went to see Mother Goodman before we left, to write down some of her remedies for teething. She told me that Wauncy was the father of Janelle’s child, despite the commonly held rumour that it is Deblunville’s.’

‘And that was why Wauncy was willing to marry her for three pennies less than the Burgh priest charged,’ said Michael, nodding. ‘He would not want her revealing that little indiscretion. And now he has married her to Hamon. She was more than willing to wed Hamon now that he, and not Isilia’s brat, will inherit Tuddenham’s estates.’

‘The course of true love,’ said Bartholomew.

‘They will never find that, Brother. It is a legend, like Padfoot. It does not really exist.’

‘Do not be so sure,’ said Michael. ‘Anyway, Hamon intends to continue to look – on all his manors.’

Bartholomew shook his head, thinking about Isilia’s and Janelle’s choice of lover. ‘It is ironic that Tuddenham went to all this trouble to prevent Isilia’s illegitimate child from inheriting his estates, but now Janelle’s child will – and it will have the same father.’ He shrugged. ‘Perhaps it is true, Brother. Perhaps Wauncy is a rogue among the ladies.’

‘Well, better the child should have Wauncy’s flapping ears than Tuddenham’s teeth,’ said Michael, ‘although I shall pray most heartily that it does not inherit his cadaverous face. But Wauncy is not returning to Grundisburgh now that the advowson is signed. Tuddenham has dispatched him to a new parish at Wyverston near Stowmarket, so Horsey will begin his duties as Grundisburgh’s priest immediately. I think it is Tuddenham’s way of informing Wauncy that he provided him with an heir he did not want.’

Bartholomew sighed. ‘I suppose Hamon will do well enough as lord of the manor when Tuddenham dies. Between them, he and Horsey will take care of Grundisburgh.’

‘Look.’ Michael held something out to him, and Bartholomew saw it was a small twist of parchment containing a few innocuous hairs. St Botolph’s relic.

‘You do have a lurid imagination, Matt,’ said Michael reprovingly. ‘You should eat fewer vegetables and more bread and meat. Stoate himself gave me this relic, as a matter of fact.’

Bartholomew sat upright. ‘Stoate? How? He will have fled the country by now!’

‘Apparently not,’ said Michael, infuriatingly smug. ‘According to him, he is sorry for the deceptions he embarked upon, but he knows he did no serious wrong – he still maintains the death of Unwin was a dreadful accident while Norys’s and Mistress Freeman’s desecrated corpses came to no harm, because they were properly buried afterwards. And the tainted mussels that killed them, of course, were not his fault at all.’

‘Of course,’ said Bartholomew. ‘So when did he tell you all this? Where did you meet him?’

‘He sought me out after the signing ceremony today,’ said Michael. ‘I confess I was a little startled to see him in Cambridge, particularly since he was wearing the habit of a Carmelite.’

‘He has become a friar,’ said Bartholomew heavily. ‘So, he escapes justice after all.’

‘I hardly think so, Matt,’ said Michael in a superior tone. ‘Can you imagine what living hell the life of a friar must be? Allowed to own nothing, begging for his food, and at the beck and call of every squalid peasant in the parish.’ He shuddered. ‘Such a life would be Purgatory itself! He is going today to join a community near Grimsby.’ He shuddered again. ‘I barely know where that is, but Stoate assures me that it will be far enough away, so that no one will know him and he can make amends for his mistakes in peace.’

‘He will not be accepted on those terms,’ said Michael, gloating somewhat. ‘As soon as Stoate had gone on his way, I mentioned the matter to my Bishop. He will send a letter to the Prior of the House Stoate intends to join in a month or two, mentioning the fact that he is not all he appears. Your charlatan physician will not be allowed to forget his past crimes – indeed, he will atone for them in ways only a mendicant Order can dream up.’

‘Your Bishop has an astonishingly long arm when it comes to these sorts of things,’ said Bartholomew, rather distastefully. ‘God forbid that I should ever come under the scrutiny of his beady eye, or within reach of his vindictive fingers.’

‘Do not worry about that,’ said Michael with a peaceful sigh. ‘He knows how much you have done for the University and the College over the last few years. My lord the Bishop might not let a wrong go unpunished, but he does not forget those who have helped him, either. If ever you decide to become a Benedictine, Matt, he will find you a pleasantly lucrative position somewhere. Physician-priest to some lord perhaps, or even at the King’s court.’

‘No, thank you,’ said Bartholomew in horror. ‘The University is bad enough for politics and intrigue, but court must be even worse!’

‘I do not think so,’ said Michael with a happy beam of satisfaction. ‘In fact, I know so.’ He took a deep breath of river-tainted air, and settled back against the sun-warmed stones of the orchard wall. ‘And it is good to be back, Matt!’