To Kill or Cure: The Thirteenth Chronicle Of Matthew Bartholomew (The Chronicles of Matthew Bartholomew) Read online

  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

  Also by Susanna Gregory

  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

  Copyright

  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

  www.hachette.co.uk

  For Barbara Sage

  Contents

  Copyright

  Also by Susanna Gregory

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  EPILOGUE

  HISTORICAL NOTE

  THE TARNISHED CHALICE

  A CONSPIRACY OF VIOLENCE

  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.

  CHAPTER 1

  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.

  Restlessly, the Fellows and their students milled about, waiting with ill-concealed impatience for her to finish. Delicious scents began to waft across the yard, almost obliterating the usual aroma of chicken droppings and stagnant water. To pass the time, Bartholomew looked around at the buildings that had been his home for the best part of thirteen years.

  The heart of Michaelhouse was its hall, a handsome structure with oriel windows gracing its upper storey; the smaller, darker chambers on the ground floor were used as kitchens, pantries and storerooms. At right angles to the hall were the two ranges that comprised the scholars’ accommodation. The northern wing boasted twelve small rooms, arranged around three staircases, while the newer, less-derelict southern wing had eleven rooms with two staircases between them. Opposite were the main gate, porters’ lodge and stables. Combined, the buildings formed a square, set around a central yard, all protected by sturdy walls. Cambridge was an uneasy place at the best of times, and no academic foundation risked being burned to the ground by irate townsmen for the want of a few basic defences.

  That morning the sun was shining, and it turned Michaelhouse’s pale stone to a light honey-gold, topped by the red tiles of its roofs. Agatha had planted herbs in the scrubby grass outside the kitchens, and their early flowers added their own colour to the spring day. Hens scratched contentedly among them, jealously guarded by a scrawny cockerel. Also present was a peacock, which was owned by Walter the porter. Walter’s surly temper was legendary, and Bartholomew suspected the only reason he had formed an attachment to the magnificent but deeply stupid bird was its unpopular habit of screaming in the night and waking everyone up.

  Eventually, Bartholomew’s book-bearer, Cynric, walked towards the bell, intending to chime it and announce the meal was ready. He could have saved himself the effort. The moment he reached for the rope, there was a concerted dash for the hall. Students jostled each other as they tore up the spiral staircase; Fellows and commoners – young hopefuls who helped with teaching, or ‘retired’ men too old to work – followed a little more sedately, although only a very little. It was not just the junior members who were hungry that morning.

  The hall had been transformed since Bartholomew had seen it the night before. Its floor had been swept, and bowls of dried roses set on the windowsills to make it smell sweet. Its wooden tables had been polished, and the usual battered pewter had been replaced by elegantly glazed pots and the College silver. A fire flickered in the hearth and braziers glowed on the walls, lending the room a welcoming cosiness – the Easter benefaction included an allowance for fires and lamps, which was a rare luxury for anyone. Some of the food was stacked near the hearth, being kept warm – or drying out, depending on whose opinion was asked – while the rest sat on platters behind the serving screen at the far end.

  The Fellows trooped to the high table, which stood on a dais near the hearth, and the students and commoners took their places at the trestle tables and benches that
had been placed at right angles to it. Michaelhouse was a medium-sized foundation. Its Master presided over seven Fellows, although two were currently away, and there were ten commoners and thirty students.

  ‘A whole sheep!’ crowed Brother Michael, rubbing his hands together in gluttonous anticipation. He was a Benedictine monk, and by far the fattest of the Fellows, despite shedding some weight the previous year. ‘And I count at least two dozen fowl.’

  ‘Oh, dear,’ whispered Father Kenyngham, the oldest member of the gathering. He had been Michaelhouse’s Master until four years before, when he had resigned to concentrate on his teaching and his prayers. He was a Gilbertine friar, whose gentle piety was admired throughout the University, and many believed he was a saint in the making. ‘How are we supposed to eat all this?’

  ‘I foresee no problem,’ said Father William, a sour Franciscan famous for his bigoted opinions and dogmatic theology. He was as unpopular as Kenyngham was loved. ‘In fact, I would say there is less here this year than there was last. Prices have soared since the Death, and a penny does not go far these days.’

  ‘Do not harp on the plague today,’ hissed Michael irritably. ‘You will upset the students or, worse, encourage Matt to wax lyrical about it. Then his lurid descriptions will put us off our food.’

  Bartholomew opened his mouth to object, but closed it sharply when his colleagues murmured their agreement. However, he thought Michael’s accusation was still unfair. The plague had shocked him to the core, because all his medical training had proved useless, and he had lost far more patients than he had saved. As a consequence, the disease was a painful memory, and certainly not something to be aired over the dinner table.

  ‘My point remains, though,’ said William, who always liked the last word in any debate. He wiped his dirt-encrusted hands on his filthy grey habit – a garment so grimy that his students swore it could walk about on its own – and began to assess which of the many dishes he would tackle first. Some strategy was needed, because Michael was a faster eater than he, and he did not want to lose out for want of a little forethought. ‘Everything costs more these days.’