The Lost Abbot (26 page)

‘Illnesses often do that.’

‘Not like this, according to Pyk.’

‘It is true.’ Trentham’s boyish enthusiasm for Kirwell’s tales had gone, replaced by sadness as he contemplated his dead friend. ‘She became ill shortly after Robert went missing, and I always wondered if her husband did something to her. I told Yvo, but he said nothing could be proved one way or the other.’

‘She is at peace now, poor soul,’ said Kirwell. ‘As I should be. Are you sure you—’

‘Yes,’ said Bartholomew firmly.

When Bartholomew returned to the hall he found Michael engaged in a futile effort to reduce the number of people who intended to watch a Corpse Examiner at work.

‘We bedesmen have a right to be here,’ Inges was declaring indignantly. ‘It is our chapel, and we should be allowed to watch what happens in it.’

‘Actually, it is the
abbey’s
chapel,’ countered Yvo. ‘And Welbyrn was our treasurer, so I should be here to ensure that justice is done for him.’

‘No, that honour should fall to me,’ argued Nonton. He had availed himself of the bedesmen’s wine, and was unsteady on his feet. ‘Welbyrn was my friend.’

‘We shall
all
watch,’ determined Ramseye. ‘Although Lullington claims he has an aversion to corpses, so perhaps he should wait outside.’

Lullington adopted a martyred expression. ‘It cannot be worse than seeing my poor wife. I shall stay. It is the least I can do to repay my debt of gratitude to the abbey for its care of me.’

‘So you are stuck with us all, Brother,’ said Ramseye with a victorious smile. ‘But we shall stand well back – for our own safety as much as the Corpse Examiner’s convenience.’

‘Too right,’ muttered Botilbrig. ‘This robe was clean on this morning.’

Bartholomew wondered what they were expecting him to do. ‘It will only—’

‘Do not try to explain, Matt,’ advised Michael in a low voice. ‘You will make matters worse, and it is easier just to let them observe. Unless you plan on doing something macabre, in which case I had better use the Bishop’s authority to oust them.’

‘Of course not,’ said Bartholomew irritably.

‘You cannot blame me for asking.’ Michael raised his hands defensively. ‘You have done some perfectly dreadful things to corpses in the past, things that have shocked me.’

Without further ado, Inges led the way to the well. No one spoke and the chapel was eerily silent, the only sounds being the lap of water and the scrape of feet on flagstones.

The treasurer lay face down, arms floating out to his sides. The angle of his head made it appear that he was looking for something he had lost on the bottom. Bartholomew set about fishing him out. Unfortunately, the stones at the pool’s edge were slick, and the listlessness that had afflicted him since dawn made him careless. He was on his knees, leaning forward to grab Welbyrn’s sleeve, when he lost his balance.

Michael reacted with commendable speed and caught him before more than his head had dipped below the surface. The water was shockingly cold, yet if it was unpleasant, it did dispel the sluggishness that still lingered from the soporific.

‘I could have told you it was slippery,’ said Ramseye, exchanging a smirk with Nonton, while Lullington brayed his mirth out loud, a jeering, mocking, inappropriate sound that echoed harshly around the chapel’s ancient stone arches.

‘So could Welbyrn,’ muttered Yvo.

Wordlessly, Botilbrig handed Bartholomew a frayed piece of sacking. As there was a pile of similar scraps on a nearby bench, the physician could only assume that such accidents occurred on a fairly regular basis. He wiped his face, then watched as Nonton helped Michael to retrieve Welbyrn and lay him by the side of the pool.

When they stepped away, he knelt and pressed on Welbyrn’s chest. Foam emerged from the nose and mouth, which meant that water had mixed with air in the lungs – in other words, the treasurer had been alive when he had gone into the water, and the cause of death was almost certainly drowning.

Ignoring the exclamations of disgust from his audience, he inspected Welbyrn’s body for other marks or abrasions. Ramseye was particularly vocal, although Bartholomew was only looking and feeling – nothing that should have horrified anyone. He hesitated before opening Welbyrn’s mouth, but then did it anyway, feeling it would be wrong to perform an incomplete examination just because the onlookers were squeamish.

At last, he sat back. ‘There is only one unusual mark,’ he said, pointing to a faint bruise on Welbyrn’s forehead. It was long and straight. ‘This suggests that he may have hit his head on the side of the well. I have just demonstrated how easy it is to fall, and he came at night, when it was dark.’

‘An accident,’ declared Yvo with satisfaction. ‘Just as I told you.’

Ramseye peered over Bartholomew’s shoulder. ‘Do you mean that tiny blemish? But it is almost invisible! I seriously doubt
that
had any bearing on his demise.’

‘On the contrary, it would have been enough to stun him,’ said Bartholomew shortly, disliking the almoner contradicting him on a matter that lay well outside the fellow’s area of expertise. ‘And remember, it does not take long to drown. However, he may also have been pushed.’

‘It is more likely to have been suicide,’ stated Botilbrig. ‘He tossed himself in the well deliberately, because he was alarmed by the fact that he was losing his intellectuals.’

‘Oh, I imagine he was pushed,’ said Inges. ‘No one liked him, and this is the kind of thing that happens to unpopular people.’

‘Lord!’ exclaimed Michael suddenly, recoiling in distaste. He was examining the dead man’s clothes, which Bartholomew had removed and passed to him, and he had just reached Welbyrn’s scrip.

What spilled out when he had upended it was a sticky bundle wrapped in cloth, to which adhered an assortment of coins, some illegible documents and the hospital key. Michael wiped his fingers fastidiously on a piece of linen, and indicated that Bartholomew was to separate the mess. The physician obliged only because refusing would have prolonged their stay – and he was oppressed by the shadowy chapel and was eager to leave. He poked at the goo with one of his surgical blades, uninterestedly at first, but with increasing urgency when he realised its significance. He looked up at Michael.

‘It is a packet of Lombard slices.’

Ducking his head in cold water had not only expunged the lingering effects of the soporific, it had imbued Bartholomew with new energy. Matilde was a sharply gnawing pain in his heart, but although it was more acute than usual, it was one that had been with him ever since she had left Cambridge and he was used to it. And as he was disinclined to examine his feelings about her, the best way to avoid this was to turn his mind to other matters.

‘Where first?’ he asked briskly, after he and Michael had pushed through the inquisitive throng that still clustered around the hospital door and were walking back to the town.

‘To see Pyk’s wife. I have tried several times, but she is always out.’ Michael shot him a sidelong glance. ‘Perhaps Inges is right to claim his well has healing properties: you seem much happier now than you were an hour ago. Or has mauling the corpse of an old adversary put you in a better mood?’

Bartholomew winced, and hoped no one else would think so. ‘The water was unusually cold – like ice – so a dousing will always be invigorating. However, I am not sure it has
healing
properties as such and—’

‘I am having second thoughts about being Abbot here,’ interrupted Michael, sensing a lecture on medicine in the offing and hastening to avert it. ‘The monastery is wealthy, attractive and influential, but there are too many disagreeable residents. Of course, unless we find answers soon, we might lose a few more to mysterious circumstances. So tell me what you discovered back there: what really happened to Welbyrn?’

As it transpired, the germ of a solution
had
started to form at the back of Bartholomew’s mind. He was silent for a moment, struggling to piece it together from what he had observed and learned during his encounters with his old tutor.

‘Welbyrn was unwell. He grew angry when it was mentioned and denied it vigorously, but the fact that he availed himself of St Leonard’s curative waters indicates that he knew something was wrong.’

‘He did not look healthy. What ailed him? Did your examination reveal it?’

‘No. I would need to look inside him for—’

‘Then we shall never know, because I am not condoning that sort of activity. At least, not here, where our every move is being carefully monitored.’

‘I was not suggesting it as an option; I was pointing out that I cannot give you answers with the kind of examination I
am
allowed to conduct. However, there were no obvious external symptoms, no disturbance to his appetite and no indication that he was in pain.’

‘So what are you saying? That he was
not
ill?’

‘It is possible. However, he certainly thought he was.’

Michael regarded him balefully. ‘I have no idea what you are trying to tell me.’

‘He was ashamed of whatever he believed was wrong with him – he visited the hospital at night, when the place was empty, and he threatened violence to anyone he feared might reveal his secret. Inges said he had taken to asking after Simon the cowherd recently, demanding to know whether there was any improvement in his condition.’

‘And?’ Michael was growing exasperated. ‘What of it?’

‘I suspect he was terrified that he might be going the same way.’

‘So what Inges said in jest was right – Welbyrn
was
losing his intellectuals?’

‘He told Ramseye that he kept forgetting things, but although Ramseye does not seem to have paid it much heed, I think Welbyrn actually disclosed something that was a genuine cause of concern to him.’

‘So
was
he going mad?’

‘The fact that he thought he was is probably an indication that he was not – the genuinely deranged do not see anything amiss with their behaviour, which is part of the problem. But Welbyrn, being proud and stubborn, refused to seek help. His fear gnawed at him, making him more aggressive.’

‘Yes – we have been told that his belligerence had escalated recently.’

‘We will never be able to prove any of this now he is dead. However, if it is true, then I am sorry. No one deserves to think that he is losing his mind.’

‘No,’ conceded Michael. ‘However, he was sane enough to leave the Bishop’s Commissioners a plate of toxic Lombard slices, and then retrieve the evidence. He was not completely witless.’

‘I am surprised he was the culprit,’ said Bartholomew unhappily. ‘I would not have predicted that he would resort to a sly weapon like poison.’

‘Perhaps he had help,’ suggested Michael. ‘From the other members of the Unholy Trinity, for example, who may then have decided to shove him in the well before he gave them away. Men on the verge of insanity do not make for reliable accomplices.’

‘We do not know he was murdered. It may have been an accident. Or suicide.’

‘He was murdered all right,’ stated Michael grimly. ‘Of that I am certain.’

Pyk had occupied an attractive house on the marketplace. Its window shutters were freshly painted, its timbers scrubbed, and it had a clean, wholesome look about it. Bartholomew felt instinctively that he would have been at home there, and wished he had known his fellow
medicus
.

The door was opened by a maid, who recognised Michael from his previous attempts to interview her mistress. She smiled, said Pernel was in at last, and led them to a solar. Lying on a couch like an indolent Roman emperor was a very fat woman in middle years, whose jaws worked furiously as she finished what appeared to have been a sizeable plate of cakes.

‘You are here about my husband Hugh,’ she said, indicating that they should sit. ‘Aurifabro sent soldiers to hunt for him, but they had no more luck than the abbey’s men.’

‘What about you?’ asked Bartholomew. ‘Did you search, too?’

‘Me?’ Pernel regarded him askance. ‘How could I succeed where mercenaries and
defensores
had failed? I am not some bloodhound, trained to sniff out prey.’

‘I meant did you hire people to look on your behalf?’ explained Bartholomew.

‘No, it would have been a waste of money. Besides, these things happen, and there is no point crying over spilt milk.’

Bartholomew frowned. ‘You do not seem very concerned.’

Her eyes were small and hard in her doughy face. ‘Is that a crime? I never wanted to marry a
medicus
. They are an unpleasant breed, with their urine flasks and astrological charts and boring lectures about diet.’

‘But he was your—’ began Bartholomew.

‘My eating is none of his business. It is
my
body, and I shall put what I please inside it.’

‘Quite right, too,’ interjected Michael.

‘But he thought that a healer’s wife should set a good example, and he ordered me to lose weight. It was entirely unreasonable.’

‘Indeed it was,’ agreed Michael sincerely. ‘Completely unfair.’

‘You
would
take his side.’ Pernel rounded angrily on Bartholomew, even though he had not spoken. ‘You are one of them – a physician!’ She spat the last word, as if she wanted it out of her mouth. ‘Of course, he did not interfere with cadavers, which is a point in his favour.’

‘I do not—’ began Bartholomew, not liking the connotations of ‘interfere’.

‘But my dietary regimen is
my
affair, and none of his,’ Pernel concluded firmly. She glared at Bartholomew. ‘And none of yours, either.’

Bartholomew was beginning to feel considerable sympathy for Pyk.

‘I quite understand,’ said Michael. ‘I suffer similar intrusions myself. But that is not why we are here. We wanted to ask about your husband’s—’

‘The poor will miss him,’ said Pernel rather spitefully. ‘He saw a number of them free of charge, although I did my best to put an end to such nonsense.’

‘What do you think happened to him and Robert?’ Michael was forced to speak quickly, to get the question out before he was interrupted again.

‘Thieves killed them, of course. He and the Abbot would have made an attractive target, because it threatened rain that day and they were both wearing nice cloaks. Hugh’s was scarlet, shot through with gold thread, while Robert’s was trimmed with ermine.’