The Lost Abbot (27 page)

‘An attractive target indeed,’ murmured Michael.

‘Many townsfolk believe these so-called outlaws are actually Aurifabro’s mercenaries, but I do not. He would not have sent them to look for Hugh if that had been the case.’

‘He might,’ countered Michael. ‘To forestall accusations.’

Pernel shook her head, making her chins swing from side to side. ‘Hugh was one of the few people Aurifabro liked. I think my husband’s disappearance can be laid at
Spalling’s
door. Spalling encourages the poor to think they have a right to the property of the rich, so is it any surprise that they then go out and put this philosophy into action?’

‘Do you have proof that Spalling’s followers are responsible?’ asked Bartholomew.

Pernel shot him a haughty glance. ‘I do not need proof. It is what I think.’

‘What I do not understand is why Pyk agreed to accompany Robert in the first place,’ said Michael. ‘I know they were friends, but it seems an unlikely association – a popular physician and a universally despised Abbot.’

‘Oh, that is easily explained. I encouraged the relationship, on the grounds that a high-ranking churchman was better company than his vile paupers – we have our social standing to consider, you know. Hugh liked everyone, so he had no trouble tolerating Robert.’

‘They arranged to ride to Torpe together on the day they disappeared?’

Pernel nodded. ‘Hugh had patients to see there, and Robert thought Hugh’s popularity with low-born villains would prevent him from being robbed. So much for that notion!’

‘I do not suppose you have received a ransom note, have you?’ asked Michael, more in desperation than hope – the interview had told them nothing new.

Pernel shook her head. ‘And I would not pay if I had. I do not believe in negotiating with extortionists. It only encourages them to try again.’

‘Surely you would have made an exception for your husband?’ Bartholomew did not try to mask his distaste for her icy pragmatism.

‘I would not,’ she said firmly. ‘But I am famished! Would you care to join me in a—’

‘No,’ said Bartholomew curtly, eager to be away from her objectionable company. ‘We have taken enough of your time.’

‘Poor Pyk,’ he said, as they walked towards Reginald’s shop. Michael had decided that it was time to force the cutler to tell them what he knew, and had already devised a list of threats that would compel him to open his door. ‘Perhaps he disappeared in order to escape from her.’

‘Taking Robert with him?’ asked Michael. ‘I doubt that.’

‘Did you believe her when she said she had forced Pyk to make friends with Robert? I cannot imagine following that sort of order – not for anyone.’

‘Fortunately for you, neither Matilde nor Julitta are the kind of women to demand that sort of obedience. But perhaps we have not been told the whole truth about Pyk – maybe he was not the saintly healer we have been led to believe.’

Bartholomew disagreed. ‘People have had no compunction about denigrating the Abbot, and if Pyk had had faults, they would have been listed, too. However, despite what Pernel claimed, I still think that Robert and Pyk were unlikely friends.’

‘People probably say the same about us: the man who will be the next prelate of Peterborough, and his sinister, anatomy-loving companion.’

Bartholomew regarded him sharply. ‘You said not an hour ago that you had decided not to try for the abbacy, on the grounds that there are too many disagreeable residents.’

‘There are, but I shall have the authority to oust most of them once I am invested. Yvo, Nonton, Ramseye and Henry can be exiled to distant outposts, while the threat of excommunication will keep Spalling in check.’

‘Do you think you will win an election?’

‘I would not demean myself by becoming involved in one of those! I shall tell Gynewell to appoint me, and he will oblige because he will be grateful to have me in his See. And who can blame him? I will be an excellent Abbot.’

But Bartholomew’s attention had wandered. ‘Something is happening near the fishmonger’s shop. A crowd has gathered outside it.’

They hurried forward, and Michael released a cry of dismay when he saw the cutler on the ground in the throes of an apoplectic attack. Bartholomew thrust his way through the onlookers and dropped to his knees next to the stricken man. Abruptly, Reginald went limp. Bartholomew put his ear to the cutler’s chest, then began compressing it.

‘What is he doing?’ whispered Hagar, watching in fascinated horror.

‘Perhaps it is anatomy,’ suggested long-toothed Marion.

Bartholomew would have reassured them that it was not, but he was concentrating on the task in hand and had no breath for explanations.

‘It is Corpse Examining,’ declared Botilbrig with great authority. ‘I just saw him doing similar things to Welbyrn.’

‘Excuse me,’ said someone, trying to push Bartholomew out of the way. The physician glanced up to see Spalling, clad in the simple attire of a fisherman, although the apron was conspicuously devoid of blood and scales. ‘Would you mind moving aside?’

‘I am busy,’ snapped Bartholomew, still trying to restart Reginald’s heart.

‘So I see,’ said Spalling. ‘But I need some fish. I am holding another meeting tonight, and people expect to be fed.’

He shoved hard enough to knock Bartholomew off balance and disappeared into the shop. Bartholomew gaped, astonished that anyone should consider shopping more important than a man’s life, but then his attention was taken by a faint thud beneath his fingers: Reginald’s heart was beating again. The cutler opened his eyes, but his lips were blue, and Bartholomew could see he had only delayed the inevitable.

‘He needs last rites, Brother,’ he said urgently. ‘Hurry!’

Although monks were not priests, Michael had been granted dispensation to hear confessions during the plague and had continued the practice since. He crouched down obligingly, fumbling for the chrism he carried for such occasions, while Bartholomew stepped back to give them privacy. Everyone else craned forward, then shuffled back sheepishly when Michael favoured them with a black glare. Reginald grasped the monk’s hand and started to whisper, but it was not long before he went limp again.

‘You could not save him then?’ asked Spalling conversationally, emerging from the shop with a parcel under his arm. Silvery heads poked from one end, tails from another.

‘No,’ replied Bartholomew shortly.

‘What happened?’ Spalling regarded the body dispassionately. ‘Apoplexy?’

‘Possibly,’ replied Bartholomew. ‘Why?’

‘He had two attacks last year, and Master Pyk warned him that he would have another unless he stopped drinking a pint of melted butter with his custard every night. It is a pity Pyk is not here to see Reginald dead. He liked being right.’

‘Did he?’ pounced Michael. ‘Was he arrogant, then?’

‘No, he just took pride in his art. We shall have to ask the new Abbot to arrange for a replacement, because Peterborough should not be without a
medicus
. Of course, we will be lucky to get another man like Pyk. Not many physicians tend the poor free of charge.’

‘Did you tell Spalling the truth, Matt?’ asked Michael in a low voice, when the rebel had moved away to nod friendly greetings to the more disreputable members of the crowd. ‘Did Reginald really die of apoplexy?’

‘It seems the most likely explanation. Why?’

‘Because he just told me he was poisoned.’

Had Reginald been poisoned? As Bartholomew had come close to suffering a similar fate himself, he gave his undivided attention to finding out what had happened to the cutler. Still in the doorway to the fishmonger’s shop, he inspected the dead man’s hands and lips. He saw nothing amiss, so he opened the mouth and tipped back the head to look down the throat. Only when there was a collective exclamation of disgust did it occur to him that he should have insisted on working somewhere less public.

‘Perhaps being examined so pitilessly serves him right,’ said Botilbrig. ‘He was a very evil villain, and I have not forgotten how his wife disappeared so suddenly.’

‘Yes, within days of Abbot Robert’s arrival,’ recalled Spalling, still with the fish under his arm. ‘Maybe
he
seduced her and encouraged her to leave, just as he seduced Joan. I would not put such unsavoury antics past a Benedictine, especially that one.’

‘Well, Matt?’ Michael moved closer to the physician, so they could speak without being overheard. Fortunately, the spectators were more interested in discussing whether Mistress Cutler had been Robert’s kind of woman.

‘There is no evidence of poison that I can see, although that proves nothing, given that most are undetectable. However, if Reginald really did drink melted butter every night and had suffered similar attacks in the past…’

Michael was silent for a moment. ‘He refused the sacrament of confession, saying that he preferred pagan deities, so I suppose I can tell you what he confided. He admitted to creating a diversion when Lady Lullington was killed – he was paid for it, apparently. Unfortunately, he died before I could ask by whom. His last words were that the purse would tell us all we need to know.’

‘What did he mean by that?’

‘I have no idea, but we should look in his shop for it. A clue that tells us “all we need to know” would be very useful.’

Bartholomew agreed, so they left the body in the fishmonger’s reluctant care, and walked to Reginald’s domain beneath the Chapel of St Thomas – a workshop at the front and living quarters behind. Bartholomew looked around in distaste, wondering if the cutler had grown so slovenly after he had no wife to care for him. The workshop was a chaotic mess, broken tools vying for space with scraps of discarded metal and sticky pools of grease, but the living room was worse. The table was thick with dirt, the blankets filthy and the plates stained with the remnants of past meals. Bartholomew retreated to the shop, leaving Michael to tackle the rest.

‘This is odd,’ he called, when they had been searching for a while. He went to the adjoining door, weighing something in his hand. ‘It looks like a—’

‘Matt, please,’ Michael was trying to summon the courage to peer beneath Reginald’s flea-infested mattress. ‘Just look for the purse.’ Bartholomew stared down at what he had found, and was not surprised the monk was uninterested – it was just a metal cylinder in two parts, one fitting inside the other. But it looked like a coining die – a press for making money – although he supposed that was unlikely. Such items were very carefully guarded, and all old ones were destroyed to prevent counterfeiting. He put it back where he had found it, then opened a dirty wooden box that contained pewter spoons. A few had been daubed with gold leaf in a sly attempt to make them appear as though they were made from solid gold.

‘Look,’ Batholomew went to the door a second time, to show them to Michael.

The monk grimaced. ‘I imagine Reginald
was
up to no good in here, given that he declined to open the door, but those spoons can have no bearing on Robert’s fate – or on who hired him to make a fuss so that Lady Lullington could be murdered. So find the purse, because I shall be sick if I am obliged to stay in here much longer.’

Bartholomew did as he was told, listening with half an ear to the discussion taking place outside the door, as people gathered there to cluck and gossip about the dead man. Predictably, Spalling was denouncing him for having money that should have been shared with the poor; Botilbrig recited a list of the crimes he was known to have committed; and Lullington had arrived to assert that Reginald had dabbled in witchery.

‘How do you know?’ asked Hagar. She sounded uneasy: his shop was under her chapel.

‘My wife told me,’ replied Lullington. ‘She knew about that kind of thing.’

‘She never did!’ snapped Hagar angrily. ‘She was a saintly soul. Will she be going in our cemetery, by the way? Trentham is digging a pit for Joan, so I am sure he would not mind excavating one for her as well. We can put her on Oxforde’s other side.’

‘She can go in the parish churchyard,’ came the callous reply. ‘I am not paying for anything special.’

‘It would not cost much,’ insisted Hagar. ‘Indeed, Trentham would probably waive his fee, because he liked her. Shall we ask him now? He is digging at this very moment, and I am sure he will be grateful for a respite while we negotiate.’

‘No.’ Lullington’s next words came from a distance. ‘I do not want my wife anywhere near where I plan to be buried myself.’

‘He is a heartless pig,’ declared Hagar to whoever was listening. ‘And if anyone is worthy of a special grave, it is Lady Lullington. She deserves one even more than Joan.’

‘Joan does not deserve it,’ countered Botilbrig. His voice became wistful. ‘Although she was a lovely lass when she was young. It is a pity she turned out the way she did.’

‘She always said the same about you,’ said Hagar.

Back in Reginald’s home, Bartholomew and Michael were having no luck. The monk had moved to the cooking pots, screwing up his face in revulsion as he peered inside each one. Bartholomew had finished rummaging through the cutler’s tools, and had just dropped to his knees to look under a bench when the door opened to reveal Henry.

‘I am afraid you must leave,’ the monk said. ‘At once.’

‘Why?’ demanded Michael, bemused.

‘Because now Reginald is dead, these premises belong to the abbey.’

‘I imagine they belong to his family,’ countered Michael. ‘The abbey is—’

‘There is a will,’ interrupted Henry. ‘The obedientiaries are studying it as I speak, and it says the abbey inherits everything.’

‘They wasted no time,’ said Bartholomew, disgusted.

Henry grimaced. ‘Reginald could not read, and while Robert
should
have been trusted to write what his friend dictated … well, suffice to say that the will is likely to be contested by Reginald’s sons. Thus the property must be sealed, and you must leave. I am sorry – I am only carrying out orders.’

‘Whose orders?’ demanded Michael. ‘Yvo’s?’

‘Yes, I suppose so. Now please do as I ask. I do not want trouble.’

‘But we are looking for information that may throw light on your Abbot’s disappearance,’ objected Michael. ‘Do you not want him found?’