An Unholy Alliance

Book 2: Chronicles of Matthew Bartholomew

by Susanna Gregory

Genres: Historical Fiction; Medieval; Mystery; Amateur Sleuth; Historical Mysteries; Crime Fiction; Medical Thrillers; Suspense

Synopsis

For the twentieth anniversary of the Matthew Bartholomew series, Sphere is delighted to reissue the first three books with beautiful new series-style covers.

In 1350, the people of Cambridge are struggling to overcome the effects of the Black Death - and with a high mortality rate among priests and monks, the townsfolk are vulnerable to sinister cults that have sprung up.

At Michaelhouse, Matthew Bartholomew is training new physicians when the body of a friar is found in the massive chest that the University uses to store precious documents. While investigating, Bartholomew stumbles across a derelict church being used as a meeting place for the mysterious sect he believes is at the heart of a web of blackmail and deceit - with intention to overthrow the established religion.

Release date: December 2, 2010

Publisher: Sphere

Print pages: 415

Sample

Cambridge, 1350

ISOBEL WATKINS GLANCED FEARFULLY BEHIND HER for at least the fourth time since leaving the home of the wealthy merchant on
Milne Street. She was sure she was being followed, but each time she stopped and looked behind her, she could hear and see
nothing amiss. She slipped into a doorway and held her breath to control her trembling as she peered down the dark street
behind her. There was nothing, not even a rat scurrying from the mounds of rubbish that lined both sides of the High Street.


She took a deep breath and leaned her head back against the door. She was imagining things, and the recent murder of two of
her colleagues in the town had unnerved her. She had never been afraid of walking alone in the dark before: indeed, it was
usually when she met her best customers. She poked her head out and looked down the street yet again. All was silence and
darkness. In the distance she heard the bell of St Michael’s chiming the hour: midnight.


Dismissing her fears, she slipped out of the doorway and began walking quickly up the High Street towards her home near the town gate. It was only a short walk, and the night-watchmen
on duty at the gate would be within hailing distance soon. She grimaced. It would not be the first time she had been forced
to give her night’s earnings to the guards in order not to be arrested for breaking the curfew. She caught her breath again
as she heard the faintest of sounds behind her, and decided she would be happy to part with an entire week’s earnings just
to be safely in her own bed.


She saw the pinprick of light coming from the gate, and broke into a run, almost crying in relief. She was totally unprepared
for the attack that came from the side. She felt herself hurled to the ground as someone dived out of the small trees around
St Botolph’s Church. She tried to scream as she felt herself dragged into the churchyard, but no sound would come. She felt
a sudden burning pain in her throat and then a hot, sticky sensation on her chest. As her world slowly went black, she cursed
herself for being so convinced that she was being followed that she had failed to consider whether it was safe ahead.


A short distance away, a man wearing the habit of a Dominican friar knelt in the silence of the tower of St Mary’s Church.
In front of him stood the great iron-bound box that held the University’s most precious documents – deeds of property, records
of accounts, scrolls containing promises of money and goods, and a stack of loose pages recording important occurrences in
the University, carefully documented by the University clerks.


The University chest. The friar rubbed his hands and, balancing the merest stub of a candle on the chest, began to work on one of the three great locks that kept the University’s
business from prying eyes. The only sounds in the tower were tiny clicks and metallic scrapes as he concentrated on his task.
He felt safe. He had spent several days in the church, kneeling in different parts so he could become familiar with its layout
and routine. That night he had hidden behind one of the pillars when the lay-brother had walked around the church, dousing
candles and checking all the windows were secure. When the lay-brother had left, the friar had stood stock still behind his
pillar for the best part of an hour to make certain that no one had followed him and was also hiding. Then he had spent another
hour checking every last corner of the church to make doubly sure. He had climbed on benches to test that the locks on the window
were secure and had taken the added precaution of slipping a thick bar across the door before climbing the spiral stairs to
the tower.


He hummed to himself as he worked. The singing that evening had been spectacular, with boys’ voices soaring like angels over
the drone of the bass and tenor of the men. The friar had been unfamiliar with the music and had been told it had been written
by a Franciscan called Simon Tunstede who was earning something of a reputation as a composer. He paused and stared into the
darkness as he tried to recall how the Sanctus had gone. As it came back to him, he resumed his fiddling with the lock and
sang a little louder.


The first lock snapped open, and the friar shuffled on his knees to the next one. Eventually, the second lock popped open
and the friar moved onto the third. He stopped singing and small beads of sweat broke out on his head. He paused to rub an arm over his face and continued scraping
and poking with his slivers of metal. Suddenly, the last lock snapped open, and the friar stood up stiffly.


He stretched his shoulders, cramped from hunching over his work, and carefully lifted the lid of the great box. It groaned
softly, the leather hinges protesting at the weight. The friar knelt again and began to sort carefully through the documents
that lay within. He had been working for only a few moments when a sound behind him made him leap to his feet. He held his
breath in terror, and then relaxed when he realised it was only a bird in the bell chamber above. He turned back to the chest
again, and continued to rifle through the scrolls and papers.


He suddenly felt a great lurching pain. He tried to stand up, but his legs failed him. He put both hands to his chest and
moaned softly, leaning against the great box as he did so. He was aware that the light from the candle was growing dimmer
as the pain in his chest increased. With the tiniest of sighs, the friar collapsed over the open chest and died.


DAWN WAS COOL AND CLEAN AS MATTHEW Bartholomew and Brother Michael walked together across the College yard to the great iron-studded
doors that led to Foul Lane. As Michael removed the stout wooden bar from the wicket gate and chided the rumpled porter for
sleeping when he should have been alert, Bartholomew looked up at the dark blue sky and savoured the freshness of the air.
When the sun became hot, the small town would begin to stink from the refuse and sewage that were dumped in the myriad of
waterways, ditches, and streams. But now the air was cool and smelt of the sea.


Michael opened the gate, and Bartholomew followed him into the lane. The large Benedictine tripped over a mangy dog that was
lying in the street outside, and swore as it yelped and ran away towards the wharves on the river bank.


‘There are far too many stray dogs in Cambridge,’ he grumbled. ‘Ever since the plague. Stray dogs and stray cats, with no
one left to keep the wretched things off the streets. Now the Fair is here, there are more than ever. And I am certain I saw
a monkey in the High Street last night!’


Bartholomew smiled at the monk’s litany of complaints and began to walk up the lane towards St Michael’s Church. It was his
and Michael’s turn to open the church and prepare it for the first service of the day. Before the plague had swept through
England, all the religious offices were recited in the church by the scholars of Michaelhouse, but the shortage of friars
and priests to perform these duties meant that the College’s religious practices were curtailed. Brother Michael would pray
alone, while Bartholomew prepared the church for Prime, which all the scholars would attend. After, they would go back to
Michaelhouse for breakfast, and lectures would start at six.


The sky was beginning to lighten in the east, and although there were sounds – a dog barking, a bird singing in the distance,
the clatter of an early cart to the market – the town was peaceful, and this was Bartholomew’s favourite time of day. As Michael
fumbled with the large church key, Bartholomew walked over the long grass of the churchyard to a small hump marked with a
crude wooden cross. Bartholomew and Michael had buried Father Aelfrith here when, all over the city, others were being interred
in huge pits at the height of the plague. He stared down at the cross, remembering the events of the winter of 1348, when
the plague had raged and a murderer had struck at Michaelhouse.


Bartholomew had buried another colleague in the churchyard too. The smug Master Wilson lay in his temporary grave awaiting
the day when Bartholomew fulfilled a deathbed promise and organised the construction of an extravagant tomb carved in black
marble. Bartholomew felt a deep unease about the notion of removing Wilson’s body from its grave in the churchyard to the church. Even after a year and a half of rethinking all he had learned, Bartholomew
still did not understand how the plague spread, or why it struck some people and not others. Some physicians believed the
stories from the East, that the pestilence had come because an earthquake had opened the graves of the dead. Bartholomew saw
no evidence to prove this was true, but the plague was never far from his thoughts, and he was loathe to risk exhuming Wilson.


He heard Brother Michael begin to chant and dragged himself from his thoughts to go about his duty. Faint light filtered through
the clear glass of the east window, although the church was still shades of grey and black. Later, when the sun rose, the
light would fall on the vivid paintings on the walls that brought them alive with colour. Especially fine was the painting
that depicted Judgement Day, showing souls being tossed into the pits of hell by a goat-devil. On the opposite side St Michael
saved an occasional soul. Bartholomew often wondered what had driven the artist to clothe the Devil in a scholar’s tabard.


As Michael continued to chant, Bartholomew opened the small sanctuary cupboard, took out chalice and paten, and turned the
pages of the huge Bible to the reading for the day. When he had finished, he walked around the church lighting candles and
setting out stools for those of the small congregation who were unable to stand.


As he checked the level of holy water in the stoup, he grimaced with distaste at the film of scum that had accumulated. Glancing
quickly down the aisle to make sure Michael was not watching, he siphoned the old water off into a jug, gave the stoup a quick wipe round, and refilled it. Keeping his back to Michael, Bartholomew poured the old
water away in the piscina next to the altar, careful not to spill any. There were increasing rumours that witchcraft was on
the increase in England because of the shortage of clergy after the plague, and there was a danger of holy water being stolen
for use in black magic rituals. The piscina ensured that the water drained into the church foundations and could not be collected
and sold. But Bartholomew, as a practising physician, as well as Michael house’s teacher of medicine, was more concerned that
scholars would touch the filthy water to their lips and become ill.


Michael finished his prayers and Bartholomew saw him sneak a gulp of wine from the jug intended for the mass. The monk yawned
hugely, and began to relate a tale of how a pardoner had tried to sell him some of the Archangel Gabriel’s hair at the Fair
the previous day. Michael, outraged, had demanded proof that the hair had indeed belonged to Gabriel and had been informed
that the angel himself had presented it to the pardoner in a dream. Michael proudly announced that he had tipped the scoundrel
and his fake hair into the King’s Ditch. Bartholomew winced. The Ditch was a foul affair, running thick with all kinds of
filth and waste, and Michael’s righteous anger might well have caused the unfortunate pardoner to contract a veritable host
of diseases.


Before he could respond, the doors were pushed open and sleepy-eyed scholars began to file silently into church. Michael and
Bartholomew shot to the altar rail and knelt quickly in the hope that they had not been seen chattering when they should have been praying. Bartholomew watched the Michaelhouse scholars take their places in the
choir: the Fellows in a line to the right headed by the Master, and the students and commoners behind. Cynric ap Huwydd, Bartholomew’s
book-bearer, rang the bell to announce that the service was about to begin. The scholars of Physwick Hostel, who had begged
use of St Michael’s Church from Michaelhouse because their own church had been closed since the plague, processed in and stood
in a neat line opposite the Michaelhouse scholars. The arrangement was an uneasy one: Physwick resented being forced to rely
on Michaelhouse’s good graces, and Michaelhouse was nervous at sharing the church after twenty-five years. Bartholomew saw
Physwick’s Principal, Richard Harling, exchange a smile far from warm with Michaelhouse’s Senior Fellow, Roger Alcote.


In the main body of the church a few parishioners drifted in, yawning and rubbing the sleep from their eyes, and Michael began
the service, his rich baritone filling the church as he chanted. Out of the corner of his eye, Bartholomew saw something fly
through the air towards the Michaelhouse students. It landed harmlessly, but a stain on the floor attested that it was a ball
of mud. Bartholomew scanned the congregation, and identified the culprits in the form of the blacksmith’s sons. They stood,
hands clasped in front of them, eyes raised to the carved wooden roof, as though nothing had happened. Bartholomew frowned.
The University had a stormy relationship with the town, and, although the University brought prosperity to a number of townsfolk,
it also brought gangs of arrogant, noisy students who despised the people of the town and rioted at the least provocation. Bartholomew saw one of the Physwick students bow his head in laughter
at the mud-ball. The University was not even at peace with itself: students from the south loathed scholars from the north
and from Scotland; they all hated students from Wales and Ireland; and there was even fierce rivalry between the different
religious orders, the mendicant friars and priests at loggerheads with the rich Benedictines and the Austin Canons who ran
the Hospital of St John.


Bartholomew turned his attention away from the blacksmith’s loutish sons, and back to the service. Michael had finished reading,
and the scholars began to chant a Psalm. Bartholomew joined in the singing, relishing how the chanting echoed through the
church. As the Psalm finished, Bartholomew stepped forward to read the designated tract from the Old Testament.


He faltered as the door was flung open, and a man walked quickly down the aisle, gesturing urgently that he wanted to speak
to the Master, Thomas Kenyngham. Kenyngham was a gentle Gilbertine friar whose rule of the College was tolerant to the point
of laxity. He smiled benignly and waved the messenger forward. The man whispered in his ear, and Bartholomew saw Roger Alcote
surreptitiously lean to one side to try to overhear. The Master favoured Alcote with a seraphic smile until Alcote had the
grace to move away. Out of the corner of his eye, Bartholomew saw that one of the clerk’s frenzied gestures was directed towards
him, and wondered which of his patients needed him so urgently that mass could be interrupted.


Kenyngham left his place and walked towards the altar, laying a hand on Bartholomew’s arm to stop his reading.


‘Gentlemen,’ he began in his soft voice, ‘there has been an incident in St Mary’s Church. The Chancellor has requested that
Brother Michael and Doctor Bartholomew attend as soon as possible. Father William and I will continue the mass.’ Without further
ado, he took up the reading where Bartholomew had stopped, leaving William to scramble to take his own place. Michael dropped
his prayerful attitude with a speed that verged on the sacrilegious and made his way down the aisle, eyes gleaming with anticipation.
Cynric followed, and Bartholomew went after them, aware of the curious looks from the other scholars. The Master of Physwick
plucked at his sleeve as he passed.


‘I am the University’s Senior Proctor,’ he said in a low whisper. ‘If there has been an incident in the University church,
I should come.’


Bartholomew shrugged, glancing briefly at him as he walked briskly down the aisle. He did not like Richard Harling, who, as
the University’s Senior Proctor, patrolled the streets at night looking for scholars who should be safely locked in their
College or hostel, and fined them for unseemly or rowdy behaviour. Bartholomew sometimes needed to be out at night to see
patients, and Harling had already fined him twice without even listening to his reasons. Harling had black hair that was always
neatly slicked down with animal grease, and his scholar’s tabard was immaculate.


The messenger was waiting for them outside. It was lighter than in the church, and Bartholomew recognised the neat, bearded features of the Chancellor’s personal clerk, Gilbert.


‘What has happened?’ asked Michael, intrigued. ‘What is so important that it could not wait until after mass?’

‘A dead man has been found in the University chest,’ Gilbert replied. Ignoring their looks of disbelief, he continued, ‘The
Chancellor ordered me to fetch Brother Michael, the Bishop’s man, and Matthew Bartholomew, the physician.’


‘Not the plague!’ whispered Bartholomew in horror. He grabbed Gilbert’s arm. ‘How did this man die?’

Gilbert forced a smile. ‘Not the plague. I do not know what killed him, but it was not the plague.’

Harling pursed his lips. ‘This sounds like business for the Proctor.’

Gilbert raised his hands. ‘The Junior Proctor is already there. He said you had been on duty last night, and you should not
be disturbed until later.’


He turned, and set a lively pace towards St Mary’s Church, so that the obese Michael was huffing and sweating within a few
moments.


Bartholomew nudged the Benedictine monk in the ribs. ‘“Brother Michael, the Bishop’s man”,’ he repeated in an undertone.
‘A fine reputation to have, my friend.’


Michael glowered at him. A year and a half before, he had agreed to become an agent of the Bishop of Ely, the churchman who
had jurisdiction over the University since Cambridge had no cathedral of its own. Michael was to be alert to the interests
of the Church in the town, and especially to the interests of the Benedictines, since Ely was a Benedictine monastery. There
was a small hostel for Benedictines studying at the University, but the four monks that lived there were more concerned with their new-found
freedom than the interests of their Order.


Bartholomew began to feel uncomfortable. The chest was where all the University’s most important documents were stored, and
the series of locks and bolts that protected it in the church tower was rumoured to be formidable. So who had broken through
all that security? What sinister plot had the University embroiled itself in this time? And perhaps more to the point, how
could Bartholomew prevent it from sucking him in, too?


The Church of St Mary the Great was an imposing building of creamy-white stone that dominated the High Street. Next to its
delicate window tracery and soaring tower, St Michael’s looked squat and grey. Yet, Bartholomew had heard that there were
plans to rebuild the chancel and replace it with something grander and finer still.


Bartholomew had barely caught up with the clerk when they reached St Mary’s. Standing to one side, wringing his hands and
throwing fearful glances at the tower was St Mary’s priest, Father Cuthbert, an enormously fat man whom Bartholomew treated
for swollen ankles. A small group of clerks huddled around the door talking in low voices. The Chancellor, Richard de Wetherset,
stood in the middle of them, a stocky man with iron-grey hair, who exuded an aura of power. He stepped forward as Bartholomew
and Michael approached, allowing himself a brief smile at Michael’s breathlessness.


‘Thank you for being prompt, gentlemen.’ He turned to Harling. ‘Master Jonstan is already here, Richard. I was loathe to disturb
you when you had been up all night.’


Harling inclined his head. ‘But I am Senior Proctor, and should be present at a matter that sounds so grave.’

De Wetherset nodded his thanks, and beckoned Bartholomew, Michael, and Harling out of earshot of the gathered clerks. ‘I am
afraid someone has been murdered in the tower. Doctor, I would like you to tell me a little more about how and when he died,
and you, Brother, must report this incident accurately to our Lord the Bishop.’


He began to walk through the churchyard, raising a hand to prevent the gaggle of clerks, and Cynric, from following them.
Michael and Harling followed quickly, Father Cuthbert and Bartholomew a little more slowly. Bartholomew felt his stomach churn.
At times, the University could be a seething pit of intrigue, and Bartholomew had no wish to become entangled in it. It would
demand his time and his energies when he should be concentrating all his efforts on his teaching and his patients. The plague
had left Cambridge depleted of physicians, and there was an urgent need to replace those who had died all over the country.
Bartholomew considered the training of new physicians the most important duty in his life.


St Mary’s was still dark inside, and the Chancellor took a torch from a sconce on the wall and led the way to the tower door
at the back of the building. They followed him up the winding stairs into a small chamber about half-way up the tower. Bartholomew
glanced around quickly, looking for the fabled chest, but the chamber was empty. Michael emerged from the stair-well, wheezing
unhealthily, and Cuthbert’s ponderous footsteps echoed until he too stood sweating and gasping in the chamber.


De Wetherset beckoned them close and shut the small wooden door so that they would not be overheard.

‘I do not want the details of this incident to become common knowledge,’ he said, ‘and what I am about to tell you must remain
a secret. You know that the University chest is kept in the tower here. To reach it, you must open three locked and bolted
doors, and you must be able to open three locks on the chest itself. These locks were made in Italy and are, I am told, the
finest locks in the world. Only I have the keys and either I, or my deputy, are always present when the chest is unlocked.’


He paused for a moment, and opened the door quickly to listen intently. He closed it again with a sigh and continued. ‘You
may consider all these precautions rather excessive to protect indentures and accounts, but the truth is that one of my best
clerks, Nicholas of York, was writing a history of the University. He was quite frank, and recorded everything he uncovered,
some of which could prove embarrassing if revealed in certain quarters. This book, you understand, will not be randomly distributed,
but is intended to be a reliable, factual report of our doings and dealings. One day, people may be interested to know these
things’


He looked hard first at Michael and then at Bartholomew. ‘The events of last year, when members of the University committed
murder to make their fortunes, are recorded, along with your roles in the affair. And there are other incidents too, which
need not concern you. The point is, a month ago Nicholas died of a fever, quite unexpectedly. I was uneasy at the suddenness
of his death, and in the light of what has been discovered this morning, I am even more concerned.’


‘What exactly has happened this morning?’ asked Michael. Bartholomew began to feel increasingly uncomfortable as the Chancellor’s
revelations sank in.


‘I came at first light this morning, as usual, to collect the documents from the chest I would need for the day’s business.
I was accompanied by my personal clerk, Gilbert. That group of scribes and secretaries you saw outside waited in the church
below. Even in the half-light, we could see there was something wrong. The locks on the chest were askew and the lid was not
closed properly. Gilbert opened the chest and inside was the body of a man.’


‘Gilbert has already told us as much,’ said Bartholomew. ‘But how did the body come to be in the chest?’

The Chancellor gave the grimmest of smiles. ‘That, gentlemen, is why I have asked you to come. I cannot imagine how anyone
could have entered the tower, let alone open the locks on the chest. And I certainly have no idea how the corpse of a man
could appear there.’


‘Where is the chest?’ asked Michael. ‘Not up more stairs I hope.’

The Chancellor looked Michael up and down scathingly, and left the room. They heard his footsteps echoing further up the stairs,
and Michael groaned.


The room on the next floor was more comfortable than the first. A table covered with writing equipment stood in the window,
and several benches with cushions lined the walls. In the middle of the floor, standing on a once-splendid, but now shabby,
woollen rug, was the University chest. It was a long box made of ancient black oak and strengthened with iron bands, darkened with age. It reminded
Bartholomew of the elaborate coffin he had seen the Bishop of Peterborough buried in years before. Guarding the chest and
the room was the Junior Proctor, Alric Jonstan, standing with his sword drawn and his saucer-like blue eyes round with horror.
Bartholomew smiled at him as they waited for the others. Jonstan was far more popular than Harling, and was seemingly a kinder
man who, although he took his duties seriously, did not enforce them with the same kind of inflexible rigour as did Harling.


De Wether set stood to one side as Michael and Cuthbert finally arrived, and then indicated that Bartholomew should approach
the chest. Bartholomew bent to inspect the wool rug, but there was nothing there, no blood or other marks. He walked around
the chest looking for signs of tampering, but the stout leather hinges were pristine and well-oiled, and there was no indication
that the lid had been prised open.


Taking a deep, but silent, breath, he lifted the lid. He looked down at the body of a man in a Dominican habit, lying face
down on the University’s precious documents and scrolls. Jonstan took a hissing breath and crossed himself.


‘Poor man!’ he muttered. ‘It is a friar. Poor man!’

‘Have you touched him?’ asked Bartholomew of the Chancellor.

De Wetherset shook his head. ‘We opened the chest, as I told you, but, when I saw what was inside, I lowered the lid and sent
Gilbert to fetch you.’


Bartholomew knelt and put his hand on the man’s neck. There was no life beat, and it was cold. He took the body by the shoulders while Michael grabbed the feet. Carefully,
they lifted it out and laid it on the rug next to the chest. The Chancellor came to peer in at the documents. He heaved a
sigh of relief.


‘Well, at least they are not all covered in blood,’ he announced fervently. He began searching among the papers and held up
a sheaf triumphantly. ‘The history! I think it is all here, although I will check, of course.’ He began to rifle through the
ream of parchments at the table in the window, muttering to himself.


Bartholomew turned his attention back to the body on the floor. It was a man in his fifties with a neatly cut tonsure. His
friar’s robe was threadbare and stained. Bartholomew began to try to establish why he had died. He could see no obvious signs,
no blows to the head or stab wounds. He sat back perplexed. Had the man committed suicide somehow after lying in the chest?


‘Do you know him?’ he asked, looking around at the others.

Jonstan shook his head. ‘No. We can check at the Friary, though. The poor devils were so decimated by the Death that one of
their number missing will be very apparent.’


Bartholomew frowned. ‘I do not think he was at the Friary,’ he said. ‘His appearance and robes are dirty, and the new Prior
seems very particular about that. I think he may have been sleeping rough for a few days before he died’


‘Well, who is he then? And what did he want from