To Kill Or Cure

Book 13: Chronicles of Matthew Bartholomew

by Susanna Gregory

Genres: Historical Fiction; Historical Mysteries

Synopsis

Cambridge University is in dire financial straits: the town's landlords are demanding an extortionate rent rise for the students' hostels, and the plague years have left the colleges with scant resources. Tension between town and gown is at boiling point and soon explodes into violence and death. Into this maelstrom comes a charismatic physician whose healing methods owe more to magic than medicine, but his success threatens Matthew Bartholomew's professional reputation - and his life....

Release date: December 2, 2010

Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group

Print pages: 448

Sample

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.


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.’


The Master of Michaelhouse stood behind his wooden throne, watching the students shuffle into place in the body of the hall.
Ralph de Langelee was a large, barrel-chested man with scant aptitude for scholarship and an appalling grasp of the philosophy
he was supposed to teach. To the astonishment of all, he was proving to be a decent administrator, and his Fellows were pleasantly
surprised to find themselves content with his rule. The students were happy, too, because, as something of a reprobate himself,
Langelee tended to turn a blind eye to all but the most brazen infractions of the rules. His policy of toleration had generated
an atmosphere of harmony and trust, and Bartholomew had never known his College more strife-free.


One of Langelee’s wisest decisions had been to pass the financial management of his impecunious foundation to a lawyer called
Wynewyk, who was the last of the Fellows present. Wynewyk was a small, fox-faced man, who loved manipulating the College accounts, and Michaelhouse would have been deeply in debt were it not for his ingenuity and attention
to detail. That morning, he was basking in the compliments of his colleagues for purchasing such an impressive quantity of
food with a comparatively small sum of money.


‘Come on, come on,’ muttered Michael, as Langelee waited for old Kenyngham to reach his allocated seat. ‘I am starving.’

‘Do not make yourself sick, Brother,’ whispered Bartholomew. The monk was his closest friend, and he felt it his duty to dissuade
him from deliberate overindulgence. The warning was not entirely altruistic, though: Bartholomew did not want to spend his
afternoon mixing remedies to ease aching stomachs. ‘The statutes do not stipulate that we should devour everything today.
We are permitted to finish some of it tomorrow.’


‘And the day after,’ added Kenyngham.

Michael shot them an unpleasant look. ‘I shall eat whatever I can fit in my belly. This is one of my favourite festivals,
and I am weary of fasting and abstinence. Lent is over, thank God, and we can get back to the business of normal feeding.’


Before they could begin a debate on the matter, Langelee intoned the grace of the day in atrocious Latin that had all his
Fellows and most of the students wincing in unison, then sat down and seized a knife. The servants, who had been waiting behind
the screen, swung into action, and the feast was under way. Michael sighed his satisfaction, William girded himself up to
ensure he did not get less than the portly monk, Langelee smiled benevolently at his flock, and Kenyngham, who was never very
impressed with the Master’s famously short prayers, began to mutter a much longer one of his own. Bartholomew looked around
at his colleagues, and thought how fortunate he was to live in a place surrounded by people he liked – or, at least, by people
whose idiosyncrasies were familiar enough that he no longer found them aggravating.


Because it was a special occasion, Langelee announced that conversation was permitted. Normally, the Bible Scholar read aloud
during meals – the Michaelhouse men were supposed to reflect and learn, even while eating. It was some time before anyone
took the Master up on his offer, however, because Fellows, commoners and students alike were more interested in what was being
put on their tables than in chatting to friends they saw all day anyway. Silence reigned, broken only by Agatha’s imperious
commands from behind the screen and the metallic click of knives on platters.


‘Can we use the vernacular, Master?’ called one man eventually, once he had satiated his immediate hunger and was of a mind
to converse. Bartholomew was not surprised that the question had come from Rob Deynman, the College’s least able student.
Deynman would never pass the disputations that would allow him to become a physician, and should not have been accepted to
study in the first place. Yet whenever Langelee tried to hint that Deynman might do better in another profession, the lad’s
rich father showered the College with money, which always ended with the son being admitted for one more term. Bartholomew
was acutely uncomfortable with the situation, and did not see how it would ever be resolved – he would never agree to fixing
a pass, because he refused to unleash such a dangerous menace on an unsuspecting public, but he doubted even the wealthy Deynman
clan would agree to paying fees in perpetuity.


‘It should be Latin,’ objected William pedantically. ‘Or French, I suppose.’


Langelee overrode him, on the grounds that he did not enjoy speaking Latin himself, and his French was not much better. ‘English
will make a pleasant change, and we do not want our dinner-table chat to be stilted. I am in the mood to be entertained.’


‘I am glad you said that, Master,’ said Michael. He beamed around at his colleagues. ‘I anticipated the need for a little
fun, so I invited the choir to sing for us.’


There was a universal groan. The monk worked hard with the motley ensemble that called itself the Michaelhouse Choir, but
there was no turning a pig’s ear into a silken purse. It was the largest such group in Cambridge, mostly because Michael provided
free bread and ale after practices. Most of the town’s poor were members, and he accepted them into his fold regardless of
whether they possessed any musical talent.


‘How could you, Brother?’ asked Wynewyk reproachfully. ‘They will wail so loudly that it will not matter what language we
use – we will not hear anything our neighbour says anyway.’


‘And we shall have to share the food,’ added William resentfully.

‘We will,’ said Kenyngham, when Michael seemed to be having second thoughts; the monk was rarely magnanimous where his stomach
was concerned. ‘But it will be the only meal most of them will enjoy today, so I do not think we should begrudge it.’


Michael inclined his head, albeit reluctantly. ‘Do not worry about the noise, Wynewyk. I have been training them to sing quietly.’

‘Here they come,’ warned Bartholomew, as the choristers marched into the hall, caps held in their right hands. They were a ragged mob, mostly barefoot, and Deynman was not the only scholar to rest his hand on his purse as they trooped
past him. In the lead was Isnard the bargeman, who hobbled on crutches because Bartholomew had been forced to amputate his
leg after an accident two years before. He was a burly fellow with an unfortunate tendency to believe anything he was told,
especially after he had been drinking, which was most nights.


‘You can lead the music today, Isnard,’ said Michael, barely glancing up from his repast. ‘You are here earlier than I expected,
and I am still eating.’


‘Me?’ asked the bargeman, stunned and flattered by the unexpected honour. ‘Are you sure?’


‘Quite sure,’ replied Michael, reaching for more chicken.

‘Right,’ said Isnard gleefully, turning to his fellow musicians. ‘Ready? One, two, three, go!’

And they were off. Unfortunately, he had not told them what to perform, as a consequence of which half began warbling one
tune, while the remainder hollered another. Jubilantly, they seized the opportunity to out-sing each other in a bit of light-hearted
rivalry. The result was not pleasant, but Michaelhouse was used to cacophonies where the choir was concerned, and most scholars
thought it no different from the racket they made when they were all trilling the same piece.


‘Did you hear about Robert Spaldynge?’ yelled Bartholomew to Michael, to take the monk’s mind off the fact that all his careful
instructing had obviously been a waste of time. On the physician’s other side, Kenyngham closed his eyes and began to pray
again, perhaps for silence. ‘He is accused of selling a house that did not belong to him. It was owned by his College – Clare.’


Michael nodded. He was the University’s Senior Proctor, which meant he was responsible for maintaining law and order among the disparate collection of Colleges and hostels that comprised the studium generale at Cambridge. He had an army of beadles to help him, and very little happened without his knowledge. ‘He claims he had no
choice – that he needed money to buy food. It might be true, because his students are an unusually impoverished group. Clare
is furious about it, but not nearly as much as I am. Spaldynge’s actions have put me in an impossible position.’


Bartholomew was struggling to hear him. The singers had finished their first offering, and had started an old favourite that,
for some inexplicable reason, included a lot of rhythmically stamping feet. He was sure the monk had not taught them to do
it. ‘What do you mean?’


‘I mean that his antics have come at a difficult time. The University is currently embroiled in a dispute about rents with
the town’s landlords – you should know this, Matt; I have talked of little else this past month – and I issued a writ ordering
all scholars to keep hold of their property until it is resolved. If we lose the fight, we will need every College-owned building we can get our hands on, to house those scholars who will suddenly find themselves with nowhere to
live.’


The monk had held forth about a ‘rent war’ on several occasions, but Bartholomew had taken scant notice. The previous term had been frantically
busy for him, because two Fellows on a sabbatical leave of absence meant a huge increase in his teaching load, and he had
not had time to think about much else. ‘Spaldynge’s is only one house, Brother.’


Michael regarded him balefully. ‘You clearly have not been listening to me, or you would not be making such an inane remark. The landlords are refusing to renew leases, and we
have dozens of homeless scholars already – scholars I need to house. Thus every building is important at the moment. Did you know the one Spaldynge sold was Borden Hostel? He was its Principal.’


‘Borden?’ asked Bartholomew, a little shocked. ‘But that has been part of the University for decades. It is older than most
Colleges.’


Michael’s face was grim. ‘Quite. Unfortunately, the landlords have interpreted its sale to mean that if stable old Borden
can fall into their hands, then so can any other foundation. As I said, I am furious about it – Spaldynge has done the whole
University a disservice.’


Bartholomew was puzzled. ‘You say he sold his hostel to buy food, but where does he intend to eat it, if he has no home? He
has solved one problem by creating another.’


‘He is a Fellow of Clare, so he and his students have been given refuge there. He said he made the sale to underline the fact
that most hostels are desperately poor, but we collegians do not care.’


Bartholomew looked at the mounds of food on Michael’s trencher. ‘Perhaps he has a point.’

‘Perhaps he does, but it still does not give him the right to sell property that does not belong to him. Did I tell you that
these greedy landlords are demanding that all rents be trebled? As the law stands, it is the University that determines what constitutes a fair rent – and that rate was set years ago.
It means these treacherous landlords are questioning the law itself!’


‘But the rate was set before the plague,’ Bartholomew pointed out reasonably. ‘