It was a dismal morning, with low, grey clouds and a wetness in the air that made everything foggy and dull. Bartholomew tried to piece together the mess of facts that had accumulated to make sense out of his present predicament. Although he had always suspected that Eltisley was not all he seemed, to be captured by him and his henchmen at arrow-point so soon after the encounter with Stoate was still a shock, and he could not imagine what he and his colleagues had done to warrant Eltisley’s determination to kill them all.
‘What will you do now that you have lost your tavern and your workshop?’ he asked, initiating a conversation to see what he might learn. ‘Where will you perform your experiments?’
‘Another tavern will be provided,’ Eltisley said confidently. ‘I am too valuable to lose.’
‘Provided by whom?’ asked Bartholomew. ‘Tuddenham? Hamon? Or is it one of the other lords of the manor, such as Bardolf or Grosnold?’
Eltisley smiled gloatingly. ‘You do not have the wits to work it out, despite the fact that you have all the information at your fingertips.’
‘Such as what?’ asked Bartholomew, racking his brains. Eltisley, however, declined to answer and they trudged along in silence. Once they turned down a little-used trackway that cut north, Bartholomew knew exactly where Eltisley was taking them, and it did not surprise him in the least.
‘Barchester,’ he muttered to Cynric. ‘We are going to Barchester.’
Cynric faltered, and Eltisley gave him an encouraging poke with a dagger. Cynric spun round fast and had ripped it from Eltisley’s hands before the taverner realised what was happening. His men, however, were not so easily taken unawares, and had their bows raised and their arrows pointed at Cynric before the Welshman could take a single step toward the trees that would mask his escape.
Eltisley snatched the dagger back, and pushed Cynric forward again. ‘That is exactly the kind of behaviour I recommend you avoid if you do not want William sent back to Cambridge in a wooden box. And your students – I will track them down and kill them, too. Now move, and no talking.’
Cynric began to walk again, his face expressionless, although Bartholomew knew he was seething with rage. One of the men, who carried a sword at his side, sported a painful-looking bruise on one cheekbone. It looked to Bartholomew exactly the kind of injury that might have been caused by a hurled heavy metal ring, and Bartholomew could only assume that it had been Eltisley and his henchmen who had been burying Norys in Unwin’s gave. But why? The pardoner was already dead, and had been dumped in the woods by Stoate.
‘If there is another chance, run,’ he muttered to Cynric, when Eltisley fell back to say something to his friends. ‘Get the others, and take them as far away from this place as you can.’
Cynric said nothing.
‘Please, Cynric,’ pleaded Bartholomew in a desperate whisper, when he realised Cynric had no intention of leaving him. ‘Eltisley intends to kill us anyway. This nonsense about letting William go free is just a ploy to gain our co-operation.’
‘No talking.’ Eltisley jabbed at Bartholomew with his dagger. Cynric spun round, his face dark with anger, but Bartholomew pulled him on, knowing that it would take very little for the unstable Eltisley to order his companions to shoot, and they looked like the kind of men to do it.
Eventually the tattered roofs of Barchester came into view, sticking forlornly through their veil of trees. In the grey light of the overcast morning, with low, dirty clouds overhead, the deserted village looked even more miserable than usual with its broken doors, unstable walls and ruined thatches. Bartholomew walked cautiously, alert for the sinister growls and unearthly screeches that would precede the old woman and her mad dog hurtling out of the undergrowth to attack them. The woods, however, were as silent and as still as the fog that swathed them.
‘You are looking for Padfoot,’ said Eltisley, watching him. ‘You need not fear – he is not here today. Even spectres have business of their own to attend.’
‘What nonsense are you speaking?’ said Bartholomew, irritated that the man should take him for a fool. ‘Padfoot is no more spectre than you are. It is the crone’s tame dog. Do you pay her to stay here and frighten travellers so that they will not linger?’ He snapped his fingers as realisation dawned. ‘Of course you do! I found a bright new penny in one of the huts when we first came here.’
‘Mad Megin likes shiny things,’ said Eltisley. ‘Especially coins.’
Bartholomew continued, as certain things became clear. ‘When we first arrived, Tuddenham told us that it was you who discovered Mad Megin’s drowned body in the river last winter, and you who buried her in the churchyard. I see now that she is not buried at all.’
Eltisley smiled. ‘But I did find her drowned in the river. I brought her back to life, and now she is my servant.’
‘You did what?’ asked Bartholomew, startled despite himself.
Eltisley made an impatient sound. ‘I brought her back to life. I took her out of the river, pressed the water from her lungs, and gave her a few drops of one of my potions. Within moments, she was gasping for breath, and her life-beat was strong and sure.’
‘Then she was probably not dead in the first place,’ said Bartholomew.
‘She was dead,’ said Eltisley with absolute conviction. ‘She was not breathing when I first found her. And her experience changed her. She is not the same woman now as she was before she died – she does not even remember her name.’
‘You damaged her, then,’ said Bartholomew. ‘I have heard of cases where people have been dragged back from the brink of death and unless it is done immediately, the mind is impaired. It would have been kinder to let her die.’
‘You believe death is better than life?’ asked Eltisley, astonished. ‘But all my work has been devoted to prolonging life – creating potions to cure diseases, making wines that repel the evil miasmas that bring summer agues, concocting remedies to prevent shaking fevers and palsies. Life is always better than death.’
‘And how well did these potions work against the plague?’ asked Bartholomew.
‘Two in three survived thanks to my mixtures,’ said Eltisley. ‘Almost everyone who took Stoate’s red arsenic and lead died, but my boiled-snake and primrose water was far more successful.’
‘A third was about what most villages and towns lost,’ Bartholomew pointed out. ‘Your potion made no difference at all.’
‘That is not true,’ said Eltisley, nettled. ‘Many villages were completely wiped out, like Barchester, and most religious communities lost more than a third of their number. That Grundisburgh only lost a hundred souls to the Death was entirely due to me.’
‘Is that the essence of your experiments, then?’ asked Bartholomew. ‘To combat diseases?’
‘Not entirely. I am searching for the element that will raise the dead from their graves.’
‘What do you mean?’ asked Bartholomew uneasily.
Eltisley smiled at him as though he were a wayward and not particularly intelligent child. ‘I am going to find a cure for death.’
‘And did you succeed with that poor animal you had in your workshop the other night?’ asked Bartholomew, once he had recovered from his shock, recalling Eltisley with the dead dog the night Cynric stole the beef.
Eltisley frowned absently. ‘No, but I have made some adjustments, and I believe the balance of elements is correct now. Of course, I realise that a dog is different from a human – it is always better to experiment on humans. I was successful with Mad Megin, and I intend to continue my work until I have all the people in Grundisburgh churchyard walking among us.’
Bartholomew shuddered at the image. ‘But most of them will be nothing but bones. Will your potion restore their flesh, too?’