‘Go and fetch it, then,’ said Michael. ‘And retrieve the candle while you are at it.’
That idea did not much appeal to Bartholomew while rats milled about on the floor. He tried to think of a better idea, but failed. ‘All right, then. But if we all go, you two can drive them off while I feel around on the floor.’
It was not a plan that filled anyone with much enthusiasm, but in the absence of an alternative, they inched down the stairs and stepped gingerly on the floor. Feeling that caution was the wrong approach, Michael suddenly began stamping his feet and spinning around like some crazed Oriental dancer. While Cynric did likewise, Bartholomew dropped to his hands and knees and began groping around for the quarrel, trying to ignore the cold, wet patches and mysterious lumps that his fingers encountered.
Michael’s breath came in laboured gasps from the vigour of his exercise, and Cynric was already edging toward the steps. Bartholomew knew they would not maintain their rat-scaring act for much longer, and his search became more erratic. Just when he thought he would have to think of something else, he found the bolt. He snatched it up with a triumphant yell, and vied with the others to be first up the stairs.
‘Give it to me,’ said Cynric, feeling for it in the darkness. He nodded. ‘It will do. Did you find the candle?’
There was a disappointed silence when Bartholomew did not reply.
‘We should try to think out answers to all this,’ said Michael, after a moment. ‘It might give us some kind of bargaining power, if Cynric’s attempt to free us fails.’
‘Eltisley said we have all the facts,’ said Bartholomew. ‘So we should be able to work out at least part of it. I have been thinking hard, and I think I know the identity of the hanged man.’
‘Then who is it?’ asked Michael.
‘James Freeman.’
‘You mean the husband of the poor woman Stoate poisoned with his neighbourly dish of mussels? The man who died of a slit throat two weeks before we arrived in the village? How in God’s name did you come up with that?’
‘Mother Goodman told me that one of the first people at the scene of James Freeman’s death was Eltisley, and Eltisley later bragged about that fact himself – he went into some detail about the box he had designed to carry Freeman to his grave. But no one saw the body except Eltisley, not even Mother Goodman, who usually lays out the dead. All anyone saw were bloodstained clothes.’
‘But Dame Eva found the body. Obviously she saw it.’
‘I doubt she stayed long and studied it,’ said Bartholomew. ‘Anyway, she is old and frail. She probably glimpsed someone lying there all covered in blood – probably one of Eltisley’s henchmen playing dead – and made the assumption that it was Freeman, because he was in Freeman’s home.’
Michael scratched his chin thoughtfully. ‘Eltisley did make a good deal of fuss about the coffin he produced – telling us how he designed it specially for the occasion.’
‘Quite,’ said Bartholomew. ‘And he designed it so that it would leak blood, and that would be what everyone would remember. No one would ask to look inside the coffin with that stuff dribbling out all over the place. And there is another thing: corpses do not bleed. So, Freeman’s body should not have been bleeding at all, gaping throat wound or no.’
‘But why should Freeman be the hanged man, as opposed to some lone traveller who stumbled on Eltisley’s evil empire by mistake?’
‘Eltisley believes he can raise the dead. By faking Freeman’s death, I imagine he saw an opportunity to avail himself of a living human subject. Then, he could add credence to the legend that anyone who sees Padfoot will die a violent death – thus keeping people away from Barchester where he conducts his experiments – and procure someone to kill at his own convenience and then try to bring back to life.’
‘So, you are saying that there was never a body with a slit throat, and that the blood dripping from Eltisley’s box had nothing to do with a corpse?’ asked Michael. Bartholomew nodded, but the monk was not convinced. ‘But why was the hanged man – Freeman – wearing Deblunville’s clothes?’ He kicked out at a rat, braver than the rest, that was edging upwards.
‘Oh, that is easy. Janelle said she stole them from Deblunville for her father. She left them near the Grundisburgh parish boundary, but someone else found them before they could be collected. Since Freeman’s clothes had been soaked in blood to convince everyone he had died a gruesome death, Eltisley would have needed another set. Doubtless he or one of his henchmen found Janelle’s bundle, and gave them to Freeman to wear while they kept him prisoner.’
‘But Norys told us that whoever ran from the church was wearing Deblunville’s clothes,’ Michael pointed out. ‘How do you explain that?’
Bartholomew scratched his head. ‘I do not know, but the dagger we saw on the hanged man was the same as the one under the smouldering corpse in the shepherd’s hut.’
‘God’s blood, Matt!’ said Michael. ‘These rats are climbing the stairs.’
Bartholomew swallowed. ‘They will become bolder the longer we stay here. Kick them away.’
Michael gripped Bartholomew’s arm and flailed about with his legs. ‘There,’ he said with satisfaction. ‘That should make them think twice about tangling with me.’
‘They will be back,’ said Cynric.
‘Think of something else,’ said Bartholomew. ‘James Freeman had to die because he claimed he had seen Padfoot – no one lives who has set eyes on Padfoot. It was the same with Alice Quy, dead of childbirth fever six months after having her last child. I will wager you anything you like that both had been out on one of Hamon’s nocturnal expeditions, looking for the golden calf. Either by design or by chance, they ended up at Barchester and encountered Mad Megin and her dog, who were guarding the village for Eltisley.’
‘Yes,’ said Michael. ‘You are right. And we were foolish, you know. We allowed ourselves to be misled by Deblunville’s false assumptions – that it was Tuddenham who was promoting the Padfoot legend to provide an excuse for his people trespassing on his neighbours’ land while searching for buried treasure.’
Bartholomew nodded slowly. ‘But, of course, had we really drought about that, we would have seen it made no sense: the only two people to have availed themselves of this excuse – James Freeman and Alice Quy – were killed almost immediately. Why go to all the trouble of inventing an excuse if you plan to kill anyone who uses it? Eltisley, not Tuddenham, killed the two villagers.’
‘Mother Goodman told you that Eltisley had sent Alice Quy a harmless potion because she could not pay Master Stoate’s inflated prices for medicine.’ Michael tried to ease higher up the stairs.
‘It was supposed to contain feverfew and honeyed wine,’ said Bartholomew, ‘an appropriate remedy for such disorders. But, of course, all that was wrong with her was fear, because she had set eyes on this so-called phantom. By the time she had taken a few draughts of Eltisley’s potion, her fate was sealed. Her death proved to the villagers that no one sets eyes on Padfoot and lives.’
‘And then there was Deblunville,’ said Michael. ‘He, too, was supposed to have seen Padfoot – although he claimed it was a wolf. Eltisley must have bashed him over the head in the woods. We know he was experimenting with how he was going to kill us that night – you saw flames shooting out of his workshop – and then he went to Barchester to continue because he had been unsuccessful at home. He must have come across Deblunville, conveniently separated from his archers, and decided it was too good an opportunity to miss.’
‘Grosnold’s man told me that Padfoot had been heard sniffing around Wergen Hall, but that people were too afraid to open the window to look. It was probably a fox, but you can see how Eltisley has the whole village terrified over this Padfoot nonsense.’