‘Are you ready for this consultation with Grosnold?’ asked the monk, bowing politely to the ladies before seizing Bartholomew’s arm and bearing him off.
‘I am not doing it,’ said Bartholomew firmly.
Michael shook him gently by the arm. ‘Alcote is right. You cannot refuse your services to one of our prospective benefactor’s friends, just because you feel like it. That kind of behaviour might lose us the advowson in itself.’
‘I do not care about the advowson. I have had enough of this place. It has killed Unwin, and now we are ordered about like servants. As soon as Horsey is well, I am leaving.’
‘Fine, Matt. You can go tomorrow, if you like. I may even come with you, if I have tracked down Unwin’s killer. We can leave Alcote here to complete this business, and we can wait for him at St Edmundsbury. But you should go with Grosnold now.’
‘No,’ said Bartholomew.
‘Think, Matt,’ said Michael urgently. ‘This is an opportunity for you to discover whether Grosnold doubled back on himself and returned to Grundisburgh to speak to Unwin as Eltisley claims. We might not have another chance like this. Go, and take Cynric with you.’
Bartholomew sighed and rubbed a hand through his wet hair, reluctant to capitulate, but knowing that Michael was right – it might well prove to be the only opportunity to wheedle information from the black knight of Otley. ‘Very well. But please make sure Deynman looks after Horsey. We do not want him catching a fever that will keep us here for days.’
Michael nodded. ‘I will see him to the tavern myself. Then I will locate Mistress Freeman to ask her about this cloaked figure she saw. She has been out every time I have called at her house so far, but, if she is away today, I will wait there until she returns.’
He leaned back against the church wall, where rain slicked down his fine brown locks to make his head seem pear-shaped. Suddenly, his sandalled foot shot out from underneath him, toppling him to the ground. His first reaction was shock, his second amused embarrassment.
‘Wet grass,’ he explained as Bartholomew and Cynric helped him up. ‘Leather-soled sandals are useless in the rain, and this is not the first time this has happened to me. I only hope it does not occur when I am in the midst of some solemn proctorial ceremony. What is the matter, Matt?’
Bartholomew was staring at the ground where Michael had slipped. It was stained a reddish brown.
‘Is it blood?’ asked Cynric, peering over his shoulder. ‘There is masses of it!’
Bartholomew nodded, pointing to where more of it turned the white heads of daisies dark. He looked at Michael.
‘I think you have just found the place where Unwin was killed.’
Chapter 7
It was not a pleasant journey through the dripping woods from Grundisburgh to Otley. Bartholomew had assumed that Grosnold would have his astrological consultation at Wergen Hall, but the knight had insisted that all the information Bartholomew would need was at his own manor, and so Bartholomew was obliged to travel home with him. Since Bartholomew had been loath to read Grosnold’s stars in the first place, he bitterly resented riding miles through the rain to do it, especially since what had started as a shower seemed to have settled in for the day, and fine, but drenching, drops pattered on his shoulders and head and trickled down the back of his neck.
Otley was several miles to the north-west, along the valley of the River Lark and across the Old Road where Bartholomew and Cynric had encountered the outlaws the previous week. As they passed the Grundisburgh-Otley boundary, Tuddenham’s scrubby pastureland gave way to Grosnold’s strips of corn and barley, waving brilliant green in the rain. Off to the left were the ruined roofs of the abandoned village of Barchester, and Bartholomew noticed that Grosnold and his steward, Ned, did not follow the path that ran through the centre of it as the scholars had done, but took a newer, well-used one that skirted the settlement at a safe distance. Cynric, riding behind Bartholomew, crossed himself and looked in the opposite direction.
‘Barchester is inhabited by plague dead,’ Grosnold stated matter-of-factly when Bartholomew asked him about it, more to take his mind off his sodden clothes and wet feet than for information. ‘And a great white dog often roams there – any who set eyes on that will be dead within the week.’
‘Unwin saw a white dog,’ said Bartholomew. ‘When we left Otley last week, we took the path that runs through the middle of Barchester by mistake, and Unwin said he spotted a white dog in the trees. No one else saw it.’
‘Well, there you are then,’ said Grosnold, exchanging a knowing glance with his redheaded steward. ‘That explains why he met his end so suddenly.’
‘But you do not believe these tales of haunted villages and spectral hounds,’ said Bartholomew, certain that a proud soldier like Grosnold would not be unnerved by such stories. He saw the intense expression on the black knight’s face. ‘Do you?’ he added uncertainly.
‘Of course I do,’ said Grosnold, with such conviction that Bartholomew wished he had never broached the subject. ‘Barchester has been infested with demons since the pestilence. It drove poor Mad Megin to her death in the river last winter, although how she lived among those tortured souls all those years is beyond me.’
‘She was mad,’ said Ned, the steward, by way of explanation, adding mysteriously, ‘and she did not keep her Good Friday loaf.’
‘Her what?’ asked Bartholomew, nonplussed.
Ned shook his head at this monumental ignorance. ‘Her Good Friday loaf – the loaf of bread cooked on a Good Friday that hangs on a string in the homes of all good Christians.’
‘It prevents the bloody flux,’ explained Grosnold. ‘I thought you would have known that, being a medical man. Megin ate hers, instead of keeping it safe, and look at the terrible end she met.’
Ned jerked his head toward the woods. ‘Padfoot was out and about last night,’ he remarked conversationally. ‘Siric, Sir Thomas’s man, heard it snuffling about near the moat.’
‘Did he see it?’ asked Bartholomew, aware that a good many things snuffled about in the night.
Ned regarded him as though he were insane. ‘Well, of course he did not. If he had set eyes on it, he would die, wouldn’t he?’
‘But if he did not see it, how did he know it was the white dog, and not some other animal?’
‘He knew,’ said Ned. ‘And so would you if you heard it. There is no mistaking Padfoot.’
‘Aye, that is true,’ agreed Grosnold. He changed the subject slightly. ‘I heard Will Norys, the pardoner, is wanted for questioning in relation to Unwin’s murder.’
‘Apparently Brother Michael questioned him, and by the next day he had fled the village,’ said Ned. ‘Such flight is a sure sign of his guilt.’
‘True, true,’ said Grosnold. ‘Poor Norys! He will swing for the murder of the student-priest, even though he was only a tool in the hands of Padfoot. As far as I am concerned, Unwin set eyes on Padfoot, and his fate was sealed. Norys was just in the wrong place at the wrong time, and Padfoot used him.’
Or was he? Bartholomew was still not certain that Norys was the culprit. He frowned, wondering how to broach the subject of Grosnold’s own mysterious meetings with Unwin – one in the castle bailey at Otley, and the other in the churchyard shortly before Unwin’s death. Grosnold glanced at him, and misunderstood his thoughtful expression.