‘No!’ exclaimed Cynric with a look of abject horror. ‘I never want to set eyes on the likes of that thing again. Although I will not have long to see anything now. I can feel it in my bones.’
‘It was just an ordinary dog,’ said Bartholomew, becoming exasperated in his battle against Cynric’s superstition. ‘Nothing is going to happen to you.’
‘No?’ said Cynric warily. ‘Then perhaps you should explain that to them.’
Bartholomew spun round to see where Cynric was pointing. From the fields around them, men had materialised, some of them carrying bows with arrows already nocked, and others with swords that glittered dully in the darkness.
‘Who are you?’ one of them called. ‘Why are you trespassing here?’
‘They are the dead souls of Barchester, protecting their fields,’ groaned Cynric, clutching at Bartholomew’s arm. ‘They have come for us!’
‘For God’s sake, Cynric!’ snapped Bartholomew, the shock of his experience with the dog making him unusually irritable with his book-bearer. ‘Pull yourself together! We are probably on Bardolf’s or Deblunville’s land, and these are their men wondering why we were racing across their crops in the middle of the night all covered in mud.’
An arrow thumped into the ground nearby. Cynric closed his eyes and began to mutter incantations against the Devil.
‘I asked who you were!’ shouted the voice.
‘We are from Cambridge,’ Bartholomew called back. ‘We were returning to Grundisburgh from Grosnold’s manor, but we are lost.’
‘You are lost,’ agreed the man. ‘This is not the way from Otley to Grundisburgh. I suppose you were sent here to spy. Who paid you? Grosnold or Tuddenham? Or has that weakling Hamon finally become a man, and come out from behind his uncle’s skirts?’
‘Someone tried to rob us,’ said Bartholomew, lowering his voice as the man with the bow came closer. ‘Our horses ran away.’
The archer gave a sneering laugh. ‘Is that so? Next you will be trying to tell us that these robbers had a big white dog.’
‘They did, actually,’ said Bartholomew, puzzled. ‘How did you know?’
‘Everyone claims to have seen Padfoot these days,’ said the archer with affected weariness. ‘They think fleeing from him is a good excuse to come sneaking on to our land. Come on. Master Deblunville will be wanting a word with you.’
The archer refused to listen to anything more. He nodded to his friends, and Cynric and Bartholomew were searched roughly: Bartholomew lost his medicine bag, and Cynric was relieved of enough metal to start his own forge. Bartholomew was astonished: he knew the Welshman never went unarmed, but the number of knives, blades and even sharp nails that were removed from every available place in Cynric’s clothing was staggering.
The archer jabbed Bartholomew with one of Cynric’s weapons, to indicate that they were to start walking. It was a miserable journey. Bartholomew’s body ached from his encounter with the dog, and he was wet and cold. Cynric seemed to have given up altogether, and trailed listlessly at Bartholomew’s side, more morose and apathetic than the physician had ever seen him. It seemed that, as far as Cynric was concerned, he was already a dead man.
At last the bumps and ridges of Deblunville’s enclosure could be seen against the night sky, and Bartholomew and Cynric were prodded inside. They were directed through both sets of embankments and led into the inner bailey, where they were ordered to wait while someone went to fetch Deblunville. The wooden keep was in darkness, suggesting that Deblunville and his household had already retired to bed. It was some time before the door opened and Deblunville appeared; his wife, Janelle, and her father, John Bardolf, were behind him. Janelle walked slowly and her eyes were red-rimmed and sad, a far cry from the confident defiance she had displayed a few days before, when she had announced her marriage to Tuddenham and his cronies.
‘You disappoint me, physician,’ said Deblunville, walking towards him, holding a flaring torch. He was wearing baggy hose and a shirt that dangled almost to his knees. ‘You seemed above all this subterfuge and trickery when we met the other day. I even gave you one of my cramp rings as an act of good faith.’
‘I am sorry we trespassed on your land,’ said Bartholomew. ‘We were attacked as we were riding through Barchester from Otley, and we ran the wrong way when we escaped.’
‘That is my land,’ interposed Bardolf coldly. ‘Barchester lies on my land – despite what Grosnold and Tuddenham might claim.’
‘Attacked?’ asked Deblunville, ignoring his father-in-law. He looked Bartholomew up and down. ‘What was stolen? Not my cramp ring, I hope.’
‘Nothing was stolen,’ said Bartholomew, although he would not have been dismayed to lose the funeral jewellery Deblunville had given him. ‘Cynric drove the robbers away with an arrow.’
‘He claims Padfoot ambushed him,’ said the archer with a grin. ‘It is strange how Padfoot always seems to chase people from Grundisburgh on to our land.’
Deblunville nodded thougtfully and addressed Bartholomew. ‘Two people claim to have been chased on to my land by Padfoot within the last month: both are now dead, although I assure you that it had nothing to do with me. I personally believe that they were spies in the employ of one of my neighbours, who then executed them for getting caught – a cut throat and a childbirth fever were the official causes of death, I understand.’
‘We are telling you the truth,’ insisted Bartholomew. ‘Why should I want to spy on you?’
‘Look.’ The archer held up the gold coin Grosnold had given Bartholomew, discovered when he had searched Bartholomew’s bag. ‘If they were robbed, why did the outlaws leave them this?’
‘Who paid you to spy?’ demanded Bardolf of Bartholomew, pushing forward to stand next to his son-in-law.
‘Grosnold paid me for–’
‘There!’ exclaimed Bardolf triumphantly, interrupting Bartholomew and turning to Deblunville. ‘A confession! I knew these scholars would soon start to meddle in our affairs. Tuddenham summoned them from Cambridge, so that he could set their cunning minds to undermining our rightful claims to this land. You know how lawyers are with words, twisting and turning them, so that they can be made to mean the opposite of what was intended.’
Janelle stepped forward and laid a hand on his arm. ‘All these accusations will get us nowhere, father,’ she said in a low voice. ‘The scholars are not unreasonable men, and if we explain to them why we do not want spies on our manors they will understand.’
‘You are ill,’ said Bartholomew, noting the tremble in her voice and the unhealthy pallor of her skin. ‘Is it the child?’
She nodded, and then shook her head. Tears sprouted from her eyes, and Deblunville thrust the torch into Bardolf’s hands, so that he could put his arm around her.
‘There is no child,’ he said bitterly. ‘Not any more. Master Stoate has killed it.’
Bartholomew was bewildered. ‘Killed it how?’
Deblunville sighed. ‘I sent a man to Ipswich for the cumin you said Janelle should have, but he has not yet returned. When Janelle was sick again this morning, we used Stoate’s old remedy, since there was nothing else. Then she had griping pains and a flux of bleeding. The child has gone.’
‘I am sorry,’ said Bartholomew gently. ‘But she should not be out here; she should be resting.’
‘Will you give her something to help her sleep?’ asked Deblunville. ‘I do not want to ask Stoate to come. I might feel obliged to wring his neck.’
‘Just a moment!’ cried Bardolf, grabbing Deblunville’s arm and swinging him round. ‘These scholars have been caught red-handed spying on your land. Will you now let them give potions to Janelle, potions that might kill her? Physicians are not to be trusted at any time, but especially not ones who are in the pay of Tuddenham, and who have already lied to you.’