‘I agree,’ said Dame Eva with a shudder. ‘This deed has been ill fated from beginning to end. It might be best to forget the whole business.’
‘That will not be necessary,’ said Michael smugly, holding aloft a piece of parchment. ‘Alcote was a cautious man, and left a copy of the draft he made here last night. It is virtually complete, and only needs a few loose ends tying here and there. I will work on the final version tonight, Master Wauncy can check it tomorrow morning, and by noon we can have it signed and be on our way.’
That there was only one more night to spend in Grundisburgh cheered Bartholomew considerably. Had Alcote not been a cautious man, and had Michael deemed it necessary to begin work afresh on the complex legal documents, Bartholomew would have concurred with Dame Eva that the advowson was ill fated, and recommended that the surviving Michaelhouse scholars should escape the village while they still could.
‘Good,’ said Tuddenham with relief. ‘It would have been dreadful if all this had been for nothing. Have it ready by dawn, Brother, and tomorrow Michaelhouse shall have its deed, and everything will be completed.’
Wearily, and looking pale and sick, he retired to bed, taking Isilia with him. Ill at ease with only his grandmother and the Michaelhouse scholars for company, Hamon was not long in following, and moments later Dame Eva also made her farewells and went to her own quarters. The Michaelhouse men were to sleep in Wergen Hall again that night, now that the Half Moon was out of commission, and Tuddenham’s servants had been relegated to the kitchens and stables. Most of them, however, had elected to remain in the Dog for as long as the knight’s generosity and the landlord’s barrels lasted.
Exhausted by his efforts to extinguish the fire, and from resting so little the night before, Bartholomew lay on a mattress and was almost instantly asleep. But his dreams teemed with visions of Alcote’s blackened body rising from the flames of the tavern, while Eltisley in a warlock’s costume invoked all manner of pagan spirits. It was still dark when he awoke to find he was shaking, and he went to see if Michael had left any wine that would soothe his frayed nerves.
The monk still wrote by the unsteady light of a candle, while Bartholomew sipped his drink and stared into the embers of the fire, thinking about Eltisley and his experiments. Michael saw his brooding expression, and set down his pen, rubbing his eyes tiredly.
‘What is wrong? Are you distressed over Alcote? You know, Matt, it would not surprise me to learn that the body we found in the rubble was not his at all, and that he staged his “death” so that no one would make any more attacks on him. He may, even now, be sitting in some inn laughing at how clever he has been. We would never know – the body was too charred for identification.’
‘Eltisley,’ said Bartholomew, still staring at the glowing logs. ‘The more I think about him, the more I am certain that the fire in his tavern was no accident.’
Michael made an impatient sound at the back of his throat, and picked up his pen to begin writing again. ‘You are as mad as he is, Matt. Think about it rationally. Do you really think he would destroy his home, all his possessions and his workshop deliberately?’
‘I do,’ said Bartholomew slowly. ‘And I think his shock at seeing us had nothing to do with relief that we were still alive: I think he wanted us dead.’
‘No,’ said Michael firmly. ‘No one – not even a lunatic like Eltisley – would commit murder by igniting his house and destroying his livelihood in the process.’
‘I thought at first that the explosion – because that is what it was – had occurred in his workshop,’ Bartholomew continued, ignoring the monk’s scepticism, ‘and that it happened because he had left some volatile compound too near a badly banked fire. But, had that been so, the workshop would have been more badly damaged than the tavern. And it was not.’
‘It was burned to the ground,’ said Michael, dipping his quill in the ink and shaking it over the rushes so that it would not blot.
‘But only after the tavern was ablaze,’ said Bartholomew. ‘And Eltisley basically admitted to playing with a concoction of saltpetre, charcoal and sulphur, which anyone with even a passing knowledge of alchemy knows will ignite and explode. Furthermore, it is clear that he was not doing it in his workshop, he was doing it in the tavern.’
‘That still does not mean that he deliberately killed Alcote, or that he intended the rest of us to die with him,’ reasoned Michael, his attention fixed on his writing. ‘You are letting your dislike of the man interfere with your judgement, Matt. You saw how devastated he was after the fire: he was a broken man, to be pitied and comforted, not accused of murder.’
‘I am sure he was appalled at the destruction he caused,’ said Bartholomew. ‘I have no doubt he did not intend to blow up his entire domain and almost take the rest of the village with it. But I remain convinced that he set his powders to kill Alcote – and us, given that he believed we were changing our clothes in the upper chamber.’
‘This is all too ridiculous,’ said Michael. ‘Why? Why should a lowly Suffolk taverner want to kill his customers and be prepared to destroy his inn? Tuddenham was paying him good money to look after us.’
‘And there is another thing,’ said Bartholomew. ‘Because he survived to tell the tale suggests to me that he set the stuff to burn and then ran away. He made no attempt to shout a warning.’
‘We cannot know that,’ said Michael, looking up at him. ‘No one else was in the tavern except Alcote, and he will not be telling anyone whether Eltisley shouted an alarm or not. You will never be able to prove that Eltisley simply ran away and left Alcote to die.’
‘I think he broke that dish of gravy deliberately,’ Bartholomew went on, piecing together scraps of information that he was sure were related. ‘He wanted us upstairs in the bedchamber, changing our clothes, so that he could kill us all at once. It was an ideal time, because the tavern was empty of other guests, and he would not need to harm anyone else in the process.’
‘I see,’ said Michael, bending his head to his work. ‘But you have not answered my question. Why should a landlord want to kill his guests?’
Bartholomew thought hard. ‘Perhaps it is something to do with Tuddenham’s deed. Perhaps Tuddenham paid Eltisley to kill Alcote, because Alcote found something dreadful in his household accounts. Alcote said he had uncovered irregularities, and that he was burning documents to hide them.’
‘You are being inconsistent: on the one hand you are saying that Tuddenham wants the advowson completed with indecent haste; on the other you claim that Tuddenham ordered Alcote killed because he found peculiarities in his affairs. Tuddenham would not have allowed Alcote to examine his documents at all, if there had been secrets in them worth killing for.’
‘But Alcote told us himself that Tuddenham’s affairs were complex, and not wholly honest.’
‘Whose affairs are, Matt? Go to sleep. You are tired and inclined to flights of fancy. In the cold light of day you will see Alcote’s death for what it is – a horrible, tragic accident.’
Bartholomew sighed and Michael set down his pen, resting his fat elbows on the table and shaking his head at his friend’s stubbornness.
‘You are making an error you have made before, Matt: you are assuming that everything that happens to you, and everything you learn, is somehow connected. That is not the case here. Eltisley has absolutely nothing to do with Tuddenham’s advowson, and the fact that Alcote died when he was working on it is simple chance. He might equally well have been eating his dinner.’