‘I am an extremely good cook,’ said Holm. ‘My father taught me, and he baked for the King.’
‘The King hires surgeons to prepare his food?’ asked Meryfeld, bemused.
Holm coloured. ‘My father had many talents,’ he hedged.
‘How fare your patients at the castle?’ asked Rougham of Bartholomew. ‘Will any more die?’
‘No, they will all live,’ replied Holm, before Bartholomew could speak. ‘I healed the lot.’
‘So you tell everyone, but it was Matthew who did all the work,’ said Gyseburne, rather acidly.
‘Yes, but he laboured under my direction,’ declared Holm. ‘I am a surgeon, and he is a physician, so how can he have performed these delicate techniques alone? He does not have the skill. Only I do.’
‘You might deceive your fiancée with your bragging lies, but we are not stupid,’ said Gyseburne, coolly. ‘We know the truth.’
‘We do, but it is better for Bartholomew if folk believe that it was Holm who undertook the surgery,’ said Rougham. ‘I say we let him have the credit.’
He had a point, and Bartholomew was certainly prepared to overlook Holm’s conceit in exchange for a quiet life. He nodded his appreciation of Rougham’s suggestion.
‘I can cure stones in the kidneys, too,’ announced Holm, aware that he had lost his colleagues’ approbation and aiming to remedy the matter. ‘I am sure the rest of you cannot.’
‘I have had some success with potions that break them up,’ said Gyseburne. ‘I have detected their remnants in urine after treatment, and patients have claimed a lessening of pain.’
‘I direct a hard punch to a specific area,’ Holm went on, ignoring him. ‘Which smashes the stones into pieces and allows them to pass harmlessly through the urethra.’
Bartholomew cringed. ‘I cannot imagine such a technique would work. It is–’
‘It does – every time. Indeed, I am thinking of going to London when I am married, to punch the stones of the wealthy. I shall make a fortune.’
‘You and Julitta will leave us?’ asked Bartholomew, trying to mask his dismay.
Holm regarded him oddly. ‘We might. I have not decided yet.’
‘Let us go to the garden and begin our experiments,’ said Meryfeld, tiring of the discussion. ‘Time is passing, and I would rather not work in the dark, if it can be avoided.’
His apprentices had already set out a table and various ingredients, along with the large cauldron they used to mix their potions. It bore ominous stains, while parts of the rim had been blown away when trials had not gone according to plan. As usual, Holm, Rougham and Meryfeld sighed impatiently when Bartholomew insisted on measuring each ingredient and recording it in the ledger they had kept since the winter.
‘This is why it is taking so long,’ grumbled Holm. ‘We should just toss in whatever we like.’
‘But then if we do discover a good mixture we will not know what went in it,’ argued Bartholomew, just as he did every time they experimented together.
‘Honey,’ said Meryfeld, approaching with a jar and a wooden spoon. ‘Let us add honey. And if we do not produce decent fuel, I can decant the stuff and sell it as cough syrup.’
‘You cannot let anyone drink this!’ cried Bartholomew, shocked. ‘There is brimstone in it!’
‘Brimstone is not poisonous in small quantities,’ declared Meryfeld. He dipped his spoon in the mixture and took a sip before anyone could stop him. ‘See?’
The others watched him intently, but although he pulled a face to indicate the mixture did not taste pleasant, there was no other reaction.
‘Here is some lye,’ said Rougham, hurling a substantial dose into the basin. Bartholomew threw down the pen and folded his arms in disgust. Rougham had not allowed him to measure it, so the test was over as far as he was concerned. ‘Now you cannot give it to your patients, Meryfeld, because lye is definitely not good for people.’
The calculating expression on Meryfeld’s face suggested he might overlook that fact, and Bartholomew found himself wondering whether the man always declined to reveal what he included in his medicines because half of it was unsuitable for human consumption.
‘And here is some urine,’ said Gyseburne, producing a jar and adding a generous glug. Immediately, something began to fizz, and there was a terrible smell.
‘You have spoiled it!’ cried Meryfeld, hand over his nose. He scowled, and Bartholomew had the distinct impression that Gyseburne had just spared Meryfeld’s clients from being sold a very dangerous “cure”.
There was no more to be done once the mixture was ruined, so the medici left to go home. It was dark, and the streets were unusually deserted; neither townsfolk nor scholars wanted to be out when armed invaders were at large. Gyseburne went north, and Bartholomew found himself walking down Bridge Street with Rougham and Holm. The surgeon was holding forth about his skill with broken limbs, and Rougham was talking about his designs for Gonville’s chapel windows, neither listening to the other, when Bartholomew heard a sound.
‘What was that?’ He cocked his head to listen.
‘The raiders?’ asked Rougham, fearfully. He increased his pace to what was almost a run. ‘We should not linger. It feels dangerous tonight, and we still have some way to go.’
He stopped abruptly when several figures materialised in the darkness ahead of them. He swallowed hard, and Holm whimpered.
‘You may have our purses,’ Rougham called unsteadily. ‘But you must leave us unharmed. We are physicians, on an errand of mercy.’
‘These two are physicians,’ bleated Holm. ‘But I am a surgeon. I heal people, whereas they only dispense expensive remedies and calculate horoscopes.’
‘God’s blood, Holm!’ breathed Rougham, shocked. ‘That was not comradely.’
‘You can go,’ said one of the figures to Holm. ‘We are not interested in you.’
Holm scuttled away without a backward glance, and Bartholomew hoped he would have the sense to summon help. The shadows approached, but he could not tell whether they were the same men who had waylaid him before. He slipped his hand inside his medical bag, fingers curling around the comforting bulk of the childbirth forceps.
‘Tell us the formula for wildfire,’ said one man softly, following a brief scuffle after which Bartholomew and Rougham were pinned against a wall with swords at their throats and the forceps lay on the ground. ‘Refuse, and you die. And do not expect rescue a second time, because it will not be coming.’
‘But we do not know it,’ squawked Rougham. ‘We hurled random ingredients into a–’
‘Then think. We know it involved brimstone, pitch and quicklime, along with a lot of other substances that are irrelevant. But there was one other vital element. What was it?’
‘Rock oil,’ blurted Rougham, desperation in his voice.
‘No!’ cried Bartholomew, horrified. ‘It was not–’
The spokesman hit him with the hilt of his sword, hard enough to knock him to his knees. The next few words were a meaningless buzz as his senses swam.
‘Rock oil was the secret ingredient,’ Rougham went on weakly. ‘It was a gift from a patient, but I could not find a medical application for it, so I tossed it in the pot. That is why we will never recreate wildfire in our quest for lamp fuel. We have no more rock oil.’
‘What is rock oil?’
‘A black, jelly-like substance,’ replied Rougham. ‘It can be–’
‘Rougham, stop!’ gasped Bartholomew, appalled. He had honestly believed that he was the only one who had remembered the rock oil, and was shocked to learn he had been wrong.
‘Wait!’ cried Rougham, when the leader raised his sword to hit Bartholomew again. ‘I can tell you more. It is not found in England – you will have to order it from the Holy Land.’