‘Recent experience,’ added Suttone helpfully. ‘He was at Poitiers, and his book-bearer says he treated many men with terrible injuries. He even managed to save a couple.’
‘Did you?’ asked Langar warily. ‘You did not offer to help when Dalderby was shot.’
‘Your surgeon was already there,’ replied Bartholomew. ‘It would have been impolite to interfere.’
‘You are interfering now,’ Langar pointed out, not unreasonably.
‘He is here to provide a second opinion,’ said de Wetherset smoothly. ‘That is not interference.’
Miller regarded Bartholomew appraisingly, then blew his nose on his sleeve. ‘Come upstairs, then. I will take you, and Langar can stay here with the others. We never leave visitors alone, because–’
‘It would be rude,’ finished Langar loudly.
‘Right,’ said Miller with a tired sigh. ‘That is the reason. Not because we have anything to hide in our cellars. They are all empty, and we do not keep any goods of dubious origin in them.’
‘You should rest, Miller,’ said Langar sharply. ‘You were up all night with Chapman, and the lack of sleep has blunted your wits.’
‘Can we look at Chapman’s relics while we wait for Bartholomew?’ asked de Wetherset, while Miller stoically waved his lawyer’s concerns away. ‘Since we are here anyway?’
‘Lora will bring them,’ said Miller. ‘Come with me, physician.’
Bartholomew knew he would be a fool to let Miller separate him from the others, but could think of no way to avoid it without arousing suspicion. He followed him up a narrow staircase to the upper floor, feeling increasingly nervous with each step.
‘Father Simon tells me you and he arrived in Lincoln at the same time,’ he said, to break a silence that was both oppressive and unnerving. ‘About twenty years ago.’
It was a blunder of enormous proportion, and Bartholomew was heartily ashamed of himself for mentioning a date that held a far more meaningful significance for Miller than anything connected to Simon. Miller stopped abruptly and turned slowly to face him. Bartholomew felt the hairs on his neck stand on end as the man regarded him with considerable malevolence.
‘What do you know about what happened twenty years ago?’ he asked, removing a dagger from his belt and using it to pick one of his teeth.
‘Nothing,’ said Bartholomew, hoping he sounded calmer than he felt. ‘I am just repeating what Simon said. It is called the art of conversation, Master Miller – two men exchanging meaningless pleasantries as a way to pass their time together.’
‘Manners,’ said Miller with a disparaging snort. ‘Langar is always telling me I need to acquire some, but all they do is make a man something he is not. If I want to spit over my own table at dinner, why should I not do it? If I want to blow my nose and the tablecloth is available, why not use it? And what is wrong with drinking my pottage noisily? Dogs do it, and there is nothing wrong with dogs.’
‘I suppose not,’ said Bartholomew weakly.
‘Father Simon and I did arrive here within a few weeks of each other,’ said Miller, replacing his dagger in its sheath as some of the anger left him. ‘But we did not come together. I left Cambridge because I am a sensitive man, and I did not like what was being said about me after my acquittal. He came because he had been offered the post of parish priest at Holy Cross Church, Wigford.’
‘Someone told me you were brothers,’ said Bartholomew, attempting a smile.
‘Well, we are not,’ said Miller firmly. ‘Do you want to see Chapman, or would you rather stand on the stairs and hone your “art of conversation” on me?’
Half expecting Miller to whip around and stab him, Bartholomew followed him up the rest of the stairs, along a corridor and into a pleasant chamber with real glass in the windows. A fire blazed in the hearth, and someone had set bowls of herbs on shelves, so the room was sweetly scented. Chapman lay on a fur-strewn bed, his arm heavily bandaged. He grimaced when he recognised the physician.
‘Go away. I told you all I know about the Hugh Chalice. It is genuine, and I bought it in Huntingdon. And if you accuse me of foul dealings again, you will have Miller to answer to.’
‘You questioned him about the cup?’ asked Miller suspiciously. ‘Why?’
‘Curiosity,’ said Bartholomew, wishing he had not let Cynric talk him into undertaking something so manifestly stupid. ‘I wanted to hear for myself how Chapman came by such an important relic.’
‘It was more than curiosity,’ countered Chapman pettishly. ‘You grabbed me by the throat and your fat friend lobbed rocks at me. It was not a pleasant encounter.’
‘You were holding a dagger at the time,’ retorted Bartholomew. He saw Miller’s face assume its dangerous expression again, and started to clutch at straws. ‘And we are friends of Master Thomas Suttone, kin to the great Suttone clan. He would have been vexed had we allowed you to stab us.’
‘Of course! You know the Suttones,’ said Miller in understanding. ‘It slipped my mind. Obviously, we would not want to offend them by knifing their acquaintances. At least, not unless it is absolutely necessary. Lie still, Chapman. Let him inspect you.’
Bartholomew sat next to the relic-seller and carefully removed the bandage, which was tight enough to have turned his fingers purple. It concealed a wound that was jagged, raw and already reddening from infection. When he looked closer, he saw specks of rust, and was able to conclude that it had not been the clean blade of his own sword that had caused the injury. Ergo, it had not been Chapman who had fought him in the orchard. The relic-seller chattered frantically as he worked, evidently to quell his nervousness at the treatment he was about to receive, and Bartholomew learned that the tavern brawl had occurred shortly before he and Michael had been attacked in the Gilbertine Priory.
‘I was busy at the time,’ said Miller cagily, just when Bartholomew had decided the Commonalty was innocent. ‘And I came back to find him like this. Surgeon Bunoun has done his best, but he says there is no hope. It does not look very serious to me, and we have had worse in the past, but Bunoun knows his business. If he says a wound will fester, it nearly always does.’
‘Is that so?’ said Bartholomew, suspecting Bunoun had seen more than his share of sepsis, if he was given to stitching up dirty wounds. ‘Is Bunoun the only medic to tend him?’
‘Yes,’ replied Miller, ‘although a crone came and presented us with a healing balm. Chapman is well liked, you see, and she wanted to help. Bunoun said it would make no difference one way or the other, but we slapped some on anyway. She was trying to be kind.’
‘You could not be more wrong,’ said Bartholomew, fetching water from the pot over the fire and beginning to bathe the wound. ‘I can smell henbane in this salve, and that is poisonous.’
‘Poisonous?’ echoed Miller in shock, while Chapman lay back and groaned.
Bartholomew nodded. ‘Will you send for more hot water and a clean cloth? This cut needs to be irrigated thoroughly and its edges resewn.’
‘You will stitch me again?’ asked Chapman, appalled. ‘But it was agony the first time.’
Bartholomew was not surprised: Bunoun’s handiwork was crude to say the least. ‘What did the “crone” look like?’ he asked, when Miller had finished issuing orders to a maid.
‘Old,’ replied Miller, after a moment of serious thought. ‘She was crouch-backed and her face was covered by her cloak. She was just a crone.’
Bartholomew regarded him uncertainly, sure a man in the devious-sounding ‘export-import business’ would know about disguises. ‘Tell me what happened in the Swan,’ he said to Chapman, when Miller did not seem able to provide a better description. ‘Who attacked you?’
‘A man,’ replied Chapman indignantly. ‘I went outside to relieve myself, and he was waiting for me. He wore a hooded cloak, but there was something about him that made me think it was Dalderby.’