left reluctantly.
‘Can you hear me?’ Bartholomew asked gently, kneeling next to the Franciscan.
Philius nodded that he could.
‘Today, a student drank from a bottle of wine that contained poison. He died almost immediately. Then, at Bingham’s installation feast, James Grene died from swallowing a similar poison. I have not seen anything quite like it before. It seems to work by burning – I think it causes the throat to blister and swell and so kill the victim by asphyxiation. I think you might have swallowed some of this poison, although a very mild dose or you would not still be alive. Have you heard of any other such cases before?’
Philius’s eyes widened in horror and he nodded vehemently. Bartholomew strained to hear what he was trying to say, but speech was impossible for Philius and his breathing became ragged. Bartholomew poured some of the wine from the green bottle into a cup and helped him drink it. Eventually, the friar grew calmer, but his eyes pleaded with Bartholomew that he wanted to speak.
‘If I ask you questions, can you nod or shake your head?’
Philius nodded quickly.
‘You have seen a case like the ones I described?’
A nod.
‘Yesterday?’
A shake of the head.
‘A week ago?’
Another shake of the head.
‘A month ago?’
A vigorous nod.
‘How many cases have you seen? One?’
A nod.
‘More than one?’
Philius shook his head.
‘Do you know what poison caused this?’
A shake of the head. Philius was beginning to tire.
‘Were you able to treat it? Did you save the patient?’
Philius shook his head again and closed his eyes tightly. Bartholomew patted his shoulder.
‘Believe me, Philius, I saw Grene stricken and he died almost instantly. You must have taken a very small dose of this poison since you are alive several hours after swallowing it, and there is every chance you will recover.’ Bartholomew looked away as he spoke. Lying to his patients was not something he did well but he did not want to frighten Philius into losing hope.
He wondered what the best way to proceed would be. He considered administering an emetic to force Philius to vomit the poison out of his system, but Philius had swallowed the poison hours ago and Bartholomew was sure it was too far into his innards to be brought out. He rummaged around in his bag.
‘Since this poison seems to burn, I think the best way to balance its effects is by absorbing the acid. I prescribed something for Master Mortimer much the same. He had been eating raw lemons.’
Bartholomew talked to reassure and saw the ghost of a smile play over Philius’s blistered lips as he listened to the story about Mortimer’s lemons. Bartholomew dispatched Cynric for milk, mixed as much of the fine, white chalk powder with it as he dared, and added a small amount of laudanum and some charcoal dust. Supporting Philius in the crook of his arm, he helped him swallow the potion sip by sip, a process which took so long that by the time it was finished Bartholomew’s arms ached. Philius lay back exhausted and Bartholomew watched him anxiously. He was far from certain whether his cure would work. And even if Philius did not die soon, Bartholomew wondered whether his innards would be able to heal themselves of the poison’s lesions.
Eventually, Philius slept and Bartholomew went to sit near the fire to wait with Cynric. Neither spoke, but sat in companionable silence, staring into the flames.
‘Isaac is taking a long time,’ said Cynric eventually, in a whisper so as not to waken the sleeping Franciscan. ‘I will slip out and have a look for him.’
Bartholomew left the fire and went to check on Philius. It might have been his imagination, but he thought the Franciscan’s breathing seemed easier. Round his lips, the blisters seemed less raw where the chalky-grey milk had stained them, and Bartholomew felt his hopes rising.
Within moments, Cynric was back, his expression anxious. ‘You had better come and see this for yourself,’ he said unsteadily.
Mystified, Bartholomew followed Cynric across the yard to the cellar-like room where Philius kept his medicines. Judging from the bundles of herbs that hung from the roof and the neatly stacked sacks of flour at the far end, it seemed Philius shared his medicine room with the cook. At first, Bartholomew could not see why Cynric had dragged him away from the warm fire. And then he became aware of a regular creaking sound. Bartholomew looked upwards to the rafters where the bunches of herbs were hanging – along with the lifeless body of Isaac.
Chapter 3
Even as they cut the body down, Bartholomew could see that help had come too late for Isaac. His hands had been tied behind his back and a gag fastened around his mouth to stop him from crying out. Bartholomew was curious as to why the room did not show signs of a struggle, but an examination of Isaac’s body revealed that he had been dealt a vicious blow to the head. In fact, the blow had been so hard that Bartholomew wondered if that, and not the strangulation, had been what had killed him. His murderer, evidently, was taking no chances.
While Cynric went to fetch Michael – whose duty as Senior Proctor it would be to investigate a murder on University property – Bartholomew sat back on his heels next to the body and considered. Was Isaac a random victim of violence? Had he disturbed a burglar when he entered the storeroom to fetch the wine he had used in the purges at Bartholomew’s request? Or was his death connected somehow to the wine itself? Bartholomew stood, and looked around for the bottle.
Isaac seemed to have used one particular bench for making his purges. Bartholomew inspected it, and then bent to peer underneath. The slender, smoked-glass bottle lay smashed, the wine pooling on the floor. As Bartholomew considered it, a ginger cat reeled out from behind one of the flour bags and swayed towards him unsteadily. Before he could stop it, it had bent to the wine and had lapped several mouthfuls from a small amount that remained cupped in the bottle’s base. He watched curiously as it wove its way from under the bench and rubbed around his legs. He picked it up and inspected it closely. It was certainly drunk, and the few gulps it had swallowed as he had watched were evidently not all it had consumed that night, yet it showed no signs of poisoning. He carried it to the candle Cynric had lit and prised open its mouth. There was no blistering.
He released it and watched it wobble out of the door. He frowned, puzzled, and then leaned forward to retrieve the fragments of bottle. As his fingers groped around for the glass, they touched something warm and furry and he quickly withdrew his hand in disgust. A rat! He looked closer and saw it was lying very still. He reached under the bench and took a cautious hold of the rodent by its long bony tail. A brief inspection showed him that it was quite dead, and a bubble of blood oozing from its mouth suggested that it, unlike the cat, had been poisoned. Now Bartholomew was truly bewildered. He had seen the cat drink the wine with no ill effects other than intoxication, whereas the rat – that obviously had not been drinking while the cat was under the bench and so could only have had time for the merest sip – had been killed in an instant.
As he pondered, an unpleasant thought occurred to him that had him up on his feet and racing towards Philius’s room. If Isaac’s killer had come for the bottle, and if he had not found it because it had been smashed under the bench, he might consider looking for it in Philius’s chamber!
He entered the Franciscan’s quarters at a run, and heaved a sigh of relief when he saw Philius move restlessly on the bed. He was about to walk towards him when something struck him heavily on the back, sending him sprawling forwards onto his hands and knees. He tried to scramble to his feet, but a blanket was hurled over
