will never think of checking.’
Bartholomew thought for a moment. ‘Is your grandmother easily shocked?’ he asked.
Michael gave a snort of laughter. ‘Grandmother? Shockable? Never!’
‘Then I know just the place,’ said Bartholomew. ‘But first, I want to get rid of Julianna before she kills someone else, and then I want to see Oswald.’
‘You are being unfair to Julianna, Matt,’ said Michael. ‘Cynric was right. Egil looked as though he was going to kill you.’ He pulled at Bartholomew’s tunic and looked at his neck. ‘There are still scratches on you from where he almost had you throttled. Let me tell Oswald what happened – if you relate the tale, he will have Julianna swinging for murder and you beside her as her accomplice!’
‘Egil did not make these marks,’ said Bartholomew, rubbing his throat. ‘Julianna did that when she was flailing around with a stick – before she thought of using a more deadly weapon. I suppose I should be grateful it was Egil she brained and not me.’
‘I see you are shocked that a young, well-bred woman could kill without compunction,’ said Michael, eyeing Bartholomew with an amused expression. ‘Well, you should not be. With all the teaching you do, you have forgotten what women are really like. You idolise them and think they are meek and gentle creatures. Do you think Edith would have hesitated to kill Egil if she thought he was harming you? Or that Philippa, of whom you were so enamoured during the Death? Or even Agatha our laundress? And look at my grandmother! How do you think she has lived so long in the sinister world of spying, if it were not for a certain ruthless streak and her inimitable cunning?’
Wondering how the monk came by his superior knowledge of women, Bartholomew conceded the point, and acknowledged that his attitude to Julianna was probably unreasonable. Part of his ambivalence to the incident, he accepted, was that he did not like her, and that was unfair. Both Cynric and Michael, whose opinions he trusted, had been convinced that Egil would have killed him had not Julianna acted when she did. He gave Michael a weak smile, and tried to force his feelings of misgiving from his mind.
While Cynric went to St Mary’s Church to report the attack to Vice-Chancellor Harling, and then to the castle to tell the Sheriff, the others made their way to Milne Street where Bartholomew rapped sharply on the bright new door of the house of Thomas Deschalers the grocer. A servant answered, and they were conducted to a chilly room overlooking the street while she went to fetch her master. Julianna was uncharacteristically subdued and Bartholomew had a sudden lurching doubt that she was related to Deschalers at all, and wondered if she had tricked him into bringing her from the abbey.
After a brief wait, during which Michael greedily devoured a dish of sugared almonds that someone had rashly left on the table, Deschalers entered. He had apparently been working in his yard, for he was wearing thick woollen hose of a russet red and a fur-lined cloak that looked comfortable and warm. Bartholomew thought of his own threadbare cloak, now a pile of ashes at Denny, and tried to imagine how he would survive the rest of the winter without it.
‘Uncle!’ exclaimed Julianna, racing across the room and hurling herself into her startled relative’s arms. ‘Uncle! I have had such a foul time! Look!’ She pulled up her gown to reveal ankles that were scratched from grovelling around in the undergrowth, while her slippers dangled from her feet, hopelessly ruined.
Deschalers looked from the shoes to Bartholomew and Michael. ‘What in God’s name have you done to her?’ he asked, his eyes blazing with a sudden anger. ‘Why have you taken her from Denny Abbey? Dame Pelagia?’
‘Your niece overheard some men talking there,’ said Dame Pelagia soothingly. ‘They seemed to be smugglers, and so we brought her here with us for her own safety.’
‘Smugglers?’ echoed Deschalers, bewildered. ‘What are you talking about? There are no men at Denny Abbey. It is a convent!’
‘They are the menfolk of the lay sisters,’ explained the elderly nun patiently. ‘Brother Michael will inform the Sheriff. But, meanwhile, I think Julianna will be safer with you than at Denny.’
‘But what about these smugglers?’ queried Deschalers, looking from her to Michael. ‘I have heard of no smugglers in that area. Why were they at the abbey?’
‘Unfortunately, we know little about them,’ said Michael, ‘except that they are well organised and ruthless.’ He paused, but then plunged on. ‘On our way here, there was an unfortunate incident.’ He glanced at Bartholomew, and quickly outlined the circumstances of Egil’s death and the role Julianna had played in it. Deschalers paled and swept Julianna up in a protective hug.
‘What have you done?’ he asked in a whisper. At first, Bartholomew thought he was talking to Julianna, but Deschalers was looking at him. ‘To what horrors have you subjected this innocent child? Is it not enough that you drag her off in the middle of the night in the company of rough men? And to compound your crime, you force her to fight for her life against an outlaw?’
This seemed a somewhat jaundiced interpretation of the circumstances. Bartholomew protested, goaded by Julianna’s expression of gloating self-righteousness. ‘Egil was not an outlaw. He was one of Oswald Stanmore’s men. And no one forced her to fight – she joined in of her own accord.’
‘I did no such thing!’ said Julianna with dignified outrage. She turned to her uncle. ‘Doctor Bartholomew abandoned me in the bushes by the side of the road while he went off in the dark. I grew so frightened on my own that I was forced to find my own way to Dame Pelagia. And then that man – Egil – attacked me. It was horrible!’
She buried her face in her uncle’s shoulder, while Deschalers turned a furious face towards Bartholomew.
‘What were you thinking of? You left my niece alone when there were outlaws nearby?’
Bartholomew’s recollection of the incident was somewhat at variance with that of Julianna, and he was certain that it had been curiosity and impatience that had driven her from her hiding place, not fear as she had claimed. He regarded her with dislike. She lifted her face from the depths of her uncle’s cloak, her bright, turquoise eyes blazing defiantly.
‘And then, when Doctor Bartholomew finally came to my aid, this outlaw started to get the better of him. I struck Egil with a stone, and in so doing I saved all our lives!’
‘Is this true?’ Deschalers demanded, still holding his niece close to him.
‘More or less,’ said Michael, before Bartholomew could answer. ‘She dispatched Egil with a single blow to the head using a rock, although I am unable to verify that we were in danger of our lives. He had no weapon with him.’
‘He was throttling the physician,’ said Julianna angrily, struggling from her uncle’s grasp and striding across the room to wrench at Bartholomew’s tunic. ‘Look! See those marks and tell me Egil did not mean business.’
‘It appears you owe my niece a great deal,’ said Deschalers, moving forward to inspect the scratches on Bartholomew’s neck. He smiled with sudden pride. ‘If only she had been born a boy. What a wonderful heir she would have made!’
Bartholomew suspected that Julianna would make Deschalers a wonderful heir just as she was – she was resourceful, resilient, ruthless and wholly without remorse. She would be a splendid merchant, especially if she were able to learn how to use her brutish instincts with more discretion. He imagined what she might be like having acquired Deschalers’ power and influence, and shuddered.
‘I could still make you a wonderful heir, uncle,’ she pouted. ‘I am clever and determined, and no man has yet bested me in anything.’
That Bartholomew could well believe. ‘You should make her your chief henchman,’ he said to Deschalers. ‘You would never need fear anything again.’
Deschalers eyed him uncertainly, but Julianna took his words as a compliment and smiled. ‘Perhaps you should hire me as your book-bearer,’ she said to Bartholomew, with a predatory gleam in her eye. ‘I would do a better job than that dirty little man you have now.’
‘I doubt it,’ said Bartholomew coldly.
‘You know I would,’ claimed Julianna haughtily. ‘Who was it who saved your life, while your servant grubbed about doing the Lord knows what in the bushes up ahead? And I can sew. I certainly would not have mended brown leggings with a red patch!’
Bartholomew would have worn red patches on all his clothes if the alternative was Julianna’s companionship. He gazed at her with undisguised dislike. ‘We cannot stand around talking nonsense with you all day. I have patients to see.’
