'You are trying to interfere, and succeeding very well,' snapped the Sheriff. 'My father's affairs are none of your business. Now, please leave our house.'
'Why will you not let your father answer for himself?' asked Michael.
'Get out!' yelled Tulyet the elder. 'I will not tolerate this in my own home. Leave now, or these men will throw you out.'
He spun on his heel and stormed out, all trace of his momentary weakness gone. Bartholomew was frustrated.
The old man had almost told them what they needed to know, and he was clearly terrified by it. He had obviously sent to the Castle for his son while he kept him and Michael waiting, which meant that he must have felt he needed protection. Perhaps he had joined the Guild of the Coming for similar reasons to de Belem, and had become too deeply embroiled to back out.
The Sheriff leaned back against the door frame and sneered at them. 'You heard my father,' he said. 'Leave, or be thrown out by my men.'
'Are you not man enough to do it yourself?' asked Michael. The father unable to answer questions himself, and the son needing others to fight his battles. Come, Matt. This is no place for men.'
Bartholomew was impressed by Michael's nerve, but uncertain that such fieriness was prudent, and followed him out into the street half expecting to feel a knife between his shoulder-blades. Sheriff Tulyet followed.
'If I discover that either of you are interfering with my investigation again, or that you are intimidating my family, I will arrest you,' he said loudly. 'I will put you in the Castle prison, and your Chancellor and Bishop will not be able to do anything to help you. How could they in matters of treason?'
He slammed the door and stalked back towards the Castle, his men following.
Treason?' said Michael, simultaneously startled and angry. 'On what grounds? This has nothing to do with treason!'
'It is not unknown for officers of the law to fabricate evidence to fit a case, or for them to force false confessions,' said Bartholomew drily, taking the monk's arm and leading him away from Tulyet's house. Justice was swift and harsh in England, and often men accused of crimes were not given time to prove their innocence.
'You should watch your tongue, Brother. It would not take much for Sheriff Tulyet to follow such a path. He seems unbalanced.'
Me hanged for treason, and you burned for heresy,' said Michael with a flicker of a smile. 'What a pair the Chancellor has chosen for his agents.'
Bartholomew walked quickly from Tulyet's house down Milne Street to Gonville Hall, to which its Master of Medicine, Father Philius, had invited two physicians from Paris, Bono and Matthieu.
'Ah yes, Doctor Bartholomew,' said Bono, standing to bow to him as he was shown into the conclave by a porter. 'I know your old master in Paris, Ibn Ibrahim.'
Bartholomew was delighted, but not surprised. Paris was not so large that a man of his master's standing could remain hidden. 'How does he fare?'
'Well enough,' said Bono, 'although I cannot imagine that he will remain so if he does not amend his beliefs.
During the Death he suggested that the contagion was carried by animals! Can you credit such a foolish notion?'
'Animals?' queried Philius, startled. 'On what premise?'
That he conducted certain tests to show it was not spread by the wind. He concluded that it must have been carried by animals.'
Bartholomew frowned. It was possible, he supposed, but he had not been in contact with animals during the dreadful winter months of 1348 and 1349, and he had been a victim of the plague. He wished Ibn Ibrahim was with them now that he might question him closer.
The Arab usually had well-founded reasons for making such claims.
The man is a heretic,' said Matthieu. 'I would keep your apprenticeship with him quiet if I were you. Do you know he practises more surgery than ever now?'
Bartholomew was silent. He too was using a greater number of surgical techniques, and the more he used them, the more he found them useful. He listened to the others discussing how surgery was an abomination that should be left to the inferior barber-surgeons. As the discussion evolved, Bartholomew began to feel a growing concern that his own teaching and beliefs would be considered as heretical as those of Ibn Ibrahim, and that he soon might have to answer for them.
The discussion moved from surgery to contagion, and Bartholomew found himself attacked again because of his insistence that a physician might spread contagion if he did not wash his hands. Bono shook his head in disbelief, while Matthieu merely laughed. Father Philius said nothing, for he and Bartholomew had debated this many times, and had never found common ground.
By the time the daylight began to fade and Gonville Hall's bell rang to announce the evening meal was ready, Bartholomew felt drained. He declined the invitation to stay to eat, and walked back along Milne Street towards Michaelhouse. As he reached the gates, the porter told him he was needed at the Castle. Wearily he set off, wondering why Tulyet should have summoned him so near the curfew, and whether he would have the strength to deal with the hostile Sheriff.
As he climbed Castle Hill, a sergeant hurried towards him with evident relief.
'You came!' he said, taking Bartholomew's arm and setting a vigorous pace towards the Castle. 'I thought you might not — under the circumstances.'
What do you mean?' asked Bartholomew, disengaging his arm.
The de Belem girl was a friend of yours, and the Sheriff is doing little to search out her killer,' he said, glancing around nervously. He added more firmly, 'He was a good Sheriff, but these last few weeks he has changed.'
'How?' asked Bartholomew.
The sergeant shrugged. 'Family problems, we think.
But none of us know for certain. Here we are.'
They arrived at the gate-house, and Bartholomew was escorted inside. Torches hung in sconces along the walls so that the entire courtyard was filled with a dim, flickering light. The towers and crenellated curtain walls were great black masses against the darkening sky.
The soldier steered Bartholomew to the Great Hall against the north wall. In a small chamber off the stairs a man lay on a dirty straw pallet, groaning and swearing.
Other soldiers stood around him, but moved aside as Bartholomew entered.
'A stupid accident,' said the sergeant in response to Bartholomew's unasked question. 'I told him to take down the archery targets, and Rufus here did not hear me shout that practice was over.'
Rufus slunk back into the shadows, aware that the eyes of all his colleagues were on him accusingly. 'It was an accident!' he insisted.
Bartholomew knelt and inspected the wound in the injured man's upper arm. The arrowhead that was embedded there was barbed, and Bartholomew hesitated. Two options were open to him: he could force the arrowhead through the arm and out the other side, or he could cut the flesh and pull the barbs free. The second option was clearly the better one for the injured man, since the arrowhead was not embedded sufficiently deeply to warrant forcing it through the arm. But it would involve surgery, and Bartholomew had just spent an entire day hearing how physicians that stooped to use methods suited to barbers were heretics. The injured man opened pleading eyes.
Bartholomew took one of the powerful sense-dulling potions he carried, mixed it into a cup of wine near the bed and gave it to the man to drink. When he saw the man begin to drowse, he indicated to the others that they should hold his patient down. He took a small knife and, ignoring the man's increasingly agonised screams, quickly cut the flesh away from the arrowhead and eased it out. The man slumped in relief as Bartholomew held the arrow for him to see. Bartholomew bound the arm with a poultice of healing herbs, gave him a sleeping potion, and said he would return later to ensure no infection had crept in.
Bartholomew was escorted to the gate by the sergeant.
Thank you,' he said, handing Bartholomew an odd assortment of coins. 'Will he live, do you think? Will he keep the arm?'
