The Hand of Justice

Rougham was still seething with resentment when a servant arrived with platters of breakfast food. There were eggs, salted herrings, fresh bread and pickled walnuts to eat, and Bartholomew thought it was not surprising that the College was running short of funds if its Fellows regularly devoured such sumptuous victuals. He ate little, because it was hard to raise an appetite with Rougham scowling so furiously at him, although Michael did not seem to notice and attacked the meal with gusto.

‘You bought four phials of Water of Snails from Lavenham,’ said Bartholomew, wanting the uncomfortable meal to end, so he could leave. ‘You used one for Warde. Where are the others?’

Rougham shook his head in exasperation. ‘I did not give Water of Snails to Warde! How many more times must I tell you that? I gave one each to Ufford, Despenser and Thompson.’ He reached into his scrip and produced a familiar little pot. ‘And I have the fourth here. I doctored them, but it did not work.’

‘Doctored?’ asked Bartholomew warily, laying down his knife. ‘In what way?’

‘I added laudanum,’ snapped Rougham. ‘It is said to make people more amenable.’

‘I see,’ said Bartholomew, disgusted. ‘You hoped this potion would make your three colleagues see the “wisdom” of your plans to have Thorpe and the Hand of Justice at Gonville.’

‘You dosed them with strong physic in an attempt to make them stay?’ asked Pulham, aghast.

Rougham rounded on him. ‘We need Thorpe and we need the Hand. And we need Ufford, Despenser and Thompson, too, if we are ever to finish our chapel. Once we have the Hand, we can claim the bones of the sainted Bateman, too. He was poisoned and is therefore a martyr. Then we shall have plenty of relics to attract pilgrims, and our College will prosper.’

‘So, that is it,’ said Michael. ‘You want to establish Gonville as a shrine. But Bateman was not a saint — he was a good man, but not a holy one — and murder is not necessarily grounds for a beatification anyway. Which is just as well, considering how many we have around here.’

‘We could never claim Bateman’s bones regardless,’ said Pulham, addressing his colleague and looking as though he was seeing him for the first time. ‘Dame Pelagia told me he asked to be buried before the High Altar at Avignon.’

‘Lies!’ cried Rougham. ‘He wanted to be here, with his friends.’

‘Not if he thought we intended to profit from his death,’ said Pulham firmly. ‘He was not that kind of man, and no one here will allow you to defile his memory in so despicable a manner.’

‘Giving folk potions to make them open to your ideas is hardly ethical, either,’ said Bartholomew, more concerned with the way Rougham practised medicine than with his penchant for relics. ‘You might have harmed someone.’

‘Well, I did not,’ snapped Rougham. ‘Ufford, Despenser and Thompson swallowed their potions — which I told them would cleanse their bowels and make them better able to learn — but they were not rendered pliable at all.’ He appealed to Pulham. ‘You must see I did it for our chapel! I cannot allow it to remain foundations in the grass for the next hundred years.’

‘Then we will pray for help,’ said Pulham sternly. ‘We will not resort to using illicit medicines on our friends — or demanding the bones of our founders when they want to be left in peace.’

‘Water of Snails was not all you bought from Lavenham recently,’ said Bartholomew. ‘He says you also purchased a large amount of henbane.’

‘You did not … Warde …?’ stammered Pulham, eyeing Rougham uneasily.

‘No! I did not poison anyone. I did buy henbane, but it was for Deschalers.’

‘You poisoned Deschalers?’ Pulham was appalled.

‘Of course not!’ cried Rougham, becoming agitated. ‘He did not want it for himself.’

‘Paxtone said you refused to prescribe strong medicine for Deschalers’s sickness,’ said Bartholomew, wondering whether the grocer had believed the toxin might help him with his pain. ‘You argued about it with him and Lynton.’

‘Deschalers was beyond any potion I could give him,’ said Rougham. ‘So I decided not to waste his money on “cures” that would not work. But I did not purchase the henbane for his sickness. He asked me to make him a poison for the rats in his house. He paid me sixpence for it.’

‘Rats?’ asked Bartholomew. Perhaps Deschalers’s role in the murders needed further assessment after all, he thought. ‘Do you mean human ones?’

‘Do not be ridiculous,’ snapped Rougham. ‘I mean rodents. Being a grocer, with plenty of food on his premises, he had problems with them. He showed me one he had caught — and it was the size of a cat. I made him a poison that would be fatal to any rat coming within an arm’s length of it.’

‘How?’ asked Bartholomew sceptically.

‘I mixed the henbane with hog grease and cat urine to ensure it stank. One sniff will kill the most robust of pests. Deschalers contacted me a day later and said it was working.’