‘Has she said why?’ asked Bartholomew. The building looked stable enough, but was showing signs of decay. It made no sense to let it rot when there was a buyer to hand.
Leccheworth grimaced. ‘No. And I do not understand it at all.’
‘Neither do I,’ said Jude. ‘But there is something about her that petrifies me. I am a large, strong man with an unshakeable faith in God, but little Emma de Colvyll turns my knees to water.’
Bartholomew’s last visit of the morning was to Bridge Street, to tend Sheriff Tulyet’s son. Dickon was nine years old, and large for his age. He terrorised the servants, had no friends because the parents of other children declined to let him anywhere near their offspring, and even his mother was beginning to be frightened of him. Tulyet was blind to his faults, though, and Dickon was growing into an extremely nasty individual. Hoping he would emerge unscathed from what was sure to be a trying encounter, Bartholomew knocked on Tulyet’s door.
‘Thank God you are here, Matthew,’ said Mistress Tulyet in relief. ‘Dickon climbed over the wall into Celia Drax’s garden, and fell on a hive of bees. He has been dreadfully stung.’
‘Christ!’ muttered Bartholomew, not liking the notion of extracting stings from a boy who was going to fight him every inch of the way. Then he frowned. ‘But Celia Drax does not live next to you – Meryfeld does. Celia is two doors down.’
‘Well, perhaps he did clamber through the property of more than one neighbour,’ admitted Mistress Tulyet sheepishly. ‘But you had better hurry. Dickon is not very nice when he is in pain.’
Dickon was not very nice when he was not in pain, either, but Bartholomew managed to follow her to the kitchen without saying so. The boy was standing in the middle of the room howling, while servants nervously attempted to divest him of his clothes, to see whether a bee might still be trapped. He held a sword, a gift from his doting father, and stabbed at anyone who came too close. His eyes were swollen with tears, and his face was flushed, although from temper rather than distress. There was a rumour that he had been sired by the Devil, and there were times when Bartholomew was prepared to believe the tale: he suspected this was going to be one of them.
‘No!’ Dickon shrieked when he saw the physician. ‘Go away!’
Bartholomew was tempted to do as he suggested, and then was mildly ashamed of himself. He wondered what it was about the brat that always brought out the worst in him.
‘Put down the sword,’ he ordered. ‘If you cooperate, this will be over in a moment.’
‘No!’ shouted Dickon again. ‘And if you come near me, I shall run you through. I know how, because my father showed me. I am to be sent away soon to become a squire in Lord Picot’s household. He is a great knight, who will make me a mighty warrior.’
‘Really?’ asked Bartholomew, delighted that someone else would soon have the pleasure of physicking him. ‘Put down the weapon and tell me about it.’
‘It is not true,’ whispered Mistress Tulyet. ‘We have not told him yet, but Lord Picot declines to accept him. We cannot imagine why, a fine, strong lad like him.’
Bartholomew turned to the servants. ‘We will rush him. You three approach from behind, and–’
‘No,’ said the steward, backing away. ‘We are not paid enough to tackle Dickon.’
Bartholomew watched in dismay as they all trooped out, Mistress Tulyet among them. He turned back to Dickon, thinking fast.
‘Do you know what happens if bee stings are not removed? All your fingers drop off. You cannot be a soldier with no fingers.’
He did not usually resort to underhand tactics with patients, but Dickon was a special case. The boy regarded him silently. His eyes glistened, and Bartholomew had the uncomfortable sense that they belonged to a much older person.
‘You lie,’ the boy said eventually.
Bartholomew smiled. ‘Then let us try an experiment. If I am lying, nothing will happen to you. But if I am telling the truth, you will be fingerless by tomorrow. What do you say?’
Dickon continued to study him. Suddenly, the sword dipped and he proffered an arm. ‘Very well. You may remove it.’
‘It’ was the operative word, because although Dickon claimed to have catapulted himself on top of the hive, he had only been stung once. Bartholomew wondered if the hapless creatures had been too intimidated to attack. The sting was quickly extracted with a pair of tweezers, and when the operation was over, both sat back in relief.
‘What were you doing in Drax’s garden?’ Bartholomew felt compelled to ask.
‘She killed her husband,’ declared Dickon with utter conviction. ‘So I decided to visit her – I have never talked to a murderess before, you see.’
‘What makes you think Celia Drax is a murderess?’ asked Bartholomew, startled.
‘Because they were always arguing – they did not love each other. But she dragged me off the hive and let me out of her front door, so I do not care what she did to him. I like her.’
‘Was she stung, too?’ Bartholomew supposed he had better go to see whether she needed help.
Dickon nodded. ‘A lot more than me.’
Bartholomew stood, eager to be away. He was just congratulating himself on escaping without harm to either of them when Dickon snatched up the sword and lunged. Bartholomew felt a sharp pain in his side, and Dickon danced away, eyes flashing with malice.
‘It hurt when you pulled out the sting, and my father said bullies are not to be tolerated,’ he declared, as Bartholomew regarded him in disbelief. ‘Now we are even.’
‘My husband did say bullies are not to be tolerated,’ acknowledged Mistress Tulyet, when Bartholomew reported that her son had stabbed him; fortunately, in a fit of common sense, Tulyet had filed off the weapon’s point. ‘But Dickon is the bully. Unfortunately, he has developed a habit of interpreting our reprimands in ways that suit him.’
Bartholomew saw the unease in her eyes and knew she was beginning to see the child for the tyrant he was, even if Tulyet remained obstinately blind. There was no more to be said, so he left and headed for Celia Drax’s home, rubbing his bruised side.
As Bartholomew knocked on the door to Celia’s house, it occurred to him that it would be a good opportunity to quiz her about her husband. Determined to make the most of the occasion, he followed a servant into an enormous hall-like room with polished wooden floors and painted walls. At the far end was a shelf containing books, a considerable luxury, given that they were so expensive. Celia was sitting on a bench with a pair of tweezers.
‘It is good of you to come,’ she said reluctantly as he perched next to her and began to remove stings from her hands and arms. ‘Did Dickon tell you what happened? From an upstairs window, I saw him invade my garden, and was on my way to box his ears, when he fell on the hive. Naturally, the bees objected. I dragged him away as quickly as I could, and shoved him out of my front door. Hateful brat! But never mind him. Has Brother Michael recovered my pilgrim badge yet? Such items are valuable, and I would like it back.’
Bartholomew saw she was still wearing the gold medallion she had retrieved from her husband’s corpse. It made him shudder. ‘Not yet.’
When she coyly left the room to look for other stings that might require his attention, he wandered towards her little library. There was a psalter, two texts by Aristotle, and a rather lurid tome of contemporary romantic poetry, which he assumed belonged to Odelina. There was also a large, brown volume that looked rather more well thumbed than the others. He took it down, and saw it was a pharmacopoeia. He frowned. Why would a taverner and his wife own such a thing? Glancing uneasily towards the door, he leafed through it until he found the entry for wolfsbane.