Michael was right: the King’s Hall physician was pale, and there were bags under his eyes. The monk started to mutter something about a guilty conscience for putting a crossbow bolt in a rival, and Bartholomew was obliged to silence him with an elbow in the ribs.
‘What is wrong, Paxtone?’ he asked, concerned. ‘Can I help?’
‘I offered my services, too, but he says it is nothing,’ said Rougham.
‘You have not accepted tonics from Arderne, have you?’ asked Bartholomew uneasily, suddenly afraid that the healer might have started work on his next victim.
Paxtone grimaced. ‘Of course not! The man is a trickster, and I would no more swallow his potions than I would let Robin perform surgery on me. Credit me with some sense, Matthew.’
‘You should not be out,’ said Bartholomew. ‘You should be lying down, resting.’
‘I told him that, too,’ muttered Rougham.
Paxtone sighed. ‘There is nothing wrong that a good purge will not cure. I am afraid I was something of a glutton with the roasted pigeon last night. I ate eight.’
‘Did you?’ asked Michael, impressed. ‘Were they cooked in any kind of sauce?’
‘Stones were thrown at me twice yesterday,’ said Rougham, changing the subject before two fat men could begin to share the delights of the dinner table. ‘It is because of Arderne. He is spreading tales about our competence as physicians. He has a convincing manner, and people believe him.’
‘I have received threatening letters from the family of a man I failed to save last term,’ added Paxtone miserably. ‘The case was hopeless – you two saw him, and you agreed with my diagnosis – but Arderne told his kin that he would have survived, had I known what I was doing.’
‘You mean Constantine Mortimer?’ asked Rougham. ‘The one who fell from his horse and cracked his skull so badly that he never awoke?’
Paxtone nodded. ‘Arderne claims he could have been woken by inserting a hot iron in his anus.’
Bartholomew winced. ‘We followed a course of treatment that was humane. Of course we could have induced a reaction by causing him pain, but that is a long way from making him better.’
Rougham glowered. ‘Arderne is a menace. Today, Mayor Harleston informed me that he no longer requires my services, which makes the fifth wealthy patient to abandon me this week alone.’
‘I lost Chancellor Tynkell this morning,’ added Paxtone, ‘and he is a very lucrative source of income, because of his appalling hygiene. We should form a united front to combat this wretched leech and his slanderous accusations.’
‘That is what Robin said,’ said Bartholomew.
‘I do not want to be associated with Robin,’ said Rougham in distaste. ‘However, he is a medical man – after a fashion – and he has been ruined by Arderne, so I feel a certain empathy with him.’
‘We may be losing patients, but your situation is far more perilous, Matthew,’ said Paxtone. ‘Arderne told Isnard his leg need not have been amputated, and Isnard believes it. Isnard is popular in Cambridge, and people are angry with you. I fear their resentment may erupt into violence.’
‘I agree,’ said Rougham. ‘Perhaps you should confine yourself to Michaelhouse until all this blows over. And blow over it will, because Arderne cannot possibly keep all the promises he has made, and it is only a matter of time before he is exposed.’
‘I cannot stay in!’ exclaimed Bartholomew. ‘What about my patients?’
‘You still have some?’ asked Paxtone bleakly. He turned suddenly. ‘I thought I could sense malevolence behind me – and there he is! Arderne himself. Look at him, strutting around the town as if he owns it.’
‘He is beginning to,’ said Rougham bitterly. ‘That is the problem.’
‘Cambridge’s infamous physicians,’ said Arderne amiably, when he spotted the three medical men standing with Michael. ‘How is business, gentlemen? If you are doing as well as I am, you must be very pleased with yourselves.’
‘Pleased enough,’ replied Rougham, unwilling to let the man know the extent of the damage he was causing. ‘Why do you ask?’
‘Because Sir Robert Ufford – your former patient – wants me to cure his swollen veins,’ said Arderne smugly. His eyes held a hard gleam of spite. ‘I shall eradicate his ailment with my feather and a decoction of grease.’
‘What manner of decoction?’ asked Bartholomew, while Rougham’s jaw dropped.
‘I never share professional secrets,’ replied Arderne. ‘Besides, only I can attempt these treatments – you do not have the necessary skills.’
‘Try him,’ challenged Michael. ‘He has been to Montpellier, where they study anatomy and surgery. You may find he is better at these exotic techniques than you.’
‘I do not compete with men who try to bury their patients alive,’ said Arderne contemptuously. ‘It is fortunate I was on hand to effect one of my miraculous cures, or Motelete would have suffered the most dreadful fate imaginable.’
‘Very fortunate,’ muttered Paxtone venomously.
‘It is not just Rougham’s patients who are flocking to me, either,’ said Arderne, rounding on the portly physician. ‘Master Powys – Warden of your own College – asked me for a remedy today.’
Paxtone gaped at him. ‘I do not believe you.’
Arderne shrugged, and fixed Paxtone with his pale eyes; Paxtone gazed back mutely, as though it was beyond his strength to break the stare. ‘Who cares what you believe? In a few weeks, I shall have all your wealthy customers, and you will be left with the ones who cannot pay.’
‘I refuse to sit still while that fellow damages my reputation – perhaps permanently,’ snarled Rougham, when the healer had gone. ‘We must act.’
‘And do what?’ asked Bartholomew. He glanced at Paxtone, whose expression was rather blank. ‘Launch into a slandering match, which will show us to be as petty and despicable as him?’
‘It would be demeaning,’ blurted Paxtone when Bartholomew poked him with his finger. He shook himself and took a deep breath.
‘I was thinking of employing more devious tactics,’ said Rougham. ‘How about tampering with his feather – putting some substance on it that will make his patients ill?’
‘We cannot do that!’ Bartholomew was shocked. ‘It would break all the oaths we have sworn.’
‘It is a case of expediency,’ argued Rougham. ‘Would you rather have a couple of folk with rashes, or some real deaths, when needy patients go to him for a cure and he fails them?’
CHAPTER 6
Michael knocked on Maud Bowyer’s door while Bartholomew faced the road. The physician had noticed several people glaring, and someone had thrown a stone. It had missed, but he was afraid to turn his back on the street lest the culprit try it again. He had assumed people were angry with Michael over the rents, and had been shocked to learn that some of the sour glances had, in fact, been directed at him. He was not sure what he could do about it – he had explained countless times to Isnard that the removal of his leg had been unavoidable, but the bargeman had never really come to terms with the loss. Arderne had homed in on Isnard’s vulnerability like a fly to dead meat, and had known exactly how to exploit it to his own advantage. But how could Bartholomew tell Isnard that? Or the men and women who sympathised with him?
Michael’s rap was answered by a thickset man who wore a sword. He conducted them to a pleasant solar on the ground floor, explaining as he went that he had been hired to make sure Candelby did not try to force his way inside the house.