A Wicked Deed by Susanna Gregory Read Free Book Online

around the throat. ‘Help me, Michael!’
‘What are you doing?’ asked Alcote, watching him in horror. ‘Leave him alone, Matthew, and come away before you land us all in trouble.’
    ‘He is alive!’ Bartholomew shouted, struggling to bear the man’s weight ‘Cynric, cut the rope! Quickly!’
    Cynric hesitated, but then moved forward. Before he could act, Michael intervened, raising an imperious hand that stopped the Welshman dead in his tracks.
    ‘He is a convicted felon, Matt,’ said the monk firmly. ‘You cannot go cutting down criminals whenever you feel like it. You are likely to end up swinging next to him.’
    ‘He is not a criminal,’ Bartholomew gasped, desperately trying to support the body. ‘Or, at least, he has not been lawfully executed. The hangmen would have taken his clothes had they been legally employed to kill him, and they have not.’
    ‘Perhaps the nature of his crime was too heinous,’ said Alcote with a shudder. ‘Come away from him, before someone sees what you are trying to do.’
    ‘Cynric!’ pleaded Bartholomew.
    The Welshman glanced uneasily at Michael, but then stepped towards the gibbet. He climbed up it before anyone could stop him, and sawed quickly through the rope. Bartholomew staggered as the body was suddenly freed and its weight dropped on to him. He laid the man down in the grass and loosened the noose, peering into the face for any signs of life. With a raw, rasping sound, the man drew breath.
    ‘This is outrageous!’ exclaimed Alcote, watching Bartholomew work. ‘I am not staying here to be charged with helping a felon evade justice!’
    He grabbed the reins of his horse and waved them, expecting the animal to know which way he wanted to turn. When nothing happened, he gave it a sharp slap on the hindquarters that made it trot down the right-hand track in agitation. Michael motioned for the students to go with him – it was not safe for a man to travel alone – and dismounted with a sigh.
‘You will be the death of me,’ he mumbled to Bartholomew under his breath. ‘I very much doubt whether the Bishop of Ely’s authority will carry much weight here. We are likely to be hanged for tampering with the King’s justice first, and questions asked after.’
    William watched Alcote disappearing down the road with the students at his heels, and it seemed as if he would follow. Instead he raised one leg to let the exhausted donkey go free, and went to stand next to Michael, breathing heavily to signify his disapproval of what Bartholomew had done.
    ‘You have endangered us all by interfering with the course of justice,’ he said angrily to the physician. ‘This is not Cambridge, you know. There is no friendly Sheriff Tulyet here to look the other way while you break the law.’ He paused in his tirade. ‘Well? Will he live?’
    Bartholomew shook his head. ‘I think his neck is broken.’
    While William dropped to his knees and began intoning prayers for the dying in a voice loud enough to wake the dead, Bartholomew put his ear to the stricken man’s mouth, listening to the faint rustle of breath that whispered there. Whether he was conscious of what was happening to him, Bartholomew could not tell. His eyes were half open, but were dull and glazed. There were blood clots around his lips, and his face was a deep red, suggesting that his death was as much due to strangulation as to the damaged vertebrae.
    ‘Padfoot.’
    Bartholomew looked sharply at him, but his breathing had faltered into nothing. He was left wondering whether he had imagined the man uttering a word with his dying breath, or whether the barely audible syllables were simply involuntary contractions of the tongue as the life went out of him. With William bellowing at his side, it had been difficult to hear much anyway. He sat back on his heels, puzzled.
‘Now what?’ asked William, finishing his prayers, and looking at the dead man in concern. ‘Do we put him back as we found