An Unholy Alliance (6 page)

“I want you to get rid of it for me,’ said Frances, turning a tear-streaked face to Bartholomew. “I do not want it.’

“I cannot do that,’ said Bartholomew. ‘Quite apart from the fact that I do not know how, it would be a terrible crime, and dangerous for you.’

“I care nothing for the danger,’ cried Frances. ‘My life will be worth nothing if I have it, so I have nothing to lose. You must be able to help me! I know there are medicines that can rid a woman of an unwanted child.

Of all the physicians in the town, you are the one most likely to know them, since you learned your medicine in dark and distant lands from foreign teachers.’

Bartholomew wondered if that was how all his patients saw him, endowed with knowledge of mysterious cures alien to physicians who had studied in England. “I do not know how to make potions for such purposes,’ he said, looking away from Frances and out of the window, hoping that she would not see he was lying. He did know of such a potion, and it was indeed Ibn Ibrahim who had shown him writings by a woman physician called Trotula where such remedies could be found: equal portions of wormwood, betony, and pennyroyal, if taken early, might sometimes cause the foetus to abort. He had seen it used once, but that was because the mother was too exhausted from her last birthing to manage another. Even then, Bartholomew had been confused by the ethics of the case.

‘You do know!’ said Frances, desperation making her voice crack. ‘You must.’

‘Go to a midwife,’ said Bartholomew gently. ‘They understand, and will help with your baby.’

‘Mistress Woodman killed Hilde’s younger sister,’ said Frances bitterly, meeting his eyes. ‘Did you know that?’

‘Hilde the prostitute?’ asked Bartholomew. ‘The one who was killed?’

Frances nodded. ‘Her sister was three months with child, and she went to Mistress Woodman, the midwife, to rid herself of it. Mistress Woodman tried to pluck the child out with a piece of wire. Hilde’s sister bled to death.’

Bartholomew knew such practices occurred - many

dangerous poisons were used, and if these failed, operations were attempted that invariably left the mother

either dead or suffering from infection. He turned away and looked out of the window. There was no disputing that it was wrong to kill, but what if Frances went to Mistress Woodman and died of her ministrations?

‘What of the baby’s father?’ he asked. ‘Will he marry you?’

Frances gave a short bark of laughter. ‘He cannot,’

she said, and would elaborate no further. Bartholomew assumed the father must already be married.

‘Do you have money?’ he asked. Frances nodded, hope flaring in her eyes, and she showed him a heavy purse.

‘You have relatives in Lincoln. Tell your father you are going to stay with them. If you can trust them, have the baby there. If not, there are convents that will help you.’

The hope in Frances’s eyes faded. ‘You will not help?’

she said.

Bartholomew swallowed. ‘Think about going away to have the child. Come to talk to me again tomorrow, but do not go to Mistress Woodman for a solution.’

Frances sighed heavily, and turned to leave. “I will give it thought,’ she said, ‘and I will come tomorrow. But my mind is already made up.’

As she left, Agatha sank down in her chair. ‘Poor child,’

she said. ‘One rash act will cost her everything, while her paramour lives on to sully another.’

‘That is not fair, Agatha,’ said Bartholomew. ‘Frances is twenty-four years old, and has been married. She is no green maiden taken unawares.’

‘But the outcome is the same,’ growled Agatha. ‘The woman suffers, and may even die, while the man merely selects another for his attentions. Perhaps I will tell her how to rid herself of the baby.’

‘How?’ demanded Bartholomew disbelievingly. Agatha never ceased to amaze him with her assertions.

‘You take two parts of wormwood to one part of crushed snails, add a generous pinch of red arsenic, and grind it into a poultice. You then insert the paste into the private regions, and the babe will sicken and die.’

‘And so might the mother,’ said Bartholomew, cringing.

‘Where did you learn such a dangerous recipe?’

Agatha grinned suddenly and tapped the side of her nose. Bartholomew wondered whether she might have made it up, but the use of wormwood was common to effect cures of women’ s ailments, and crushed snails were also popular. The thought of medicines reminded him that he was supposed to be teaching. Thanking Agatha for her help, he walked quickly back through the kitchen, and up the wide spiral staircase that led to the hall on the upper floor. Father William, the dour Franciscan teacher of theology, was holding forth to a group of six or seven scholars on the doctrine of original sin, his voice booming through the hall to the distraction of the other Fellows who were also trying to teach there. Piers Hesselwell, Michaelhouse’s Fellow of Law, was struggling valiantly to explain the basic principles of Gratian’s Decretum to ten restless undergraduates, while Roger Alcote, probably tired of competing with William’s voice, had ordered one of his scholars to read Aristotle’s Rhetoric to his own class. As Bartholomew passed him on his way to the conclave at the far end of the hall, Alcote beckoned him over.

‘What is the news?’ he asked. ‘Are these rumours true about dead friars in the chest?’

Bartholomew nodded, and tried to leave, reluctant to engage in gossip with the Senior Fellow. He was a tiny, bitter man who fussed like a hen and had a fanatical dislike of women that Bartholomew thought was abnormal.

‘What House?’ Alcote asked.

‘Dominican,’ answered Bartholomew, guessing what was coming next.

Alcote shot him a triumphant look. ‘Dominican! A mendicant!’ Bartholomew gave him a look of reproval.

If the Fellows harboured such unyielding attitudes, what hope was there that the students would ever forget their differences and learn to study in peace?

Alcote had recently taken major orders with the

Cluniacs at Thetford, and had immediately engaged upon a bitter war of attrition with the mendicant Franciscans. Michaelhouse had been relatively free from inter-Order disputes until then; Brother Michael, the one Benedictine, picked no quarrel with the strong Franciscan contingent there, while those who had taken minor orders, like Bartholomew, had no quarrel with anyone.

Most scholars at the University took religious orders.

This meant that they came under the jurisdiction of Church, rather than secular, law. This division between scholars and townspeople was yet another bone of contention, for secular law was notoriously harsher than Canon law: if Alcote or Bartholomew stole a sheep, they would be fined; if a townsman stole a sheep, he was likely to be hanged. Being in minor orders meant that Bartholomew had certain duties to perform, such as taking church services, but the protection it offered was indisputable. Other scholars, like William, Michael, and now Alcote, had taken major orders, which forbade marriage and relations with women.

Bartholomew left Alcote to his nasty musing, and made for the conclave. It was a pleasant room in the summer, when the light from the wide arched windows flooded in.

The windows had no glass, and so a cool breeze wafted through them, tinged with the unmistakable aroma of river. The coolness was welcome in the summer, but in the winter, when the shutters had to be kept firmly closed against the weather, the conclave was dark and cold. The limewashed walls were decorated with some fine wall-hangings, donated by a former student after a fire had damaged much of the hall two years before, and, at Bartholomew’s insistence, there were always fresh rushes on the floor.

Bartholomew’s students were engaged in a noisy

dispute that he felt certain was not medical, and they quietened when he strode in. He settled himself in one of the chairs near the empty fireplace and smiled round at his students, noting which ones smiled back and which ones studiously avoided his eye because they had failed to prepare for the discussion he had planned.

Sam Gray was one of the ones looking everywhere but at his teacher. He was a young man in his early twenties with a shock of unruly, light-brown hair. He looked tired and Bartholomew wondered what nocturnal activities he had been pursuing. He was certain they would not have had much to do with trepanation, cutting the skull open to relieve pressure on the brain, the subject of the day.

Bartholomew had been taught how to perform a

number of basic operations by Ibn Ibrahim, and was considered something of an oddity in the town for knowing both surgery and medicine. He believed that medicine and surgery could complement each other, and wanted his students to have knowledge of both, despite the fact that most physicians looked down on surgical techniques as the responsibilities of barbers.

Another problem he faced was that those students who had taken major orders were forbidden to practise incision and cautery by an edict passed by the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215.

‘What is trepanation?’ he asked. He had described the operation the previous term, but was curious to know who had remembered and who had not.

There was a rustle in the room as some students

shuffled their feet, and one or two hands went up.

Bartholomew noted that the first belonged to Thomas Bulbeck, who was his brightest student.

‘Master Gray?’ Bartholomew asked maliciously, knowing that Gray would not have the faintest idea what

trepanation was because he had missed the previous lecture.

Gray looked startled. ‘Trepidation,’ he began, his usual confident manner asserting itself quickly, ‘is a morbid fear of having your head sawed off.’

Bartholomew fought down the urge to laugh. If these young men were to be successful in their disputations, there was no room for levity. He saw one or two of the students nodding sagely, and marvelled at Gray’s abilities to make the most outrageous claims with such conviction.

Secretly, he envied the skill: such brazen self-assurance in certain situations might give a patient the encouragement needed to recover. Bartholomew was a poor liar,

and his Arab master had often criticised him for not telling a patient what he wanted to hear when it might make the difference between life and death.

‘Anyone else?’ he asked, standing and pacing back and forth in front of the fireplace. Bulbeck’s hand shot up. Bartholomew motioned for him to answer.

‘Trepanation,’ he said, casting a mischievous glance at Gray, ‘is the surgical practice of removing a part of the skull to relieve pressure on the brain.’

‘Surgery!’ spat one of the Franciscans in disgust. ‘A tradesman’s job!’

Bartholomew wandered over to him. ‘A patient comes to you with severe headaches, spells of unconsciousness, and uncoordinated movements. What do you do, Brother Boniface?’

‘Bleed him with leeches,’ Brother Boniface replied promptly.

Bartholomew thrust his hands in the folds of his tabard and suppressed a sigh of resignation. Wherever he went, people saw bleeding as a panacea for all manner of ailments, when other, far more effective but less dramatic, methods were to hand. He had lost many a patient to other physicians because of his refusal to leech on demand, and some had not lived to regret it. ‘And what will that do?’

‘It will relieve the patient of an excess of bad humours and reduce the pressure in the brain. Without the use of surgery,’ he concluded smugly.

‘And what if that does not work, and the patient becomes worse?’ asked Bartholomew, sauntering to the window and sitting on one of the stone window seats, hands still firmly in his gown to prevent himself from grabbing the arrogant friar and trying to shake some sense into him.

‘Then it is God’s will that he dies, and I give him last rites,’ said Boniface.

Bartholomew was impressed at this reasoning. Would that all his cases were so simple.’ But anyone who becomes ill and who is not given the correct treatment may die,’

he said, ‘and any of you who are unprepared to apply the cure that will save the patient should not become physicians.’

There was a sheepish silence. Bartholomew continued.

‘Under certain circumstances there may be a surgical technique that can be used to save a patient’s life. If it were God’s will that these people should die, He would not have made it possible to use the technique in the first place. But the point is that many people who might have died have been saved because a surgeon has known how to do it. You need not perform the operation yourselves, but you should be prepared to hire the services of a barber-surgeon who will do it for you. Your first duty as a physician is always to save life, or to relieve painful symptoms.’

‘My first duty is to God!’ exclaimed Boniface, attempting piety, but betrayed by the malice that glittered in his eyes.

‘Physicians serve God through their patients,’ said Bartholomew immediately, having had this debate many times with Father William. ‘God has given you the gift of healing through knowledge, and the way in which you use it is how you serve Him. If you choose to ignore the knowledge He has made available to you without good reason, then your service to Him is flawed.’

‘Do you believe you serve God without using the

leeches He saw fit to provide for that purpose?’ asked Boniface blithely.

“I try to save my patients’ lives with the most effective method,’ replied Bartholomew. ‘If I was certain leeching a patient would secure his recovery, I would leech him.

But when my own experience dictates that there are other, more effective, cures for certain ailments than leeches, it would be wrong of me not to use them.’

‘Does trepanation hurt the patient?’ asked Robert Deynman suddenly, causing stifled laughter among the other students, and effectively ending Bartholomew’s debate with Boniface. Deynman was Bartholomew’s least able student, who had been accepted by Michaelhouse because his father was rich. Bartholomew eyed him closely, wondering if the question was intended to needle him, but a glance into the boy’s guileless eyes told him that this was just another of his unbelievably stupid questions. Bartholomew felt sorry for him. He tried hard to keep up with the others, but study was entirely beyond him. The thought of Deynman let loose on patients made Bartholomew shudder, and he hoped he would never pass his disputations.