A Wicked Deed by Susanna Gregory Page A

it closely. Some of the blades were flattened where the body had lain, although with four horses trampling about it was flimsy evidence at best. He had presented Tuddenham with the rope Cynric had cut, but the knight claimed it had been left from the previous hanging. Bartholomew had discovered only one other thing: in the fading light, something had glinted dully, and he saw it was one of the silver studs from the belt the dead man had worn. Tuddenham shrugged, unimpressed, and pointed out that it might have been there for weeks, and provided no incontrovertible evidence that Deblunville had been hanged there earlier that day.
    It had been an uncomfortable ride back to Grundisburgh. Tuddenham was clearly relieved that the scholars had been mistaken, but was not pleased that he had been dragged away from the Pentecost Fair on a wasted errand. His priest, meanwhile, hinted darkly about the widely known penchant of Cambridge scholars for strong wines. As far as Bartholomew was concerned, the timely disappearance of the corpse added credence to his initial claim that the hanged man had been murdered, while Michael fretted about whether the incident would make Tuddenham rethink his intention to grant the advowson to Michaelhouse.
    Michael need not have been concerned. As soon as they entered the grassy courtyard of Wergen Hall, the knight had asked yet again whether they were inclined to begin sifting through the pile of deeds that needed to be read before the advowson could be drafted. Michael pounced on the opportunity – uncharacteristically declining an invitation to attend the villagers’ feast on the green – and summoned Alcote so that they could begin immediately. The rest of the evening was spent painstakingly sorting through the mass of scrolls and deeds that proved Tuddenham’s legal ownership of various plots of land and buildings.
Michael and Alcote, with William and Bartholomew helping, toiled well into the night, working in the unsteady light of smoking tallow candles. Eventually, eyes stinging from the fumes and from the strain of reading poor handwriting in the gloom, they were obliged to sleep where they sat, hunched over a trestle table piled high with documents, because all the best places by the fire had been taken by Tuddenham’s servants hours before. The scholars were woken, stiff and unrested, before dawn the following morning by Tuddenham himself, eager to know how much progress had been made.
    Later, over a breakfast of hard bread and salted fish, during which the usual topics were aired – it was indeed mild for the time of year, the scholars had heard that the Pope had died the previous December, and food prices had risen alarmingly since the plague – Dame Eva turned the conversation to the mysteriously absent hanged man. Tuddenham pursed his lips, reluctant to resurrect a subject he considered closed, but the old lady persisted, claiming she was concerned that the outlaws on the Old Road might have dipped south on to Tuddenham land.
    As she spoke, Bartholomew wondered how old she was. Although she possessed almost all her long yellow teeth and her eyes were bright and alert, she seemed so small and frail that he thought a gust of wind might blow her away. But elderly though she might be, she was astute and far too wary of her neighbours to make light of the odd disappearance of a corpse on her son’s manor. Given the seemingly precarious state of his relationship with Deblunville, Bartholomew thought her concerns were probably justified, and that Tuddenham would do well to pay heed to her.
‘The hanged man was about thirty years of age,’ said Alcote, looking up from where he was prising the bones from his herrings with a delicate silver knife, ‘with brown hair and a red face.’
    ‘He had a red face because he had been suffocated,’ Bartholomew pointed out. ‘I cannot imagine it was that colour in life.’
    Tuddenham raised silvery eyebrows. ‘It is not much of a description,