The Hand of Justice by Susanna Gregory

is not justice!’
    ‘No, but it is the law,’ said Tynkell flatly. ‘None of us want that pair in our town, but they have the King’s Pardon, and
     there is nothing we can do about it.’
    ‘But this is preposterous!’ exclaimed Langelee furiously. ‘They are criminals!’
    Tynkell sighed. ‘You are not listening, Master Langelee. The law is not about who is the criminal and who is the aggrieved.
     It is about enforcing a set of rules. And those rules have just put Thorpe and Mortimer in the right.’
    Bartholomew started to walk home, Tynkell’s words echoing in his mind. He could not believe that self-confessed killers were
     not only free to wander where they liked, but were enjoying protection by the very laws that should have condemned them. He
     was grateful his sister and brother-in-law were away, and hoped Mortimer and Thorpe would have tired of their sport and left
     before they returned.
    He had not travelled far when he saw the town’s wealthiest merchant, Thomas Deschalers, riding along the High Street on an
     expensive-looking horse. Despite his fine, jewel-sewn clothes, the grocer looked ill, and Bartholomew’s professional instincts
     told him there was something seriously amiss with his health. Oddly, the madwoman who had discovered Bosel’s corpse was trailing
     behind him. Bartholomew studied her, noting her flat, dead eyes, and wondered what she and Deschalers planned to do together.
     They were odd bedfellows, to say the least.
    Deschalers reeled suddenly, and something slipped from his hand to the ground. He righted himself, then gazed at the thing
     that had fallen, as though asking himself whether retrieving it was worth the effort. Since the woman did not attempt to help,
     Bartholomew went to pick it up for him. It was a leather purse, heavy with coins and embossed with the emblem that represented
     Deschalers’s wares: a pot with the letter D emblazoned across it. This distinctive motif was also engraved in the lintel above
     the door to his house, and it often appeared on the goods he sold.
    ‘Thank you,’ said Deschalers, taking the purse gratefully. ‘I would have had to dismount to get that, and I do not know whether
     I have the strength.’
    ‘You could have asked her,’ said Bartholomew, indicating the woman, whose dirty hand rested on the grocer’s splendid saddle.
     She regarded him blankly, and he realised that his earlier sense that he knew her had been wrong. There
was
something familiar about her face and the colour of her hair, but the familiarity was simply because she reminded him of
     someone else. However, the woman who looked similar hovered just outside his memory.
    ‘She is slow in the wits,’ said Deschalers. ‘It would have been just as much trouble to make her understand what I wanted
     as to collect it myself. I do not have the will for either.’
    ‘You are unwell?’ asked Bartholomew, since Deschalers seemed to expect such an enquiry.
    ‘Very,’ said Deschalers. ‘Rougham says I will recover my former vigour, but I know that whatever is rotting inside will soon
     kill me. I do not think any physician in England can help me now, not even one who flies in the face of convention to affect
     his cures. But thank you for the offer, anyway.’
    ‘You are welcome,’ said Bartholomew, who would never have done any such thing. First, he seldom saw eye to eye with the laconic,
     aloof grocer and suspected Deschalers would be a difficult patient, arguing over every scrap of treatment and advice. Second,
     Rougham would not appreciate the poaching of his wealthiest patient. And third, Bartholomew knew Deschalers’s self-diagnosis
     had been correct: he already walked hand in hand with death, and no physician could snatch him back.
    Deschalers rode on with the woman in tow, and Bartholomew watched him acknowledge Rougham and Bottisham with a weary wave
     as he passed. Rougham called something about a new tincture of lavender that he claimed would make the