The Devil's Disciples

The Fourteenth Chronicle of Matthew Bartholomew

It is ten years since the Black Death reaped its harvest at Cambridge. Now, in the stifling summer of 1357, an even more sinister visitor is at large. He claims that when the plague comes again he will save people. Last time God failed, next time the Devil will succeed.

Some people easily believe the message from the Devil’s disciple, a black-hooded figure known only as the Sorcerer. Some need a little more persuasion and for those he leaves reminders of his powers – manuals on sorcery, a hand severed from a corpse, desecrated graves. But there are stubborn sceptics in the town, and physician Matthew Bartholomew is one of them. He suspects that a more identifiable form of devilry is involved, one that has reared its head in the affairs of the town and the university before, when disputes break out between religious orders, when quarrels rage over legacies, and where mysteries linger over clerics who have fled the country.

It is in Matthew’s own – and urgent – interests to unmask the Sorcerer, for there is a belief at large that this devil’s agent is none other than Matthew himself. He is, after all, a man who is no stranger to death, who has a self-professed interest in the illegal art of anatomy, and who has an impressive array of deadly methods at his disposal. And as well as the Sorcerer’s activities threatening Matthew’s reputation, it rapidly becomes clear they threaten his life…