A Masterly Murder хмб-6

by Susanna GREGORY

‘If so, then I cannot blame them,’ replied Bartholomew. ‘Are you feeling better? You look better.’

  Michael nodded. ‘I feel dizzy if I stand too long and I tire easily, but I am well enough.’ He gestured at his table, which was piled high with scrolls and parchments. ‘I am making good use of the fact that I am confined to my room, though. I have resumed my dealings with Master Heytesbury of Merton College in Oxford, and I have been sifting through the reports from my beadles about these murders.’

  ‘Have they learned anything?’

  Michael shook his head gloomily, and not even the fragments of gossip from Robin of Grantchester and Suttone seemed to lessen his despondency about the slow pace of the investigation. Bartholomew left him sitting at his table, muttering obscenities about the fact that the reports his beadles dictated to the University’s scribes in St Mary’s Church were so ambiguous that he was obliged to send for most of them anyway, so that they could clarify what they had intended to say.

  By the time Bartholomew quit Michael’s chamber he had lost his students, who were enjoying the spectacle of the workmen picking through the smashed tiles, and it was almost time for teaching to end anyway. He returned to the hall where he carefully secured the colourfully illustrated anatomy book to its chain in the wall, straightened the benches, and replaced the ink stands, spare parchment and pens in the aumbry in the corner of the conclave. When he had finished, Suttone came to stand next to him at the window, staring into the yard below.

  ‘That is what happens when corners are cut,’ he said, looking down at the mess with a resigned sigh. ‘Master Runham is forcing the pace of this building work to the point where it is dangerous.’

  ‘Then tell him,’ suggested Bartholomew. ‘We do not want someone injured because Runham wants a new College instantly.’

  ‘He will not listen. He does not care if a workman is killed, anyway. I reminded him that Master Raysoun of Bene’t College died because he fell from unstable scaffolding, but Runham merely thanked me for my advice, and assured me that he would take care not to climb on any of ours.’

  ‘He said that?’ asked Bartholomew, not sure whether to be indignant or amused by the Master’s brazen self-interest.

  Suttone frowned. ‘There he is. What is he doing now?’

  Runham was staggering under the weight of a small chest. It was one of the College ‘hutches’ – a box containing money that benefactors had provided so that scholars could borrow from it if they found themselves short of cash. The Master would give the student money, while the student exchanged a caucio or pledge of comparable value. So, for example, when Gray had needed two marks to pay for his tuition fees, he had deposited a gold ring in the chest that he would redeem as soon as he had saved enough money. Similarly, Deynman had left his beautiful copy of Galen’s Tegni in the chest when he wanted money for pens and ink. If Gray or Deynman were unable or unwilling to repay their loan, the College would then be the proud owner of a gold ring and a book for the library. The College’s hutches, containing varying amounts of money, were stored in a heavily barred room in a cellar under the hall.

  ‘He must be going to do an inventory of the contents,’ said Bartholomew, watching Runham sweating under his load. ‘Some of our hutches contain a lot of money – or its equivalent.’

  ‘Are all the hutches for the students’ use?’ asked Suttone.

  ‘No. Some of our eight or nine hutches are for Fellows, too. They are useful if we need money to pay some fine or other.’

  ‘I owe no fines,’ said Suttone. He gave a sudden, wicked grin. ‘Although I might well be fined for being insubordinate to Runham before too long. But I do need money to buy the alb I will need to conduct masses in the church. I shall see Runham about it this morning.’

  He wandered away, and Bartholomew went to visit a patient near the river before the bell announced the midday meal. His patient had been bitten by a rat, so Bartholomew cleaned the wound and then rummaged in his bag for the betony plaster that would help prevent festering. It was missing and he suspected it had been borrowed by Gray, who had then forgotten to replace it. He remembered that the last time he used it was when he had treated Michael in the lane the night Runham had been elected. He paid an urchin a penny to fetch some more from the apothecary, and talked with the man’s family while he waited.

  It was not long before they were joined by the old brothers Dunstan and Aethelbald, who always came to see what was happening if a stranger visited the row of hovels that crouched near the seedy wharves on the river where they had lived all their lives.

  ‘We are going to Bene’t College today,’ announced Dunstan without preamble. ‘Now that Wymundham and Raysoun are dead, their choir is depleted, so we thought we would offer our services.’

  ‘I see,’ said Bartholomew, wondering whether Bene’t knew what it was letting itself in for if it accepted the rivermen’s reedy tenors.

  ‘They will have to give us bread and ale, though,’ added Aethelbald. ‘We do not sing for nothing.’

  ‘Isnard the bargeman tried to join the Peterhouse choir,’ said Dunstan. ‘Peterhouse gives its singers wine after each mass, you see. But the music master told Isnard he should take pity on the world and swear a sacred oath that he would never utter another note as long as he lived. Now why should the man say a rude thing like that, Doctor?’

  ‘I cannot imagine,’ said Bartholomew, deliberately not looking at the old man, who sounded genuinely surprised.

  ‘Bene’t will be glad to have us,’ said Aethelbald with conviction. ‘And when Michaelhouse hears us singing like angels, it will be sorry that it allowed us to leave.’

  ‘You could be right,’ said Bartholomew, sure he was not.

  ‘We heard one of your lot came to a nasty end,’ said Dunstan suddenly, with inappropriate salaciousness.

  ‘Who?’ asked Bartholomew absently, thinking about Raysoun, Wymundham and Brother Patrick.

  ‘One of your lot – that miserable Justus, Runham’s book-bearer. His body is in St Michael’s Church porch.’

  Bartholomew sighed. It was already a week since the book-bearer’s body had been found, and it was clear that Runham had no intention of arranging a burial. Bartholomew saw he would have to do it himself if he did not want the corpse to remain in the church until it decomposed completely.

  He was angry: Justus had served Runham for almost a year, and paying a few pennies for a shroud should not have been an insurmountable problem, even to a miser like Runham. Compared to the efforts Runham had made to beautify the tomb of his loathsome cousin, Bartholomew found the new Master’s attitude to the dead perplexing and inconsistent. Justus had not been a likeable man, but that was no reason to treat his body with such disrespect.

  ‘It is disgraceful,’ added Aethelbald gleefully. ‘Still, given what Runham did to our choir, I cannot say I am surprised. And then there was Brother Patrick – another victim of that University.’

  ‘I know,’ said Dunstan, shaking his head. ‘Stabbed through the heart, I heard.’

  ‘Stabbed in the back,’ corrected Aethelbald. ‘A coward’s blow.’

  ‘Who told you all this?’ asked Bartholomew, amazed at the speed at which gossip seemed to rip through the town.

  ‘Everyone knows,’ said Aethelbald dismissively. ‘It is no secret. And everyone knows who killed this Brother Patrick, too.’

  ‘They do?’ asked Bartholomew hopefully.

  Dunstan nodded vehemently. ‘Another scholar. It could not have been a townsman because it was on University property.’

  ‘That does not necessarily follow,’ said Bartholomew. ‘It is not unknown for townsmen to trespass on University land.’

  ‘I would like to trespass on Michaelhouse,’ said Aethelbald with feeling. ‘No offence, Doctor, but I would like to see it burn to the ground for what it did to our choir. And I would like to see every one of its fat, grasping scholars strung up like the common criminals they are – not you, of course, Doctor, and not that sainted Brother Michae
l.’

  ‘If I were twenty years younger, I would do it,’ announced Dunstan.

  ‘Forty years younger might see you in with a chance,’ cackled Aethelbald. ‘I tell you, Doctor, that College is destined for a great fall. And when it comes, not a soul in the town will raise a finger to save it.’

  For some unaccountable reason, their words unnerved Bartholomew. When the betony plaster arrived, he slapped it on his patient’s leg with almost indecent haste, and strode quickly back up the lane, his head bowed in thought, wondering what he could do to prevent the ever-widening rift between his College and the townsfolk.

  Since it was a lenten day, fried herring giblets were on the menu at Michaelhouse. Bartholomew thought about William as he toyed with the unappetising mess, because any kind of fish organs were a favourite with the friar. Bartholomew hoped William would be getting his share of them in the Franciscan Friary.

  The entrails were served on thick slabs of stale bread made from rye flour, which served as platters. Although scholars were not usually expected to consume their trenchers, Bartholomew ate most of his that day because he was hungry and he did not fancy the oily, fishy guts that were heaped in front of him. Glancing down the table, he saw that none of the other Fellows were devouring them with much enthusiasm, either, and Runham had gone so far as to hire a personal cook to provide him with something else.

  As well as giblets and stale bread, there was a thick, brown-green paste made from dried peas. It was bland and contained some crunchy parts that Bartholomew imagined it was better not to try to examine too carefully. The last time he had investigated a foreign body in his food it had transpired to be a toenail, although none of the cooks would admit to being its owner. The Bible Scholar droned on, skimming through the text quickly and without any indication that he had the slightest understanding of what he read.

  When Runham rose to say grace, Bartholomew escaped with relief from the oppressive atmosphere of the hall and went to his own room. The College was still in a chaos of noise following the collapse of scaffolding, and Runham had announced that the rest of the day’s lectures were cancelled. The students were delighted although Bartholomew fretted that so much lost time would mean poor results at the end-of-year disputations.

  He was about to go inside when he saw Beadle Meadowman hurrying across the yard towards him, and so escorted him to Michael’s room. In tones of barely concealed pride, Meadowman informed the monk that he had persuaded his brother-in-law, Robert de Blaston the carpenter, to hire him to work alongside the men who had been building Bene’t College the day Raysoun had died. Meadowman hoped to gain the confidence of his fellow workmen, and see whether he could ascertain if any of them had given Raysoun a timely shove.

  Meadowman also reported that the other beadles had been diligent in their enquiries around the taverns, but although the townsmen professed to be delighted by the deaths of scholars of the much-hated University, no one seemed to be taking the credit for killing them. Michael instructed him to ensure the enquiries continued, and then sent him away to begin mixing mortar with his new colleagues.

  ‘This is a bad business,’ said Michael gloomily. ‘I have all my beadles on the alert for information regarding the deaths of Patrick, Raysoun and Wymundham, but they have heard nothing. It is unusual, because there is nearly always some rumour or accusation passed on over a jug of ale that I can act upon, but in these deaths, there is nothing.’

  ‘You are essentially better, so why do you not leave your room and take control over these investigations?’ suggested Bartholomew. ‘Meadowman will do his best, but he is not you.’

  ‘I wish it were that easy, Matt. But my talents lie in dealing with scholars, and I suspect our victims were killed by townsfolk. The kind of mean, vicious fellows who would stab a friar in the back, shove an ageing academic from a roof, or smother a man with a cushion and leave his body in the Mayor’s garden are unlikely to open their hearts to the Senior Proctor – whether the ale is flowing or not. But they might tell my beadles, who are townsfolk themselves. I may do more harm than good if I interfere.’

  Bartholomew left him and went to his own room, where he threw open the window shutters and sat at the table to begin work on his treatise. The section on infection reminded him of the riverman with the rat bite, and from there he thought about the conversation he had had with Dunstan and Aethelbald. Although the old rivermen were a pair of shameless gossips, their stories often carried an element of truth, and he was concerned by their assertion that the town was resentful that Michaelhouse had left the book-bearer’s body unattended and forgotten in St Michael’s Church for a week.

  He considered mentioning the matter to Runham again, but suspected it would be a waste of time. With some reluctance, he laid down his pen, swung his cloak around his shoulders, and left the College to walk to St Michael’s Church. Justus’s body was still there, shut into the porch and draped carelessly with a dirty sheet. Bartholomew lifted the corner and peered underneath. Justus’s face had darkened, and the corpse released an unpleasant, sickly odour: it was not as bad as the stench from the butchers’ stalls because the cold weather had slowed putrefaction, but it would not be long before it was providing some impressive competition.

  He returned to Michaelhouse, asked Agatha for a sheet to use as a shroud, and then set off with it across the yard. On the way back to the church he met Suttone, and the Lincoln-born friar immediately agreed to conduct a funeral for a man who had hailed from the same city. Together, they wrapped the body in the sheet and then prepared it for burial, lighting candles, anointing it with chrism, and sprinkling scented oil over it to mask the smell as it was brought from the porch to the chancel.

  Because Justus was a suicide, the verger would not allow him to be buried in the churchyard, so Bartholomew hired a cart to take the body to the desolate spot near the Barnwell Causeway that had been set aside for people who had taken their own lives. As Suttone said his prayers, Bartholomew stood at the side of the shallow grave and shivered, his cloak billowing around him in the wind. The scrubby bushes that shielded the burial ground from the yellow stone buildings of the nearby Austin priory whispered and hissed when the breeze cut through them, and small, stinging dashes of rain spat at Bartholomew and Suttone as they completed their mournful task.

  The grave-diggers, who had decided it was too cold to wait for the Carmelite to finish his benedictions, were nowhere to be found after he and Bartholomew had rolled Justus’s floppy remains into the wet hole in the ground. Not liking to leave the grave open, Bartholomew took a spade and filled in the gaping maw himself, while Suttone continued to pray. When they had finished, they stood in silence for a few moments, gazing down at the soggy pile of earth until wind and rain forced them to hurry back along the Causeway and into the town. Suttone returned to St Michael’s Church for more prayers, while Bartholomew walked back to the College, feeling cold and dirty. As he went, he grew increasingly angry with Runham, despising the man for having so little concern for others that he had consigned Justus to the paltry ceremony Suttone had just conducted.

  He was so engrossed in his thoughts that he almost collided with a horse being ridden down the High Street at a healthy clip, and was only saved from injury by some very skilled horsemanship on the part of its rider. He backed up against a wall in alarm, and watched Adela Tangmer, the vintner’s daughter, control her panicky mount.

  ‘You should watch where you are going, Matthew,’ she called when the horse had been calmed. He was relieved that she did not seem cross at his carelessness; the tone of her words bore more sisterly concern than censure. She grinned down at him, and he was amused to note that she still wore her comfortable brown dress, set off by a pair of rather manly riding boots and a belt from which hung a no-nonsense dagger.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I was thinking about something else.’

  ‘You should be more careful. You would have been trampled had I not been such an accomplished horsewoman. Worse yet, you might have
done Horwoode an injury.’

  ‘Horwoode?’ asked Bartholomew in confusion. ‘The town Mayor?’

  Adela gave a guffaw. ‘I call this horse Horwoode, because he is skittish, weak, rather stupid and has overly thin legs.’

  ‘I see,’ said Bartholomew, startled by such a bald, if astute, summary of the Mayor’s most prominent attributes. ‘I have never noticed Mayor Horwoode’s legs, personally.’

  ‘Well, you are not a woman, are you?’ Adela pointed out. ‘But I do not like that man.’

  Neither did Bartholomew, but he was not so imprudent as to be bawling his opinions in one of the town’s main thoroughfares.

  ‘Horwoode is Master of the Guild of St Mary, you know,’ Adela went on. ‘His advice to my father’s guild, Corpus Christi, to invest in Bene’t College was bad. That horrible College is turning out to be a lot more expensive than my father was given leave to expect. And a couple of their scholars have been put down in the last few days, which does not reflect well on my father’s guild.’

  ‘Put down?’ asked Bartholomew, not sure what she meant.

  She waved an impatient hand. ‘Killed. Put out of their misery. Or rather, put out of ours. That drunken Raysoun and his friend Wymundham have already gone to meet their maker, and the rest of the rabble are bickering about who was responsible.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’ asked Bartholomew, confused by her diatribe.

  ‘Bene’t College is a nasty place, Matthew. Its porters are a gang of uncontrollable louts, its students are worse than some of the town’s apprentices for wild behaviour, and the Fellows are always fighting and squabbling.’

  ‘It sounds just like any other University institution to me,’ said Bartholomew. ‘What is it that singles Bene’t out as particularly disreputable – other than the fact that you do not approve of your father’s money being spent on it?’

  She gave him a hard stare, and then broke into one of her toothy smiles. ‘You are an astute man, Matthew. I do resent the money my father is always ploughing into the place. But Bene’t is more than just a waste of gold: it seethes with secrets and plots. One of its patrons is the Duke of Lancaster, and he is so worried about what might happen in the College with which he is associated, that he has made one of his squires a Fellow there, just to keep an eye on it.’