A Masterly Murder хмб-6
Page 49
‘That upset him terribly,’ said Adela. ‘But you are trying to distract me. Where is the rest of the treasure?’
‘Most of it is at Michaelhouse,’ said Michael. ‘Wait here, and I will go and fetch it.’
Adela laughed. ‘I know there is about seventy pounds at Michaelhouse – the money Suttone returned to you, along with some promissory notes and baubles that Runham found, begged or borrowed. But that is nothing compared to what Wilson really had. Runham boasted to Suttone that Wilson had at least a hundred pounds in gold coins hidden away. So, let us not play games here. Where is it?’
‘A hundred pounds?’ exclaimed Michael, astonished. ‘As well as the seventy pounds in College?’
‘Yes,’ said Adela impatiently. ‘And do not pretend to be surprised: it is common knowledge that Wilson’s room was stuffed to the gills with gold after he died, so you cannot fool me with your feigned innocence.’
‘But I am telling the truth,’ protested Michael. ‘Believe me, if I knew where to find a hundred pounds, we would not be poking around in Wilson’s tomb for treasure to show angry builders.’
‘Liar!’ snapped Adela. ‘Tell me where it is, or Caumpes will shoot you.’
Caumpes was quaking like a leaf, and Bartholomew inched forward. It was a mistake.
‘Caumpes!’ Adela’s ringing no-nonsense voice made the agitated scholar jump and his finger trembled on the trigger. ‘Pull yourself together!’
‘I did not mean for this to happen,’ said Caumpes in an unsteady whisper. ‘All I wanted was to protect my College from wicked men like Wymundham and Brother Patrick, and to make sure Michaelhouse did not poach our workmen. That is all. I wanted no part in murder and theft.’
‘But you sold stolen goods,’ said Michael, unmoved.
Caumpes turned a tortured gaze on him. ‘No! Do you think I would risk having it said that Bene’t scholars peddle stolen property? Everything I sold was honestly obtained. Ask Sheriff Tulyet or the Goldsmiths’ Guild.’
‘Then why did you throw in your lot with her?’ asked Michael, casting a contemptuous glance at Adela. ‘And with Runham?’
‘I told you,’ said Caumpes miserably. ‘I wanted money to finish Bene’t’s buildings, because the Duke and the Guilds of St Mary and Corpus Christi are becoming reluctant to pay.’
This time the yell from the crowd was hoarse and angry. It sounded as though it were closer, as if the mob had left the Market Square and was already on the move.
‘The treasure,’ prompted Adela, gazing purposefully at Michael. ‘Where is it?’
‘Caumpes will not shoot,’ said Michael, although his voice was uncertain. ‘He has said all along that he is not a murderer, and he is right.’
‘Caumpes!’ snapped Adela again. ‘Kill the servant. Show them that you are a man, and not a snivelling, cowardly rat.’
‘Caumpes is not a murderer,’ said Michael again. His conviction wavered slightly as Caumpes swallowed hard and brought his crossbow to bear on Cynric. ‘And it would do you no good if he were, madam, because we do not know where Runham hid his gold.’
‘I do not believe you,’ said Adela. ‘Shoot him, Caumpes.’
But Michael was right: Caumpes had no intention of shooting anyone. He hurled the crossbow from him in revulsion and started running up the nave towards the door. Before Bartholomew could react, Adela made a quick, decisive movement, and Caumpes fell, scrabbling helplessly at the metal that was embedded in his back. She turned to Bartholomew, Michael and Cynric, showing that she held another four or five shining silver spikes in her hands.
‘I am good with these,’ she said. ‘I advise you to stay where you are.’
Bartholomew gazed at Caumpes who was gasping for breath on the patterned tiles of the nave, and then watched him painfully continue his journey to the door. The physician guessed the wound had pierced a lung, and doubted whether Caumpes would survive. How many more people would die in their church, he wondered, before the curse of Wilson’s stolen treasure was exorcised?
A short distance away, the cheated workmen and the wronged singers were definitely making their move. The shouting was louder, and Bartholomew could hear ringing curses from carters on the High Street as the rioters began to stream from the Square towards Michaelhouse, blocking the road. Caumpes had reached the church door and opened it, allowing the sounds to drift in more clearly. A horse neighed in panic at the sudden increase in noise.
‘Horwoode!’ exclaimed Adela in alarm, glancing at the door.
‘He sounds panicky,’ said Bartholomew quickly, seeing an opportunity to break the stalemate. ‘Perhaps someone is trying to steal him.’
‘No one in this town would steal a horse of mine,’ she said, raising her throwing hand to warn Bartholomew against moving. She glanced towards the door in agitation, then snapped her attention forward again as Bartholomew braced himself to stand. ‘They would not dare.’
‘Then perhaps it is an outsider,’ said Bartholomew. ‘To a poor man with a starving family, Horwoode would be well worth stealing.’
‘And eating,’ added Michael. ‘After all, it could not be sold, given that it is so distinctive, but it would keep a family in meat for a week.’
It was enough. Without a word, Adela turned and raced up the nave, her mind fixed on the rescue of her horse. Bartholomew followed her, ignoring the warning cries of Michael and Cynric to let her go. By the time he reached the door, she was mounted and the horse was prancing skittishly among the graves. She pulled back her arm, and Bartholomew ducked back inside the porch. One of her spikes thudded into the door.
‘Stay away!’ she yelled. ‘Let me go – we have a pact to help each other, remember?’
‘I would not have made it had I known what you planned,’ he shouted back. His medicine bag caught on the door latch, and as he struggled to free it, he felt the smooth metal of his new childbirth forceps. He hauled them out and held them like a weapon. Adela gave a bitter smile.
‘What will you do, Matthew? Club me off my horse with the implement you use to save women’s lives? Believe me, I will kill you before you close half the distance.’
To prove her point, another of the silver missiles appeared in her hand, and her arm came up as she prepared to throw. A furious yell from the mob unnerved Horwoode. Hooves flailed and Bartholomew took the opportunity to dash to the back of the bucking horse. It did not like the sensation that someone was behind it, and began to prance and rear even more frantically. Despite her skills as a horsewoman, Adela was having difficulty in controlling it. Meanwhile, Caumpes had reached the High Street, and was clinging to the churchyard gate for support.
Bartholomew dodged this way and that, trying to get close enough to knock Adela from her saddle. Horwoode became more agitated, and a sudden sideways skip made the horse collide with Bartholomew, causing him to drop the forceps to the ground. The metallic clatter and the sight of something shiny under its feet was the last straw. Horwoode bolted.
At that precise moment, Caumpes released his grip on the wall that supported him and began to lurch forward, following some final desire to make his way back to the College he had loved. Startled by another movement under its front legs, the horse jolted backward, rolling its eyes in terror, and then fell.
Caumpes was crushed under the falling body, while Adela lost her grip on the saddle and slid to the ground. She recovered herself quickly and maintained her grip of the horse’s reins, but the horse was on its side with its hooves flailing wildly. There was a sickening crack as one of them caught her on the side of her head. She stood immobile for a moment, and then crumpled to lie twitching on the ground. The horse scrambled to its feet and darted off along the High Street.
Bartholomew dashed forward and knelt next to her, but he could see she was beyond anything he could do. The hoof had cracked the skull at the temple, and crushed the brain inside. Despite her convulsive struggles, her eyes already had the glassy look of death in them.
‘The horse killed her,’ whis
pered Cynric, coming to stand next to Bartholomew. ‘She was killed by one of the animals she loved.’
Adela’s uncontrolled shuddering ceased as the brain relinquished its damaged grip on her body.
‘The horse has killed Caumpes, too,’ said Michael, who crouched next to the scholar from Bene’t. ‘He is dead.’
‘This is no place for us,’ said Cynric urgently, grabbing Bartholomew’s tabard and hauling him to his feet as an ear-splitting howl echoed through the churchyard. ‘The mob is here.’
Dragging Bartholomew behind him, and with Michael following with uncharacteristic speed, Cynric darted to the back of the graveyard and hid among the tangle of bushes and small trees that grew there. They had been wrong when they had assumed the mob would go straight to Michaelhouse. The gaggle of workmen and singers had known perfectly well that they would be unlikely to make an impression on a sturdy foundation like the College, and had marched instead on that most prominent piece of Michaelhouse property – St Michael’s Church.
From his frighteningly inadequate hiding place, Bartholomew watched the rioters pour into the churchyard. At the head of them was Osmun. He faltered as he saw Caumpes’s body, and his pugilistic features hardened. He jumped on a tombstone to address his followers.
‘This is the body of Master Caumpes of Bene’t College!’ he howled in fury. ‘Caumpes was a good and honest man, and it is obvious who killed him – Michaelhouse men!’
‘Why is that obvious?’ piped up old Dunstan the riverman from the front of the crowd. The question was not put in such a way as to question Osmun’s authority, but in a manner that suggested the old riverman merely wanted the information.
‘Because his murdered body lies in the graveyard of the church Michaelhouse owns,’ yelled Osmun, spittle flying from his mouth in his fury. ‘Use your wits, old man!’
‘I do not see that proves anything,’ said Aethelbald, Dunstan’s brother, scratching his head in genuine puzzlement. ‘Anyone could have killed your Master Caumpes and left the body here.’
‘Michaelhouse hates Bene’t scholars,’ fumed Osmun. ‘Poor Caumpes was killed only because he wore the blue tabard of the College I serve.’
‘In that case, why is Adela Tangmer also dead?’ asked Robert de Blaston the carpenter. ‘She was not a scholar from Bene’t.’
‘And anyway, those Michaelhouse men are a cunning brood,’ said his friend Newenham knowledgeably. ‘They would not leave the bodies of people they killed on their own property.’
Osmun was not stupid. He could see that the crowd’s fury was fading as he argued with them. He gave a warlike whoop and waved a long, gnarled stick in the air. There were some answering cries and a few weapons were rattled, although it all seemed rather feeble to Bartholomew.
‘To Michaelhouse!’ shouted Osmun. ‘We will tear it stone from stone to its foundations!’
‘We have been thinking about that,’ said Dunstan uneasily. ‘If we destroy Michaelhouse, we will never be invited to sing in a choir again – none of the other colleges would have us.’
‘Will you let music interfere with justice?’ yelled Osmun, outraged. ‘To Michaelhouse, lads, and all its ill-gotten wealth will be ours!’
‘But that is the problem,’ Blaston pointed out. ‘It does not have any ill-gotten wealth. If it did, we would not be here now, using the tools of our trade as weapons. We would be working on their north court. Michaelhouse is destitute.’
‘Hardly that,’ muttered Michael indignantly. Cynric jabbed him hard in the ribs to silence him before he gave them away.
‘To Michaelhouse!’ yelled Osmun, ignoring the carpenter.
‘It is all that Runham’s fault,’ said Dunstan, climbing unsteadily on another tombstone, using his brother as a prop. ‘He dismissed the choir and he made the deal with the craftsmen that he knew he could not fulfil. It is not the fault of the other scholars – only him.’
‘Where is Runham?’ screamed Isnard the bargeman from the back of the crowd. ‘It is him we will tear apart! And then we will march on Michaelhouse and demand our bread and ale.’
‘He is in the church, God rot his wicked soul,’ said Dunstan, addressing the crowd from his little pulpit, just as Osmun had been doing. ‘He is lying under a lovely piece of silk – unlike his own book-bearer, whom he left to rot for days. Justus would still be there now if Doctor Bartholomew had not arranged his burial.’
‘When was that, then?’ asked Isnard conversationally. ‘I would have attended Justus’s requiem mass had I known when it was going to happen. I like a good funeral.’
‘Justus was my cousin,’ yelled Osmun. ‘I had to plead and beg on bended knees for Michaelhouse to honour his poor remains and do its duty. Bene’t would never have left a man unburied for more than a week.’
‘Why did you not bury Justus, then?’ asked Dunstan. ‘If he was your cousin–’
‘March on Michaelhouse now, and demand all they have!’ shrieked Osmun, sensing he was losing control of his small crowd to the old man. ‘We will have their silver and gold, and their rich cloaks and fine food.’
‘Michaelhouse does not have fine food,’ said Isnard. ‘You are thinking of Peterhouse. Michaelhouse is the College with the worst food in Cambridge.’
‘I think you will find that honour goes to Gonville Hall,’ muttered Michael indignantly. Cynric prodded him again.
‘And the food has got worse since Runham was made Master,’ shouted Dunstan, although there was no reason why he should be privy to such facts, now that he no longer earned his Sunday bread and ale. ‘And it was bad food that made Brother Michael ill. Runham tried to starve him to death!’
There was an ominous, angry rumble from the members of the choir, although the craftsmen appeared sceptical, and Bartholomew buried his face in his hands so that Michael would not see him smile. He wondered whether any of the crowd would question why Michael should be made ill with bad food, if Runham was starving him. None did.
‘And Runham was going to stop Doctor Bartholomew coming to visit the sick,’ continued Dunstan, now enjoying his role as spokesman for the underclasses. ‘How can we afford the high fees of Master Lynton when we are ill? We need Doctor Bartholomew, and Runham was trying to take him from us.’
The angry rumble increased in volume. Dunstan had succeeded where the aggressive Osmun had failed.
‘And Doctor Bartholomew gave my Yolande a green ribbon, too,’ added Blaston, drawing the bemused glances of several of the choir. ‘He is a kind man who is fond of his patients – us.’
‘To Michaelhouse then,’ shouted Osmun, waving his stave, ‘to avenge all these wrongs.’
‘No!’ wailed Dunstan in his reedy tenor. ‘To St Michael’s Church to where that vile Runham’s corpse lies. We will string it up.’
This time, the yell of approval from the crowd was distinctly more enthusiastic.
‘What for?’ demanded Osmun, startled. ‘Hanging a corpse will do you no good. Looting the College will bring you fortunes beyond your wildest dreams.’
‘How many more times do we have to tell you?’ demanded Blaston, shoving the porter out of his way. ‘Michaelhouse does not have this great fortune you keep talking about. And it is Runham we want. Runham is responsible for all our troubles.’
‘Wait!’ shouted Osmun, as the crowd surged forward and elbowed their way into the church.
But no one paid him any heed, and there was no more for him to do than to pick up the body of Caumpes, sling it over his shoulder, and be on his way. Smashing sounds came from inside the church. Bartholomew leapt to his feet and tried to move forward, but Cynric held him back.
‘Are you mad, boy?’ he hissed. ‘They will see a Michaelhouse tabard and turn their rage on you.’
That was certainly true, thought Bartholomew, easing back into the cover of the trees. He had almost been the victim of the choir once before in St Michael’s Church.
‘But they will destroy it,’ he whispered. ‘And they will take the church silver.’
‘But they are smashing things. I can hear them.’
‘Only the vase that contains the flowers Runham left for Wilson,’ said Michael. ‘And that has been empty this past week.’
There was some angry shouting, and the crowd began to emerge from the church, carrying Runham’s coffin with them. Dunstan, wearing the silk sheet around his thin shoulders, led the strange procession like some bizarre priest. Behind him, Runham shuddered and bumped as he was carried head-high along the High Street, willing hands reaching up to be part of the grisly celebration. Not far behind, the gilt effigy of Wilson was being given similar treatment, joggling in grabbing hands as it was borne away towards the Market Square.
It was not long before the church was empty. Fearful for it, Bartholomew darted from his hiding place and through the door. But Michael had been right, and the only thing that had been smashed was Runham’s clay vase. He started in alarm when the door clanked open.
‘Where have they gone now?’ asked Sheriff Tulyet wearily. ‘I thought that by showing them all my soldiers, armed and willing to use force, I had convinced them to go home peacefully. They were perfectly calm when I left them, and then I heard the whole thing had started again.’
‘Osmun from Bene’t was whipping them into a frenzy,’ said Michael. ‘Or was trying to. They do not seem a particularly frenzied mob to me – just people who have been badly treated.’
‘So where are they?’ said Tulyet. ‘I have better things to do than chase around after frustrated choristers. I will have that Osmun in my gaol for his role in this.’
‘Quite right, too,’ agreed Michael. ‘And then he can enjoy a spell in the proctors’ prison – that will cure his riotous fervour for a while. But the mob snatched Runham’s corpse and Wilson’s effigy and were heading off to the Market Square with them.’