Bartholomew 07 - An Order for Death

by Susanna GREGORY

  ‘Do not lie!’ exclaimed Bartholomew in disbelief. ‘The poor man was trying to hold his innards in. It was patently obvious the blood was his. And you can say what you like, but you were going to finish him off. You said as much when you tried to prevent me from carrying him away.’

  ‘Those were words spoken in the heat of the moment,’ said Bulmer defensively. ‘We let you go, did we not? There were six of us, and had we really meant trouble, then you would not have left with him.’

  Bartholomew wondered if that were true. He was not one of Cambridge’s most skilled fighters, birthing forceps or no, and suspected that the six Dominicans had carried weapons that would have been much more efficient than a heavy lump of metal.

  ‘It seems you must look elsewhere for your killer, Brother,’ said Morden smugly. ‘You heard these students: Faricius was already wounded when they found him. Perhaps they did mean to harm him when they saw his white habit, but they still allowed Bartholomew to carry him away. The Dominicans are not responsible for this crime.’

  ‘Lord!’ muttered Michael as he looked from the gloating features of the diminutive Prior to the calm gazes of the six student-friars who were protesting their innocence. ‘What a mess! I do not know whom to believe.’

  ‘Well, I do not believe any of them,’ said Bartholomew firmly. ‘I know what I saw.’

  ‘You are right,’ agreed Michael. ‘So we will arrest the whole lot of them and talk about this in the proctors’ cells – that should make them reconsider their stories and their lies and the threats they made to you.’

  ‘You should take a horse, Matt,’ said Michael, watching critically as Bartholomew prepared to visit his sister in her husband’s country manor the following evening.

  Bartholomew grabbed his warmest winter cloak and swung it around his shoulders. The pale spring sun that had cheered the town at dawn had long since slipped behind a bank of dense clouds, and a bitter wind had picked up. Now, as evening fell, it promised to be a miserable night, with wind and rain in the offing. Bartholomew did not feel like going out, but he had promised his sister he would be there. He would have gone earlier, but had been obliged to spend most of the afternoon tending the Dominican Precentor, Kyrkeby, whose frail heart and imminent lecture were making him breathless and feverish. Normally, Kyrkeby was a compliant and grateful patient, but that day he was agitated and moody, oscillating between angry defiance of the Carmelites and frightened tearfulness when he talked about the lecture that loomed on his horizon.

  ‘I am pleased you plan to sleep at Trumpington tonight and not return here,’ Michael continued, when the physician did not reply. ‘But you should not walk there alone at this time of the day. You would be wise to take someone with you.’

  ‘Cynric has promised to escort his wife to the vigil in St Mary’s Church tonight,’ said Bartholomew, referring to his faithful book-bearer. ‘I cannot ask him to come with me.’

  ‘Ask me, then,’ offered Michael generously. ‘Years of wrestling with recalcitrant undergraduates have honed my fighting skills, so that I am more than a match for most would-be robbers. I can protect you almost as well as Cynric.’

  ‘But you have a murder to investigate,’ Bartholomew pointed out. ‘And anyway, I imagine you are also expected to take part in a vigil tonight. You are a monk after all, and Easter Week is an important time for clerics.’

  ‘The Benedictines at Ely Hall plan to keep vigil in St Botolph’s Church,’ replied Michael, slightly disapproving. ‘But so do the Carmelites, and I do not want to spend an entire night yelling at the top of my lungs in a futile attempt to make the prayers of a few Benedictines heard over four dozen bawling White Friars.’

  ‘If the Orders confined their rivalries to who can shout the loudest prayers, Cambridge would be a nicer place in which to live,’ said Bartholomew fervently. ‘Then I would have been treating Faricius for a sore throat, rather than a fatal stab wound.’

  ‘And I would not be thinking about how to solve the mystery surrounding his death: a man whose Prior swears he did not leave the friary and whose apparent killers claim he was already stabbed when they found him.’

  ‘I suppose the Dominicans could be telling the truth,’ said Bartholomew uncertainly. ‘I did not actually see them stab him. But they certainly intended mischief when I caught them: they were advancing on him with undisguised menace as he lay helpless, and I am sure they planned to make a quick end of him.’

  Michael agreed. ‘Those student-friars we met yesterday – Horneby, Lynne and Bulmer – are the kind of men who turn small disputes between the Orders into violence. They are the younger sons of minor noblemen, who have been dispatched to the religious Orders to make their own fortunes in the world because they cannot expect an inheritance.’

  ‘Like you?’ asked Bartholomew, aware of Michael’s own noble connections.

  Michael regarded him coolly. ‘In a sense, although I would hardly describe my family as minor. They are a powerful force in Norfolk. But lads like Horneby, Lynne and Bulmer are sent to Cambridge to form alliances with other men destined for high posts in the Church—’

  ‘Not to study and receive an education?’ interrupted Bartholomew. ‘This is a University, Brother. It is a place of learning, not somewhere to develop business connections.’

  ‘Do not be ridiculous, Matt,’ said Michael dismissively. ‘Many of these friars only stay for a term or two. How much learning do you imagine they absorb in that time?’

  Bartholomew sighed heavily. ‘Not all scholars are ambitious power-mongers, here only to further their careers.’

  ‘No,’ admitted Michael, after a moment of thought. ‘There are exceptions, and you are one of them. The Benedictines at Ely Hall are also a sober group of men.’

  ‘And there are others,’ persisted Bartholomew. ‘In our own College, Master Kenyngham is devoted to his teaching, and even Father William never misses a lecture.’

  ‘But things are different in the friaries, Matt. The Orders are legally obliged to send one in ten of their number to Oxford or Cambridge, and the men who come are not necessarily endowed with a desire to learn. They see their time here as an opportunity to escape the rigours of living as priests, and to engage in the kind of fighting that most young men love. And that is what they are – young men – for all their habits and their cowls.’

  ‘They certainly behaved like undisciplined louts two days ago,’ said Bartholomew, thinking of the six Dominicans clustered around the injured Faricius, and of their sneering threats when he had driven them off.

  Michael seemed to read his thoughts. ‘I mean no disrespect, Matt, but had Bulmer and his cronies genuinely intended to kill Faricius, you would not have been able to stop them. If Cynric had been there, it would have been a different matter, but you were alone. And there is another thing that worries me, too.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘They all readily identified themselves. Murder is a serious offence: would they have leapt to their feet so willingly if they really had killed Faricius?’

  ‘They knew I would identify them anyway,’ said Bartholomew doubtfully. ‘It would have done them no good to deny it.’

  ‘They did not know that for certain. And if all had denied encountering you, it would have been the word of six friars against a lone physician, who had half his attention on a patient who was bleeding to death.’

  ‘Then do you think they are telling the truth: that they saw a wounded enemy and did not know he was so seriously injured?’

  Michael shook his head slowly. ‘I do not know. Perhaps one of the six struck the fatal blow, and the others merely saw a wounded Carmelite. Then, when you came along, they decided that it was not worth a battering from your forceps and they let you both go.’

  ‘So, how will you discover which of them was responsible?’ asked Bartholomew. ‘Will you interview them all separately?’

  ‘Already done,’ replied Michael. ‘Walcote and I had them in the proctors’ cells yesterday and today. They all said
the same thing: they admitted that they were out looking for trouble, but maintained that when they found Faricius he was already bleeding. You did not actually see them stab him, and so there is insufficient evidence to charge them with his murder. I was forced to release them.’

  ‘Then what do you think happened? Do you think one of Faricius’s own Order harmed him?’ asked Bartholomew, thinking about the peculiar story spun by Lincolne and his students that Faricius could not have left the friary.

  Michael scratched his chin, fingernails rasping on two days’ growth of bristles. ‘It is odd. On the one hand, we have Prior and friends certain that an exit from the friary was impossible and that Faricius was inside; on the other we have the very real evidence of his corpse outside it. I cannot decide what the truth is.’

  ‘Either they really believe what they say is true – even though it clearly is not – or they want to hide the real truth and have decided to do it by confusing you.’

  ‘Well, it is working,’ said Michael irritably. ‘I am confused.’

  ‘So, what will you do? Where will you start?’

  Michael sighed. ‘I can do no more to solve Faricius’s murder today. I worked hard questioning those Dominicans and I am tired. I feel like doing something pleasant this evening – and I do not mean sitting in a freezing conclave with Michaelhouse’s eccentric collection of Fellows after an inadequate meal.’

  ‘Lent is almost over,’ said Bartholomew, knowing that the miserable food was the real cause of the monk’s discontent. Michael was usually perfectly happy to relax in the company of his colleagues, despite their peculiarities.

  ‘And not a moment too soon,’ said Michael bitterly. ‘Lent is a miserable time of year. No meat to be had; church services held at ungodly hours; gloomy music sung at masses; everyone talking about abstention and fasting and other such nonsense.’ He watched the physician swing the medicine bag he always carried over his shoulder as he prepared to leave. ‘Going out alone when you have an offer of company is madness, Matt. Let me escort you to Trumpington.’

  ‘I do not need an escort,’ said Bartholomew. ‘I walk to Trumpington quite regularly, and you have never expressed any concern before.’

  Michael gave a long-suffering sigh. ‘You are being remarkably insensitive, Matt. Edith told us what she planned to cook tonight, to celebrate Richard’s return to Cambridge. However, the offerings at Michaelhouse are more of that revolting fish-giblet stew and bread I saw Agatha sawing the green bits from this morning. If you were any kind of friend, you would see my predicament and invite me to dine with Edith.’

  ‘I wondered what was behind all this uncharacteristic concern for my safety. It is not my well-being that preoccupies you: it is Edith’s trout with almonds, raisin bread and pastries.’

  ‘You have convinced me to come,’ said Michael, reaching for his cloak. ‘I took the precaution of hiring a couple of horses yesterday. We will ride. It will leave more time for eating.’

  ‘And what do you think Edith will say when she sees you have invited yourself to her family reunion?’ asked Bartholomew, sure that his sister would not be pleased to see Michael on her doorstep determined to make short work of her cooking.

  Michael gave a smug grin. ‘She will thank me for my devotion to you – for accompanying the brother she adores along a dangerous road so that he can spend an evening in her company. And anyway, I want to meet your nephew again. It is five years since last I saw him.’

  ‘He has changed,’ said Bartholomew, walking with the monk across the courtyard to where Walter, the surly porter, was holding the reins of the two horses Michael had hired. ‘He abandoned medicine to study law and it has made him pompous and arrogant. Perhaps he has just spent too much time with lawyers.’

  ‘Or perhaps he has just spent too much time with that band of mongrels at Oxford who call themselves scholars,’ said Michael with an unpleasant snigger.

  ‘Brother Michael!’ exclaimed Oswald Stanmore, as the Benedictine and Bartholomew walked into his manor house at the small village of Trumpington. ‘What are you doing here?’ His eyes narrowed in sudden suspicion. ‘You have not come about the murder of that Carmelite, have you? Matt was wrong to have brought him to my property.’

  Edith sighed crossly. ‘Really, Oswald! What was Matt supposed to do? He could hardly carry Faricius all the way back to Michaelhouse.’

  ‘But by taking him to my house, he endangered the lives of you and my apprentices,’ said Stanmore sternly. ‘It was a thoughtless thing to do.’

  ‘I am sorry, Oswald,’ began Bartholomew, knowing the merchant had a point. ‘I did not—’

  Edith raised a hand to silence him. ‘Matt was right to do what he did, Oswald, and any decent man would have done the same. Those louts murdered a priest right outside our door. Would you rather he turned a blind eye to such an outrage?’

  ‘From what I hear, the killers were priests, too,’ retorted Stanmore. ‘And so I imagine that turning a blind eye would have been a very prudent thing to do. But prudence is not something that runs in your side of the family, it seems. Thank God Richard does not take after you two.’

  ‘No one could ever accuse me of imprudence,’ said Richard lazily from his position in the best chair in the house – a cushion-filled seat that was placed so close to the fire that Bartholomew was surprised his nephew did not singe himself.

  Bartholomew saw Michael regard Richard with interest. Richard had indeed changed from the gangling seventeen-year-old who had marched away to Oxford University some five years before with dreams of studying medicine. He possessed the same unruly black curls and dark eyes as Bartholomew, and had grown tall. But there the likeness ended. Richard’s face was plumper than it should have been for a man of his age, and there were bulges above his hips that testified to too much good living. His hands were pale and soft, as though he scorned any sort of activity that would harden them, and there was a decadent air about him that certainly had not been there when he had lived in Cambridge.

  His clothes presented a stark contrast to those of his uncle, too. Whereas the physician’s shirt and tabard were frayed and patched, Richard’s were new and the height of fashion. He wore blue hose made from the finest wool, a white shirt of crisp linen, and a red jerkin with flowing sleeves that were delicately embroidered with silver thread. On his feet were red shoes with the ridiculously impractical curling toes that were currently popular at the King’s court, and in his ear was the gold ear-ring to which Edith had taken such exception. His beard was in the peculiar style that covered the chin and upper lip, but left the sides of the face clean shaven, and was so heavily impregnated with scented oil that Bartholomew could smell it from the door. The physician resisted the urge to comment on it.

  ‘Well,’ said Michael, wrinkling his nose and smothering a sneeze. ‘You are not the awkward youth I remember from the black days of the plague.’

  ‘And you are not the slender monk I once knew, either,’ retorted Richard promptly, his insolent eyes taking in Michael’s considerable bulk.

  Bartholomew raised his eyebrows. ‘If you recall a slender monk, Richard, then your memory is not all it should be. Michael has never been slender.’

  ‘When I was a child, I was so thin that my mother was convinced I was heading for an early grave,’ said Michael. ‘She took me to see a physician, who bled me and dosed me with all manner of vile potions. I have spent the rest of my life ensuring that I never warrant such treatment again.’

  ‘Most physicians are charlatans,’ agreed Richard, throwing Bartholomew a challenging stare. ‘They claim they can cure you, but their powdered earthworms and their lead powder and their paste of sparrows’ brains no more heal the sick than do the expensive horoscopes they insist on working out.’

  ‘You are right,’ said Bartholomew, wondering why his nephew was trying to goad him into an argument when it would only spoil Edith’s evening. ‘I have long believed that horoscopes make no difference to a patient’s health. However, I have als
o learned that a patient’s state of mind is important to his recovery – if he believes a horoscope will provide a more effective cure, then he is more likely to get well if I use one.’

  Richard yawned and reached out to take some nuts from a bowl that had been placed near him. ‘If you say so.’ He lost interest in his uncle and turned his languorous gaze on Michael. ‘But what brings you to Trumpington on this cold and windy night, Brother? It would not be the fish-giblet stew that Agatha is simmering at Michaelhouse, would it?’

  Michael regarded him coolly, and if he were surprised that Richard had guessed the real reason for his visit he did not show it. ‘The Trumpington road is haunted by outlaws. I merely wanted to ensure that your uncle arrived safely.’

  ‘So, will you be returning to Cambridge now?’ asked Richard with feigned innocence. ‘You have discharged your duty and he is here in one piece.’

  ‘I thought I might stay a while – at least until the rain stops,’ said Michael, smiling comfortably. Bartholomew knew that Michael allowed very little between him and a good meal, and it would take far more potent forces than the irritating Richard to make him abandon one. And Michael knew perfectly well that the rain had settled in for the night, and that it was unlikely to abate until the following day. ‘You seem to have had an interesting sojourn at Oxford; I would like to hear more about it.’

  ‘Perhaps later,’ said Richard, reaching for more nuts. He smiled ingratiatingly at Edith. ‘Is the food ready?’

  Edith returned her son’s smile. ‘Almost. I will tell the servants that we have two more guests.’

  ‘Two?’ asked Bartholomew. ‘Who else did you invite?’

  ‘Not me,’ replied Edith as she left the room. ‘Richard asked a friend to come.’

  ‘Who?’ asked Stanmore of his son, surprised. ‘You have only been back a few days, and you have spent most of that time in bed, recovering from your “arduous journey”.’

  ‘It is no one from Cambridge – and certainly no one from Trumpington,’ said Richard, with a contrived shudder. ‘I do not know why you live here, father. It is little more than a few hovels stretched along a muddy track, and it is occupied almost entirely by peasants. If I were you, I would live in the house in Cambridge.’