Bartholomew 07 - An Order for Death

by Susanna GREGORY

  Eventually, the door was answered by Ringstead, who admitted them to the yard. He told them to wait while he informed Morden that he had visitors, but Michael was having none of that. Shoving his way past the startled friar, he thundered up the stairs to Morden’s room and flung open the door so hard that it rattled the candle-holders on the table. An inkwell rolled on to its side, then dropped to the floor, where a spreading black stain began to inch towards one of Morden’s fine rugs, and something dark dropped from the rafters to the floor. At first, Bartholomew thought it was a dead bat. Timothy shot him a nervous glance, uneasy with an approach so violent that it shook dead animals from the roof.

  ‘I want a word with you,’ snapped Michael, addressing the diminutive Dominican, who perched on a chair piled with cushions so that he would be able to reach his table. Small legs clad in fine wool hose swung in the air below.

  ‘What do you mean by bursting into my room like this?’ demanded Morden, outraged. ‘It is customary to knock. And will you please refrain from slamming that door? Next time, I shall send you the bill for the damage you cause.’

  ‘Does this belong to you?’ demanded Michael, ignoring the Prior’s ire as he removed the small glove from his scrip and tossed it on to the table.

  Morden picked it up, turning it over in his hands in surprise. ‘Where did you find this?’

  ‘In my room,’ said Michael coldly. ‘It was dropped very late last night, after its owner had stabbed a Michaelhouse student to death in order to gain access. And not only did this villain kill our student, but he attacked Matt with a knife. I do not take kindly to people who threaten my friends with weapons.’

  Morden’s face turned white as the implications of Michael’s words sunk in. ‘What are you saying, Brother? I can assure you—’

  Michael cut through his words. ‘Is this your glove?’ he shouted. ‘Yes or no?’

  Morden agreed reluctantly. ‘But it was not I who dropped it at Michaelhouse. It has been missing—’

  ‘How convenient,’ snapped Michael, his tone of voice making it obvious that he did not believe a word the Prior was saying. ‘And for how long has it been missing?’

  Morden shrugged helplessly. ‘I do not know. I seldom go out these days, because of the cold weather. I first noticed it had gone a couple of days ago, because I had to go to St Mary’s Church to tell the Chancellor that Kyrkeby would not be able to give the University Lecture. But I have no idea whether it went missing then or whether it has been gone a lot longer.’

  ‘And where do you think it might have been?’ asked Timothy. The incredulous expression on his face suggested that he was of the same mind as Michael. ‘Are you suggesting that someone stole it?’

  ‘Of course someone took it,’ stated Ringstead firmly, leaping to the defence of his superior. ‘How else could it have ended up in your room, Brother? I can assure you that Prior Morden did not put it there.’

  Michael and Timothy did not reply; they simply gazed at Morden, as if they considered him to be the lowest form of life. Bartholomew began to feel sorry for the little man – until he looked more closely at what had fallen from the rafters when Michael had flung open the door.

  ‘And who do you think may have taken your gloves and left them in Brother Michael’s chamber, Father?’ asked Timothy softly.

  ‘Glove,’ corrected Bartholomew, stooping to retrieve the object that lay on the floor. ‘Here is the twin of the one that we found at Michaelhouse. It seems that someone thought the ceiling a good place to hide it.’

  ‘I certainly did not put it there,’ said Morden, white-faced with worry. ‘I could not reach.’

  ‘You do not need to reach,’ Bartholomew pointed out. ‘You could have thrown it.’

  ‘Well, I did not,’ said Morden, shooting wary glances at his interrogators. ‘Someone else must have put it there – and placed the other one at Michaelhouse.’

  ‘Really,’ said Timothy flatly. ‘This is all very curious. You are claiming that someone took one of your gloves – which coincidentally just happened to reappear in Michael’s quarters shortly after the murder at Michaelhouse – and then hurled the other into the rafters to conceal the fact that the first glove was missing?’

  ‘I do not understand this,’ said Morden miserably. ‘I cannot imagine how one ended up in Michaelhouse or the other on the ceiling, but I do know it has nothing to do with me. I certainly did not stab any student to gain access to his College. Why would I do such a thing?’

  ‘Is there someone who can verify your whereabouts between midnight and the office of nocturns last night?’ asked Michael, declining to speculate on answers to the Prior’s question.

  ‘The entire friary,’ replied Morden immediately. ‘Everyone knows I retire to bed immediately after compline, and that I do not rise until it is time for matins.’

  ‘That is true,’ concurred Ringstead loyally. ‘Prior Morden likes a good night’s sleep.’

  ‘That is not the same as people actually seeing him here,’ Timothy pointed out. ‘He could have retired to bed, then slipped out when everyone else was asleep. Do you share your chamber with anyone, Prior Morden?’

  ‘I shared it with Kyrkeby,’ said Morden bitterly. ‘But he is scarcely in a position to vouch for me. But how could I have slipped out at night, anyway?’

  ‘By walking down the stairs and across the yard,’ said Michael promptly. ‘Like every other night porter in Cambridge, yours dozes when he should be on watch. It would be an easy matter to tiptoe past him and leave the friary through the wicket door.’

  ‘Well, I did not,’ said Morden in an unsteady voice. ‘I am a Dominican Prior, and I have no need to sneak out of the friary in the middle of the night. And I ask you again, why would I want to go to your room anyway?’

  ‘That is what I should like to know,’ said Michael. ‘For your information, and for that of anyone else who may be interested, I never keep notes of the cases I am investigating in my room. I would not put Michaelhouse at risk like that. I keep them elsewhere.’

  ‘Where?’ asked Morden automatically.

  ‘Why?’ pounced Michael. ‘Because you did not find what you were looking for last night?’

  Morden rubbed his eyes with his tiny fingers. ‘This is a nightmare! I do not know why I asked that. Even you must admit that your statement was a little provocative.’

  ‘Enough of this,’ said Michael, turning away from him. ‘I am too busy to waste any more time with you. You are under arrest for the murder of Martin Arbury. Brother Timothy will escort you to the proctors’ cells.’

  ‘What?’ cried Morden in horror, darting around to the other side of the table when Timothy took a step towards him. ‘But you cannot arrest me! I have done nothing wrong!’

  ‘Whoever broke into my room last night murdered the student on gate duty and attacked my friend,’ said Michael harshly. ‘Your glove was found at the scene of the crime, dropped when the culprit fled the College. That is evidence enough for me.’

  Timothy grabbed the protesting Morden and led him from the room, easily encompassing the scholar’s small arm in one of his hands. Michael returned the glove to his scrip to use as evidence in the trial that would come later, then followed them down the stairs. Bartholomew brought up the rear, fending off the horrified Ringstead, who was trying to shove past him to reach Timothy and his prisoner.

  ‘This is an outrage!’ Ringstead shouted, his agitated voice ringing across the courtyard. Several student-friars heard it, and began hurrying to where their Prior struggled ineffectually against Timothy’s strong hand. ‘What will the Bishop of Ely say when he hears you have arrested the head of an important Order in the town?’

  ‘He will congratulate me for removing a ruthless killer from the streets,’ replied Michael. He glanced coolly at the assembling friars, who muttered and shuffled menacingly. ‘And unless you want more of your Dominican brethren to join Prior Morden in his cell, you will instruct your students to return to their rooms and behave thems
elves.’

  ‘Do not worry, Father,’ Ringstead called to Morden. ‘I will find the best law clerk in Cambridge, and he will have you back here in a trice.’

  ‘Hire that young man Heytesbury recommended,’ Morden shouted back. ‘He is said to be clever and crafty.’

  ‘But he is also Doctor Bartholomew’s nephew,’ said Ringstead, glowering at the physician. ‘We will have someone else.’

  Meanwhile, the student-friars had been edging closer to where Timothy hauled his reluctant prisoner to the gates. Michael eyed them coldly.

  ‘Tell them to disperse, Ringstead,’ he ordered. ‘Or Morden will not be the only Dominican requiring the legal services of a “clever and crafty” lawyer.’

  For a few uncomfortable moments, Bartholomew thought Ringstead would refuse, and that the sullen, resentful crowd would attack the proctors and prevent them from taking Morden into custody. But Ringstead was not a stupid man. He knew that Morden would end up in the proctors’ cells eventually, and that all that would happen if he fought against it would be a delay of the inevitable. He hung his head as Timothy opened the gate, still holding Morden by the arm.

  ‘Very wise of you,’ said Michael, as Ringstead reluctantly told the students to return to their rooms. ‘Nothing would have been gained from a display of violent behaviour, and it would have looked bad for when you try to prove your Prior’s innocence in the courts.’

  ‘But he is innocent,’ protested Ringstead, following them to the gate. He watched Morden precede Timothy on to Hadstock Way and head in the direction of the cells that were located near St Mary’s Church. Timothy was not an unkind man, and Bartholomew saw him bend to say something to which the small Prior nodded agreement. Timothy released Morden’s arm, and although he stayed close and was clearly alert for tricks, he did not submit Morden to the indignity of being marched through the busiest part of the town in the grip of a proctor. To anyone who did not know what had just transpired in the Dominican Friary, Morden and Timothy were simply walking side by side.

  While Bartholomew approved of Timothy’s sensitivity, Michael muttered venomously that Morden deserved no such consideration, and started to compare his new junior unfavourably with Walcote, who was similarly kind to malefactors. Ringstead broke into his mumbled tirade.

  ‘How can you think Morden could stab students? He is not big enough.’

  ‘Arbury was knifed in the chest,’ said Michael. ‘Morden could easily have done it.’

  ‘That is no kind of evidence,’ objected Ringstead, almost in tears that he was so powerless. ‘And neither is that wretched glove. Lots of things seem to have gone missing from our friary recently – the glove was just one of a number of items we seem to have mislaid.’

  ‘What else?’ asked Michael, uninterested.

  ‘Perhaps the most important thing is Kyrkeby’s lecture,’ replied Ringstead. ‘When we learned about his death, we decided his work should not have been in vain, and we were going to publish it posthumously. But we cannot find it.’

  ‘Perhaps he hid it,’ suggested Bartholomew. ‘Some people do not like their work known before their public lectures, and he may have put it away from prying eyes.’

  ‘Never,’ said Ringstead firmly. ‘We have no need to hide things from each other here, and anyway, he read parts of the lecture to several of us to test his performance. He did not hide his notes. I went to collect them from his cell, and they simply were not there.’

  ‘Then are you suggesting that someone took them?’ asked Bartholomew. ‘Or that Kyrkeby merely mislaid them?’

  ‘A few moments ago, I would have said the latter,’ said Ringstead. ‘But given that poor Morden is now under arrest because a missing glove has appeared somewhere I am sure he did not leave it, then I suggest that they must have been stolen.’

  ‘So, you wish to report a theft,’ said Michael heavily.

  ‘Yes I do,’ snapped Ringstead, resentful that Michael clearly did not believe him.

  ‘You have no evidence the lecture has been stolen,’ said Michael, exasperated by Ringstead’s heavy-handed attempts to exonerate his leader. ‘You only know that it is not in Kyrkeby’s cell. Perhaps he gave it to someone else to read; perhaps he put it in a different place.’

  ‘But he did not have another place!’ insisted Ringstead. ‘His life was here, at the friary.’ He sighed and relented a little. ‘But I suppose he may have given it to someone else to read. I know he discussed it with Father Paul at the Franciscan Friary. Perhaps he passed it to Paul.’

  ‘Why would he do that?’ asked Michael doubtfully. ‘Paul is blind. He cannot read anything.’

  Ringstead flushed with embarrassment. ‘Well, in that case, my first supposition must be right: Kyrkeby’s lecture has been stolen.’

  ‘What a mess,’ said Michael tiredly. ‘Still, at least we have the killer of poor Arbury under lock and key. And who knows? Perhaps Morden may confess to other crimes once he has had time to reflect on his evil deeds through the bars on his cell window. We shall see.’

  Bartholomew hoped he was right and gave Ringstead a wide berth as he left the friary. It was certainly not the tiny Morden with whom he had struggled at Michaelhouse, and he realised that the young secretary could well be Morden’s accomplice.

  While Timothy locked Morden in a cell, Bartholomew and Michael walked slowly along the High Street, thinking about Morden’s claims of innocence and Ringstead’s assertion that someone had been in the Dominican Friary stealing gloves and lectures on nominalism. The day was wet and dull, and clouds hung in a solid canopy over the Fen-edge town. There was no wind, and the bare branches of trees and bushes were static and skeletal, while the leaves that had fallen the previous autumn lay in brown-black soggy piles filled with worms. The market was in full swing, and the hoarse voices of competing traders rang out in the still air, accompanied by the mournful bellow of a cow that was being led towards the butchers’ stalls. Bartholomew saw its rolling eyes and quivering flanks, and wondered if it knew what was in store for it, or whether it was simply the stench of rotting blood and the sound of metal against bone as the butchers dealt with a sheep that it did not like.

  Michael led the physician towards an insalubrious establishment at the edge of the Market Square called the Cardinal’s Cap. A joyous red sign hung outside, and from within came the contented murmur of men enjoying their ale. Michael did not use the front entrance, but slipped down a filthy runnel that cut along the side of the building, and entered a much smaller room via an almost invisible rear door.

  Inside, a number of scholars were sitting at rough wooden tables; some were gathered around a fire that roared in the hearth, listening to a dialogue by a man Bartholomew knew to be Father Aidan of Maude’s Hostel. None seemed in the slightest disconcerted by the sudden presence of the Senior Proctor in their midst, and one or two even nodded friendly greetings in Michael’s direction.

  ‘I need a pot of warm ale inside me before we walk to St Radegund’s in this rain,’ said Michael. ‘And perhaps a bowl of beef stew.’

  ‘Not beef,’ said Bartholomew, thinking about the cow he had just seen led to slaughter. He thought he could still hear its baleful lows echoing across the Market Square. ‘It is Lent, remember. But what is this place? A room in a tavern devoted exclusively to serving scholars?’

  ‘Have you never been here before?’ asked Michael, raising his eyebrows in astonishment. ‘I thought every University master knew that the Cardinal’s Cap was a good place for a quiet drink. Students are not welcome here, of course. They would be rowdy, and then we would all be in trouble.’

  ‘Scholars are not supposed to drink in the town’s taverns,’ said Bartholomew. ‘It is what leads to fighting between us and the townsfolk.’

  Michael gestured to the conversations that were taking place around him. In one corner, a number of Gilbertines were discussing the sermons of St Augustine, while Father Aidan’s audience appeared to be listening to an explanation of how to deal with the problem of d
ry rot. At other tables, single scholars read or wrote with their cups at their elbows, enjoying the comfort of hot ale and a warm fire while they worked.

  ‘These men are unlikely to challenge the apprentices to a fight,’ said Michael. ‘They are all respectable people, who like a little intelligent conversation away from their own Colleges and hostels. Where lies the harm in that?’

  Michael had arranged for Timothy to meet them in the Cardinal’s Cap when he had finished locking up Morden. The Benedictine arrived and sat opposite them, ordering bread and cheese, and if he noticed that Michael was breaking the rules of Lent by eating meat, then he said nothing about it.

  ‘What do you think about these killings, Brother?’ asked Michael, when Timothy’s food had arrived. ‘You know everything we have learned. How do you interpret the information?’

  ‘Theft,’ said Timothy promptly. ‘Kyrkeby’s scrip was missing; Walcote’s purse was stolen; and Faricius’s scrip was cut from his belt. These men were killed purely and simply for the contents of their purses.’

  ‘But they were all friars who are not supposed to be wealthy,’ said Bartholomew, not convinced. ‘Why attack them?’

  Timothy shrugged. ‘First, many friars in this town are extremely rich – you have only to look at Morden or in Kyrkeby’s jewel box to see that they own a good deal. And second, Walcote and probably Kyrkeby were killed in the dark. Perhaps their killers did not know they were clerics.’

  ‘But it was obvious Faricius was a cleric,’ argued Bartholomew. ‘And he was killed in broad daylight. I am sure his death was connected to the essay that is missing.’

  ‘I think you are attributing too much importance to this essay,’ said Timothy. ‘Just because you cannot locate a few scribbled notes does not mean Faricius died for them. You know how poor many people are these days: some would kill for a loaf of bread – and Faricius’s purse almost certainly contained enough for that.’