The thought also crossed his mind that his innocent discussion with Matilde might well give Eleanor cause to decline his offer, and then at least he would only have one woman to explain away to his chaste-minded colleagues.
He looked back to where Matilde was still speaking with the seamstress. Seeing him watching them, they both waved; self-consciously, he waved back. He hoped Eleanor’s words were nothing more than jealousy, because he felt Matilde’s information might prove helpful to Tulyet and Michael if it were true. But if Matilde were known to be untrustworthy, her clients might feed her false information, so her claim that the riot had been started to hide two acts might be meaningless. Yet she had appeared to consider carefully before breaking the confidence of her client. But then perhaps she preceded all her gossip with this show of reluctance. He dismissed the whole affair from his mind impatiently, realising that mulling over what Matilde and Eleanor had said meant that he was merely raising yet more questions to which he had no answers. He decided to tell Michael what Matilde had revealed, but to advise him to use the information cautiously.
As he walked past St Bene’t’s Church, the doors opened and the students who had been to sext filed out. Since this was not one of the religious offices the students were obliged to attend, only those that wanted to pray were there. Thus it was a subdued crowd that emerged, in contrast to the high-spirited one he had seen three days before.
He saw a familiar figure and darted after him, stopping him dead in his tracks with a firm grip on his arm.
‘You are hurting me!’ whined the terrified Werbergh, looking in vain for help from his Godwinsson cronies.
They, however, had more sense than to interfere in the dubious affairs of their untrustworthy colleague, and quickly melted away, leaving the friar and Bartholomew alone. Panic-stricken, Werbergh began to struggle, whimpering feeble objections about his rough treatment.
‘Let me go! You cannot lay hands on a priest! I am one of God’s chosen! I will tell Master Lydgate that you have been molesting a man of God!’
Bartholomew gave a small, humourless smile. ‘Then of God do not lie. And you were not wholly honest with me, Brother Werbergh.’
Werbergh squirmed in Bartholomew’s grip. ‘I told you everything that happened. Please!’
‘But when I discussed what you had told me with Brother Michael, your story and Edred’s did not tally. You said you returned to Godwinsson with Cecily Lydgate after compline the night Kenzie was murdered, but Edred with Cecily listening – claimed to have accompanied you. One, or both, of you is lying. What have you to say?’
Werbergh stopped struggling, his head and shoulders sagging. ‘I told you the truth,’ he insisted. ‘I did go to compline with Edred and I did walk back with Mistress Lydgate. The Scot – Kenzie – did ask us if we had stolen his ring the night he was killed. But I suppose I did not tell you everything,’ he added with a fearful glance at Bartholomew. ‘That is to say, I only told you what I know to be true and what I understand.’
‘Oh, for heaven’s sake!’ said Bartholomew, exasperated. ‘Stop twisting words and tell me something honest.’
People on the High Street were beginning to notice them, wondering why he was holding the friar’s arm so uncomfortably high. Bartholomew’s tabard was in his medicine bag, so he looked like a townsperson abusing a student. He relaxed his hold on Werbergh to one that looked more natural, before some scholars took it into their heads to rescue the friar.
‘I omitted only one thing,’ said Werbergh miserably, looking up at Bartholomew. The physician in him noted the friar’s shaking hands and unhealthy pallor. Werbergh was not a man at peace with the world or himself. ‘I think Edred probably did steal the ring. I did not see him do it, but he has done it before. He jostles people, and afterwards, they discover that something is missing. I do not know how he does it. Anyway, he jostled the Scot, but it misfired and we ended up in that silly argument in the street.’
Bartholomew released Werbergh completely, watching him as he rubbed his arm. ‘Anything else?’
‘I was coming to see you anyway,’ said Werbergh, glancing up and down the street nervously. ‘That is why I was in the church – I was praying for guidance. I had just decided to come to talk to you and there you were, like an avenging angel.’
He looked at Bartholomew with glistening eyes, and Bartholomew wondered whether he had been drinking.
‘I think Edred stole the ring. I think he knows more about Kenzie’s death than he is telling,’ said Werbergh in a rush. ‘He was also gone all night when the riot was on and I believe he was out fighting. Perhaps he has a taste for violence; when I asked him where he had been the next day, he gave me this black eye.’
Bartholomew remembered Werbergh’s bruised face the day after the riot and saw that his cheek remained discoloured. Edred had been limping. So what had the other duplicitous friar been doing? ‘And where were you when the town was ablaze, Brother Werbergh?’ Bartholomew asked.
‘In Godwinsson, virtually alone,’ said Werbergh unhappily. ‘I have no taste for rough behaviour. I imagined I might get hurt if I went out fighting.’
‘What about the French students at Godwinsson? Were they out that night?’
Werbergh, once he had started informing on his colleagues, was more than ready to continue. ‘Of course. They love fighting, and they boast that they are good at it. Two came back later and said that their friend had been killed.’
‘Did they say anything about what they had done that night?’
‘Oh, yes. They spoke in great detail about the tremendous fight they had had with ten townsmen all armed with massive broadswords. They say they were lucky to survive but that Louis had been treacherously stabbed in the back before being overwhelmed.’
So, the Frenchmen’s pride had been injured, Bartholomew thought, and they were unwilling to admit that Louis had been killed by a woman. Perhaps it was better that way. He did not like to think that the Godwinsson students might take revenge on the Tyler household for his death. Werbergh could tell him nothing more and Bartholomew let him go, watching him thoughtfully as he weaved his way through the throngs of tradesmen making their way home.
CHAPTER 6
Thunder rolled again, distantly, and another silver fork of lightning illuminated the darkened courtyard of Michaelhouse. Bartholomew sipped the sour ale he had stolen from the kitchens and watched through the opened shutters of his room. The night was almost dripping with humidity, even in the stonewalled rooms of the College and, from low voices carried on the still air, Bartholomew knew he was not the only person kept awake by the heat and the approaching storm.
He thought about Mistress Flecher. She would find the night unbearable with her failing lungs. She would be unable to draw enough air to allow her to breathe comfortably and would feel as though she were drowning.
He considered going to visit her, perhaps to give her a posset to make her sleep more easily, but distant yells and the smell of burning suggested that a riot of sorts had broken out in some part of the town. The streets would be patrolled by the beadles and the Sheriffs men and he had no wish to be arrested by either for breaking the curfew.
Sweat trickled down his back. Even sitting in his room sipping the brackish ale was making him hot. He stood restlessly and opened the door, trying to create a draught to cool himself down. The lightning came again, nearer this time, lasting several moments when the College was lit up as bright as at noon. In the room above, he heard Michael’s heavy footsteps pacing the protesting floorboards, and the muttered complaints of his roommates for keeping them awake.
While the evening light had lasted, Bartholomew had read his borrowed book, then had fallen asleep at the table with his head resting on his arms. He had woken stiff and aching two hours later, his mind teeming with confused dreams involving Philippa, Matilde and Eleanor, and wild collections of bones arising from the King’s Ditch.
Philippa. He thought about her now, humorous blue eyes and long tresses of de
ep gold hair. He had not realised how much he missed her until he knew she would not be returning to him. He wondered how he had managed to make for himself a life that was so lonely.
A creak from the room above made him think of Michael, a Benedictine monk in major orders. Bartholomew often wondered, from his behaviour and attitudes, how seriously the monk took his vow of chastity. But Michael had deliberately chosen such a life, whereas Bartholomew had not, although he might just as well have done. He wondered whether he should take Michael’s advice and become a friar or a monk, devoting himself entirely to his studies, teaching and patients. But then he would never be away from his confessor, because he liked women and what they had to offer.
He went to lie down on his bed to try to sleep, but after a few minutes, rose again restlessly. The rough blanket prickled his bare skin and made him hotter than ever. He paced the room in the darkness, wondering what he could do to pass the time and divert his mind from dwelling on Philippa. Since candles were expensive they were not readily dispensed to the scholars of Michaelhouse, and Bartholomew had used the last of his allowance that morning to read before dawn. When the natural light faded, most reading and writing ceased and the scholars usually went to bed, unless they took the considerable risk of carousing in the town. Then Bartholomew realised that he did have a spare candle, given to him in lieu of payment by a patient. He had been saving it for the winter, but why not use it now, to read the Galen, since he could not sleep?
He groped along the single shelf in his room, recalling that he had left it next to his spare quills. It was not there.
He wondered if perhaps Cynric had taken it, or Michael.
But that was unlikely. It was more probably Gray, who had taken things from Bartholomew without asking before. He took another sip of the warm ale, and then, in disgust at its rank, bitter flavour, poured it away out of the window.
‘The Master has forbidden the tipping of waste in the yard. At your own insisting, Doctor,’ came the admonishing tones of Walter, the night porter, through the open window. Bartholomew was a little ashamed.
Walter was right: Bartholomew had recommended to Kenyngham that all waste should be tipped into the cesspool behind the kitchen gardens, following an outbreak of a disease at Michaelhouse that made the bowels bleed.
Bartholomew had been proven correct: the disease had subsided when the scholars were not exposed to all kinds of unimaginable filth on their way from their rooms to meals in the hall.
‘What do you want, Walter?’ Bartholomew asked testily, setting the empty cup on the window-sill. ‘It is the middle of the night.’
Walter’s long, morose face was lit by a flicker of lightning and Bartholomew saw him squint at the brightness.
Both looked up at the sky, seeing great, heavy-bellied clouds hanging there, showing momentarily light grey under the sudden flash.
‘A patient needs you. Urgent.’ It was no secret that Walter resented the fact that Master Kenyngham had given Bartholomew permission to come and go from the College during the night if needed by a patient. Such calls were not uncommon, especially during outbreaks of summer ague or winter fevers.
Walter glanced up at the sky again. ‘You will probably get drenched when this storm breaks,’ he added, in tones of malicious satisfaction.
Bartholomew looked at him in distaste, confident that Walter would be unable to make out his expression in the darkness of his room.
‘Who is it?’ he asked, reaching for his shirt and pulling it over his head, grimacing as it stuck unpleasantly to his back. He tucked it into his hose, and sat on the bed to put on his boots. Walter was right about the rain and Bartholomew had no intention of tramping about in a heavy downpour in shoes. He knew well what sudden storms were like in Cambridge: the rainwater would turn the dusty streets into rivers of mud; in the mud would be offal, sewage, animal dung and all manner of rotting vegetation.
Wearing shoes would be tantamount to walking barefoot.
Walter rested his elbows on the window-sill and leaned inside, lit from behind by another flash of lightning.
‘Mistress Fletcher,’ he said. ‘Does she have a son? It was not her husband who came.’
‘Yes, she has two,’ said Bartholomew, his stomach churning. Surely it was not time for her to die already?
Perhaps the wetness of the air had hastened her end. He hoped the storm would break soon and that in her last moments she would breathe air that carried the clean scent of wet earth.
Bartholomew saw his door open, and Michael stepped inside, clad in his baggy black robe with no cowl or waist-tie, while the wooden cross he usually wore around his neck had been tucked down the front of his habit.
Michael had explained that it had once caught on a loose slat of his bed and all but strangled him in his sleep; now he slept with it inside his habit out of harm’s way. He looked even larger than usual. Without the trappings that marked him as a monk, Bartholomew thought, he looked like one of the fat, rich merchants who lived on Milne Street.
‘I heard voices,’ Michael said. ‘What has happened?’
‘Mistress Fletcher needs me,’ Bartholomew answered, struggling with his second boot. The hot weather seemed to have shrunk them somehow. Or perhaps his feet were swollen.
Michael shook his head. ‘There were the beginnings of a riot tonight, Matt. It is not safe for you to go out.’
‘Who was rioting?’ Bartholomew asked, pulling harder at his boot.
‘Some apprentices set light to that big pile of wood in the Market Square. The Sheriffs men put it down fairly easily, but I am sure small groups of youths looking for trouble are still roaming around, despite the patrols.’
The boot slid on at last and Bartholomew stood. He indicated his tabard folded on the room’s single chest.
‘Then I will leave that here and, if I meet any apprentices, they will think I am a townsperson.’
Michael sighed. ‘They will see a lone man and will attack regardless of whether you are town or gown,’ he said. ‘Wait three hours until the curfew is lifted.’
Bartholomew shook his head. ‘She might not be alive in three hours. She needs me now.’
Michael gave a resigned sigh. ‘Then we shall go together,’ he said. ‘From the sound of it, she will be more in need of my skills than yours anyway.’
Bartholomew gave him a grateful smile in the darkness, and followed him into the yard. Once out, he realised how comparatively cool it had been in his room after all. The heat lay thick, heavy and still in the night air. It was slightly misty, where the fetid ditches and waterways were evaporating into the already drenched air. The smell was overpowering. Lightning cracked overhead, followed immediately by a growl of thunder. Quickly, Bartholomew led the way out through the wicket gate, up St Michael’s Lane and into the High Street. Mistress Fletcher lived on New Bridges Street, almost opposite Godwinsson Hostel.
On the way they had to pass the leafy churchyards of St Michael’s, St Mary’s, St Bene’t’s and St Botolph’s, all stretching off into a dark abyss of overgrown grass and thick bushes.
As they reached St Bene’t’s the lightning flickered again and, out of the corner of his eye, Bartholomew thought he saw something glint briefly. He paused, peering into the gloom to try to make out what he had seen.
Michael plucked at his sleeve.
‘Let’s not dally here of all places,’ he said anxiously, then stopped short as someone came hurtling out of the row of trees running along the edge of the churchyard.
He was knocked to his knees and someone leapt on his back with considerable force, pushing him flat on the ground. He was aware that Bartholomew had been similarly attacked and was angry with himself for not insisting that they were both armed before going out.
Usually, the sight of Michael, monk and Senior Proctor, was enough to ward off most potential acts of violence, but he was not wearing his full habit tonight because of the heat.
He began to squirm under the weight of the man on top of him, and fe
lt a second person come to help hold him down.
‘Shame on you! Attacking one of God’s monks!’ he roared, a tactic that had worked successfully in the past.
A snort of laughter met his words, indicating he had not been believed. He struggled again but his arms were pinned to his sides. The sound of a violent scuffle to one side told him in an instant what was happening.
The message had been sent to lure Bartholomew out of the College. Michael had not been expected, and the two men holding him down were doing no more than that: he was not being harmed or searched for valuables, simply being kept from going to the aid of his friend.
The knowledge enraged him and he began his struggles anew, yelling furiously, hoping to raise the alarm. A heavy, none-too-clean, hand clamped down over his mouth, and he bit it as hard as he could. There was a cry of pain and the hand was removed to be replaced by a fistful of his own loose gown, rammed so hard against his face that he could scarcely breathe. He heard a shrill howl coming from the skirmish to his right and guessed that Bartholomew, unarmed or not, was putting up quite a fight.
‘Where is it?’ came a hissed question, more desperate than menacing.
Michael heard the fight abate and Bartholomew ask, ‘Where is what?’
Loud cursing by an unfamiliar voice suggested that Bartholomew had taken advantage of the lull to land a heavy kick. Michael, dizzy from lack of air, renewed his own efforts to escape but stopped when he felt the cold touch of steel against his neck.
‘Tell us, or we will kill him.’ On cue Michael felt the blade move closer to his throat.
‘I do not know what you want!’ Bartholomew sounded appalled. ‘He is a monk. Kill him, and you will be damned in the sight of God!’
Michael mentally applauded the threat of hell fires and eternal damnation to get them out of their predicament, but his brief flare of hope faded rapidly when he realised Bartholomew’s ploy had not worked.
A Bone of Contention хмб-3 Page 19
