‘This is your brother-in-law, Oswald Stanmore,’ the voice hissed again, the knife pricking at Michael’s throat. ‘He is a merchant, not a monk!’
Michael closed his eyes in despair. In the daylight, his habit would be unmistakeable, tied and cowled or not, but in the dark it was just a robe. He strained against his captors again, but weakly because of the burning in his lungs, protesting at the lack of air. Any moment now he would black out.
He was dimly aware that Bartholomew was still fighting but the noise did not induce the people who lived in the houses opposite the churchyard to come to their rescue.
But why should they? They were likely to be harmed, and almost certain to be arrested for breaking the curfew.
‘No!’ someone yelled. Then followed: ‘Fool!’
Someone grabbed a handful of Michael’s hair and wrenched his head up, and he saw a knife flash in the darkness. He closed his eyes again tightly and tried to remember the words of the prayers for the dying.
Abruptly and unexpectedly, he was released. The weight that had been crushing him lifted, and the handful of material that had been slowly suffocating him dropped away. For a moment, all he could do was suck in great mouthfuls of air. He scrabbled at his throat to see if it had been cut and he was bleeding to death, and felt instead the wooden cross that must have fallen out of his habit when his head had been pulled back.
He looked up and down the High Street, glimpsing several dark shadows moving some distance away, and then they were gone. The road was deserted and as still as the grave.
Slowly, he crawled to Bartholomew. The first heavy drops of rain began to splatter in the dust, breaking the silence as they fell harder and faster. He pulled himself together and rolled Bartholomew on to his back, giving him a rough shake that made him open his eyes.
After a moment Michael stood, reeling from his near strangulation, and hauled Bartholomew to his feet.
‘Bring him here.’
Michael saw Mistress Tyler standing in the doorway to her house a short distance away, and they staggered towards her. The rain was coming down in sheets; by the time they reached her door they were drenched.
Wordlessly, Michael pushed past her into the small room beyond and Bartholomew sank gratefully on to the rush-strewn floor. Eleanor kindled a lamp, exclaiming in horror as she recognised them when the room jumped into brightness. Mistress Tyler dispatched her for wine, and bundled the younger girl away to bed.
‘The commotion awoke us but we would have been able to do little to help,’ said Hedwise, wringing her hands. ‘We would have tried, though, had we known it was you, even if it had only been throwing stones from the window.’
‘It is better that you stayed out of it,’ said Michael. ‘I doubt you would have been able to help and you may have brought reprisals upon yourselves. Did you ask us here without knowing who we were, then?’
Mistress Tyler nodded. ‘We saw only two men attacked and needing help.’
Michael was impressed, certain that such open charity would not be available to anyone from Michaelhouse, especially if the morose Walter were on gate duty. He turned back to Bartholomew, and saw a large red stain on the front of his shirt. He took a strip of linen from Eleanor, bundled it into a pad, them pushed it down hard, as he had seen Bartholomew do to staunch the blood-flow from wounds.
Bartholomew looked at him in bewilderment. ‘What are you doing?’
‘Stopping the bleeding,’ Michael answered assertively.
Now the first shock of the attack was over, he was beginning to regain some of his customary confidence; the terrifying feeling of helplessness he had experienced when he was being suffocated was receding.
Bartholomew sat up, pushing Michael’s hands away.
‘What bleeding?’ he asked, holding his head in both hands as it reeled and swam at his sudden movement.
‘You are bleeding,’ answered Michael, applying his pressure pad again firmly.
Bartholomew shook his head and instantly regretted it.
He hoped he was not going to be sick in Mistress Tyler’s house. He saw the red stain on his shirt but knew it was from no injury of his own. At some point in the struggle Bartholomew had scored a direct hit on one man’s nose, and blood had splattered from him on to Bartholomew as they fell to the ground together.
Michael gazed at Bartholomew’s shirt with wide eyes, looking so baffled that Bartholomew would have laughed had his head not ached so.
‘Did you not check there was a wound first?’ asked Bartholomew, his voice ringing in his head like the great brass bells at St Mary’s Church.
Michael shrugged off this irrelevance. ‘If the blood is not yours, what ails you?’
‘A bump on the head,’ Bartholomew replied.
‘Is that all?’ Michael sighed. ‘Then we should stop pestering Mistress Tyler and return to Michaelhouse.’
‘Stay a while,’ insisted Eleanor, returning from the kitchen with a bottle and some goblets. ‘At least wait until the rain stops.’
‘And take a little wine,’ said Mistress Tyler, filling a cup and offering it to Bartholomew. ‘You look as though you need some.’
Michael snatched it and drained it in a single draught.
‘I did,’ he said, handing the empty goblet back with satisfaction. ‘I was almost suffocated, you know.’
‘We saw,’ said Eleanor, with a patent lack of interest in Michael’s brush with death. She knelt next to Bartholomew and offered him another goblet. ‘Drink this, Matt. It is finest French wine.’
‘He needs ale, not wine,’ said Hedwise scornfully, appearing on his other side with a large tankard of frothy beer. ‘I brewed this myself.’
‘Rubbish!’ snapped Eleanor, thrusting her goblet at Bartholomew. ‘Everyone knows that wine is the thing for sudden shocks. Ale will do him no good at all.’
‘With respect,’ said Bartholomew, pushing both vessels away firmly, ‘I would rather drink nothing.’ He felt queasy and the proximity of alcoholic fumes was making his stomach churn. He struggled to stand, hindered more than helped by the sister on either side of him.
‘Are you ready?’ asked Michael archly, when the physician had finally extricated himself from their helpful hands.
Bartholomew nodded and followed Michael towards the door.
‘See you next Tuesday,’ said Eleanor, beaming as she opened it for him.
‘And I shall see you the following Sunday,’ said Hedwise, raising her chin in the air defiantly as she glowered at her sister.
Sensing an unseemly disagreement in the making, Mistress Tyler hauled them both back inside and closed the door quickly. Bickering voices could be heard through the open window.
Once they began to walk along the High Street, Bartholomew wished he had stayed longer. Walking made him dizzy and he wanted to lie down. He lunged across the road to retrieve his medicine bag that had been upended and searched during the fight. Michael took his arm and guided him away from some of the deeper potholes, some rapidly filling with rain.
‘You are in for one hell of a day at the Founder’s Feast,’ remarked Michael unkindly. ‘That Eleanor has set her sights on you and she will be none too pleased when she sees she has a rival for your affections.’
‘Eleanor has done nothing of the sort,’ muttered Bartholomew, rubbing his eyes to try to clear them. ‘She is probably just interested in hearing your choir.’
Michael shook his head firmly. ‘You want to watch yourself, Matt, dallying mercilessly with all these ladies. If you are not careful, you will end up like Kenzie – murdered in the King’s Ditch. There is nothing as venomous as a woman betrayed.’
‘Oh, really?’ asked Bartholomew. ‘Over the last four years or so, I have seen a good deal more venom expended by the men of the town than by the women.’
‘We should be considering what has just happened, not discussing your love life,’ said Michael, suddenly serious, perhaps because he knew Bartholomew was right. ‘What did those men want from you? Did
you know them? It seems that Walter was right when he did not recognise the messenger as one of Mistress Fletcher’s family. We were foolish to have walked into such an obvious trap.’
Bartholomew put his hand to his head in an effort to stop it spinning and closed his eyes. That was worse. He opened them again.
‘They thought you were Oswald Stanmore,’ he said, leaning heavily on Michael.
Michael caught him as he stumbled. ‘Watch where you are going! I imagine my dark robe misled them.’
‘They were from Godwinsson,’ Bartholomew said, trying to concentrate on the way ahead, them wincing as a flash of lightning lanced brightly into his eyes. The rain was pleasant though, drenching him in a cooling shower and clearing the blurring from his eyes.
‘Godwinsson? How could you see that in the dark?’ queried Michael in disbelief.
‘You should not ask me questions if you do not think I can answer them,’ Bartholomew retorted irritably. ‘There were lightning flashes and I saw their faces quite clearly. One was Huw the steward, and another was the servant I saw emptying the slops while I was hiding in Godwinsson’s back yard – Saul Potter, I think he is called. And one of the ones who fought you was Will from Valence Marie – the fellow who keeps digging up bones.’
‘That puny little tyke?’ exclaimed Michael. ‘Are you certain?’
Bartholomew nodded cautiously, his hand still to his head. ‘And the one demanding to know where “it” was I think may have been Thomas Bigod, the Master of Maud’s.’
Michael whirled around. ‘Now I know you must be raving! Why would Master Bigod attack us in the street? Or rather, attack you, since I think this whole business has nothing to do with me – it was to you the message was sent. What did you say to Father Eligius when you went to Valence Marie this afternoon that has set the servant after you so furiously? Did you press him too hard about the Frenchmen?’
Bartholomew could not imagine he had said anything to Eligius, or anyone else, to warrant such a violent attack.
‘I simply asked him if he knew where I might find his college’s French students. He told me that they had gone to London.’
Michael looked sceptical. ‘Just when term is beginning? It is an odd time for students to be leaving the University to say the least. Did you tell Eligius why you wanted them? Did you mention the relic and offend him by your rejection of it?’
Bartholomew skidded in something slippery. ‘He would not have noticed if I had. He was too absorbed in his own devotion to the thing. It was difficult to persuade him to discuss anything else.’
Michael was silent, concentrating on steering himself and Bartholomew clear of the more obvious obstacles that turned the High Street into a dangerous gauntlet of ankle-wrenching holes, treacherously slick mud, and repellent mounds of substances the monk did not care to think about.
‘But what about Master Bigod?’ he said eventually. ‘I cannot imagine why he would be out in the rain ambushing his colleagues.’
Bartholomew frowned, trying to concentrate. ‘I may be mistaken – I did not see his face because it was hidden by a hood. But I am sure I recognised his voice. He is from Norwich, and his accent is distinctive, not to mention the fact that his voice is unusually deep.’
‘Well, what do you think he wanted?’ asked Michael, still dubious.
Bartholomew shrugged. ‘I have no idea.’ He stopped abruptly, turning to face Michael. ‘Unless it could be that broken ring I found.’
Michael scratched his chin, the rain plastering his thin brown hair to his scalp, making his head seem very small atop his large body. ‘It may have been, I suppose.’
‘I think I may have broken the arm of one of our attackers: I was holding it when I fell and I heard it crack. He was wielding a knife, trying to stab me, and Bigod called for him to stop. I struggled and he missed, striking the ground instead – I heard it scrape the ground next to my ear. I suppose the sight of the blood on my shirt led Bigod to assume it was mine. I decided to play into their belief that I was dead so they would leave, but one of them, that Saul Potter I think, kicked my head.’ He rubbed it ruefully. ‘A tactical error on my part.’
‘I do not think so, Matt,’ said Michael soberly. ‘They were certainly going to slit my throat. They only desisted at the last moment because they realised I really was a monk and not just Oswald Stanmore.’
Bartholomew tried to work out what the servants of Godwinsson and Valence Marie could possibly want from him. Or Master Bigod from Maud’s. It proved their institutions were connected in some way. But how? To the murder of the child and James Kenzie? To the rape and murder of Joanna? To the mysterious movements of Kenzie’s ring? Or to the “two acts” that Matilde said the riot was instigated to hide?
Thinking was making him feel light-headed and he felt his legs begin to give way. They had reached St Michael’s Church. He lurched towards one of the tombstones in the churchyard and held on to it to prevent himself from falling.
‘I think I am going to be sick,’ he said in a whisper, dropping to his hands and knees in the wet grass.
Feeling better, he was helped to his feet by Michael.
‘May the Lord forgive you, Matthew,’ the monk said with amusement. ‘You have just thrown up on poor Master Wilson’s grave.’
When Bartholomew woke, he sensed someone else was in the room with him. He opened his eyes and blinked hard.
Above him the curious face of Rob Deynman hovered.
‘At last!’ the student said, his voice loud and unendearingly cheerful. ‘I was beginning to think you would sleep for ever.’
‘So I might, had I known I would wake to you,’ Bartholomew muttered unkindly, sitting up carefully.
‘What was that?’ Deynman said, putting his ear close to Bartholomew in a grotesque parody of the bedside manner that Bartholomew had been trying to instil into him. Not receiving a reply, he pushed Bartholomew back down on the bed and slapped something icy and wet on his head with considerable force.
‘God’s teeth!’ gasped Bartholomew, his eyes stinging from the violence of Deynman’s cold-compress application.
‘You just lie there quietly,’ Deynman yelled, hauling the blanket up around Bartholomew’s chin with such vigour that it all but strangled him. Bartholomew wondered why Deynman was shouting. He was not usually loud-voiced.
‘Where is Michael?’ he asked.
Deynman favoured him with an admonishing look. ‘Brother Michael is asleep, as are all Michaelhouse scholars. Tom Bulbeck, Sam Gray, and I – we three are your best students – are the only ones awake.’
‘Not for long if you keep shouting,’ said Bartholomew, feeling cautiously at his head. Someone had bandaged it, expertly, and only a little too tight.
Deynman laughed. ‘You are back to normal,’ he said. ‘Crabby!’
Bartholomew stared at him in disbelief. Cheeky young rascal! ‘Where is Sam?’ he demanded coldly.
‘Gone for water,’ said Deynman, still in the stentorian tones that made Bartholomew’s head buzz. ‘Here he is.’
‘Oh, you are awake!’ exclaimed Gray in delight, entering Bartholomew’s room and setting a pitcher of water carefully on the table. He knelt next to Bartholomew and peered at him.
‘What is Deynman doing in my room?’ Bartholomew demanded. ‘What time is it?’
Gray sent Deynman to the kitchen for watered ale, and arranged the blanket in a more reasonable fashion.
‘You should rest,’ Gray said softly. ‘It is probably somewhere near midnight and you have been ill for almost two days. We wondered whether you might have a cracked skull but now you seem back to normal, I think not. But your stars are sadly misaligned.’
‘Two days?’ echoed Bartholomew in disbelief. ‘That cannot be right!’
But even as he said it, vague recollections of moving in and out of sleep, of his students, Michael and Cynric, hovering around him began to flicker dimly through his mind.
‘Easy,’ said Gray gently. ‘The kick Brother Michael sa
id you took in that fight must have been harder than you realised. And, as I said, your stars are not good. You were born when Saturn was in its ascendancy and the conjunction of Mars and Jupiter on Wednesday…’
‘Oh really, Sam!’ exclaimed Bartholomew irritably. ‘You do not have the slightest idea when I was born. And if you had been to Master Kenyngham’s lecture last week, you would know there was no conjunction of Mars and Jupiter on Wednesday.’
Gray was not easily deterred. ‘Details are unimportant,’ he said airily. ‘But you were attacked on Wednesday night and it is late on Friday.’
‘Two days wasted,’ said Bartholomew, his mind leaping from his neglected teaching to the inquiries he had been pursuing with Michael.
‘We have not been idle,’ said Gray, not without pride. ‘While Deynman stayed with you, I read the beginning of Theophilus’s De urinis to the first-and second-year students, while Tom Bulbeck read Nicholas’s Antidotarium to the third, fourth and fifth years.’
Bartholomew regarded him appraisingly. ‘It seems I am no longer needed,’ he said, complimenting Gray’s organisational skills.
Gray looked at him sharply to see if he were being facetious, but then gave a shy grin. ‘I would claim it was all down to my talent for teaching but the students were only malleable because you were ill,’ he said in an rare moment of honesty. ‘Had you left me in charge and went drinking in the taverns all day, it would have been a different matter. We were all concerned for you. After all, since the plague, there is just you, Father Philius and Master Lynton who teach medicine. What would happen to us if you were to die?’
‘Nicely put,’ said Bartholomew.
‘We have had to turn away hoards of anxious women who came to enquire after you,’ announced Deynman, loud enough to be heard in every college in Cambridge as he returned with the watered ale. Tom Bulbeck slipped in behind him and came to squat next to Gray, inspecting his teacher anxiously. Deynman, choosing to ignore Gray’s gesture to keep his voice down, continued with his oration.
‘These ladies have been very persistent; we had a difficult job keeping them out of the College.’
A Bone of Contention хмб-3 Page 20
