A Bone of Contention хмб-3

by Susanna GREGORY

  Bartholomew thought of Lydgate’s story in the light of what he had been told by Cecily and Edred. They claimed they had seen Lydgate standing over the dead Dominica and Ned, holding a dripping knife. If everyone was telling the truth, then Cecily and Edred had indeed seen Lydgate standing over two bodies with a dagger, but had misinterpreted what they had seen. On the strength of these erroneous assumptions, Mistress Cecily had left her husband, and Edred had applied what he had known of the other deaths to reason that Lydgate had not only killed Dominica and Ned, but Werbergh and Kenzie too.

  Bartholomew rubbed the back of his head. Cecily, Lydgate and Edred all said it was Dominica they had seen lying dead near Ned from Valence Marie. In which case, where was Joanna? Bartholomew was certain she was dead, or the Tyler family would not have gone to such lengths to prevent him from looking too closely into her disappearance. But the more he thought about it, the more convinced he became that the woman with the unrecognisably battered face and long, golden hair was Joanna and not Dominica at all. It had been dark, both during the riot and in the Castle mortuary and that, coupled with the fact that the face had been battered, would have made definite identification difficult, if not impossible. And finally, there was the ominous patch of blood in the Tylers’ house.

  He glanced at Michael, wondering whether to share his thoughts with Lydgate. The monk had been watching him intently and gave a barely perceptible shake of his head.

  Michael had apparently guessed what Bartholomew had been reasoning, but thought the evidence too slim to give Lydgate hopes that he might have been mistaken and that Dominica might yet be alive.

  ‘Dominica’s name was not among the dead,’ said Michael when he saw Bartholomew was not going to speak. ‘Why did you not claim her body?’

  Lydgate put his head in his hands. ‘I did not know what to do,’ he said. ‘Cecily was gone, and there was no one with whom to discuss it. I decided to let Dominica’s death remain anonymous until I had had time to think. You see, the soldiers at the Castle were saying that the woman who had died had been a whore. I did not want to risk Dominica’s reputation by claiming that this whore was her. Half the town knew that she had a lover and she would always be remembered as the whore who died in the riots. I had to think before I acted, so I said nothing.’

  ‘You went to her grave, though,’ said Bartholomew.

  Lydgate fixed his small eyes on Bartholomew. ‘Yes. And you found me there. I thought you had come to gloat. You were lucky I did not run you through.’

  ‘Does your wife know about the blackmail notes?’ asked Michael.

  ‘I told her I was being blackmailed, but I did not tell her why. She was concerned only for Dominica, and cared not a fig for me or my reputation should all this come out. She ran away from me the night Dominica died and lurks in her underground chamber at Chesterton.’

  ‘You know where she is?’ asked Bartholomew, startled.

  ‘Of course!’ said Lydgate dismissively. ‘My wife is not a woman richly endowed with imagination, Bartholomew. I knew immediately that she would flee to the same place where we had hidden Dominica. And even if I had not guessed, my friend Thomas Bigod would have told me. Bigod has been a good ally to me. He gave me an alibi the night Dominica died and is keeping Cecily safe until such time as we can settle our differences – if we ever bother.’

  ‘Cecily believed you killed Dominica,’ said Michael baldly.

  Lydgate gave a faint smile. ‘So Thomas Bigod tells me. Silly woman! She can stay away as long as she likes. The house is more pleasant without her whining tongue.’

  Bartholomew let all this sink in. Cecily was hiding away, and Lydgate had not been fooled for an instant about her whereabouts. Lydgate had told Cecily that Bartholomew had been blackmailing him, but she had shown no compunction about helping the man she thought was her husband’s enemy. To Cecily, Bartholomew had been an instrument to use against her husband. That must have been at least partly why she had helped him to escape from the manor at Chesterton: she believed she was releasing her husband’s blackmailer to continue his war of attrition!

  Lydgate sighed. ‘I knew Dominica was seeing a scholar. The day after I sent her away, I heard him throwing stones at her window. When he saw he would get no response, he left and I followed him. But I am too big and clumsy for such work and I lost him before we reached the High Street.’

  Unfortunately for Kenzie, thought Bartholomew. He might still be alive had his killer seen the hulking figure of Lydgate pursuing him.

  ‘All I saw was a man in a scholar’s tabard,’ continued Lydgate wearily. ‘I could not see him well enough to identify him again.’

  ‘It was James Kenzie, the David’s student who was murdered,’ said Michael.

  Lydgate gazed at the Benedictine in mute disbelief, and then slammed one thick fist into the palm of his other hand. ‘Of course!’ he exclaimed. ‘That student was killed the same night I followed Dominica’s visitor. No wonder you paid me so much attention!’

  Bartholomew and Michael exchanged a look of bemusement, wondering how Lydgate had never put the two together in his mind before. Lydgate did not notice and continued. ‘So, Dominica chose a Scot! She knew how to be hurtful. What more inappropriate lover could the daughter of a hostel principal chose than an impoverished Scot?’

  ‘But if you did not kill him, who did? And why?’ asked Bartholomew, wanting to get back to the business of solving the murders, away from Lydgate’s domestic traumas.

  Lydgate looked at him as though he were mad. ‘Why, Norbert, of course,’ he said.

  Bartholomew paced up and down and shook his head impatiently. Lydgate followed him with his eyes.

  ‘But why? Norbert has no reason to kill Kenzie.’

  ‘What about the ring?’ asked Michael. ‘The lover’s ring that Kenzie had lost to Edred that day?’

  ‘Why?’ said Bartholomew. ‘Why should Norbert want the ring? And if you recall, Kenzie wore no ring when he died. Edred had stolen it earlier – or at least, had stolen the fake.’

  Lydgate nodded. ‘Edred tried to claim a reward by offering a cheap imitation of Dominica’s ring. I grew angry with him and since then he has been sulky with me. That is why he accused me of those murders – as I said, it is the only thing I truly understand in all this muddle.’

  ‘Ah!’ said Michael. ‘So, the slippery friar changed his allegiance. This begins to make sense. Repulsed by you in his attempts at winning favour, he was recruited by, or turned to, Norbert. It was Norbert who told him to make sure you were blamed for all those deaths by coming to us, and it was for Norbert that Edred searched Matt’s room looking for the Galen. I think Edred believed what he told us was true and I think he was afraid of you. But he was working for Norbert all the time!’

  It was dark in the church now and the only light came from the candles. There seemed to be little more to be said and Michael and Lydgate stood. As Lydgate stepped forward, he stumbled against Michael’s bench.

  Bartholomew caught him by the arm and prevented him from falling. Lydgate peered down at the bench and grimaced.

  ‘How long have your eyes been failing?’ asked Bartholomew gently.

  Lydgate glared at him and pulled his arm away sharply.

  ‘That is none of your business,’ he snapped, but then relented. ‘My eyesight has never been good, but these last three years have seen a marked degeneration. Father Philius says there is nothing I can do. I have told no one except Dominica. It is worse at night, though. Everything fades into shadow.’

  As they opened the door of the church, they saw an orange glow in the sky and, very distantly, they could hear shouting and screams carried on the slightest of breezes.

  ‘Oh, Lord, no!’ whispered Michael, gazing at the eerie lights. ‘The riot has started!’

  ‘My hostel!’ exclaimed Lydgate and hurried away into the night without so much as a backward glance. Michael watched him go.

  ‘How did you guess about his sight?’ he asked.

 
; Bartholomew shrugged. ‘The signs are clear enough. He rubs his eyes constantly and he squints and peers around. When I paced, he spoke to me in the wrong direction. And he failed to see the bench he fell over. He lost Kenzie when he followed him and he, unlike Edred, did not see his bright yellow hose. But even more importantly, he probably did not see Dominica. It was Joanna he saw dead.’

  ‘So, your theory was wrong after all,’ said Michael. ‘Dominica and Joanna are different.’

  ‘It would seem so,’ said Bartholomew. ‘The woman’s face was bloody, and the street where he found her and the Castle mortuary were dark, where Lydgate admits he cannot see well. The dead woman was probably Joanna after all. But I am not the only one who was mistaken. Lydgate, Cecily and Edred all think Dominica died on the night of the riot. Edred and Cecily only saw a fair-haired corpse from a distance; Lydgate saw her close but has poor vision.’

  ‘So Lydgate went to look at her body at the Castle,’ said Michael, ‘because he had not trusted his failing eyesight on the night of the riot.’

  Bartholomew ran a hand through his hair and then scrubbed hard at his face. Although things were clearer – Joanna and Dominica were not one and the same; he now understood the reason behind Lydgate’s hostility towards him; and they finally knew more about the treacherous Edred’s actions – there were still many questions that remained unanswered. Where was Dominica? Where was Norbert? Why had Bigod and his cronies elected to organise a riot that night? And why had someone been to such trouble to ensure that Joanna’s body had been mistaken for Dominica’s? He and Michael sank into the shadows of the church as shouting and running feet began to echo along the High Street. It grew closer, many feet pounding the dust of the road.

  ‘It sounds like an army,’ whispered Michael, edging further back.

  Torches threw bouncing shadows in all directions as the mob surged past, yelling and calling to each other.

  Bartholomew recognised some of them as tradesmen from the Market Square. They all carried weapons of one kind or another – staves, knives, scythes, sticks, even cooking pots. Where the torch-light caught the occasional face, Bartholomew saw that they appeared mesmerised. They chanted together, nonsense words, but ones that created a rhythm of unity. Bartholomew had heard that clever commanders were able to create such a feeling of oneness before battles and that the soldiers, whipped up into a frenzy, fought like wild animals until they either died or dropped from sheer weariness. The crowd that surged past Bartholomew and Michael ran as one, chanting and crashing their weapons together. Bartholomew knew that if he and Michael were spotted now in their scholars’ garb, they would be killed for certain. No amount of reasoning could possibly work against this enraged mob.

  As the last torch jiggled past and the footsteps and chanting faded, Michael crossed himself vigorously, and Bartholomew crept cautiously to the fringe of trees in the graveyard to check that the rioters did not double back.

  ‘That was an evil-intentioned crowd,’ he whispered, as Michael joined him. ‘There will be murder and mayhem again tonight, Brother. Just as Bigod promised there would be.’

  Michael regarded him sombrely. ‘That was no random group of trouble-makers,’ he muttered. ‘That was a rabble, carefully brought to fever-pitch, and held there until it is time to release it.’

  ‘We had better return to Michaelhouse,’ said Bartholomew, his voice loud in the sudden silence. The fat monk tried to muffle Bartholomew’s voice with a hand over his mouth.

  ‘Hush! Or they will release it on you and me!’ he hissed fiercely.

  Bartholomew had never seen Michael so afraid before and it did little to ease his troubled mind.

  Michael’s beadles seemed pathetic compared to the confident mob that Bartholomew had seen thunder past. They looked terrified, too. Each time an especially loud yell occurred, they glanced nervously over their shoulders, and at least two of them were so white that Bartholomew thought they might faint. One took several steps backwards and then turned and fled. Bartholomew did not blame him: the group that had been hurriedly assembled in St Mary’s churchyard was pitifully small, and would be more likely to attract the violent attentions of the crowd than to prevent trouble. To one side, Guy Heppel stood in the shadows and trembled with fear. His hands rubbed constantly at the sides of his tabard in agitation.

  The Chancellor stalked up and down in front of his frightened army, twisting a ring around on his finger with such force that he risked breaking it.

  A sudden shout made several of the beadles shy away in alarm, and all of them jumped. It was Tulyet, his face streaked with dirt, and his horse skittering and prancing in terror. Only Tulyet’s superior horsemanship prevented him from being hurled from the saddle.

  ‘At last! ‘ breathed de Wetherset, and smiles of relief broke out on the faces of one or two of the beadles. ‘What is the news? Is the mob dispersing?’

  Tulyet leaned towards him so that the fearful beadles would not overhear.

  ‘One hostel has been fired, but it seems that most, if not all, of the scholars escaped. St Paul’s Hostel is under siege but is holding out. Townsfolk are gathering near St Michael’s Church and it looks as though there will be an attack on Michaelhouse soon. And at least three other hostels have been sacked.’

  ‘Are the scholars retaliating?’ asked Bartholomew, trying to stay clear of the horse’s flailing hooves.

  ‘Not yet,’ said Tulyet. He flashed Michael a grin of thanks as the fat monk took a firm hold of his mount’s reins, preventing it from cavorting by sheer strength of arm. ‘But I have had reports that they are massing. Valence Marie are out and so are King’s Hall.’

  ‘What of Godwinsson?’ asked Michael, stroking the horse’s velvet nose, oblivious to the white froth that oozed from its mouth as it chewed wildly on the bit.

  ‘That is the one that has been fired,’ said Tulyet. ‘The students are out somewhere.’

  ‘What do you plan to do?’ asked the Chancellor. There was a loud crash from the direction of the Market Square, and he winced. It was only a short distance from the Market Square to St Mary’s Church, the centre of all University business, and the place where all its records were stored. It would take very little for the townspeople to transfer their aggressions from the market stalls to the obvious presence of the University in Cambridge’s biggest and finest church.

  Tulyet scrubbed at his face with his free hand. ‘I scarcely know where to begin,’ he said. ‘It is all so scattered. The best plan I can come up with is to remove temptation from the mob’s path. I want all scholars off the streets, and I want no action taken to curb the looting of the hostels that have already fallen – if there are no bands of scholars with which to fight, the fury of the mob will fizzle out.’

  ‘It is not the University that precipitated all this,’ said de Wetherset angrily. ‘The townspeople started it.’

  ‘That is irrelevant!’ snapped Tulyet impatiently. ‘And believe me, Master de Wetherset, the University will lose a good deal less of its property if you comply with my orders, than if you try to meet the rabble with violence.’

  ‘You are quite right, Dick,’ said Michael quickly, seeing de Wetherset prepared to argue the point, his heavy face suffused with a deep resentment. ‘The most useful thing we can do now is to urge all the scholars indoors, or divert them from the mob. Heppel – take a dozen beadles and patrol Milne Street; I will take the rest along the High Street.’

  Heppel looked at him aghast. ‘Me?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Michael. ‘You are the Junior Proctor and therefore paid to protect the University and its scholars. ‘

  ‘God help us I’ muttered de Wetherset under his breath, regarding the trembling Heppel in disdain. Bartholomew could see the Chancellor’s point.

  ‘But do you not think it would be better to lock ourselves in the church?’ Heppel whispered, casting fearful eyes from Michael to the Chancellor. ‘You said it would be best if all scholars were off the streets.’

  ‘I was not ref
erring to the Proctors and the beadles,’ said Michael, placing his hands on his hips. ‘It is our job to prevent lawlessness, not flee from it.’

  ‘I did not anticipate such violence when I took this post!’ protested Heppel. ‘I knew Cambridge was an uneasy town, but I did not expect great crowds of townsfolk lusting for scholars’ blood! I was not told there would be murder, or that the students would be quite so volatile!’

  De Wetherset swallowed hard, and glanced around him uneasily, as if he imagined such a mob might suddenly converge on the churchyard. Meanwhile, Heppel’s fear had communicated itself to the beadles and there were two fewer than when Bartholomew had last looked.

  Michael raised his eyes heavenward, while Tulyet pursed his lips, not pleased that the University was producing such a feeble response to its dangerous situation.

  ‘The students are always volatile,’ said Bartholomew who, like Tulyet and Michael, was unimpressed at Heppel’s faint-heartedness. ‘Just not usually all at once. And not usually in conjunction with the entire town. However, like the last riot, this is no random occurrence. It was started quite deliberately. And this time, I know at least one of the ringleaders.’

  ‘Who?’ demanded Tulyet, fixing Bartholomew with an intent stare. His horse skittered nervously as another volley of excited shouts came from the direction of the Market Square.

  ‘Ivo, the noisy scullion from David’s Hostel,’ said Bartholomew, thinking about what had clicked into place when the stone had been hurled at him as he and Michael had gone to meet Lydgate. ‘He was the man whose cart was stuck on the High Street earlier today. A fight broke out when it blocked the road for others. He threw a stone at us as we passed – it hit a wall, but he was probably hoping to start a brawl between scholars and townsfolk there and then. And then I saw him quite clearly leading the mob past St Botolph’s, calling to them, and keeping their mood ugly. He was also one of the seven that attacked Michael and me last week, looking for the book and its hidden documents.’