Bartholomew 09 - A Killer in Winter

by Susanna GREGORY

  Suttone’s frantic protests were inaudible through the singing, as Gray had doubtless intended. Deynman’s fingers tightened around the veil and cloak and, with a flourish, he whipped them off. Underneath, the figure was no Madonna. It was a model of Father William, complete with filthy habit, grimy hands and a tonsure that was irregular, bristly and made from real hair. The sculptor had captured the fanatical gleam of the friar’s eyes and the pugilistic pout of his lips. A miniature wineskin dangled at his side, and one foot was resting on a copy of the Rules of St Dominic, the laws and ordinances by which the Dominican Order was governed. In one of his hands was a vast purse with the word ‘fines’ written on it, while the other grasped a book that had ribald songs inscribed on its tiny pages.

  There was an appreciative roar of delight from the students, and Bartholomew and Michael exchanged a grin of relief. Suttone rubbed a hand over his face and left the hall, while Clippesby laughed long and hard. Langelee was suddenly among them, holding a casket of wine in his powerful arms. He gaped at the figure, set down his barrel and traced a forefinger down the line of its habit, clearly impressed.

  ‘Good God!’ he muttered in amazement. ‘It looks real!’

  ‘It is William in every respect!’ cried Clippesby, perching on the high table to inspect the figure in greater detail. William did not like Dominicans, and Clippesby had been on the receiving end of a good many unprovoked insults. He was obviously delighted that the dour friar had been the butt of the students’ joke. ‘I wish he could see it. Shall we take it to him?’

  ‘I do not think so,’ said Gray wisely. ‘He will not see the amusing side and will fine us all for worshipping graven images or some such thing.’

  ‘I can assure you we will not be praying to it,’ said Langelee, standing back to admire the statue and its clever details. There was even a broken sandal strap, just like William’s. ‘But you are right. He will not see the humour. Who made it?’

  ‘It was—’ began Deynman.

  ‘That we shall never reveal,’ said Gray, interrupting firmly. ‘William is vengeful, and I do not want to see someone mercilessly persecuted for what is only a little fun. But shall we just stand here and look at it, or shall we eat him?’

  ‘Eat him!’ yelled the students as one.

  Deynman grabbed a knife and began paring away sections of the model, enjoying himself enormously. The students cheered as he worked, particularly when he attacked the head.

  ‘Who will eat this?’ he cried, waving his trophy in the air.

  ‘Not me,’ said Michael in distaste, although he was not normally a man to refuse something edible. ‘It has hairs in it. Real ones.’

  ‘Of course it has hairs,’ said Deynman. ‘It is a head. Will you eat it if I remove them?’

  ‘Well …’ said Michael, clearly tempted. William’s head represented a sizeable chunk of marchpane, and the monk would have a larger share if he accepted it. He adored the expensive almond-flavoured paste, and such a generous portion was not an offer to be lightly dismissed.

  ‘Give it to me,’ said Clippesby, snatching the head from Deynman. He broke it in half, and gave part to Michael. Then he began to pull away smaller pieces, handing them to the students. ‘We shall all partake of William’s head.’

  ‘You have given me the bit with the hair in it,’ said Michael, aggrieved, but making no move to share. ‘They are not his hairs, are they? If so, then none of us should be eating it.’

  ‘They are from a horse,’ said Deynman. ‘We wanted William’s own, but I could not bring myself to gather them, even when he lay in a drunken slumber after he had broken his leg.’

  It was not long before everyone had been given a piece of William – with the notable exception of Gray. The Waits had also been left out, although all four stuck out their hands hopefully when the tray came past. Deynman held up his portion, and a respectful silence fell over the assembly.

  ‘To William,’ he announced, and thrust the treat into his mouth. The students, Fellows and servants repeated his words and followed suit. Bartholomew did not, suspecting that there was a good reason why Gray had declined his share.

  There was. Within moments, the hall was full of gagging and spitting sounds.

  ‘Horrible!’ cried Michael, flinging away his piece so hard that it disappeared from view near the conclave door. He stuck out his tongue and began to wipe it with a piece of linen, pulling the most disagreeable of faces as he did so. Others were not so genteel. A good many mouthfuls ended up on the floor, and Bartholomew saw Quenhyth being sick.

  ‘Salt,’ said the physician, taking a careful lick of his own piece, ‘instead of sugar.’

  Gray sat in his chair and laughed until he wept, and Bartholomew saw he had had his revenge on the College that had declined to elect him its Lord of Misrule. Gray was not the only one to indulge in spiteful laughter. Bartholomew looked towards the servants’ screen and saw the Waits were equally amused.

  Quenhyth was waiting for Bartholomew the following morning when the physician emerged from the kitchens, where he had been helping the other Fellows to clean up after breakfast. Deynman had decreed that the servants should spend the day in the conclave, while the Fellows scrubbed the trays and pans used at the feast the night before. No one was happy with this arrangement: the servants complained that the Fellows would make more work by not cleaning their utensils properly, and the Fellows had not performed such base chores for years and did not want to start now. But Deynman’s orders were law, and they were all obliged to obey them.

  ‘Are you better today?’ asked Bartholomew, recalling that it was Quenhyth who had vomited after eating the salty marchpane.

  Quenhyth grimaced. ‘No thanks to Gray. He might have made someone seriously ill with that prank. I hope Master Langelee sees he pays for his irresponsible behaviour.’

  ‘What did you want?’ asked Bartholomew, knowing that Langelee would do nothing of the kind. The Master had thoroughly enjoyed the joke, and considered a mouthful of salt a small price to pay for such rich entertainment.

  ‘I am consigned to gate duty,’ said Quenhyth resentfully. ‘Deynman says Walter the porter is to deliver a lecture on creation theology, while I am to guard the door.’ He pouted angrily. ‘I have a disputation in a few weeks and I must study. I cannot afford to waste time on foolery like this.’

  ‘Just do it, Quenhyth,’ advised Bartholomew. ‘If you rebel, you will only find yourself in trouble. Your fanatical attitude to your studies has not endeared you to your fellow students, and you would be wise to do as they ask until the Twelve Days are safely over.’

  ‘I will not permit them to dictate the pace of my studies,’ declared Quenhyth hotly. ‘Education is a sacred thing, and it is not for the likes of Deynman to tell me when I can and cannot read.’

  ‘Right,’ said Bartholomew, seeing that his advice was wasted. ‘But why are you telling me all this? There is nothing I can do to relieve you of your gate duties.’

  ‘I did not imagine there would be,’ said Quenhyth unpleasantly. ‘No man can control that pair of louts – not even their teacher. But I came because you have been summoned by a patient. He wants you to attend him at the King’s Head.’

  ‘The King’s Head?’ asked Bartholomew, surprised. He was not usually called to tend the patrons of that particular tavern. The landlord tended to recommend the cheaper services of Robin of Grantchester, who was a townsman and not a member of the University. ‘Who is it?’

  Quenhyth shrugged. ‘The messenger was vague about the name: it was something like Harpoon or Hairspoon.’

  ‘Harysone?’

  Quenhyth shrugged again. ‘It could have been. But I must get back to my post. Gray may let robbers into the College, just to blame their presence on me. Of course, Deynman has given four thieves permission to stay here, anyway. I know the Chepe Waits from of old, and they are not honest folk.’

  ‘How do you know them?’ asked Bartholomew, walking with him across the yard to fetch his cloak an
d bag. The morning was icy again, and winter lay cold and heavy on the town. A rich, metallic scent in the air indicated they were in for yet more snow soon.

  ‘My father hired them once. They spend most of their time in London, hawking their skills to merchants, and my father asked them to perform at my sister’s marriage last year. I sensed it was a mistake, given they are so obviously vagabonds, but he persisted anyway. I was proved right, of course.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘They stole a silver chalice. Well, they claimed they did not, and the thing was not among their possessions when they were searched, but they were the culprits, nevertheless.’

  ‘How do you know those Waits and ours are the same people?’

  Quenhyth gave him a weary look. ‘I remember their names: Frith, Makejoy, Yna and Jestyn. They wear each other’s clothes, so the men are women and the women men. They say it is to make people laugh, but I think it is because they encourage men to seduce the “ladies”, then demand payment for their silence. You know how severely lewd acts are punished these days.’

  ‘How do you know they stole your father’s chalice?’ asked Bartholomew, thinking it would have to be a desperate man who would try to seduce one of the stubble-chinned ‘ladies’ of the Chepe Waits. Still, he recalled, Langelee had been fooled, and there was no accounting for taste.

  ‘The Waits were the only strangers to enter the house that day, and the chalice was found to be missing after they left. I tried to tell Langelee about it, but he would not listen. I confess I am surprised to see them in Cambridge – I thought they confined their activities to London.’

  ‘If they steal from every household they visit, they will not stay in business for long,’ said Bartholomew, thinking Quenhyth was mistaken. ‘Even in a large city.’

  ‘I followed them for a while, hoping to reclaim our property. They do a lot of business in Chepe, with fishmongers, cordwainers and other wealthy merchants. Later, they went to Kent, presumably to help with the harvest.’

  ‘Fishmongers,’ mused Bartholomew, thinking about the Waits’ claim that they had been hired by Turke. Philippa had mentioned that she lived on Friday Street, and he wondered whether her house was anywhere near the Waits’ territory. ‘Is Friday Street close to Chepe?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Quenhyth, looking disdainfully down his long nose at Bartholomew. ‘Friday Street is part of Chepe. Do you know nothing about London?’

  ‘Not much,’ said Bartholomew, who had found it dirty, dangerous, noisy and crowded on his few brief visits.

  ‘Friday Street is dominated by the fishmongers’ homes. It is near Fishmonger Row and Thames Street. Chepe, obviously, is on the river and convenient for bringing supplies of fish to the city. It is near Quenhyth, where my family live. My father is a fishmonger, too, although he is not as rich and powerful as Master Turke was. Turke did not remember me when we met at the feast, but his wife did, and she asked after my family. She is a good woman.’

  Bartholomew regarded his student thoughtfully. Did the fact that Philippa lived in Chepe mean the Waits had indeed been telling the truth when they claimed they had performed for her? Or were they lying, because they were dishonest folk who regularly stole from the people who hired them? Impatiently, he pushed the questions from his mind. All of this was irrelevant. Philippa’s choice of entertainers – and her willingness, or otherwise, to acknowledge them – was none of his affair. But he had a patient to attend, and that was his business.

  ‘Chepe is a place of contrasts,’ Quenhyth chattered, while the physician collected his bag. ‘The merchants’ houses – like the ones on Friday Street – are among the finest in the city, while some of the alleys are a foretaste of Hell in their filth and debauchery. Of course, violence is not always confined to alleys. Only a few weeks ago, Walter Turke himself stabbed a man in Fishmongers’ Hall.’

  ‘So I heard. But how do you know about it?’

  ‘My father was there and he saw it all. The victim was called John Fiscurtune. Incidentally, he was the same fellow who recommended the Chepe Waits to my father. I later informed Fiscurtune that they were not the sort of people he should be advising honest folk to hire, but he told me to mind my own affairs. He was not a pleasant person, and I am not surprised Turke took a knife to him. No one liked him, not even his own family. It was rumoured that his son found him so vile he tossed himself in the Thames to avoid future encounters with him.’

  ‘So, Fiscurtune knew the Waits, too?’ asked Bartholomew, baffled by the complex social connections that were emerging as Quenhyth gossiped.

  ‘I do not know if he knew them personally, but he certainly told my father to hire them. Perhaps he liked bad juggling and hairy women. By the way, I saw Frith talking to Norbert in the King’s Head the night he died, so you should tell Brother Michael to question him about that particular murder.’ His eyes gleamed with spite.

  ‘You tell him,’ suggested Bartholomew.

  ‘I have,’ replied Quenhyth resentfully. ‘But he said the Waits talked to lots of folk the night Norbert was murdered, because they were looking for someone to hire them. He is a fool to dismiss them from his enquiries so readily, though. He will find them responsible, you mark my words.’

  Bartholomew sensed Quenhyth felt the same about the Waits as Michael did about Harysone. Quenhyth believed the jugglers had wronged him, and he was not a lad to forgive and forget: he was determined to make life uncomfortable for them. Bartholomew listened with half an ear as Quenhyth described what had happened when he had made himself known to the Waits in Cambridge. He claimed they had been appalled to learn of his presence, although Bartholomew suspected that they had merely warned the boy to mind his own business. Frith did not look the kind of man to be cowed by someone like Quenhyth.

  ‘I also saw them at the King’s Head with Giles Abigny,’ added Quenhyth, still talking, even though Bartholomew was already out of the gate and starting to walk up the lane. ‘Since they “entertained” his sister in Friday Street, I suppose they were hopeful he might buy their services a second time. That was before Master Langelee hired them for Michaelhouse, of course.’

  The physician turned. ‘How do you know the Waits played for Philippa?’

  ‘I told you,’ said Quenhyth impatiently. ‘I watched them very carefully after they stole from my father, and one of their engagements was in the Turke household. But I could tell Abigny had not hired them this time. They made rude gestures as he walked away. I saw them with another fellow in the King’s Head, too – a man with huge teeth and a habit of showing off his dancing skills. Perhaps they were trying to recruit him.’ He sniggered nastily.

  ‘Harysone?’

  ‘The man who has summoned you? I did not know they were one and the same.’

  ‘What were you doing in the King’s Head?’ asked Bartholomew archly, wondering how the student came to be in possession of so much information. If Quenhyth had been in the tavern long enough to see the Waits with Abigny, Gosslinge and Harysone, then he must have been there for some time.

  Quenhyth’s face puckered into a scowl. ‘Gray told me there was a messenger waiting with a letter from my father. I should have known better than to believe him, because he had played exactly the same trick on me the week before. And, sure enough, Father William appeared as I waited for the “messenger” to arrive. It cost me fourpence. But before I left, I saw Harysone sitting with Frith. However, the tavern was busy, so I could not hear what they were saying.’

  ‘Are you sure they were speaking, not just using the same table?’ asked Bartholomew, recalling that the Waits had denied exchanging words with Harysone.

  Quenhyth’s expression became uncertain. ‘I think they were talking. Why? Is Harysone a criminal? He looks like one.’

  Bartholomew rubbed his chin, wondering what was truth and what was malicious gossip intended to harm the Waits. ‘Why did you notice all these things?’

  ‘If you had been the victim of a vile theft, then been made to look foolish when you could not
prove your accusation, you would notice every move the Waits made, too,’ said Quenhyth bitterly. ‘I hate them.’

  * * *

  As always, when there was a deviation from the expected in terms of weather, those in authority at the little Fen-edge town were wholly unprepared for the consequences. In the summer, they were taken aback when there was a drought; they were stunned by the floods that regularly occurred in the spring; and they were aghast when rains interfered with the harvest. Snow was no different. Even though some fell most years, the town officials never thought about it until it arrived. Spades and shovels for digging were always in short supply, while no one stocked firewood so that ice could be melted in sufficient quantities to meet the demand for water.

  This year was the same. Morice’s soldiers had been pressed into service to clear pathways through the larger drifts, but, in the absence of proper equipment, their progress was slow. There was a particularly vast bank outside Bene’t College, but the soldiers had decided this was simply too daunting to tackle, and so dug their path around it. Carts stood where they had been abandoned by their owners, some buried so deeply that only the very tops were visible. In one, a horse had been left, frozen where it had died between the shafts.

  People also seemed bemused by the fact that the river had iced over, and that some traders were experiencing difficulties in transporting their goods along the waterways that wound through the Fens. It was as if it had never happened before, and people discussed the weather at every street corner, remarking that it was the most severe winter they had ever known, and that times were changing for the worse. Friars and lay-preachers were out in force, exhorting all who would listen that the climate was a sign from God that evil ways had not been sufficiently mended after the warning of the plague. The world would end in ice and fire, they claimed, if folk did not repent, wear sober clothing, give away all their possessions to the poor, cut their hair and wear sackcloth, be kind to animals and avoid the town’s prostitutes.

  Cynric met Bartholomew on the High Street, and when he heard that the physician intended to visit the King’s Head to tend Harysone, he insisted on accompanying him. Bartholomew did not object, glad to have Cynric and his ready blade behind him when he entered the notorious tavern. They passed through the Trumpington Gate, and walked the short distance to the inn, which stood opposite St Edmund’s Priory. The priory doors were firmly closed, suggesting the Gilbertines wanted no part in the noisy Christmas revelry that was taking place in the rest of the town. The King’s Head, on the other hand, was bursting at the seams. As Bartholomew and Cynric approached, two men hurtled through the door and rolled across the trodden snow of the road, where they climbed groggily to their feet. The door slammed behind them.