A Bone of Contention

by Susanna GREGORY

'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 aroun
d 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, enter ing Bartholomew's room and setting a pitcher of water carefully on the table. He knelt next to Bartholomew and peered at him. I '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 said 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.'

  'Oh?' said Bartholomew cautiously. 'Which ones came?'

  'Which ones!' echoed Gray admiringly. He gave Bartholomew a conspiratorial wink. 'And all this time we thought you were destined to take the cowl, like Brother Michael. Now we find out you have a whole secret life that is positively teeming with some of the loveliest females in town.'

  'I have nothing of the kind,' snapped Bardiolomew testily. 'I simply invited one or two young ladies to the Founder's Feast.'

  'And one to the Festival of St Michael and All Angels,' added Deynman helpfully. 'And she was the prettiest of them all.'

  All? thought Bartholomew in horror. How many of them had there been? He sincerely hoped one of them had not been Matilde. Bulbeck, more sensitive to his teacher's growing discomfort than his friends, put him out of his misery.

  'It was just the four Tyler women and your sister, Edith,' he said. 'They were concerned about you. And Agatha, of course.'

  'That is no woman,' declared Deynman.

  'You should keep your voice down,' advised Bartholomew.

  'Or she might hear you and then I will not be the only one with a cracked head.'

  The three students exchanged fearful glances, and Deynman crossed himself vigorously. Bartholomew smiled. He was beginning to feel better already. He was not at all surprised that the kick had rendered him insensible, especially given the sensations of sickness and dizziness he had experienced on the way back to Michaelhouse.

  He thanked his misaligned stars that astrology had been the subject of his recent discussion with his students, and not trepanation, or he might have awoken to find Gray had relieved him of a chunk of skull rather than simply predicted his horoscope. Dim memories began to drift back. Had Michael accused him of vomiting on Master Wilson's grave? If that were true, he really ought to do something to atone for such an act of sacrilege. When the pompous Master Wilson had died during the plague, he had made a deathbed demand that Bartholomew should oversee the building of his fine tomb. Three years had passed, and, apart from ordering a slab of black marble, Bartholomew's promise remained unfulfilled.

  When he opened his eyes again, it was early morning and daylight was beginning to glimmer through the open window. On a pallet bed next to him, Gray slumbered, fully clothed, his tawny hair far too long and very rumpled.

  Bartholomew sat up warily, and then stood. Apart from a slight ache behind his eyes, he felt fine. So as not to wake Gray, he tiptoed out of his room, taking the pitcher of water with which to wash and shave. Then he unlocked the small chamber where he stored his medicines. Pulling off the heavy bandage he fingered the lump on the back of his head. He had felt worse, although not on himself.

  He went back to his room for clean clothes, tripping over the bottom of Gray's straw mattress. The student only mumbled and turned over without waking. Bartholomew wondered at the usefulness of having him in a sickroom if he slept so heavily, but then relented, knowing he was a heavy sleeper himself. It was not the first time Gray had kept a vigil at Bartholomew's bedside, and he knew he should not be ungrateful to his student, whatever his motives for wanting his teacher hale and hearty.

  Outside, the air was cool and fresh. The rain of two nights ago seemed to have broken the unbearable heat and the breeze smelled faintly of the sea, not of the river. Bartholomew looked at the sky, beginning to turn from dark blue to silvery-grey, ducked back inside to his room for his bag — noting that someone had thought to dry it out after the heavy rain — and walked across the yard to the front gates. Then he made his way to St Michael's Church. The ground was sticky underfoot, and here and there puddles glistened in the early light.

  He reached the church and walked furtively to Master Wilson's grave, relieved to see that nothing appeared to I be amiss.

  In the church, Fathers William and Aidan, Franciscan friars and Fellows of Michaelhouse, were ending matins and lauds. Bartholomew sat at the base of a pillar in the cool church and let Father William's rapid Latin echo around him. William always gave the impression that God had far better things to do than to listen to his prayers, and so gabbled through the
m at a pace that never failed to impress Bartholomew. However, if Bartholomew would ever be so rash as to put his observation to William, the friar would scream loudly about heresy and they would end up in one of the interminable debates that William so loved.

  Aidan favoured Bartholomew with a surprised grin, revealing two large front teeth, one of which was sadly decayed. While Aidan fiddled about with the chalice and paten on the altar, William gave Bartholomew one of his rare smiles and sketched a benediction at him in the air. On the surface, Bartholomew and William had little in common and argued ceaselessly about what was acceptable to teach the students. Any display of friendship between them was usually unwillingly given, although beneath their antagonism was a mutual, begrudging respect.

  In pairs and singly, Michaelhouse's scholars began to trickle into the church, and Bartholomew took up his appointed place in the chancel. Master Kenyngham arrived and gestured to the Franciscans to begin prime.

  The friars started to chant a psalm, and Bartholomew closed his eyes, relishing the way their voices echoed through the church, slow and peaceful. Roger Alcote, the Senior Fellow, stood next to him and enquired solicitously after his health. Bartholomew smiled at the fussy little man: he had no idea he was so popular among his colleagues — unless, like Gray, they knew that they would have a serious problem trying to find a replacement Regius physician to teach medicine at Michaelhouse.

  During the morning's lectures, his students were uncommonly considerate, keeping their voices low, even during an acrimonious debate about the inspection of urine to determine cures for gout. Bartholomew was amazed to learn that they had been instructed to keep the noise down by Deynman of all people, which was especially surprising given his uncharacteristic loudness during the night. Apparently, he had thought Bartholomew might be deaf because the bandage had covered his ears. Bartholomew wondered what it was like to see the world in such black and white terms as Deynman.

  When teaching was over for the day, Bartholomew sent for the town's master mason. While he waited, he read his borrowed Galen: although Radbeche's message had been that Bartholomew might use it as long as he liked, to be in possession of a hostel's one and only book was a grave responsibility, and he wanted to return it to them as soon as possible.