A Bone of Contention

by Susanna GREGORY

  Thorpe drew closer, and Bartholomew looked around in panic, wondering how they might escape. There was no other way out. Bartholomew knew instinctively that if Thorpe discovered they had overpowered his servants, he would give them into the custody of his vengeful students, and that would be their death warrant. As Thorpe's hand reached out to push open the hall door, a scholar emerged from the Master's quarters, carrying a bundle of cloth. Thorpe's hand dropped from the door and he began to walk away. Bartholomew was so relieved, his legs turned to jelly, and he had to lean against the wall for support. Next to Will, Michael dropped the dagger in revulsion.

  Bartholomew gave the monk a weak smile. 'Master Thorpe does not want to confront the Chancellor improperly attired,' he explained shakily. 'He was waiting for a student to fetch him his best robe.'

  Michael gnawed at his finger-nails. 'We will lose d'Ambrey if Thorpe does not leave soon!'

  While they waited for Thorpe to be satisfied with the way his gown fell, Bartholomew crammed bandages and salves back in his medical bag and tucked the Galen into one of the side pockets. Michael fretted at the door.

  By the time Bartholomew had finished, Thorpe and his entourage had gone and Michael was already across the courtyard and out of the main gates. As they emerged into the High Street, they caught a glimpse of d'Ambrey's grey habit disappearing up the Trumpington Road.

  They set off after him, pausing briefly to tell the guards on the gate that there were three felons secured in Valence Marie, and that Tulyet should follow as soon as possible. After a moment's hesitation, Michael tossed a small child a penny and sent her with a message to the Chancellor and Heppel.

  'Wicked waste of a penny,' muttered Michael. 'De Wetherset will be in a business meeting and his clerks will be too frightened to disturb him on our behalf, while Heppel's presence while we apprehend a killer will be more hindrance than help.'

  While they had been in Valence Marie the clouds had thickened, and a light, misty rain was falling. It should have been a welcome relief after the heat of the morning, but it served only to increase the humidity.

  Michael complained that he could not catch his breath; even Bartholomew began to feel uncomfortable. But the rain afforded some advantage, for it provided a haziness in the air that meant that Bartholomew and Michael were able to follow d'Ambrey with less chance of being seen.

  They walked quickly and without speaking, alert for any sound that would warn them that d'Ambrey had stopped.

  One or twice they glimpsed him ahead and, as they went further from the town, Bartholomew began to wonder how far d'Ambrey was going to go. They reached the small manor owned by Sir Robert de Panton, where the land had been cleared for farming, affording uninterrupted views down the road for some distance. D'Ambrey was nowhere to be seen. Michael sagged in defeat.

  As they dithered, wondering where d'Ambrey might have turned, they met Sir Robert himself, who told them that he had seen an elderly friar pass along the Trumpington Road just a few moments before. Encouraged, Bartholomew and Michael hurried on.

  They continued in silence, the only sounds being Michael's heavy breathing, and their feet on the muddy road. As they began to despair that they might have lost. him a second time, a thought occurred to Bartholomew.

  They were near Trumpington village, where d'Ambrey had almost been incinerated in the tithe barn fire. The new barn had been built closer to the village, so it could be better protected, and the charred timbers of the old one had been allowed to decay. Now, nothing remained, ' apart from one or two ivy-covered stumps and a clearing ' in the trees where it had once stood.

  Wordlessly, Bartholomew led Michael off the main path to the site of the old barn. He was beginning ' to think he must have miscalculated, when he heard f voices. One was d'Ambrey, speaking with no hint of a v Scottish accent. Peering through the trees, Bartholomew.'* saw an unwholesome creature wrapped in filthy rags, but f standing straight and tall and speaking in a firm, clear 'Ј voice. The murderous Dominica. "t D'Ambrey said something, and there were growls of agreement from others: Huw from Godwinsson, Ivo from David's, and Cecily, who looked sullen. As Bartholomew'«turned to indicate to Michael that they should withdraw and wait for Tulyet, he heard the unmistakeable click of a crossbow bolt being loaded. He spun round.

  'Ruthven!'

  Ruthven smiled, and indicated with a small flick of his crossbow that they should precede him into the midst of'* Simon d'Ambrey's meeting.

  D'Ambrey scowled when he saw Ruthven's captives.

  'Where did you find these gentlemen?'

  'Listening to you from the bushes over there,' said Ruthven with a toss of his head. He poked at Bartholomew with his weapon and indicated that he and Michael should sit on the grass.

  'Well, we can do nothing until nightfall, anyway,' said d'Ambrey with a shrug. 'I would like Huw to return to Valence Marie and find out from Will what is happening about my hand.' He turned to Bartholomew and Michael, and smiled. 'Given long enough, I might be made a saint, do you think? Perhaps a fine abbey built around my shrine?'

  'I doubt it,' said Michael. 'Although people do seem to worship the oddest things.' He smiled guilelessly back at d'Ambrey, ignoring Bartholomew's warning kick.

  D'Ambrey saw Bartholomew's reaction, however. 'I see you seek to caution your friend, lest he moves me to anger, Doctor,' he said. 'You have doubtless seen many forms of madness since you have become a physician. Well, you have no need to look for any such signs in me. I am as sane as you. Angry, perhaps. Betrayed, certainly. And vengeful. But most assuredly not mad.'

  He smiled in a way that made Bartholomew seriously doubt it. The only hope for him and Michael, he realised, was that one of the messages that they had left for Tulyet would reach him, especially the one with the guards at the gate. He prayed that the Sheriff would not be waylaid into helping Thorpe search for the missing relic.

  D'Ambrey sat on a tree stump and smiled beatifically.

  Even with his accent and friar-like demeanour gone, Bartholomew felt the man still had a peculiarly saintly air about him.

  'You are wondering what made me change,' he said, looking from one to the other of his captives. 'I was loved by the people. My brother and sister adored me.

  And then my brother betrayed me. He stole the treasure I had collected for the poor and flaunted it by wearing it around the town. People thought I had given it to him and turned against me. I ran to the woman I had always liked best for sanctuary. But she betrayed me too. She told her betrothed where I was and he came to kill me.'

  'No!' Cecily rose from where she had been sitting, uncomfortable and bedraggled, on the grass. 'You know I did not betray you! I saw smoke coming from the barn and ran back to warn you, but it was already too late. I thought it was a terrible accident, not murder!'

  'But you did not try to look for me after the blaze,' said d'Ambrey, with quiet reason. 'You were quick to assume i I was dead.'

  'But the barn was an inferno! ' wailed Cecily desperately, moving towards him, arms outstretched. 'No one could '' have survived! Even the nails melted from the heat!' | 'And then you married the man who brought about i my death,' continued d'Ambrey relentlessly. 'And you i allowed him to bring up my daughter as his own child. Jf You did not even keep the rings I gave you. Somehow.3 one of them ended up on a shabby little student at my own hostel and I had to go to all manner of contortions to get it back to adorn my relic at Valence Marie.'

  'Dominica gave it to him,' protested Cecily. 'I kept both rings close to my heart for twenty-five years. I only gave one to Bartholomew recently because I thought he might, be able to use it to catch Dominica's killer.'

  'I did no such thing, father,' said Dominica disdain-; fully. 'She and Thomas Lydgate were far too mean to: give me jewellery to dispense with as I pleased. She ' is lying!'

  'I think you did give it to Jamie, Dominica,' said Ruthven uncertainly. 'He said you did.'

  'My Dominica has no cause to lie,' said d'Ambrey, somewhat rashly, since it was clear
to everyone in the clearing that she had every reason to stretch the truth.

  Cecily gazed at her daughter in mute appeal, and Bartholomew found he could not watch.

  'Those rings belonged to my parents,' said d'Ambrey sternly. 'My father had them made to match my mother's blue-green eyes. They are not baubles to be dispensed to any snotty-nosed scholar who wanted one, especially a lad like James Kenzie, who was so careless. First he let John steal it and then he lost the false one I replaced it with while he was brawling on the High Street.'

  'But I kept them safe! ' shrieked Cecily. 'I did! Dominica stole them from me to give to her paramour!'

  D'Ambrey turned from her and made a quick gesture to Ruthven. There was a swish and a thump. Ruthven was reloading his crossbow with a new quarrel before the shocked Bartholomew could act. Cecily looked at d'Ambrey in horror, her hands clawing at the bolt that protruded from her chest. Her bulbous eyes popped out even further as she sank on to the grass.

  Bartholomew made to go towards her.

  'Leave her!' d'Ambrey snapped, his gentle tones vanished.

  'She deserves to die.'

  Bartholomew looked at him in revulsion. 'Why?'

  'She has served her purpose,' said d'Ambrey with a shrug. 'I only brought her into the plot at the last minute because she had hidden away her family jewels so well that neither Edred nor Dominica could find them. She kindly brought them — Dominica's inheritance — a few moments ago, although they are a little fire-damaged. But I do not want her slowing us down when we leave tonight. We will need to move fast if we*‹ want to escape.'

  'I can give her something to ease the pain,' said Bartholomew, reaching for his bag and flipping it open.

  'You will leave her alone,' d'Ambrey repeated, looking inside the bag with interest. 'You have my Galen, I see. A little late, perhaps, but I am pleased to have it back.'

  Before Bartholomew could reply, d'Ambrey had plucked the tome from the bag, and was sitting with it on his knees.

  He saw immediately where Gray had torn the covers away and shook his head slowly, fingering the damage with sadness in his face.

  'Is this the way scholars treat their books? Would you do this, eh, Ruthven?'

  Ruthven came to peer over d'Ambrey's shoulder, look-. ing at the torn cover. 'Was this where the documents were hidden?' he asked.

  D'Ambrey nodded. 'I tried several times to get this "‹ back,' he said to Bartholomew. 'But if I sent someone | to search your room, you would have it in your bag, and ' when I waylaid you on the High Street, you had left it in ^ your room. And then, when I simply asked you for it, you ^ offered to return it immediately!' v› 'My father wrote that book,' said Ruthven with pride.*| 'What was his name?' asked Michael. ^ 'No one you would know, Brother,' said d'Ambrey. 'Just a scholar I helped many years ago. You should empathise, Doctor, for he was a man whose revolutionary medical ideas gave rise to an accusation of heresy. I gave him ' money to flee to Scotland to safety. He remembered me, unlike so many, and told his son, already a student here, to help me in my revenge against the town.'

  'It seems you have engineered quite a plot against the; town, Master d'Ambrey,' said Michael, knowing that as soon as d'Ambrey grew tired of them, he and Bartholomew would go the same way as Cecily. They had to try to keep him talking until Tulyet arrived. 'Perhaps you would care to entertain us with the details.'

  D'Ambrey looked pleased. 'Shall I start at the beginning, then?' he asked sweetly. At Michael's nod, he settled himself comfortably and beamed around at his audience. 'Well, to take you back twenty-five years, I fled the burning barn and sought safety near the river. I was not the only abandoned soul that night. A lad named Norbert was also fleeing that horrible little village. We joined forces and lived rough for several days. He told me what you had done for him and it did much to cheer me, Bartholomew. We exchanged our plans of revenge me on the town, him on the village — and he confided his plans to become an archer at Dover Castle.'

  'Oh, no!' said Bartholomew suddenly, an uneasy feeling uncoiling in his stomach. 'It was you! You killed Norbert!

  It was his skeleton we found in the Ditch after all!'

  He gazed, horrified, at d'Ambrey, who smiled back at him, unperturbed by his distress. 'I am afraid you are right. But it was all a dreadful mistake. You see, one night, Norbert disappeared, and I assumed that he had gone to fetch soldiers. I was desperate to stop him and caught him near the Ditch where my brother had died. I slipped up behind him and stoved in his skull with a stone.

  He hadjust enough breath, before he died, to tell me that he was going to burgle a house to steal me a new cloak for our journey south together. I have been sorry about Norbert ever since,' he finished, looking wistfully at the crushed grass at his feet.

  Bartholomew felt sick. The messages he had received had been forged by d'Ambrey, and the copies in the back of the book kept so he would not forget the lies told.

  Bartholomew had released Norbert from Trumpington, only for him to fall into the hands of a murderer.

  D'Ambrey's eyes were guilelessly wide. 'I sent Bartholomew letters — signed with the name of Norbert's sister so as not to get him into trouble with his family so that he would not fret about the welfare of his young friend. It was a simple act of kindness.'

  Bartholomew gazed at him with renewed awe. Such dishonesty surely could not be considered kindness? He wondered afresh at d'Ambrey's sanity. The man sat, still dressed in his friar's habit, smiling benevolently down at them like a beloved old grandfather. Yet he had ordered Cecily's brutal murder without a moment's hesitation.

  'And you needed somewhere to hide these letters,' said Michael. 'Where better than the Galen? The book was never used by David's students because none of them were studying medicine. It would have been difficult to hide them otherwise — hostels are notorious for their lack of privacy.'

  D'Ambrey nodded. 'You have it, Brother. Scholars are naturally curious and I did not want them poking about in my belongings and finding the letters. The Galen was a perfect hiding place until Radbeche lent it to you!

  But we digress.' He gave a huge sigh, and continued.

  'It was my intention that Norbert's skeleton should be dredged from the Ditch and revered as mine at Valence Marie, assuming it had not washed away. But, ironically, it was you who prevented that, Doctor, by saying it was too small.'

  'How could you know your brother's skeleton would not be dredged up?' asked Michael. 'Or his and Norbert's?'

  'The Ditch was in flood the night my brother died,' said d'Ambrey. 'His body was washed a long way downstream.

  When I killed Norbert, the Ditch was low. The water did not cover him, and so I buried him in the mud at the bottom.'

  'And then you went to Dover,' said Bartholomew, unsteadily.

  'I did indeed,' said d'Ambrey, 'I went in pursuit of my fleeing household — as did the three burgesses from the town. It was easy to follow them, and I disguised myself as a travelling priest.'

  Bartholomew closed his eyes in despair. 'And I suppose it was you who started the fire in which all those people died, your household included.'

  D'Ambrey smiled. 'It was nothing,' he said modestly.

  'An oven left burning in a baker's shop when it should have been doused for the night; a specially prepared pie that would ensure my household slept through any alarms that might have been raised before the fire was underway. '

  'Dozens of innocent people died in that blaze,' said Bartholomew, appalled, 'not just members of your household.'

  'It could not be helped,' said d'Ambrey. 'And I am sure you will understand my need for revenge after what had happened to me.'

  'But how did you manage to make the burgesses believe that your brother was among the casualties?' asked Michael. 'His body was never recovered.'

  'Never recovered?' queried d'Ambrey. 'On what grounds do you base such an assumption? Believe me, my brother's body lies in the grave that is marked with his name. I could not allow it to be found when all believed it was me
who had died in the Ditch that day. Norbert helped me search for it and, when I assumed my disguise as a priest, I hid it in the portable altar I carried on my cart.'

  'And then you left his body for the burgesses to find after the fire,' said Bartholomew.

  'Exactly. I had to disguise the wound in his throat, but that was easy enough with all that falling timber.

  The whole affair was expertly brought to a satisfactory conclusion. I even heard later that the worthy burgesses were suspected of starting the fire themselves,' he added with a chuckle.

  'But how could you know that the Ditch would be dredged at such an opportune time?' asked Michael, shifting uncomfortably on the sodden ground.

  'Think!' said d'Ambrey with chiding patience. 'It was mainly Thorpe who set the scheme in motion in the first place: Will mentioned the money that might be made if the relics of Simon d'Ambrey were to be found by Valence Marie. Thorpe needed little encouragement once that seed was sown. I wonder what happened to that hand…'

  He thought for a moment before resuming. 'I returned here two months ago and secured myself a place at David's. Ruthven's father sent a letter of recommendation, along with the name of a friar — recently deceased — whose identity I could assume. It was an excellent idea.

  After all, who would suspect an elderly Scottish friar? Any lapses in my theological knowledge would merely be put down to my nationality.'

  Ruthven looked at him sharply and fingered his crossbow.

  But d'Ambrey was oblivious to Ruthven's patriotic ire and continued with his tale.

  'I had settled in nicely by the time term had started; I had secured the help of people who owed me favours Will, Henry and Jacob, who now work at Valence Marie;

  Huw and Saul Potter of Godwinsson; even Master Bigod of Maud's owes me a small favour — you see, I once loaned him the money to pay a hag to rid one of his mistresses of an unwanted child. Bigod was always one for the women, as Cecily will attest.'