‘Robert will not let anything happen to them,’ said Appletre, although Bartholomew thought he really was insane if he thought there was an ounce of pity or compassion in the man he had chosen to serve. Robert would be more than happy to be rid of a lot of monks who did not like him and start afresh with new ones.
‘Work,’ ordered Nonton, prodding the physician with a sword.
Seeing he was wasting his breath, Bartholomew did as he was told, hoping Michael could devise a plan, for his own mind was horribly blank. He dawdled, playing for time, but Nonton guessed what he was doing and lashed out with a kick. Bartholomew staggered, and the knife dropped from his sleeve. Michael pretended to stumble in order to conceal it, and there was a hollow thud as his knees struck the ground. Appletre, Nonton and the defensores strained forward eagerly. They had reached Oxforde’s coffin.
‘Out, Bartholomew,’ ordered Nonton. ‘Appletre will take over now.’
‘Me?’ asked the precentor in distaste. ‘Why not you?’
‘Because I am better at controlling mutinous physicians,’ replied Nonton savagely.
Rolling his eyes, Appletre indicated that Bartholomew should be hauled out, and took his place. It did not take him long to clear the remaining soil from the lid, while Michael stood at the far end of the hole, out of the way.
‘Look at the number of nails that were used to seal the casket,’ the precentor murmured. ‘People must have been terrified that Oxforde would escape.’
‘Do not bother prising them out,’ instructed Nonton. ‘Smash the wood.’
‘The kitchen is alight!’ exclaimed Bartholomew suddenly.
Appletre stood. ‘He is right, Nonton. Perhaps we had better raise the alarm and come back to this later, because that is a building I should not like to lose.’
‘We are almost there,’ argued Nonton. ‘A few more moments will make no difference. Break the wood with the edge of the spade. Hurry!’
Avarice and curiosity won out; Appletre turned his attention back to the coffin. He raised the spade and brought it down hard. Nothing happened, so he did it again. Something cracked, and he exchanged an excited grin with Nonton before striking a third time. Bartholomew eased towards Michael and dropped to a crouch, feigning exhaustion. When everyone’s eyes were fixed on Appletre, the monk quickly tossed the knife to Bartholomew.
‘Use it well,’ he murmured. ‘Then run. Do not worry about me.’
‘No! I cannot leave you to—’
‘Run from this place and do not stop until you are safe. Someone must survive to tell the Bishop what really happened, or Robert and his henchmen are going to win. That will be my vengeance. Now go.’
Bartholomew clambered to his feet and braced himself for a sprint, but one of the defensores moved to stand between him and the cemetery gate, his eyes sharp and watchful.
‘This is taking too long,’ said Nonton impatiently, as Appletre’s battering became more exasperated and less efficient. He pointed at Michael. ‘You do it.’
Michael made a show of gripping the spade for an almighty swipe, aiming to snag the defensores’ attention, but the one guarding Bartholomew was too professional to be distracted. He continued to watch his prisoner, even when the wood shattered. Michael bent to rip away the broken pieces, but still the fellow’s gaze did not waver. Bartholomew ground his teeth in impotent frustration.
‘There is nothing here but bones!’ cried Appletre in dismay. ‘Bartholomew was lying. Kill him, Nonton. He has made fools of us.’
‘The treasure is beneath the coffin,’ said Bartholomew quickly, when Nonton raised his sword. ‘Obviously.’
‘Why obviously?’ demanded the cellarer.
‘Because Oxforde put the treasure down there himself, of course,’ explained Bartholomew acidly. ‘It is not going to be on top of his body, is it?’
‘Look at the hospital roof,’ said one defensor anxiously. ‘And the kitchen will be also lost unless we do something soon.’
‘In a moment.’ Nonton was not interested, all his attention on the grave.
‘Robert is deranged from living in the wild for weeks on end,’ said Bartholomew, fabricating wildly. ‘He is no longer rational. You cannot follow his—’
‘Enough!’ snapped Nonton. ‘Shut up, or I will kill you now.’
‘Do it,’ said Appletre. ‘We will have the hoard soon, and he is no longer of use to us.’
Nonton took a step towards Bartholomew, but another cheer from the hospital distracted him. A movement made them both turn – it was Robert leaving the building. Bartholomew frowned in confusion when the Abbot secured the door behind him with a bar. Then his stomach lurched when he recalled Appletre saying that the market-side entrance would also be locked, to exclude gatecrashers from the town.
‘He is going to leave them in there,’ he breathed, appalled. ‘To burn!’
He felt rather than saw Nonton’s sword flash towards him, and only just managed to duck away. The watchful defensor grabbed his arms and held him while Nonton took aim a second time, but a clod of earth struck the cellarer in the back and made him stagger.
‘My apologies,’ said Michael. ‘Hah! Come and look. We are almost there.’
Nonton nodded that the defensor was to keep hold of Bartholomew, and stepped towards the grave. Bones were flying out, along with pieces of shattered coffin, as Appletre worked with manic excitement.
‘Christ!’ said one soldier uneasily, holding up a piece of lid to show that the inside was scored with scratches. ‘Oxforde tried to claw his way out.’
‘The Devil raised him,’ cried Michael suddenly. ‘And anyone touching his grave will be cursed, so we had better run to the chapel to—’
‘Superstition,’ declared Nonton savagely when the defensores looked as though they might do it. ‘Ignore him. He is just trying to frighten you.’
The soldiers continued to edge away, but surged back when Appletre gave a loud whoop and catapulted to his feet, clutching a handful of glittering metal. He tossed it high into the air with a shriek of delight, and it rained down all around them.
It was now or never. While everyone’s attention was on the falling treasure, Bartholomew plunged the knife into his captor’s hip. While the fellow screamed in pain, the physician swung a wild punch at Nonton and knocked him cold.
Michael had not been slow to react either, and had dealt Appletre an almighty blow to the chin with the spade. Bartholomew started to run, but the defensores were after him in a trice and there were too many to outrun. While three held him down, the one he had wounded hobbled forward, dagger at the ready.
‘Look!’ yelled Michael, brandishing a fistful of treasure at them. ‘Rings, bracelets, brooches! But this is as close as you will ever come to it.’
‘What do you mean?’ demanded the injured defensor, swivelling around to look at him just as Bartholomew felt the cold touch of steel against his neck.
‘It will be used to rebuild the abbey, and every penny will be needed, because the stables are alight now, too.’
The defensores exchanged looks, but the wounded one shook his head. ‘You are wrong. Robert will pay us.’
‘Yes, but this is more than pay,’ coaxed Michael. ‘This is an opportunity. Take some and leave. You can live lives of luxury with all the women, wine and—’
He flinched back as two soldiers jumped into the grave with him and began stuffing gold into their tunics. Eager not to miss out, their cronies hastened to join them. The wounded man opened his mouth to order them back, but Bartholomew aimed a kick at the damaged hip that sent him sprawling, his face contorted in agony.
Bartholomew scrambled to his feet and tried to haul Michael out of the grave, but the monk was too heavy. Then Clippesby and Cynric appeared. The Dominican was pale and wild-eyed, and Bartholomew suspected he had been watching for some time, helpless to intervene. Cynric was breathing hard, though, indicating that he had only just arrived.
‘A defensor laid hold of me,’ he muttered. ‘It took a while
to escape the bastard – and I never reached the hospital.’
‘Help me!’ Bartholomew was tugging with all his might on Michael’s arm.
Cynric and Clippesby obliged, and the monk began to rise. The process dislodged the excavated earth, which began to slide back into the tomb, showering down on soldiers and treasure alike. Appletre lay motionless, but the others cursed, although none thought to abandon the hoard in order to escape the avalanche. When Michael reached the top, his scrabbling feet sent more of it cascading downwards.
‘Leave them!’ shouted Clippesby, when Cynric grabbed a spade and began shovelling for all he was worth, determined to avenge himself on the men who had tried to burn him alive. ‘We must save the people in the hospital.’
Bartholomew glanced at the flames that now danced over the roof, and recalled what it had been like in the granary as it had ignited and smoke had seared his lungs. He started towards the chapel, but Michael caught his arm.
‘Wait! We need a plan. Robert will order you shot if you just race up to—’
‘William is in there,’ Bartholomew shouted, trying to shrug him off.
‘You will be killed before you are halfway to the door,’ gasped Cynric. He was still frantically shovelling soil, drawing furious yells from the defensores below.
In an agony of despair, Bartholomew gazed around wildly, looking for anything he might turn to his advantage. His eye lit on the treasure that Appletre had tossed up in his moment of jubilation. Michael had used it to prevent the defensores by the grave from killing him, so would the same ploy work on the others? He snatched up the biggest, gaudiest items and ran.
‘We found it!’ he yelled, waving the jewellery in the air as he tore towards the hospital.
Robert whipped around and barked an order to the defensores, but the glitter of gold had caught their attention and they did not shoot. Bartholomew shouted louder: his survival and that of William, the monks, the bedesfolk and the servants depended on him being understood.
‘Hurry if you want a share,’ he hollered. ‘Four of your friends have already left, loaded down with as much as they can carry.’
‘They would not dare steal from me,’ said Robert coldly. He turned to his men. ‘Kill him.’
Bartholomew brandished what he had taken. ‘Do you think they would let me take this if they were still here? They knew Robert would not share it. He plans to spend it all on rebuilding his abbey. Why else would he let it burn?’
He felt like screaming when the defensores still hesitated. At the end of his tether, he shoved the baubles at the nearest guard. ‘Here. There is plenty more in the grave. Help yourself, because Robert will not—’
‘Kill him,’ snarled Robert, exasperated. ‘Can you not see that he is lying?’
But the defensor who held the treasure was impressed by its weight and quality, and wanted more. He dropped his bow and began to hurry towards the cemetery. Unwilling to miss out, his cronies followed.
‘No!’ screeched Robert. ‘Come back!’
Bartholomew shoved past him and hauled open the hospital door. Immediately, people spilled out, coughing and gagging.
‘You locked us in!’ gasped William, pointing furiously at Robert. ‘And you must have known the roof was smouldering.’
‘I did not,’ stated Robert. ‘I was just coming to—’
‘Liar!’ shouted Inges. ‘We heard you order the defensores not to open the door on any account.’
‘Lay hold of him, ladies,’ ordered Hagar, and her bedeswomen surged forward. ‘We shall see what the Bishop says about abbots who leave their flock to roast.’
Robert went down in a flailing melee of arms and legs, still protesting his innocence.
The lesser obedientiaries, quick to understand what was happening, hastened to organise their bewildered brethren. Some were instructed to secure Nonton and the cemetery, while others were directed to fight the fires. Their calm but firm commands soon restored order, and it was not long before the blazes were either doused or under control.
‘It is over, Matt,’ said Michael, coming to stand next to the physician, who was trying to summon the energy to walk to where Ramseye was dispensing ale to the exhausted but victorious monks, servants and bedesfolk. ‘Nonton was stabbed by a defensor during the scrabble for the treasure, Appletre suffocated before he could be pulled out of Oxforde’s grave, and Robert is under Hagar’s watchful eye.’
‘I cannot begin to imagine how we will explain all this to the Bishop,’ said Clippesby. He had several horses and a goat in his wake, along with Henry.
‘I am sure Michael will find a way,’ said Henry. ‘And if not, I shall do it. I am not afraid to tell the truth about these wicked men.’
‘None of this would have happened if you had not buried a felon in your grounds,’ said Michael, rather accusingly.
‘In that case,’ said Henry with a seraphic smile, ‘we had better make sure we do not do it again.’
EPILOGUE
Cambridge, three days later
The journey south was uneventful, and with no robbers to repel, Bartholomew did not fall off his horse once. He breathed a sigh of relief when he saw the familiar jumble of towers and spires on the horizon, and was delighted to ride back through Michaelhouse’s sturdy gates, despite the immediate accusatory clamour from patients and students who thought he had been gone too long.
When he had seen to the more urgent cases, and the sun was setting in a blaze of orange, he went to the conclave, the room adjoining the hall that was the exclusive domain of the Fellows. They were all there: those who had stayed were keen to hear about their colleagues’ adventures, while the travellers were eager to oblige them. Cynric was there, too, serving cakes. Bartholomew took one. It was overcooked, needed salt and tasted vaguely of cabbage, but it was fare he was used to, and there was something comfortingly reassuring about it after the fine tables of Peterborough.
Michael came to slump next to him. ‘I should never have gone,’ he said bitterly. ‘My Junior Proctor not only wrote and published Winwick Hall’s charter, he gave its founder permission to start building. The place is half finished already, and will open next term.’
‘Next term?’ asked Bartholomew, startled. ‘That is fast.’
‘Yes, considering these things usually take years – decades, even. It has caused a lot of ill feeling: the other Colleges object to this cuckoo in their midst, the hostels resent its brazen affluence, and the town is angry that they were not consulted.’
‘What will you do? Order it demolished?’
‘I wish I could, but the founder is a favourite of the King, so Winwick Hall is here to stay. There have already been riots over it, including one last night in which a student was killed. I shall need you to inspect his body tomorrow, then help me find the culprit.’
‘It is good to be home,’ declared William, just as Bartholomew was wondering whether he might have been wiser to stay away. ‘Heresy and wickedness have flourished in my absence, and I shall have to work hard to suppress them again.’
‘Do not forget the reason you were sent away in the first place,’ warned Michael. ‘So watch what you say – unless you want to be dispatched on another journey.’
William closed his mouth abruptly.
‘Cambridge may have its drawbacks,’ said Clippesby quietly. ‘But I would rather live here than anywhere else. At least no one labours under the misapprehension that I am a saint.’
‘No,’ agreed William sullenly.
‘The College cat could scarcely credit such foolery when I told her about it,’ Clippesby went on. The animal in question was purring in his lap. ‘You see? She is still stunned now.’
‘You are not the only one who was perceived as something he was not,’ said Langelee. ‘So was Spalling. He had fiery ideas, but he did not really believe in them.’
‘He was a villain,’ spat Cynric. He did not usually voice his opinions in the hallowed confines of the conclave, where only Fellows ever spoke, but Spalli
ng’s perfidy still rankled, and he could not help himself. ‘Yet there will be a great rebellion one day, when everything he promised will come to pass.’
‘I sincerely hope you are wrong,’ said Langelee fervently. ‘But before we leave the subject of Spalling, I should tell you that I did not know him after all. We got together with dates and places one night, and it turned out that it was another Spalling I met in York. Not him. No wonder he did not look familiar.’
Bartholomew blinked. ‘You mean you imposed yourself on a total stranger?’
Langelee shrugged. ‘I knew him by the time we realised the mistake.’
William laughed. ‘I must remember that one, Master, because it saw you housed and fed most sumptuously.’
‘But not as sumptuously as us,’ said Michael. ‘Those monks knew how to cater to their personal comforts. Of course, those days are over now that most of the obedientiaries are in one kind of trouble or another.’
‘Or dead,’ added William, rather gleefully. He began to list them. ‘Welbyrn the treasurer, drowned in St Leonard’s well; Appletre the precentor, smothered in Oxforde’s tomb; and Nonton the cellarer, knifed during an unseemly spat over gold. And their helpmeets Spalling and Lullington killed into the bargain.’
‘And poor Pyk sacrificed on the altar of their greed,’ said Michael. ‘Not to mention Lady Lullington and Reginald.’
‘But none of them poisoned Matt,’ said Clippesby with a guileless smile. ‘That was William’s doing.’
‘It was not deliberate,’ insisted the Franciscan, flushing red with mortification. ‘I was trying to help.’
‘There is a certain irony in the fact that Oxforde’s treasure was in their own abbey,’ said Langelee, more interested in the hoard than the friar’s protestations of innocence – he had listened to them all the way back from Peterborough, because although Bartholomew was prepared to overlook the matter, Michael was not, and had harped on it constantly. ‘Robert wasted an entire month digging up Aurifabro’s land.’
The Lost Abbot: 19 (The Chronicles of Matthew Bartholomew) Page 33
