The Killer Of Pilgrims: The Sixteenth Chronicle of Matthew Bartholomew (The Chronicles of Matthew Bartholomew)

by Gregory, Susanna

  ‘It was a badge from the Holy Land,’ came the agitated voice. ‘Not a brooch.’

  Bartholomew followed Etone outside, relieved to be spared the awkwardness of pretending that he had been touched by what he had been shown, when the reality was that he had felt nothing at all. Perhaps God did consider him a disciple of Satan, he thought uneasily, and his constant flying in the face of all that was orthodox had finally been too much. It was not a comfortable notion.

  Michael was standing in the yard with the four pilgrims they had seen earlier – two men and two nuns. All looked angry.

  ‘What is the matter?’ demanded Etone, hobbling towards them. ‘What has happened?’

  ‘Brazen robbery,’ declared one of the pilgrims, turning to face him. He was a thickset man with an unhealthy complexion that said he was probably ill. His hat and cloak bore more pilgrim insignia than Bartholomew had ever seen on a single person, and he imagined the fellow must have spent half his life visiting shrines, because besides the distinctive ampoules of Canterbury and St Peter’s keys from Rome, at least two suggested he had been to Jerusalem, as well.

  ‘Robbery?’ repeated Etone uneasily. ‘Not in my priory, Master Poynton.’

  ‘Yes, here!’ declared Poynton heatedly. ‘One of my badges has been stolen. It was pinned to my saddlebag, and now it has gone.’

  ‘I saw it happen,’ added one of the nuns. ‘I saw the signaculum snatched with my own eyes.’

  ‘So did I,’ added the second nun. ‘The villain aimed straight for it, and ripped it away. He did not even look at our purses.’

  ‘Signacula are extremely valuable,’ snapped Poynton. ‘Especially that one. It was gold – a cross from the Holy Land, no less.’

  ‘What was it doing on your saddlebag, then?’ asked Bartholomew, before he could stop himself. But it was a fair question: an item of such worth should have been treated with more care.

  ‘Because there is no more room on my clothes,’ snarled Poynton, rounding on him. ‘And these items are meant to be seen, so everyone will know of the great journeys I have undertaken for the sake of my body and my soul. Who are you, anyway?’

  While Bartholomew thought Poynton’s body and soul must be in a very poor state indeed, if they required quite so many acts of penance, Etone introduced him. Then he indicated the pilgrims.

  ‘Master Poynton is a merchant,’ he said. ‘Hugh Fen is a pardoner, while Agnes and Margaret Neel are nuns of my own Order. They were both married to the same man.’

  ‘But not at the same time,’ added one of the nuns hastily. They were both short, middle-aged and plump, and in their identical habits, were difficult to tell apart.

  ‘A pardoner,’ said Michael, regarding Fen with distaste. He detested pardoners – men who peddled indulgences and relics to the desperate. Fen, however, looked a cut above his fellows. He was a tall, handsome man with a neat black beard, and if he had undertaken lots of pilgrimages, he did not advertise the fact by covering himself with tokens. He bowed politely to Michael, revealing fine white teeth in a smile, although he must have detected the disapproval in the monk’s voice.

  ‘He makes a fine living from it,’ said Poynton. ‘There is much money to be made from pilgrims.’

  ‘I hope so,’ muttered Etone. He smiled ingratiatingly at the merchant. ‘Brother Michael will retrieve your cross, Master Poynton, never fear. He is our Senior Proctor, and very good at investigating crimes that occur on University property.’

  ‘I am good,’ agreed Michael immodestly. ‘But I do not see how I shall solve this one. All you can tell me is that the thief wore a green tunic, but I shall need more than that if I am to succeed.’

  ‘He dashed in from the street,’ said Poynton, bristling with anger at the memory. ‘It happened so fast that I only had a glimpse of him. Damned villain!’

  ‘He had bright yellow hair,’ said Fen helpfully. ‘Lots of it.’

  ‘Yellow hair?’ asked Bartholomew, looking sharply at him. ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘It cannot be the same man you chased, Matt,’ said Michael in a low voice. ‘He fled the town, and Heslarton is now hot on his heels. He is unlikely to have returned within a couple of hours and committed a second offence.’

  ‘Why not?’ Bartholomew whispered back. ‘If Heslarton is scouring the Chesterton road, then Cambridge is as safe a place as any to hide. Here, there are crowds to disappear into.’

  ‘I accept that,’ said Michael. ‘But the operative word here is hide. If he did return, he will be lying low, not drawing attention to himself by stealing from pilgrims.’

  Bartholomew shrugged. ‘If you say so. But it is an odd coincidence.’

  When Prior Etone changed the subject from theft to shrines, Bartholomew took his leave, unwilling to be asked in front of quite so many devout penitents whether he had been struck by the sanctity of Simon Stock’s scapular. He muttered something about patients, and continued with his rounds. He visited a student with stomach pains, then aimed for Michaelhouse, eager to spend at least some time teaching before the day ended – it was already mid-afternoon.

  He was walking down St Michael’s Lane, pondering a lecture he was to give on the theories of Maimonides the following day, when he became aware that his path was blocked by a wall of men. Academic thoughts flew from his mind when he recognised Principal Kendale and the scholars of Chestre Hostel.

  Chestre was located not far from Michaelhouse, so the two foundations’ paths often crossed. Michaelhouse’s Fellows were mostly sensible, sober men, who took care to ensure the encounters were amiable, but the same could not be said for their students. Ever since Kendale’s trick had seen a College man gored by a bull, they had taken to bawling insults at Chestre. There had been no physical fighting so far, but Bartholomew sensed it would not be long in coming.

  That day, Chestre’s scholars had ranged themselves across the alley in such a way that no one could pass. Kendale was in the middle, distinctive with his braided hair and sturdy bulk. He was a philosopher, with exciting ideas about mathematics and natural philosophy, and Bartholomew had been impressed when he had heard him in the debating chamber.

  ‘You are in our way, Michaelhouse,’ Kendale said coldly. ‘You had better retrace your steps.’

  Bartholomew was half tempted to do as he suggested, just to avoid a confrontation, but was aware that if the same tactic was then tried on Michaelhouse’s students, there would be a fight for certain. With a stifled sigh of resignation – he did not want to bandy words with Chestre when he could be teaching – he adopted his most reasonable tone of voice.

  ‘This is no way to behave,’ he said quietly. ‘Why not live peacefully, and take advantage of—’

  ‘Peacefully?’ sneered Chestre’s Bible Scholar, a man named Neyll. He was a bulky, pugilistic Scot in his early twenties, with dark hair and curious black eyebrows that formed a thick, unbroken line across his forehead. There was something about him that reminded Bartholomew of an ape, and he could not imagine a fellow less suited to the task of daily scripture reading. ‘You mean to lull us into a false sense of safety, so the Colleges can slit our throats while we sleep!’

  ‘No one means you harm,’ said Bartholomew, although he suspected that the bull incident might well have changed that. ‘And it is—’

  ‘All College scum mean us harm,’ Neyll flashed back. ‘But they will never best us.’

  Bartholomew declined to be drawn. He smiled at Kendale and tried a different tack. ‘I enjoyed your lecture the other day. Your contention that non-uniformly accelerated motion is—’

  ‘I was wasting my breath,’ said Kendale disdainfully. ‘No one at the Colleges has the wits to understand my analyses. I might just have well have been speaking Greek.’

  ‘You could have done,’ retorted Bartholomew coolly. There was only so far he would allow himself to be insulted. ‘Many of us would still have followed your reasoning.’

  ‘Liar!’ snarled Neyll, raising his fists as he stalked forward. ‘I am going
to give you a—’

  ‘Hold, Chestre!’ came a loud, belligerent yell.

  Bartholomew glanced around and saw a group of Michaelhouse students returning from a sermon in St Bene’t’s Church. They outnumbered Kendale’s lads by at least two to one, and Neyll’s aggressive advance immediately faltered. At their head was John Valence, Bartholomew’s best pupil, a freckle-faced lad with floppy fair hair.

  ‘We were just discussing Kendale’s lecture on the mean speed theorem,’ said Bartholomew quickly, before there was trouble. ‘But we have finished now, and it is time to go home.’

  Valence did not look convinced, but began to walk towards Michaelhouse anyway, beckoning his cronies to follow. Neyll was ‘accidentally’ jostled as they passed, and his dark eyebrows drew down in a savage V, but he was not so reckless as to voice an objection.

  ‘You are a warlock, Bartholomew,’ hissed Kendale, as the physician turned to leave, too. ‘And a heretic – not the sort of man who should be teaching in any university. I will see you ousted.’

  Bartholomew ignored him, but was relieved when he reached the sanctuary afforded by Michaelhouse’s sturdy gates.

  ‘At least we know where we are again now,’ said Walter, the College’s surly porter, after he had opened the gate and Bartholomew had remarked sadly that the recent peace seemed to be crumbling. ‘I did not like everyone being nice to each other. It did not feel right.’

  ‘You mean you prefer to be constantly on the brink of a riot?’ asked Bartholomew archly.

  Walter nodded, unabashed. ‘Of course I do. It means I can suspect everyone of evil intent, which is much more satisfying than sickly cordiality. And the trouble is only within the University anyway – the town is quite happy to sit back and watch us squabble among ourselves this time.’

  He picked up his pet peacock and hugged it. It crooned and nestled against him. Bartholomew had always been surprised by the relationship between porter and bird, because both were sour tempered and inclined to be solitary.

  ‘Incidentally, the uncanny calm in the town is Emma de Colvyll’s doing,’ Walter went on when Bartholomew made no reply. ‘She has driven the other criminals out of business, see.’

  ‘She is not a criminal,’ said Bartholomew. ‘She is a businesswoman.’

  ‘She is a criminal,’ asserted Walter firmly. ‘She may not go around burgling and robbing, but there are other ways to deprive a man of his wealth. She is deeply wicked, and I dislike the fact that my College accepted her charity.’

  He scowled into the yard. Scaffolding swathed the building where Bartholomew lived, and he was alarmed when he saw most of the roof tiles had been removed since he had gone out. If it rained – and the sky was ominously dark – the rooms beneath would be drenched. He hoped the workmen knew what they were doing.

  ‘It will not be for long,’ he said, wincing when a carelessly placed strut slithered off the roof to land with an almighty crash that reverberated around the whole College. The peacock issued one of its piercing shrieks in reply. The mason imitated it, and his workmates guffawed uproariously. None of them could be seen, because they were all on the far side of the roof – the section that overlooked the gardens at the back. ‘The repairs will soon be finished.’

  ‘The repairs will soon be finished,’ agreed Walter, hugging his bird more tightly. ‘But the debt will last for ever, and it will not be long before Emma starts demanding payment. And I do not refer to money. She will want other things.’ His voice dropped meaningfully. ‘Like services.’

  Bartholomew frowned, puzzled. ‘Yes, she has asked for services. The priests among us have agreed to say masses for her husband’s soul, while Master Langelee ordered me to tend her—’

  ‘I do not mean prayers and medicine,’ interrupted Walter impatiently. ‘I mean other things. She will be asking for dubious favours soon. I tell you, it is not a good idea to do business with her, even if she is making us watertight. Which I seriously doubt.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ asked Bartholomew. ‘The workmen seem to be doing well enough.’

  ‘The mason – Yffi – is careless and shoddy. Take this morning, for example. He arrived at dawn, and has been labouring ever since. Look at how much he has done.’

  Bartholomew looked at the roof, trying to understand Walter’s point. ‘His apprentices have removed all the old tiles, and he has laid two rows of new ones. He has achieved a lot.’

  ‘Exactly!’ pounced Walter. ‘A good mason would have taken twice as long. The roof will leak again as soon as he leaves, and all this chaos and upheaval will have been for nothing. And we shall have Emma de Colvyll after us for dark favours.’

  Bartholomew left, hoping Walter was wrong, then stood for a moment, looking around him. His College comprised a handsome stone-built hall, with two accommodation wings set at right angles to it. He lived in the northern wing, the older and shabbier of the pair, where he occupied two chambers – a large one he shared with his students, and a cupboard-like space that was used for storing the accoutrements necessary for his work as a physician.

  There was just enough space in the little room for a mattress, and he had taken to sleeping there following an incident involving missing potions the previous term: he felt people were less likely to help themselves to what were some very dangerous substances if he was present. The smell had been uncomfortable to begin with, but he had quickly grown used to it, and his students were pleased to have the additional space in the main chamber.

  He started to walk again, but had not gone far before he was intercepted by Robert de Blaston, the carpenter. Blaston, his wife Yolande and their fourteen children were Bartholomew’s patients, and he had known them for years. Blaston was a conscientious, talented craftsman, who would never be rich because he was too honest. Bartholomew was fond of him, and considered him a rare ray of integrity in a town that was mostly out for its own ends.

  ‘I do not know about that roof,’ Blaston said, shaking his head in disapproval. ‘Yffi has not used enough battens, and I doubt the ones he has put up are thick enough to support a structure of that weight – tiles are heavy.’

  Bartholomew was no builder, but could see that Blaston had a point – the wooden frame Yffi had constructed did appear too flimsy. ‘I will speak to the Master about it.’

  He aimed for the hall straight away. Blaston’s concerns had made him uneasy: Emma’s thriftiness, combined with the natural skimming that went along with any building project, meant corners were going to be cut. And that might prove dangerous to Michaelhouse’s residents.

  He passed through the door bearing the founder’s coat of arms, now woefully caked in dust from the renovations, then trotted up the spiral staircase to the hall, where the day’s teaching was under way. As usual, benches had been placed to face individual masters, who then held forth to classes that ranged in size from two students to ten, depending on the subject.

  Normally, there was no problem with everyone being in the same room – the Fellows were used to lecturing at the same time as their colleagues, and the students were used to tuning out other lessons to attend to their own – but that day they were obliged to contend with the workmen, too. This included not only rattling pulleys, assorted crashes and hammering, but the manly banter that went along with them. Closing the window shutters would have eliminated some of the racket, but then lamps would have been needed, and fuel was far too costly to squander in such a way.

  ‘Blaston and Walter are worried about the quality of Yffi’s work,’ Bartholomew murmured in Langelee’s ear as he passed, en route to his own class. ‘And so am I.’

  The Master of Michaelhouse was a burly man with a barrel chest. He looked more like a wrestler than a philosopher, and was not a talented academic. He had been the Archbishop of York’s henchman before deciding on an academic career, and remarks he had let slip about his duties indicated he had not been employed in any capacity the prelate would care to have made public.

  ‘Me, too,’ said Langelee worried
ly. ‘There do not seem to be enough battens, although Yffi told me I did not know what I was talking about when I said so. Damned impertinence! But I will tackle him again when teaching is finished.’

  Bartholomew was about to leave him to his work when he noticed that one corner of the hall was empty. It was where Thelnetham, the College’s Gilbertine theologian usually taught, but his students were sitting with Michael’s pupils.

  ‘Where is Thelnetham?’ he asked. The Gilbertine was conscientious about teaching, and it was rare for him to miss a lesson.

  ‘At his friary,’ replied Langelee. ‘There is a meeting to discuss the purchase of some house or other, and he wanted to be there, to voice an opinion. I envy him. I would not have minded an excuse to miss hollering my way through the afternoon, either.’

  ‘Nor I,’ agreed Suttone, a portly Carmelite, looking up from his grammar books. ‘We shall all be after you for sore-throat remedies before the day is done, Matthew. I am already hoarse.’

  It was not long before Bartholomew appreciated what they meant. The masons were enjoying a lewd discussion about the famously creative talents of Blaston’s wife. Yolande worked as a prostitute to supplement the family income, and when Yffi began to describe some of her more innovative techniques, Bartholomew saw he was losing his class’s attention – they were all staring in open-mouthed fascination towards the roof on which the builders were working.

  ‘What does Galen say about blood that is excessively salty?’ he asked loudly, indicating that Valence should answer the question.

  But Valence was transfixed by Yffi’s description of what Yolande could do with a handful of chestnuts and a warm cloth, and it was Rob Deynman, the dim-witted librarian, who answered. Deynman had been a medical student himself, until he had been ‘promoted’ in an effort to keep him from practising on an unwary public, and prided himself on what he could remember from the many years of lessons he had attended. Unfortunately, his memory was rarely equal to his enthusiasm.