A Bone of Contention

CHAPTER 9

In the silence that followed Edred’s announcement, Bartholomew was aware of small sounds in the kitchen: Michael’s heavy breathing, a student laughing in one of the rooms, the purring of the College cat as it rubbed around his legs.

‘How do you know all this?’ asked Michael, the first to regain his tongue.

Edred studied an oatcake, then began to crumble it in his fingers. ‘On the night of the riot, I was out with some of the other students. I was only there to administer to those that might need me, and to try to stop needless fighting,’ he said, looking at Michael.

‘Of course you were,’ said Michael flatly. ‘Pray continue.’

‘Then I saw Dominica Lydgate in the company of two men. I knew she was thought to be safe in Chesterton, and so I ran back to Godwinsson to tell Master Lydgate that she was in Cambridge.’

Bartholomew nodded. That accorded with what Cecily had told him. He thought of Joanna and the uncertain light. ‘Are you certain it was Dominica? Could you have been mistaken?’

Edred looked surprised. ‘Yes, I am certain,’ he said. ‘It was Dominica I saw.’

‘Did you recognise the men she was with?’ asked Michael, looking at the small pile of crumbs on the table from Edred’s oatcake.

Edred hung his head and swallowed noisily.

‘Come now, Brother Edred,’ said Michael firmly. ‘You are safe here. Tonight you can sleep in Michaelhouse and tomorrow we will see about getting you away from Cambridge altogether. But only if you are honest with us now.’

Edred nodded miserably. ‘I thought I recognised who she was with,’ he said, ‘although I am still uncertain. I think one of the men was called Will – he is a grubby little man who works at Valence Marie and who has been trawling the King’s Ditch for relics recently. The other was his brother, Ned, who died in the riot.’

Bartholomew thought back to the bodies lying in the castle outbuilding. One may well have been Will’s brother.

He looked up to find Edred staring at him intently.

‘Master Lydgate has killed four people already. My conscience will not allow him to kill again.’

‘But what evidence do you have that he has killed these four people?’ asked Bartholomew, denying himself the satisfaction of asking the arrogant friar why his conscience only started to prick after four deaths.

Edred began to push the oatcake crumbs into a heap with his index fingers. ‘When I told Master Lydgate I had seen Dominica the night of the riot, he left to find her. He was in a rage such as I have never seen before.’ He looked up briefly. ‘And, believe me, I have witnessed a fair few of his rages during my time at Godwinsson. Anyway, after he had gone Mistress Lydgate said she was going, too. I did the only thing an honest friar could do and accompanied her.’

Michael and Bartholomew exchanged a wry look in response to the friar’s claimed motive. Edred, his attention fixed on his pyramid of crumbs, did not notice.

‘We searched for some time and then we found Dominica. But Master Lydgate had arrived before us and Dominica already lay dead. He had also killed Ned. He was standing over the bodies with his dagger dripping. Of Will there was no sign. He must have managed to escape, for I have seen him alive since.’

‘But did you actually see Lydgate kill them?’ persisted Bartholomew. Although Edred’s story corroborated Cecily’s, there remained a small thread of doubt in his mind.

Edred gave a short bark of laughter. ‘No, I did not. But a man hovering over two corpses with his dagger dripping blood? What else would you imagine had happened?

Mistress Cecily was all for rushing forward to Dominica, but I prevented her. Master Lydgate stood over his victims for a while, looked around him as though he expected the Devil to snatch him away, and then slunk off. We had seen enough. Mistress Lydgate asked me to escort her to Maud’s and I left her there. By the time I returned to the scene of the murder, Dominica’s and Ned’s bodies had been removed by the Sheriffs men.’

Michael looked at Bartholomew as he asked his next question. ‘Do you know where Cecily Lydgate is now?’

Bartholomew avoided his eyes while Edred continued.

‘I cannot say what happened after I left her at Maud’s. She did not return to Godwinsson, but apparently someone had made a terrible mess of her room – perhaps when it was searched.’

‘Searched for what?’ asked Michael.

‘Her jewellery, I suppose. It is widely known that she possesses a great deal of priceless jewellery.’

‘Was this jewellery missing after her room was searched?’ Michael asked.

Edred’s mouth lifted at one corner in a disdainful sneer. ‘Of course not. She does not keep it on display. It is all hidden away in places known only to her and Master Lydgate.’

‘Not Dominica?’ asked Bartholomew.

Again the sneer. ‘One or two places, perhaps, but not all. The Lydgates are not a trusting couple where their wealth is concerned.’

Around Edred’s neck was a delicate golden crucifix that Bartholomew had not seen him wear before. Since Edred seemed to know about Cecily’s hidden treasure, Bartholomew supposed it was not too much of a leap in logic to suppose that Edred had taken the opportunity to ransack her room himself. It would certainly explain why he had taken so long to return to the scene of Dominica’s murder – long enough so that the Sheriff had removed the body – after he had seen Cecily safely to Maud’s Hostel.

‘The day after all this, you went to the Castle to identify the body of the Godwinsson friar who died during the riot, did you not?’ asked Bartholomew. ‘In the company of Master Lydgate?’

Edred nodded. ‘Several students were missing after the riot and Master Lydgate wanted to see whether any of the dead were ours. Two were: the friar and the French student. The friar’s head was crushed but we saw the scar on his knee where he was injured at the Battle of Crécy. Or so he always claimed. Master Lydgate insisted on viewing all the dead, although I only looked at ours.’

Bartholomew caught Michael’s eye, wondering if he would consider this evidence that Lydgate had been looking for Dominica among the dead. Except that now Bartholomew was no longer certain whom Lydgate had been seeking – or even which of the women had lain dead in the makeshift Castle mortuary. Edred went back to his pile of crumbs.

‘Now, tell us why you also think Lydgate killed Werbergh?’ asked Michael, leaning back in his chair and folding his arms across his considerable girth. ‘His death was an accident, was it not? The shed fell on him when he went to find timber to build a writing desk. Why do you think Werbergh was murdered?’

Edred looked pained. ‘Because Master Lydgate told us that if we talked to you, he would kill us. Werbergh was seen talking to you and he disappeared, only to reappear dead under the shed.’

‘And you think this suspicious?’ asked Michael.

Edred gave another of his short, explosive laughs. ‘I most certainly do! Oh, it looked convincing enough, and our servants, Saul Potter and Huw, both claimed that Werbergh had told them he was going out to look for wood to build a desk, but it seemed too convenient. A man disappears and suddenly returns only to die in a fluky accident? No! That is too coincidental.’

‘But you did not actually see Lydgate kill Werbergh,’ pressed Bartholomew. It was a statement and not a question.

‘It is not necessary to have seen him plunge the dagger into his victims in order to make sense of the evidence,’ retorted Edred, his temper ruffled. He suddenly put his head in his hands, scattering the crumbs. ‘I should have known it was a mistake to come to you. Why should you believe me?’

Why indeed? thought Bartholomew. Edred had really given them very little new information, and most was in the form of supposition and conjecture. But Bartholomew’s compassion was aroused when he saw the young man’s shoulders shaken by a sob. Edred obviously believed what he was telling them was the truth and was frightened by it.

‘And what about James Kenzie?’ he asked in a gentler tone. Edred shook his head, unable or unwilling to answer, so Bartholomew answered for him. ‘You stole the ring from him during the street brawl and took it to Lydgate to claim your reward. Lydgate was simultaneously pleased to have such a clue regarding the identity of his daughter’s lover, but angry when you told him it was a Scot. He is a man who blusters and threatens. He vowed to kill Kenzie, and hurled the ring from the window in his anger. Then he threatened to kill you if you confessed that you had stolen the ring.’

Edred looked at him with a tear-stained face. ‘No. It did not happen quite like that. I gave the ring to Master Lydgate and he became furious. But not with the Scot, with me. He said the ring was a fake, a cheap imitation of the original. He accused me of having it made so that I could claim the reward from him. He hurled it to the floor and stamped on it. Then he said that if I ever told anyone what I had done, he would kill me. He said having a friar who was a confessed thief and liar would bring Godwinsson Hostel into disrepute. After he had gone I picked up the ring and I could see that he was right. What I had thought was silver was cheap metal. I flung it through the window in disgust.’

‘So the ring you took from Kenzie was a fake?’ said Bartholomew thoughtfully. He reached into his sleeve and brought it out. ‘Is this it?’

Edred took the broken ring and examined it briefly.

‘Yes. That’s the wretched thing that brought me so much trouble. I don’t know how the Scot came to have it, rather than the original. He came later that night to ask if I had taken it, but since it was already broken, and it had landed me in so much trouble, I told him I had not.’

But what was Kenzie doing with a ring that was a fake? wondered Bartholomew. Dominica had definitely given one of the original pair to Kenzie – Robert had identified it quite clearly as the one at Valence Marie – while the other, the one Dominica had kept, had remained with Cecily. But Kenzie had not worn the real ring in the street brawl, he had worn a cheap imitation. Meanwhile, the real ring was on the finger of the relic at Valence Marie. It made no sense. How did the real ring get from Kenzie to the hand found at Valence Marie?

‘So, if Lydgate knew that the ring you had taken from Kenzie was a false one, why do you think Lydgate killed him?’ Michael was asking.

‘That evening, after I had shown the false ring to Master Lydgate, Dominica was sent away to relatives in Chesterton to keep her from seeing her lover,’ said Edred. ‘I was restless after the scene with the Scot, and knew I would be unable to sleep, so I stayed out. As I was returning, much later, I saw someone throwing pebbles at Dominica’s window. He threw perhaps three or four before he realised he was not going to be answered, and then he stole away.’

‘And did you recognise this person?’ asked Michael.

‘Oh yes, I recognised him by the yellow hose under his tabard, which was obvious, even by moonlight. It was the Scot – James Kenzie you say his name was. A few moments after, I saw Master Lydgate leave the house and follow him up the lane. I went to bed, and the next day, you came to say that Kenzie was murdered. I made the reasonable assumption that Lydgate had also seen Kenzie throwing stones at Dominica’s window, guessed him to be her lover, followed him and killed him.’

‘Why did you not tell us this before?’ asked Michael. ‘And why did you lie to us when we asked where you were that night?’

Edred looked frightened again, but also indignant.

‘How could I do otherwise? By telling you, I would have admitted to theft and lying, two virtues not highly praised by my Order. I would have been thrown out of the University. And anyway, how could I accuse the Principal of murder? Who would you have believed: the poor, lying thief of a friar who had been seen by the Proctor arguing with the murdered man the day before his death, or the rich and influential Lydgate?’

Michael inclined his head, accepting the young man’s reasoning. ‘But by hiding your own lesser sins, you have protected the identity of a murderer. And you now say that this murderer has struck thrice more and will do so again.’

Edred looked away. ‘I did not know what to do. I did not think you would believe me, because I had already lied to you. But I was afraid, too. The Lydgates know I was absent from the hostel the night of Kenzie’s death, and Mistress Lydgate could have accused me of lying when I used Werbergh as my alibi that night. But she did not, and I think she guessed I saw her husband leaving to follow Kenzie. Perhaps she saw me returning through her window. Anyway, the message was clear: if I maintained my silence about what I had seen, so would they.’

It made sense logically, thought Bartholomew, casting his mind back to the information they had been given the day of Kenzie’s murder. Edred’s story and Werbergh’s had not tallied and Bartholomew had wondered whether Edred was lying about the theft of the ring to mask a far more serious incident. The incident had been that he believed his Principal had committed murder. It tallied with Cecily’s story, too. She had been told not to contradict anything said to protect Godwinsson from the unwelcome inquiries of Brother Michael. But were Edred’s suspicions to be believed? It was all so simple: Lydgate killed Kenzie, then his daughter and Ned from Valence Marie, then Werbergh, whom he thought might be passing information to Bartholomew and Michael. Was Lydgate a man who could kill four people with such ease?

Cecily certainly feared her husband sufficiently to flee from him, so perhaps he was.

‘Two more questions,’ said Bartholomew, seeing the student’s shoulders begin to sag with tiredness, ‘and then you should sleep. First, do you know who attacked Brother Michael and me in the High Street?’

Edred shook his head. ‘I heard about that from Master Lydgate. He was delighted that you had received your just deserts, but he did not know who would attack you, and neither do I.’

Bartholomew nodded, satisfied with the answer, especially given the very plausible response reported from Lydgate.

But that did not mean that Godwinsson was uninvolved.

Bartholomew remained convinced that it had been Saul Potter and Huw’s voices he had heard that night, despite his hazy memory.

‘And second,’ he continued, ‘where are Godwinsson’s French students?’

Edred looked frightened again. ‘One was killed in the riot. But when Master Lydgate had the truth from the other two that they had been involved in a brawl with you – and not with ten heavily armed townspeople as they initially claimed – he grew angry. They left to return to France. Huw and Saul Potter helped them escape.’

Escape from their Principal, thought Bartholomew.

What a terrible indictment of his violent and aggressive character. No wonder Cecily had left him.

As if reading his thoughts, Edred added. ‘He hates you. That is one of the reasons I came. Any man who has earned such hatred from Master Lydgate must surely be the man whom I can trust with my life, and who will protect me from him.’

Bartholomew nodded absently, and indicated for Cynric to show Edred where he might sleep. The Welshman fetched a spare blanket from the laundry and led the weary scholar out of the kitchen towards Bartholomew’s room. When they had gone, Bartholomew and Michael sat in silence.

‘Do you believe him?’ asked Bartholomew after a while.

Michael nodded. ‘I am certain he thinks he is telling the truth. But that is not to say I agree with his interpretation of it.’

Bartholomew concurred. ‘All his evidence – such as it is – suggests that Lydgate killed Dominica, Kenzie, Ned and Werbergh. But there is something not right about it all, something missing.’

‘But what? The motives are there in each case, and the opportunity.’

‘I know, but there is something I cannot define that does not fit,’ said Bartholomew insistently.

‘I would have thought you would have been pleased with Edred’s evidence. It adds weight to your theory that Joanna was really Dominica.’

‘Oh, that,’ said Bartholomew dismissively.

Michael leaned forward in his chair, while Bartholomew repeated the conversation he had had with the old rivermen. Michael listened gravely.

‘And there is something more, is there not?’ he asked when Bartholomew had finished. ‘About Mistress Lydgate’s disappearance? I know you have another ring like the one on the relic in your sleeve. I found it while you were asleep a couple of nights ago. So, you may as well tell me what else you have learned.’

‘Did you search my room?’ asked Bartholomew, remembering the moved candle and jug.

‘Of course not!’ said Michael indignantly. ‘And I did not really search for the rings. I just knew where you would hide them.’ He paused. ‘Are you certain your room was searched?’

Bartholomew nodded. ‘Twice. And if it was not you, it must have been those who attacked us, looking for whatever it was they wanted me to give them.’

Michael picked at a spot on his face. ‘Perhaps. But tell me what happened on Sunday when you were out. Perhaps the two of us can make some sense out of all these clues.’

Bartholomew hesitated, wondering about his agreement with Cecily regarding her hiding place. But unless he told Michael all he knew, they would never get to the bottom of the mystery and more people might die.

Michael was a good friend and Bartholomew knew he could be trusted with secrets, so he told Michael about his visit to Chesterton. When he had finished, Michael sat back thoughtfully.

‘This is an odd business,’ he said. ‘Is the dead woman Joanna or Dominica? And whichever one it is, where is the other? And did Lydgate really kill all these people? I see no reason to suppose he did not, although, like you, I have doubts niggling in the back of my mind. And now we know there is a riot planned for tomorrow night, we can deduce for certain that the recent civil unrest is not random. I will send a messenger to Tulyet tonight. He might be able to avert trouble if he has warning of what is planned.’

Bartholomew, recalling the scenes of violence and mayhem a few nights before, sincerely hoped so. Michael fingered the whiskers on his cheek, thinking aloud. ‘I do not like Bigod’s involvement in this affair. You say he was one of those who attacked us – although he denies it – and it is he who secretes Mistress Lydgate away from her husband. His role is even more puzzling when you consider that not only does he provide Cecily with a haven, but that he is Lydgate’s alibi for the night of the riot. It is odd, I would think, for someone to be such a good friend to both parties simultaneously – most friends would side with either one or the other.’

Bartholomew frowned in thought. ‘I wondered at the time why Cecily chose Bigod, of all people, to flee to that night. He is clearly a loyal intimate of Lydgate. But then she said she had hoped he would allow her to share the upper chamber at Chesterton tower-house with him. It became clear – he is her lover and Lydgate’s best friend.’

Michael’s eyes were great round circles. ‘You never cease to amaze me, Matt,’ he said. ‘That seems something of a leap of faith, given the evidence you have.’

Bartholomew grinned, accepting Michael’s caution. ‘I know. But it would explain some of Bigod’s actions – he is prepared to risk a good deal by offering Lydgate an alibi for the night of the riot. At the same time, he is willing to hide away the man’s wife. And Werbergh told me the first time we visited Godwinsson that Cecily was more interested in students than in her husband.’

‘All right, then,’ said Michael. ‘Let us assume you are correct. But we are not finished with Bigod yet. The conversation you overheard in the basement at Chesterton shows he knows when there is to be a riot. Extending this logically, it can be assumed that he knew about the last riot too, which explains why Maud’s students were all safely inside at a birthday party.’

‘Of course,’ said Bartholomew. ‘But the Godwinsson students were out, so it seems Lydgate was not party to Bigod’s plans.’

‘Maybe,’ said Michael. ‘I wonder if these “two acts” that Matilde told you about were the murder of Lydgate’s wayward daughter and her lover. Lydgate was out all night, after all, and we have not the faintest idea what he was up to when he was not standing over corpses with dripping daggers.’

Bartholomew rubbed the back of his head, becoming disheartened at the way every question answered seemed to pose ten more. ‘But even Cecily has her doubts about Lydgate’s role in the murder of Dominica. She is reluctant to believe he would kill the person he loved most.’

‘People do the most peculiar things for the most bizarre of motives, Matt,’ said Michael in a superior tone of voice.

‘But one of the oddest aspects about this whole business is these damned rings. How did one of Whining Cecily’s rings find its way on to the relic at Valence Marie? And I wonder who that other person was that you heard in the basement, the one whose voice you could not place. Have you considered who it might be? This is important.’

‘Not really,’ said Bartholomew, closing his eyes as he recalled the clear tenor. ‘It was familiar but I cannot place it at all.’

‘Was it someone from Valence Marie?’ asked Michael to prompt him along. ‘Father Eligius, perhaps. Or that fellow who looks like a toad – Master Dittone? Robert Bingham is ill with ague, so it cannot be him. Or one of the merchants, maybe?’

Bartholomew racked his brains but the identity of the voice eluded him still. ‘Cynric is a long time,’ he said eventually, standing and looking out of the window.

‘Probably looking for a pallet bed,’ said Michael, standing also. ‘It is too late to do anything tonight. First thing in the morning, I suggest we talk to Mistress Tyler and see if we can discover the whereabouts of Joanna. Then, unpleasant though it might be, I must tackle Lydgate. I do not want you there but I will ask Richard Tulyet to accompany me. Perhaps afterwards, Mistress Lydgate will find it safe to come out of her self-inflicted imprisonment.’

They walked across the courtyard together, Michael still speculating on Lydgate’s guilt. Cynric had lit a candle in Bartholomew’s room, and the light flickered yellow under the closed shutters. Bartholomew wondered why Cynric was wasting his only candle when he knew his way around perfectly well in the dark. As he turned to listen to Michael, he heard the faint groan of the chest in his room being opened. Michael stopped speaking as Bartholomew darted towards the door.

His attention arrested by Edred’s hands in the chest, Bartholomew did not see Cynric sprawled across the floor, until he fell headlong over him. He heard Michael yell, and Edred swear under his breath. Bartholomew struggled to his knees, his hands dark with the blood that flowed from the back of Cynric’s skull. Blind fury dimmed his reasoning and he launched himself across the room at the friar with a howl of rage.

Edred’s hands came out of Bartholomew’s storage chest holding a short sword. It was one Stanmore had given him many years ago that Bartholomew had forgotten he had.

Edred swung at him with it, and only by dropping to one knee did the physician avoid the hacking blow aimed at his head. Edred swung again with a professionalism that suggested he had not always been in training for the priesthood. Bartholomew ducked a second time, rolling away until he came up against the wall.

Edred came for him, his face pale and intent as he drew back his arm for the fatal plunge. His stroke wavered as something struck him hard on the side of the head, and Bartholomew saw shards of glass falling around him.

Michael was not standing helplessly in the doorway like some dim-witted maiden but was hurling anything that came to hand at Edred.

While the friar’s attention strayed, Bartholomew leapt at him, catching him in a bear-like grip around the legs.

Edred tried to struggle free, dropping the sword as he staggered backwards. Michael continued his assault and Bartholomew could hear nothing but smashes and grunts.

Suddenly, Edred collapsed.

Bartholomew squirmed to free himself from Edred’s weight. Michael came to his aid and hauled the unresisting friar to his feet. Edred’s knees buckled and Michael allowed him to slide down the wall into a sitting position.

Bartholomew scrambled across the floor to where Cynric lay.

The Welshman’s eyes were half open and a trickle of blood oozed from the wound on the back of his skull.

Bartholomew cradled him in his lap, holding a cloth to staunch the bleeding.

‘So, I am to die from a coward’s blow,’ Cynric whispered, eyes seeking Bartholomew’s face. ‘Struck from behind in the dark.’

‘You will not die, my friend,’ said Bartholomew. ‘The wound is not fatal: I have had recent personal experience to support my claim.’

Cynric grinned weakly at him and closed his eyes while Bartholomew bound the cut deftly with clean linen, praying it was not more serious than it appeared.

‘Matt!’ came Michael’s querulous voice from the other side of the room. Bartholomew glanced to where the monk knelt next to Edred.

‘I have killed him,’ Michael whispered, his face white with shock. ‘Edred is dying!’

Bartholomew looked askance. ‘He cannot be, Brother. You have just stunned him.’

‘He is dying!’ insisted Michael, his voice rising in horror. ‘Look at him!’

Easing Cynric gently on to the floor, Bartholomew went to where Michael leaned over the prostrate friar. A white powder lightly dusted Edred’s black robe and the smell of it caught in Bartholomew’s nostril’s sharply. The powder was on the friar’s face too, it clung to the thin trail of blood that dribbled from a cut on his cheek and stuck around his lips. Bartholomew felt for a life-beat in the friar’s neck and was startled to feel it rapid and faint.

Puzzled, he prised open Edred’s eyelids and saw that the pupils had contracted to black pinpricks and that his face and neck were covered in a sheen of sweat.

‘Do something, Matt!’ said Michael desperately. ‘Or I will have brought about his death! Me! A man of the cloth, who has forsworn violence!’

The noise of the affray had disturbed those scholars whose rooms were nearby and they clustered around the door as Bartholomew examined Edred. Gray and Bulbeck were among them, and he ordered them to remove Cynric to his own room, away from the strange white powder that seemed to be killing Edred. He grabbed the pitcher of water that stood on the window-sill and washed the powder from the cut on Edred’s face and from his mouth.

The friar was beginning to struggle to breathe.

‘What is happening? What have you done?’ Roger Alcote, still a little pale from the aftermath of the Founder’s Feast, forced his way through the scholars watching at the doorway, and stood with his hands on his hips waiting for an answer.

‘I threw a jar,’ said Michael shakily, backing away from where Edred was labouring to breathe. ‘It struck him full in the face and broke, scattering that powder everywhere.’ He turned on Bartholomew suddenly. ‘What was it? Why do you keep such deadly poisons lying so readily to hand?’

‘I do not,’ protested Bartholomew. He went to considerable trouble to keep the few poisons he used under lock and key in his storeroom. He shook his head in disbelief.

‘The powder is oleander, judging from its smell. I keep a small quantity locked in the chest in the storeroom but I used the last of it several days ago.’

‘So where did it come from?’

Bartholomew ignored Michael’s question. More important at that moment was that he did not understand why Edred was reacting to the poison so violently. Edred’s breathing was becoming increasingly shallow, and Bartholomew forced his fingers to the back of the friar’s throat to make him vomit. He doubted whether it would help, since the oleander had also entered the friar’s body through the cut in his head and had probably been inhaled when the jar had smashed, but he had to try. He dispatched Michael to fetch the charcoal mixture he had used successfully against oleander poisoning – although admittedly a very mild dose – in the past, and forced Edred to swallow it. But it was all to no avail. Bartholomew felt the friar’s heartbeat become more and more rapid, and then erratic. He tried to ease him into positions where the student might be able to breathe more readily, but he was fighting a lost battle.

‘Matt! He is dying!’ pleaded Michael. ‘Do something else! Make him walk. Let me fetch eggs and vinegar. That worked with Walter last year.’ Without waiting for Bartholomew’s reply, he thrust himself through the silent group of watching scholars at the door and they heard him puffing across the yard towards the kitchens.

Bartholomew stood and turned to face them. ‘It is too late.’

‘How did this happen?’ asked Master Kenyngham, shocked. ‘Who is he? And what is he doing in our College?’

Bartholomew wondered how he could begin to explain, but at that moment Michael returned, his hands full of eggs and a pitcher of slopping vinegar. He sagged when he saw Edred’s half-closed eyes and waxen face.

‘Is he dead?’ he asked hoarsely.

Bartholomew nodded. ‘Oleander is a powerful poison. There was nothing I could do.’

Alcote elbowed him out of the way to look at Edred. ‘I wonder you ever have any patients, Matthew. You always seem to be losing them. First Mistress Fletcher, and now this friar.’

Bartholomew flinched. While he had a better rate of success with his cures than most of his colleagues, he was only too aware that there were diseases and injuries when a patient’s demise was inevitable, no matter what treatment he might attempt. Knowing that his skills and medicines were useless in such cases was the part of being a physician he found most difficult part to accept.

‘You did not even consult his stars,’ Alcote was saying, kneeling next to the dead man, and preparing to give him last rites.

‘He had no time,’ Kenyngham pointed out, rallying to Bartholomew’s defence. ‘It all happened rather quickly. And how could the man answer questions about his birth date anyway, when he lay fighting for his last breath?’

Alcote declined to answer, and traced vigorous crosses on Edred’s forehead, mouth and chest. The sudden movement created a puff of the white dust and Alcote raised his hand to his mouth as he prepared to cough.

Bartholomew leapt forward and dragged him away.

‘Wash your hands, Roger,’ he said firmly. ‘Or you will be discovering first-hand how my medical skills cannot save a man from poisoning.’

Colour drained from Alcote’s face and he scurried hastily from the room to act on Bartholomew’s advice.

Kenyngham ushered everyone out and closed the door behind him.

‘There is nothing more to see,’ he said to the still-curious scholars. ‘Go back to your chambers. Fathers William and Aidan will pray for this man’s soul.’ He watched them disperse to do his bidding and turned to Bartholomew. ‘It is clearly not safe to be in your room with that white poison floating around, so we will deal with the friar’s earthly remains in the morning when we can see what we are doing. ‘

Bartholomew leaned against the door wearily, wondering what nasty turn the investigation would take next, and whether he and Michael would live to tell the tale. Meanwhile, Michael was trying to explain to Kenyngham what had happened. The placid Gilbertine listened patiently to Michael’s brief summary of his inquiries into the death of Kenzie and the involvement of Lydgate, but refused to allow the monk to dwell too deeply on the details of Edred’s death. He took the distressed Benedictine firmly by the shoulder.

‘No goodwill come of thinking about the matter before we have made a thorough examination of the facts. You did not seek to kill this man, Michael: it was an accident.

And who can say that if you had not thrown the poison jar, this friar would not have slain Matthew? Or both of you? It seems to me he was bent upon some kind of mischief. It grieves me to see such evil in a man of the cloth, but if you are determined to be a proctor you must inure yourself to such matters.’

It was sound advice, although Bartholomew was surprised to hear it from Kenyngham, a man whose gentleness and reluctance to believe ill of anyone sometimes proved a liability to his College.

Kenyngham continued. ‘It is too late and too dark to begin inquiries into this mysterious powder now. Sleep in Michael’s room tonight, Matthew. I will send a porter to inform the Chancellor of what has happened immediately.’

Bartholomew followed Michael up the creaking stairs.

Michael was strangely subdued, and Bartholomew’s mind whirled with questions as he lay under the coarse blankets of his borrowed bed. What had Edred been doing? Was his confession merely an excuse to get into the College to search Bartholomew’s room? What was so important that he had been prepared to kill? And perhaps more important to his own peace of mind, why had Edred died so quickly and violently from his slight exposure to the oleander powder?

When Bartholomew awoke the next morning, the room was unfamiliar. The wooden ceiling was brightly painted and the bed was lumpy. He raised himself on one elbow, and in a rush the events of the previous night came back to him. Michael snored softly in his own bed, while Gray was on another, his tawny hair poking out from under the blanket. Gray had been concerned that some of the oleander might have landed on Bartholomew and had insisted on staying with him to be on hand lest he began to show symptoms of poisoning. After all, he had added, his blue eyes wide, Master Lynton and Father Philius had full classes already, so who would teach him and his friends medicine if Bartholomew were to die? Trying not to disturb them, Bartholomew stood up as quietly as he could.

Michael, a light sleeper, woke immediately.

Bartholomew pointed to the lightening sky. ‘It is time for us to be about our business,’ he whispered. ‘We have a lot to do today, and there may be a riot tonight.’

Michael swung his large legs off the bed and sat up with a yawn.

Their voices woke Gray, who uncurled himself and watched Bartholomew. ‘I will do a mask and gloves and clean the poison from your room,’ he offered, rubbing the sleep from his eyes.

Bartholomew thanked him. ‘But do not let Deynman help – he is not to be trusted around poisons for his own safety. Ask Tom Bulbeck to assist you. I suppose someone will arrange for Edred to be returned to Godwinsson today?’

Michael shook his head. ‘The Master heard from de Wetherset last night after you were asleep. He recommends that Edred be buried discreetly in St Mary’s churchyard. He is afraid that the death of a scholar in a college other than his own might start another riot, and I believe he is right. I do not trust Lydgate to be sensible about this and so he shall not be told. Not yet, anyway.

Master Kenyngham will call a meeting of all our scholars this morning and order that last night’s events are not to be discussed outside Michaelhouse. He will appeal to their sense of College loyalty in dangerous times, and I am sure they will comply.’

‘But what did Edred want?’ asked Bartholomew, his bewilderment of the night before surging back to him. ‘What do I have that causes people to search my room – three times now – and lure us out in the depths of the night to attack us?’

‘Medicines? Poisons?’ suggested Gray, who had been listening with interest to their conversation.

‘I have nothing that Jonas the Poisoner, Father Philius or Hugh Lynton do not have,’ said Bartholomew, ‘not to mention the infirmarians at Barnwell Priory and the Hospital of St John’s.’

‘The rings in your sleeve?’ asked Michael, ignoring Gray’s look of incomprehension.

Bartholomew shook his head. ‘Edred saw me take the broken ring from my sleeve in the kitchen. Why bother to look in my room when he knew where they were?’

‘Do you have letters from anyone, or documents?’ said Gray, racking his brains.

‘Not that I can think of,’ said Bartholomew. ‘I have records of the treatments given to patients and of medicines dispensed. But these cannot be important to anyone but me.’

‘Whatever it was, Edred was prepared to kill for it,’ said Michael. ‘And he died for it. Are you certain it was the oleander that killed him?’ Bartholomew saw the silent appeal in his friend’s eyes and looked away.

‘I am afraid so. He was most definitely poisoned, and I am sure the white powder that coated him was oleander from one of the jars you threw. His symptoms matched those usual in such cases, although Edred succumbed very rapidly to the poison’s effects.’

‘But why do you need such a foul powder?’ cried Michael, suddenly agitated. ‘You are a physician, not a poisoner! And you are usually so careful with toxins. Why did you leave this one lying so readily to hand?’

‘I use a diluted form of oleander for treating leprosy,’ said Bartholomew. ‘It works better on some forms of the disease than other potions. But it is a very diluted form and, as I said last night, I used the last of it several days ago.’

‘You ordered more oleander from Jonas the Poisoner before your stars became so sadly aligned,’ said Gray helpfully. ‘It came yesterday while you were out. I could not lock it in the storeroom because you were out with the key, so I put it on the shelf in your chamber so it would not be lying around too obviously. But it was powerful stuff, this oleander – much more so than the stuff you usually use. It seems to me that this friar died more quickly than he would have done had he been killed with your normal-strength powder.’

At his words, Bartholomew’s stomach started to churn with a sudden, vile realisation. He sat down abruptly and looked up at Michael with horrified eyes. ‘The Tyler family!’ he said in a whisper. ‘They are related to Jonas’s wife!’

‘So? Are you saying that the Tyler women are trying to poison you?’ asked Michael, astounded.

‘They may have sent me some kind of oleander concentrate, instead of the diluted powder I usually order from Jonas. It would be easy enough to do, given that they would look the same.’

Michael thought for a moment and then sighed, raising his shoulders in a gesture of defeat. ‘It is possible, I suppose. They are involved in all this business somehow, through Joanna. Maybe they felt you were coming too close to the truth about her and wanted you out of the way.’

‘But I take great care with powerful medicines,’ said Bartholomew, thinking uncomfortably of how Eleanor had tried to dissuade him from looking any further into Joanna’s death. ‘I am unlikely to be poisoned by them.’

‘Perhaps they did not want to kill you at all,’ said Gray. He stiffened suddenly as a thought occurred to him. ‘Not me, either! I swear to you that I did not lay a finger on her! Well, perhaps a little kiss, but she was willing enough for that.’

‘What is this?’ asked Michael, bewildered.

‘Sam escorted Eleanor home after the Founder’s Feast,’ said Bartholomew. ‘Are you sure you did nothing to anger her? Or her mother?’

‘Nothing!’ cried Gray. ‘Honestly! I thought she had set her sights on you but you had put her off somehow during the Feast. I was singing your praises and she told me, rather sharply, to keep them to myself. That’s when I decided to make a move. Well, just a kiss. Perhaps they wanted you to dispatch one of your patients for them. That would make sense.’

‘But I only use oleander for treating leprosy,’ objected Bartholomew. ‘And all the lepers I attend are poor, pathetic creatures who have long since ceased to deal with affairs outside their own community.’

‘Why should the Tylers know what you use oleander for?’ said Michael. ‘None of them are physicians or even apothecaries.’

Bartholomew spread his hands. ‘We may be wronging them terribly,’ he said. He thought back to the events of the previous night. ‘Did Edred say anything to you after he was stricken?’ he asked, recalling Michael kneeling next to the friar as Bartholomew attended to Cynric, before Michael realised that Edred’s sudden collapse was more serious than a jar breaking in his face.

Michael rubbed his cheeks with his hands. ‘Nothing,’ he said softly. ‘Not so much as a whisper.’

Gray stood to pour him a cup of watered wine from the supply on the window ledge. As he flopped back on the bed again, he winced as he sat on something hard. He pulled it from underneath him and shot Bartholomew a guilty glance.

‘Master Radbeche’s Galen,’ said Bartholomew, recognising the rough leather binding. ‘I must return that today.’

‘I saw it yesterday afternoon when I put the package from Jonas in your room,’ said Gray, defensively. ‘I thought I might borrow it since you were out. I brought it here to read last night, but I fell asleep,’ he finished lamely.

‘You should ask before you take things,’ said Bartholomew mildly, pleased that Gray was prepared to undertake voluntary reading, but concerned that he should borrow David’s Hostel’s precious tome without permission.

‘It is an interesting text,’ said Gray, detecting that Bartholomew’s admonition held an underlying note of approval and keen to turn it to his advantage. ‘Although I must say that the last chapter was the most interesting of all. And not by Galen,’ he said with a laugh.

‘How do you know it is not by Galen?’ asked Bartholomew.

Although Gray was a quick student, he rarely used his intellectual talents to the full and was far too lazy to instigate a debate that would mean some hard thinking. ‘Are you so familiar with his style and knowledge of medicine that you are able to detect mere imitation from the master himself?’

‘Oh, no! ‘ said Gray hastily, knowing that he would never be able to take on Bartholomew in a debate about the authenticity of Galen. ‘But the last chapter is not about medicine at all. Have you not read it? It is a collection of local stories – like a history of the town.’

Michael made a sound of irritation at this irrelevance and drained the wine from his cup. ‘So what? Parchment is expensive and scribes often use spare pages at the end of books to record something else so as to avoid waste. If you are surprised by that, Sam Gray, then you are revealing that you have read far fewer books than you should have done at this point in your academic career.’

‘I was not surprised by it,’ said Gray hotly. ‘I was just pointing out to you that the last chapter was considerably more interesting than boring old Galen.’

He scrambled to his feet and brought the book over to Bartholomew. ‘Your marker is here,’ he said, indicating a point about three-quarters of the way through, where Bartholomew had reached. ‘And the interesting chapter is here.’

He opened the book to the last few pages. The text was in the same undisciplined scrawl that characterised the rest of the book, complete with spelling errors, crossings out and ink blots. Gray was right about the content: there was nothing medical about the subject of the last chapter and parts were illustrated with thumb-sized sketches. The drawings were good, and Bartholomew suspected that the anonymous scribe derived a good deal more pleasure from his illustrations than his writing.

‘See?’ said Gray. ‘Here is a bit about how William the Conqueror came in 1068 and ordered that twenty-seven houses should be demolished so that the Castle could be built. And here is a description of the fire that almost destroyed St Mary’s Church. My uncle remembers that very well…’

‘Does he?’ asked Bartholomew, startled. The fire in St Mary’s, he knew, had been in 1290, and Gray’s uncle was certainly no more than forty years old.

‘Oh, yes,’ said Gray. ‘He often tells the story about how he dashed through the flames to save the golden candlesticks that stood on the altar.’

‘So, it runs in the family,’ muttered Michael, also aware of the date of the fire. ‘That explains a lot.’

‘What do you mean?’ demanded Gray. ‘My uncle is a very brave man.’

‘What else is in this history?’ asked Bartholomew quickly, before tempers could fray. While Michael’s sharp, sardonic wit might best Gray in an immediate argument, Michael would then be considered fair game for all manner of Gray’s practical jokes, not all of them pleasant or amusing.

‘There is a bit about the hero Hereward the Wake, who fought against William the Conqueror in the Fens,’ continued Gray, giving Michael an evil look. ‘And a paragraph about Simon d’Ambrey who was shot in the King’s Ditch twenty-five years ago and whose hand is in Valence Marie. The whole thing ends with a tale about some Chancellor called Richard de Badew who funded Clare College before the Countess came along and endowed it with lots of money in the 1330s.’

Intrigued, now that the University and not the town was the subject of the text, Michael came to sit next to them, peering at the book as it lay open on Bartholomew’s lap.

‘The rest of the book is undoubtedly Galen,’ said Bartholomew, flicking through it. ‘I have read it before, although this is by far the worst copy I have ever seen.’

‘It was the book!’ exclaimed Gray suddenly, grabbing Bartholomew’s arm. ‘The attack in the street, your room searched. It was the book they wanted!’

‘Whatever for?’ asked Bartholomew, unconvinced. ‘It is a poor copy of Galen at best and certainly not worth killing for.’

‘Not for the Galen. For the bit at the end,’ insisted Gray, eyes glittering with enthusiasm. ‘Perhaps it contains information about the town that no one knows.’

‘Perhaps Hereward the Wake is alive and well and wants to read it,’ said Michael, laughing. ‘Or maybe this long-dead Chancellor, de Badew.’

‘It was no apparition that brained me in the High Street,’ said Bartholomew firmly. ‘That was Will, Huw, Saul Potter and Bigod. And it was Edred who searched my room.’

He leaned back against the wall and began to study the book with renewed interest. Were the local stories significant, or was the copyist merely using up leftover paper at the end of his book, as Michael suggested?

The leather covers of the tome were thick and crude, and inside, an attempt had been made to improve their appearance by pasting coloured parchment over them.

Bartholomew ran his fingers down them and then looked closer. He was wrong – the parchment had not been placed there to make the inside cover look neater, but to hide something. He picked at it, uncertain. Michael watched silently. Both were scholars with a love of learning and of the books that contained it. Damaging one of these precious items was an act alien to both of them.

Gray took it from him, and with a decisive movement of his hand, ripped the parchment away. Bartholomew and Michael, as one, winced at the sound of tearing, but looked with interest at what spilled out into Gray’s hands.

While Gray performed a similar operation with the front cover, Bartholomew and Michael read the documents that had fallen from the back.

Bartholomew felt sick. ‘These are copies of letters sent by Norbert to me after he fled to Dover,’ he said in a low voice. ‘They date from a few weeks after he left, to the last message I had about fifteen years ago and are signed with the name of his sister, Celinia.’

‘Who is Norbert?’ asked Gray, intrigued.

Bartholomew sighed. ‘He was accused of burning the tithe barn at Trumpington when we were children. I helped him escape.’

‘And this,’ said Michael, waving another document in the air, ‘is a list of times and dates suggesting meetings, along with names and addresses. They include Mistress Tyler, Thomas Bigod, Will of Valence Marie, Cecily Lydgate, and the Godwinsson servants Saul Potter and Huw, to name but a few. You were right, Matt. It was Bigod, Will, Potter and Huw who attacked us – for these parchments.’

‘Do you think they are involved in starting the riots, then?’ asked Gray, his eyes alight with excitement.

Bartholomew turned the letters over in his hands. ‘That seems something of a leap in logic, but does not mean that you are wrong. The only thing finding these documents has made clear to me is that Norbert may have returned to the area. Why else would his letters be here?’

Mistress Tyler’s house was silent and still. Tulyet’s sergeant kicked at the door until it gave way and forced his way in, shouldering aside the splintered wood to stand in the small chamber on the ground floor. Bartholomew peered in. The room was bare except for a heavy chest, a table and some shelves. Tulyet pushed past him and began to climb the ladder that led to the upper chamber where the women had slept. He shook his head in disgust as he descended.

‘Gone,’ he called. ‘And swept so clean that a spider could not hide.’

‘This will confound your plans for the Festival of St Michael and All Angels on Sunday,’ remarked Michael to Bartholomew leeringly. ‘Whom will you ask to escort you now Hedwise Tyler has fled? I doubt you will get away with Matilde a second time. You might be reduced to taking Agatha given that you are so intent on being surrounded by women!’

Bartholomew pretended to ignore him, wondering how such things could occur to the fat monk when the situation was so grave.

‘Why clean a house you are abandoning for ever?’ he mused, looking around him.

‘I will never understand women,’ agreed Tulyet. ‘What a waste of time!’

‘Perhaps not,’ said Bartholomew, frowning. Watched by the others, he began a careful examination of the room.

Finally, he stopped and pointed to some faint brownish stains on one of the walls. When he moved some cracked] bowls and pots that had been left, there was a larger stain on the wooden floor.

‘Cooking accident?’ asked Michael, nonplussed.

‘Hardly, Brother,’ said Bartholomew. ‘Only people who do not mind their houses going up in flames cook so close to the walls. This stain is blood. It splattered on the wall and then pooled on the floor.’

‘Whose blood?’ asked Tulyet, staring at it. ‘This Joanna’s?’

‘Probably,’ said Bartholomew, thinking again of Mistress Tyler leading him away from her house the night of the riot. ‘There is enough of it to suggest that a serious, if not fatal, wound was inflicted and there was simply too much blood to be cleaned away.’

Michael puffed out his cheeks, and prodded halfheartedly at the stone jars and bowls that had been left. Bartholomew leaned against the door frame and thought. He had been hoping that there had been some mistake, and that they would discover the Tylers’ part in the affair was coincidental, or innocent. But how could he hold to that belief now? They had fled the town, taking everything that was moveable with them. He wondered if Eleanor had been given the idea by Father William while at the Feast, since he had regaled her with stories of how he had run away laden with monastic treasures.

Hope flared within him suddenly. Perhaps they had been taken by force; abducted and taken away against their will. The hope faded as quickly as it had come. What abductor would take the furniture with him and sweep the upstairs chamber before making away with his prizes? Not only that, but Bartholomew very much doubted that the Tyler women could be abducted anywhere they did not want to go.

Michael bent to one of the bowls and Bartholomew saw him run his finger around its rim. He held it up lightly coated with a gritty, white powder and raised the finger to his lips to sniff at it. With a bound, Bartholomew leapt at him, knocking Tulyet sideways before slapping Michael’s hand away from his face and wiping the powder from his finger with his shirtsleeve.

Michael looked puzzled. ‘How will we know what this is unless we smell it?’ he said. ‘I have watched Jonas the Poisoner smell and taste his medicines often enough.’

‘Then Jonas is a fool,’ snapped Bartholomew. ‘If, as you believe, that powder is the same kind that killed Edred, it is in a highly concentrated form.’

‘But you told me last night that the poison might have worked more quickly on Edred because it entered a wound or because he inhaled it in. A small amount on my hand will not harm me.’

‘It might,’ said Bartholomew. ‘Can you feel your finger now?’

Michael rubbed his finger cautiously. ‘It is numb. I cannot feel it,’ he added with a slight rise in pitch, and his eyes widening with horror.

Bartholomew pursed his lips. ‘Go and rinse it off,’ he said. ‘The feeling will return eventually.’

Tulyet crouched next to the bowl, poking at it with his dagger. ‘Is it the same concentrated powder that killed the friar in your room?’ he asked, glancing at Bartholomew as Michael hurried from the house in search of water.

‘It would seem so,’ said Bartholomew. ‘Even a small amount has taken the feeling from Michael’s fingertip.’

Tulyet stood. ‘I will send men after Mistress Tyler and her devious daughters to see what she has to say for herself.’ He looked down at the bowls again. ‘Although, all we can prove is that she had the same powerful poison in her house that Jonas sent to you.’

‘I will go to see if Jonas knows where she might have gone,’ said Bartholomew. ‘If he has any ideas I will send you a message.’

Wringing and flexing his afflicted finger, Michael followed Bartholomew to the apothecary’s shop, while Tulyet went to organise men to search for the Tyler family, although they all knew that they would be long gone.

Jonas’s shop was empty of customers, and the apothecary was mixing potions on a wide shelf that ran along one side of the room. He was humming to himself, his bald head glistening with tiny beads of sweat as he applied himself to pounding something into a paste with considerable vigour. His two apprentices were hanging bunches of herbs to dry in the rafters of an adjoining room.

‘You sent me a powerful poison, Jonas,’ said Bartholomew without preamble, watching the apothecary jump at the nearness of the voice behind him. Colour drained from Jonas’s usually pink-cheeked face. He cast a nervous glance at his apprentices and closed the door so that they should not hear.

‘Please, Doctor,’ he said. ‘That matter was finished with a long time ago and I paid dearly for my mistake. Do not jest with me about poisons!’

‘I am not jesting about the events of years ago,’ said Bartholomew. ‘I am talking about the events of yesterday. You sent me oleander so concentrated that Brother Michael’s finger is numb from touching a few grains of it.’

Michael held up his finger, an even more unhealthy white than the rest of him. Jonas’s eyes almost popped from their sockets. Cautiously, like a bird accepting a much desired crumb, Jonas inched forward to examine Michael’s finger. He put out a tentative hand and touched the pallid, puckered skin.

As though he had been burned, he snatched his hand back again.

‘Oleander without a doubt,’ he said. ‘But why were you touching it?’

‘That was caused by the same oleander you sent to me for the physic I use for leprosy,’ said Bartholomew.

Jonas backed up against the wall, as though faced with a physical threat. ‘Not me, Matthew,’ he said. ‘You know I am careful with such poisons. Have I ever made a mistake in the measurements and doses I send to you? Everything that leaves this shop, even down to the mildest salve, is checked. First by me, then by my apprentices and then by my wife.’

‘But nevertheless, this powerful oleander was sent to me,’ said Bartholomew persistently. ‘Yesterday afternoon.’

Jonas’s confusion increased. He pointed to a package on one of the wall shelves. ‘There is your order of oleander, Matthew. It is ready but, as I said, all potions leaving my shop are checked. Your order has not yet been checked by my wife, which is why it is waiting.’

Now it was Bartholomew’s turn to be confused. ‘But you sent my order yesterday.’

Jonas bristled. ‘I did no such thing. You can look in my record book if you doubt me.’

Bartholomew exchanged a puzzled look with Michael.

‘Were Eleanor or Hedwise Tyler here yesterday?’ he asked.

Jonas smiled suddenly. ‘Both were here. Eleanor has been most helpful these last few weeks. The outbreak of summer ague has meant that we have been busier than usual and she has been a valuable assistant. She helped to prepare some of the orders yesterday, and even offered to deliver them, so that my apprentices would not have to leave their work.’

The smile slowly faded and he swallowed hard. ‘Oh no!’ he said, backing away from them. ‘You are not going to tell me that Eleanor sent the poison?’

‘Does she have access to your poisons?’ asked Bartholomew.

‘Not access as such,’ said Jonas, his small hands fluttering like birds about the front of his apron in his agitation. ‘But she was interested in my work and I showed her what was where.’

‘I assume you store your oleander in its concentrated form and sell it diluted for medicines?’ asked Bartholomew.

It was standard practice among apothecaries and there was nothing untoward in it. Jonas nodded. ‘Did Eleanor know this?’

‘I showed her how I diluted it yesterday,’ said Jonas, his hands fluttering even more wildly. ‘For you as a matter of fact. You ordered some for the lepers at Barnwell Priory.’

‘Do you know Eleanor and her family have gone?’ asked Bartholomew.

‘Gone where?’ asked Jonas, bewildered. ‘Not far, surely. She said she would help me this afternoon and I have come to rely on her. And her family is coming for dinner this evening.’

‘I do not think so,’ said Michael. ‘The Tyler house is abandoned and all removeable items gone.’

Jonas shook his head. ‘They are coming to eat with us tonight. Meg!’ he yelled suddenly, making Bartholomew leap out of his skin. Immediately, there were footsteps on the wooden stairs, and Jonas’s wife appeared.

‘They say Agnes has left town, Meg,’ said Jonas, still wringing his hands. ‘I told them that was impossible because she and the family are coming to dinner tonight.’

Meg’s eyes grew huge and flitted from Bartholomew to Michael in terror.

‘Tell us what you know, Mistress,’ said Michael, watching her reaction with resignation.

Meg’s fearful eyes danced back to her husband, who smiled at her, encouraging her to support his statement.

‘I went round to Agnes’s house yesterday afternoon and they had everything piled up in the middle of the room,’ she said. ‘They made me promise not to mention they were leaving until they had gone.’

‘Gone where?’ asked Bartholomew. ‘And why?’

Meg shook her head. ‘I begged them to stay. They are my only relatives here but they were insistent that they should go.’

‘Do you know that Eleanor sent me a powerful poison yesterday, in place of the diluted oleander I use for treating leprosy?’

‘No!’ Meg cried. ‘She did not!’

‘Oh, but she did, Mistress,’ said Michael. ‘And I suspect you know far more than you are telling us. Now, we do not have all day, so tell us the truth and hurry up with it.’

Meg’s eyes flitted to her husband’s horrified face and she burst into tears.

‘This oleander has caused the death of someone,’ Michael pressed. Jonas’s legs gave out and he plopped on to a low bench on top of a bunch of dried mint.

Within moments, the herb’s pungent odour filled the shop.

‘Oh no!’ he groaned. ‘Who has died? Not that saintly Master Kenyngham? My business will be finished for ever if this gets out! ‘

Meg wailed louder, so that Michael had to raise his voice to be heard. ‘I am sure your part in all this will be overlooked if you tell us what we need to know.’

Meg fought to bring her sobs under control. ‘Eleanor said that Doctor Bartholomew had been asking questions about Joanna,’ she said, after a few moments of serious sniffing. ‘She was terribly distressed because she said she did not want him, of all people, to be the cause of her mother’s downfall. I am not sure what she meant. I thought it was Joanna’s prostitution and that Eleanor was worried for the good name of her mother’s household, but I think now that it was more than that.’

She paused to scrub at her nose with the back of her hand. ‘I saw Eleanor in the poisons cupboard yesterday and she told me she was preparing your order of oleander. Later, I remembered that Jonas always keeps the diluted oleander for you in a separate jar, but that Eleanor had been using the concentrated powder.’

‘So it is true!’ wailed Jonas in horror. ‘We did send concentrated oleander to Doctor Bartholomew! This is just too dreadful!’

‘Please continue, Mistress,’ said Michael, silencing the apothecary with a disdainful glance.

Meg took a deep breath. ‘I was appalled that she might inadvertently have sent you the wrong thing, and rushed to her house so we could put all to rights before Jonas found out, or anyone was harmed. Agnes and Hedwise had all their belongings piled in the middle of the floor while Eleanor sat in a corner and wept. They would not tell me what was amiss. I asked Eleanor about the powder but she said it was still on the shelf with the other orders awaiting delivery.’

She gestured to the package above her head with Bartholomew’s name written on it, a certain defiance in her eyes. ‘And there it is.’

‘But she was lying, Mistress,’ said Michael harshly. ‘Eleanor had already dispatched one package to Doctor Bartholomew – the one she had prepared at home containing the concentrated oleander she had stolen from Jonas. She hoped it would have done its job before he received the real package and became suspicious. And you suspected all was not well by her behaviour.’

‘No!’ shrieked Meg, weeping afresh. ‘I did not know. I came home, and there was the package, just as she said it would be. I threw it away and prepared another in its place – with diluted oleander.’

‘And do you know what Eleanor’s motives were in all this?’ persisted Michael, his grim expression making it abundantly clear that he did not believe her for an instant.

‘Motives for what?’ cried Meg. ‘She did nothing wrong! She accidentally used the wrong powder in your order but I discovered her mistake and corrected it before anyone came to harm. I do not know how poor Master Kenyngham died but it was not with anything from our shop!’

Michael said nothing, and regarded her long and hard.

Bartholomew had known Jonas and Meg for years and knew they would not risk their livelihood so rashly: he was therefore inclined to believe they were telling the truth. But Eleanor was another matter. Clearly, she had stolen the concentrated oleander and prepared it for Bartholomew in the safety of her own home, as attested by the residues in the bowl Michael had touched.

But was Mistress Tyler aware of her daughter’s actions?

Or Hedwise? Surely, Bartholomew’s feeble investigation concerning Joanna could not warrant Eleanor trying to kill him? He decided that he might be wise to stay away from future involvements with women – at least until he had learned a little more about them.

Meg wiped her nose. ‘Eleanor told me some days ago that Doctor Bartholomew had some odd notion that Joanna had been murdered during the riot. Of course, nothing of the kind had happened and we all know that Joanna had left because she found Cambridge too violent.’

‘So, Joanna is in Ely?’ asked Michael. Meg nodded and Michael continued. ‘In that case, surely it would be a simple matter to summon her back again and prove that she is alive and well, living a life of sin near the greatest Benedictine House in East Anglia. Why did Mistress Tyler not do that?’

Meg looked bewildered, as though such a notion had not occurred to her before. ‘I do not know,’ she stammered. ‘Perhaps because they were so relieved when she left. Joanna was definitely not the demure and gentle niece we remembered from years ago.’ She pursed her lips in disapproval. ‘She had become a harlot.’

Bartholomew studied the frightened woman soberly.

She did not possess the quick intelligence and courage of her Tyler relatives and Bartholomew was in no doubt that she had believed what she had been told. Meg’s crime was nothing more than gullibility. But Bartholomew was now certain that Joanna had played a part in some plot – whether willingly or unwillingly he did not know – and that Eleanor had sent him the poison in order to prevent him coming any closer to the truth. The more he thought about it, particularly in relation to the bloodstains in the house, the more he sensed that there was most definitely something untoward about Joanna’s sudden departure, and that Eleanor had taken it upon herself to protect her family from the consequences.

‘Did you see Joanna after the riot?’ asked Bartholomew, already guessing what the answer would be.

Meg shook her head. ‘Agnes said Joanna did not want to help with the clearing up afterwards. It is typical of her. She has become a lazy woman. Agnes saw her off early that morning.’

But Joanna, if Joanna it were, was already dead in the Castle mortuary that morning and Agnes Tyler herself was staying at Jonas’s house because her own had been looted.

‘Where did Agnes see Joanna?’ pressed Bartholomew.

‘I do not know,’ said Meg. ‘She was up early and went off to inspect the damage done to her house. I did not question where they met.’

If they ever met, thought Bartholomew. There was no evidence to suggest that they did, and quite a bit to suggest that they did not.

‘One last question,’ he said. Meg nodded cautiously, still sniffling. ‘Could Joanna write?’

Meg looked taken aback. ‘Of course not,’ she said. ‘Her mother always planned for her to follow in her footsteps and become a dairy-maid at the Abbey. She had no need to learn her letters.’

But Eleanor could write, thought Bartholomew. And someone had written a note, purporting to be from Joanna, to Dunstan’s lovesick grandson, perhaps so that her sudden disappearance would not arouse the lad’s suspicion, and cause him to go to Ely to find her. If Joanna was illiterate, it was unlikely that she would have written a note – or even bother to dictate one to a moonstruck adolescent who could not read. Eleanor Tyler’s role in the affair was becoming increasingly suspect.

Bartholomew made his farewells to Meg and the agitated apothecary. As he turned to leave the shop the doorway darkened. Against the bright sunlight, a figure stood silhouetted.

‘Doctor Bartholomew,’ said the hulking shape in a loud, confident voice that dripped with loathing. ‘And Brother Michael. I have been searching for you two. We should talk. Meet me at St Andrew’s Church at sunset tonight.’

The figure moved away, leaving Bartholomew and Michael staring at the empty doorway.

‘Well,’ said Michael. ‘Do we obey this summons and meet Master Lydgate tonight?’

‘A summons from the Devil?’ asked Bartholomew dubiously.