A Bone of Contention

CHAPTER 6

Thunder rolled again, distantly, and another silver fork of lightning illuminated the darkened courtyard of Michaelhouse. Bartholomew sipped the sour ale he had stolen from the kitchens and watched through the opened shutters of his room. The night was almost dripping with humidity, even in the stonewalled rooms of the College and, from low voices carried on the still air, Bartholomew knew he was not the only person kept awake by the heat and the approaching storm.

He thought about Mistress Flecher. She would find the night unbearable with her failing lungs. She would be unable to draw enough air to allow her to breathe comfortably and would feel as though she were drowning.

He considered going to visit her, perhaps to give her a posset to make her sleep more easily, but distant yells and the smell of burning suggested that a riot of sorts had broken out in some part of the town. The streets would be patrolled by the beadles and the Sheriffs men and he had no wish to be arrested by either for breaking the curfew.

Sweat trickled down his back. Even sitting in his room sipping the brackish ale was making him hot. He stood restlessly and opened the door, trying to create a draught to cool himself down. The lightning came again, nearer this time, lasting several moments when the College was lit up as bright as at noon. In the room above, he heard Michael’s heavy footsteps pacing the protesting floorboards, and the muttered complaints of his roommates for keeping them awake.

While the evening light had lasted, Bartholomew had read his borrowed book, then had fallen asleep at the table with his head resting on his arms. He had woken stiff and aching two hours later, his mind teeming with confused dreams involving Philippa, Matilde and Eleanor, and wild collections of bones arising from the King’s Ditch.

Philippa. He thought about her now, humorous blue eyes and long tresses of deep gold hair. He had not realised how much he missed her until he knew she would not be returning to him. He wondered how he had managed to make for himself a life that was so lonely.

A creak from the room above made him think of Michael, a Benedictine monk in major orders. Bartholomew often wondered, from his behaviour and attitudes, how seriously the monk took his vow of chastity. But Michael had deliberately chosen such a life, whereas Bartholomew had not, although he might just as well have done. He wondered whether he should take Michael’s advice and become a friar or a monk, devoting himself entirely to his studies, teaching and patients. But then he would never be away from his confessor, because he liked women and what they had to offer.

He went to lie down on his bed to try to sleep, but after a few minutes, rose again restlessly. The rough blanket prickled his bare skin and made him hotter than ever. He paced the room in the darkness, wondering what he could do to pass the time and divert his mind from dwelling on Philippa. Since candles were expensive they were not readily dispensed to the scholars of Michaelhouse, and Bartholomew had used the last of his allowance that morning to read before dawn. When the natural light faded, most reading and writing ceased and the scholars usually went to bed, unless they took the considerable risk of carousing in the town. Then Bartholomew realised that he did have a spare candle, given to him in lieu of payment by a patient. He had been saving it for the winter, but why not use it now, to read the Galen, since he could not sleep?

He groped along the single shelf in his room, recalling that he had left it next to his spare quills. It was not there.

He wondered if perhaps Cynric had taken it, or Michael.

But that was unlikely. It was more probably Gray, who had taken things from Bartholomew without asking before. He took another sip of the warm ale, and then, in disgust at its rank, bitter flavour, poured it away out of the window.

‘The Master has forbidden the tipping of waste in the yard. At your own insisting, Doctor,’ came the admonishing tones of Walter, the night porter, through the open window. Bartholomew was a little ashamed.

Walter was right: Bartholomew had recommended to Kenyngham that all waste should be tipped into the cesspool behind the kitchen gardens, following an outbreak of a disease at Michaelhouse that made the bowels bleed.

Bartholomew had been proven correct: the disease had subsided when the scholars were not exposed to all kinds of unimaginable filth on their way from their rooms to meals in the hall.

‘What do you want, Walter?’ Bartholomew asked testily, setting the empty cup on the window-sill. ‘It is the middle of the night.’

Walter’s long, morose face was lit by a flicker of lightning and Bartholomew saw him squint at the brightness.

Both looked up at the sky, seeing great, heavy-bellied clouds hanging there, showing momentarily light grey under the sudden flash.

‘A patient needs you. Urgent.’ It was no secret that Walter resented the fact that Master Kenyngham had given Bartholomew permission to come and go from the College during the night if needed by a patient. Such calls were not uncommon, especially during outbreaks of summer ague or winter fevers.

Walter glanced up at the sky again. ‘You will probably get drenched when this storm breaks,’ he added, in tones of malicious satisfaction.

Bartholomew looked at him in distaste, confident that Walter would be unable to make out his expression in the darkness of his room.

‘Who is it?’ he asked, reaching for his shirt and pulling it over his head, grimacing as it stuck unpleasantly to his back. He tucked it into his hose, and sat on the bed to put on his boots. Walter was right about the rain and Bartholomew had no intention of tramping about in a heavy downpour in shoes. He knew well what sudden storms were like in Cambridge: the rainwater would turn the dusty streets into rivers of mud; in the mud would be offal, sewage, animal dung and all manner of rotting vegetation.

Wearing shoes would be tantamount to walking barefoot.

Walter rested his elbows on the window-sill and leaned inside, lit from behind by another flash of lightning.

‘Mistress Fletcher,’ he said. ‘Does she have a son? It was not her husband who came.’

‘Yes, she has two,’ said Bartholomew, his stomach churning. Surely it was not time for her to die already?

Perhaps the wetness of the air had hastened her end. He hoped the storm would break soon and that in her last moments she would breathe air that carried the clean scent of wet earth.

Bartholomew saw his door open, and Michael stepped inside, clad in his baggy black robe with no cowl or waist-tie, while the wooden cross he usually wore around his neck had been tucked down the front of his habit.

Michael had explained that it had once caught on a loose slat of his bed and all but strangled him in his sleep; now he slept with it inside his habit out of harm’s way. He looked even larger than usual. Without the trappings that marked him as a monk, Bartholomew thought, he looked like one of the fat, rich merchants who lived on Milne Street.

‘I heard voices,’ Michael said. ‘What has happened?’

‘Mistress Fletcher needs me,’ Bartholomew answered, struggling with his second boot. The hot weather seemed to have shrunk them somehow. Or perhaps his feet were swollen.

Michael shook his head. ‘There were the beginnings of a riot tonight, Matt. It is not safe for you to go out.’

‘Who was rioting?’ Bartholomew asked, pulling harder at his boot.

‘Some apprentices set light to that big pile of wood in the Market Square. The Sheriffs men put it down fairly easily, but I am sure small groups of youths looking for trouble are still roaming around, despite the patrols.’

The boot slid on at last and Bartholomew stood. He indicated his tabard folded on the room’s single chest.

‘Then I will leave that here and, if I meet any apprentices, they will think I am a townsperson.’

Michael sighed. ‘They will see a lone man and will attack regardless of whether you are town or gown,’ he said. ‘Wait three hours until the curfew is lifted.’

Bartholomew shook his head. ‘She might not be alive in three hours. She needs me now.’

Michael gave a resigned sigh. ‘Then we shall go together,’ he said. ‘From the sound of it, she will be more in need of my skills than yours anyway.’

Bartholomew gave him a grateful smile in the darkness, and followed him into the yard. Once out, he realised how comparatively cool it had been in his room after all. The heat lay thick, heavy and still in the night air. It was slightly misty, where the fetid ditches and waterways were evaporating into the already drenched air. The smell was overpowering. Lightning cracked overhead, followed immediately by a growl of thunder. Quickly, Bartholomew led the way out through the wicket gate, up St Michael’s Lane and into the High Street. Mistress Fletcher lived on New Bridges Street, almost opposite Godwinsson Hostel.

On the way they had to pass the leafy churchyards of St Michael’s, St Mary’s, St Bene’t’s and St Botolph’s, all stretching off into a dark abyss of overgrown grass and thick bushes.

As they reached St Bene’t’s the lightning flickered again and, out of the corner of his eye, Bartholomew thought he saw something glint briefly. He paused, peering into the gloom to try to make out what he had seen.

Michael plucked at his sleeve.

‘Let’s not dally here of all places,’ he said anxiously, then stopped short as someone came hurtling out of the row of trees running along the edge of the churchyard.

He was knocked to his knees and someone leapt on his back with considerable force, pushing him flat on the ground. He was aware that Bartholomew had been similarly attacked and was angry with himself for not insisting that they were both armed before going out.

Usually, the sight of Michael, monk and Senior Proctor, was enough to ward off most potential acts of violence, but he was not wearing his full habit tonight because of the heat.

He began to squirm under the weight of the man on top of him, and felt a second person come to help hold him down.

‘Shame on you! Attacking one of God’s monks!’ he roared, a tactic that had worked successfully in the past.

A snort of laughter met his words, indicating he had not been believed. He struggled again but his arms were pinned to his sides. The sound of a violent scuffle to one side told him in an instant what was happening.

The message had been sent to lure Bartholomew out of the College. Michael had not been expected, and the two men holding him down were doing no more than that: he was not being harmed or searched for valuables, simply being kept from going to the aid of his friend.

The knowledge enraged him and he began his struggles anew, yelling furiously, hoping to raise the alarm. A heavy, none-too-clean, hand clamped down over his mouth, and he bit it as hard as he could. There was a cry of pain and the hand was removed to be replaced by a fistful of his own loose gown, rammed so hard against his face that he could scarcely breathe. He heard a shrill howl coming from the skirmish to his right and guessed that Bartholomew, unarmed or not, was putting up quite a fight.

‘Where is it?’ came a hissed question, more desperate than menacing.

Michael heard the fight abate and Bartholomew ask, ‘Where is what?’

Loud cursing by an unfamiliar voice suggested that Bartholomew had taken advantage of the lull to land a heavy kick. Michael, dizzy from lack of air, renewed his own efforts to escape but stopped when he felt the cold touch of steel against his neck.

‘Tell us, or we will kill him.’ On cue Michael felt the blade move closer to his throat.

‘I do not know what you want!’ Bartholomew sounded appalled. ‘He is a monk. Kill him, and you will be damned in the sight of God!’

Michael mentally applauded the threat of hell fires and eternal damnation to get them out of their predicament, but his brief flare of hope faded rapidly when he realised Bartholomew’s ploy had not worked.

‘This is your brother-in-law, Oswald Stanmore,’ the voice hissed again, the knife pricking at Michael’s throat. ‘He is a merchant, not a monk!’

Michael closed his eyes in despair. In the daylight, his habit would be unmistakeable, tied and cowled or not, but in the dark it was just a robe. He strained against his captors again, but weakly because of the burning in his lungs, protesting at the lack of air. Any moment now he would black out.

He was dimly aware that Bartholomew was still fighting but the noise did not induce the people who lived in the houses opposite the churchyard to come to their rescue.

But why should they? They were likely to be harmed, and almost certain to be arrested for breaking the curfew.

‘No!’ someone yelled. Then followed: ‘Fool!’

Someone grabbed a handful of Michael’s hair and wrenched his head up, and he saw a knife flash in the darkness. He closed his eyes again tightly and tried to remember the words of the prayers for the dying.

Abruptly and unexpectedly, he was released. The weight that had been crushing him lifted, and the handful of material that had been slowly suffocating him dropped away. For a moment, all he could do was suck in great mouthfuls of air. He scrabbled at his throat to see if it had been cut and he was bleeding to death, and felt instead the wooden cross that must have fallen out of his habit when his head had been pulled back.

He looked up and down the High Street, glimpsing several dark shadows moving some distance away, and then they were gone. The road was deserted and as still as the grave.

Slowly, he crawled to Bartholomew. The first heavy drops of rain began to splatter in the dust, breaking the silence as they fell harder and faster. He pulled himself together and rolled Bartholomew on to his back, giving him a rough shake that made him open his eyes.

After a moment Michael stood, reeling from his near strangulation, and hauled Bartholomew to his feet.

‘Bring him here.’

Michael saw Mistress Tyler standing in the doorway to her house a short distance away, and they staggered towards her. The rain was coming down in sheets; by the time they reached her door they were drenched.

Wordlessly, Michael pushed past her into the small room beyond and Bartholomew sank gratefully on to the rush-strewn floor. Eleanor kindled a lamp, exclaiming in horror as she recognised them when the room jumped into brightness. Mistress Tyler dispatched her for wine, and bundled the younger girl away to bed.

‘The commotion awoke us but we would have been able to do little to help,’ said Hedwise, wringing her hands. ‘We would have tried, though, had we known it was you, even if it had only been throwing stones from the window.’

‘It is better that you stayed out of it,’ said Michael. ‘I doubt you would have been able to help and you may have brought reprisals upon yourselves. Did you ask us here without knowing who we were, then?’

Mistress Tyler nodded. ‘We saw only two men attacked and needing help.’

Michael was impressed, certain that such open charity would not be available to anyone from Michaelhouse, especially if the morose Walter were on gate duty. He turned back to Bartholomew, and saw a large red stain on the front of his shirt. He took a strip of linen from Eleanor, bundled it into a pad, them pushed it down hard, as he had seen Bartholomew do to staunch the blood-flow from wounds.

Bartholomew looked at him in bewilderment. ‘What are you doing?’

‘Stopping the bleeding,’ Michael answered assertively.

Now the first shock of the attack was over, he was beginning to regain some of his customary confidence; the terrifying feeling of helplessness he had experienced when he was being suffocated was receding.

Bartholomew sat up, pushing Michael’s hands away.

‘What bleeding?’ he asked, holding his head in both hands as it reeled and swam at his sudden movement.

‘You are bleeding,’ answered Michael, applying his pressure pad again firmly.

Bartholomew shook his head and instantly regretted it.

He hoped he was not going to be sick in Mistress Tyler’s house. He saw the red stain on his shirt but knew it was from no injury of his own. At some point in the struggle Bartholomew had scored a direct hit on one man’s nose, and blood had splattered from him on to Bartholomew as they fell to the ground together.

Michael gazed at Bartholomew’s shirt with wide eyes, looking so baffled that Bartholomew would have laughed had his head not ached so.

‘Did you not check there was a wound first?’ asked Bartholomew, his voice ringing in his head like the great brass bells at St Mary’s Church.

Michael shrugged off this irrelevance. ‘If the blood is not yours, what ails you?’

‘A bump on the head,’ Bartholomew replied.

‘Is that all?’ Michael sighed. ‘Then we should stop pestering Mistress Tyler and return to Michaelhouse.’

‘Stay a while,’ insisted Eleanor, returning from the kitchen with a bottle and some goblets. ‘At least wait until the rain stops.’

‘And take a little wine,’ said Mistress Tyler, filling a cup and offering it to Bartholomew. ‘You look as though you need some.’

Michael snatched it and drained it in a single draught.

‘I did,’ he said, handing the empty goblet back with satisfaction. ‘I was almost suffocated, you know.’

‘We saw,’ said Eleanor, with a patent lack of interest in Michael’s brush with death. She knelt next to Bartholomew and offered him another goblet. ‘Drink this, Matt. It is finest French wine.’

‘He needs ale, not wine,’ said Hedwise scornfully, appearing on his other side with a large tankard of frothy beer. ‘I brewed this myself.’

‘Rubbish!’ snapped Eleanor, thrusting her goblet at Bartholomew. ‘Everyone knows that wine is the thing for sudden shocks. Ale will do him no good at all.’

‘With respect,’ said Bartholomew, pushing both vessels away firmly, ‘I would rather drink nothing.’ He felt queasy and the proximity of alcoholic fumes was making his stomach churn. He struggled to stand, hindered more than helped by the sister on either side of him.

‘Are you ready?’ asked Michael archly, when the physician had finally extricated himself from their helpful hands.

Bartholomew nodded and followed Michael towards the door.

‘See you next Tuesday,’ said Eleanor, beaming as she opened it for him.

‘And I shall see you the following Sunday,’ said Hedwise, raising her chin in the air defiantly as she glowered at her sister.

Sensing an unseemly disagreement in the making, Mistress Tyler hauled them both back inside and closed the door quickly. Bickering voices could be heard through the open window.

Once they began to walk along the High Street, Bartholomew wished he had stayed longer. Walking made him dizzy and he wanted to lie down. He lunged across the road to retrieve his medicine bag that had been upended and searched during the fight. Michael took his arm and guided him away from some of the deeper potholes, some rapidly filling with rain.

‘You are in for one hell of a day at the Founder’s Feast,’ remarked Michael unkindly. ‘That Eleanor has set her sights on you and she will be none too pleased when she sees she has a rival for your affections.’

‘Eleanor has done nothing of the sort,’ muttered Bartholomew, rubbing his eyes to try to clear them. ‘She is probably just interested in hearing your choir.’

Michael shook his head firmly. ‘You want to watch yourself, Matt, dallying mercilessly with all these ladies. If you are not careful, you will end up like Kenzie – murdered in the King’s Ditch. There is nothing as venomous as a woman betrayed.’

‘Oh, really?’ asked Bartholomew. ‘Over the last four years or so, I have seen a good deal more venom expended by the men of the town than by the women.’

‘We should be considering what has just happened, not discussing your love life,’ said Michael, suddenly serious, perhaps because he knew Bartholomew was right. ‘What did those men want from you? Did you know them? It seems that Walter was right when he did not recognise the messenger as one of Mistress Fletcher’s family. We were foolish to have walked into such an obvious trap.’

Bartholomew put his hand to his head in an effort to stop it spinning and closed his eyes. That was worse. He opened them again.

‘They thought you were Oswald Stanmore,’ he said, leaning heavily on Michael.

Michael caught him as he stumbled. ‘Watch where you are going! I imagine my dark robe misled them.’

‘They were from Godwinsson,’ Bartholomew said, trying to concentrate on the way ahead, them wincing as a flash of lightning lanced brightly into his eyes. The rain was pleasant though, drenching him in a cooling shower and clearing the blurring from his eyes.

‘Godwinsson? How could you see that in the dark?’ queried Michael in disbelief.

‘You should not ask me questions if you do not think I can answer them,’ Bartholomew retorted irritably. ‘There were lightning flashes and I saw their faces quite clearly. One was Huw the steward, and another was the servant I saw emptying the slops while I was hiding in Godwinsson’s back yard – Saul Potter, I think he is called. And one of the ones who fought you was Will from Valence Marie – the fellow who keeps digging up bones.’

‘That puny little tyke?’ exclaimed Michael. ‘Are you certain?’

Bartholomew nodded cautiously, his hand still to his head. ‘And the one demanding to know where “it” was I think may have been Thomas Bigod, the Master of Maud’s.’

Michael whirled around. ‘Now I know you must be raving! Why would Master Bigod attack us in the street? Or rather, attack you, since I think this whole business has nothing to do with me – it was to you the message was sent. What did you say to Father Eligius when you went to Valence Marie this afternoon that has set the servant after you so furiously? Did you press him too hard about the Frenchmen?’

Bartholomew could not imagine he had said anything to Eligius, or anyone else, to warrant such a violent attack.

‘I simply asked him if he knew where I might find his college’s French students. He told me that they had gone to London.’

Michael looked sceptical. ‘Just when term is beginning? It is an odd time for students to be leaving the University to say the least. Did you tell Eligius why you wanted them? Did you mention the relic and offend him by your rejection of it?’

Bartholomew skidded in something slippery. ‘He would not have noticed if I had. He was too absorbed in his own devotion to the thing. It was difficult to persuade him to discuss anything else.’

Michael was silent, concentrating on steering himself and Bartholomew clear of the more obvious obstacles that turned the High Street into a dangerous gauntlet of ankle-wrenching holes, treacherously slick mud, and repellent mounds of substances the monk did not care to think about.

‘But what about Master Bigod?’ he said eventually. ‘I cannot imagine why he would be out in the rain ambushing his colleagues.’

Bartholomew frowned, trying to concentrate. ‘I may be mistaken – I did not see his face because it was hidden by a hood. But I am sure I recognised his voice. He is from Norwich, and his accent is distinctive, not to mention the fact that his voice is unusually deep.’

‘Well, what do you think he wanted?’ asked Michael, still dubious.

Bartholomew shrugged. ‘I have no idea.’ He stopped abruptly, turning to face Michael. ‘Unless it could be that broken ring I found.’

Michael scratched his chin, the rain plastering his thin brown hair to his scalp, making his head seem very small atop his large body. ‘It may have been, I suppose.’

‘I think I may have broken the arm of one of our attackers: I was holding it when I fell and I heard it crack. He was wielding a knife, trying to stab me, and Bigod called for him to stop. I struggled and he missed, striking the ground instead – I heard it scrape the ground next to my ear. I suppose the sight of the blood on my shirt led Bigod to assume it was mine. I decided to play into their belief that I was dead so they would leave, but one of them, that Saul Potter I think, kicked my head.’ He rubbed it ruefully. ‘A tactical error on my part.’

‘I do not think so, Matt,’ said Michael soberly. ‘They were certainly going to slit my throat. They only desisted at the last moment because they realised I really was a monk and not just Oswald Stanmore.’

Bartholomew tried to work out what the servants of Godwinsson and Valence Marie could possibly want from him. Or Master Bigod from Maud’s. It proved their institutions were connected in some way. But how? To the murder of the child and James Kenzie? To the rape and murder of Joanna? To the mysterious movements of Kenzie’s ring? Or to the “two acts” that Matilde said the riot was instigated to hide?

Thinking was making him feel light-headed and he felt his legs begin to give way. They had reached St Michael’s Church. He lurched towards one of the tombstones in the churchyard and held on to it to prevent himself from falling.

‘I think I am going to be sick,’ he said in a whisper, dropping to his hands and knees in the wet grass.

Feeling better, he was helped to his feet by Michael.

‘May the Lord forgive you, Matthew,’ the monk said with amusement. ‘You have just thrown up on poor Master Wilson’s grave.’

When Bartholomew woke, he sensed someone else was in the room with him. He opened his eyes and blinked hard.

Above him the curious face of Rob Deynman hovered.

‘At last!’ the student said, his voice loud and unendearingly cheerful. ‘I was beginning to think you would sleep for ever.’

‘So I might, had I known I would wake to you,’ Bartholomew muttered unkindly, sitting up carefully.

‘What was that?’ Deynman said, putting his ear close to Bartholomew in a grotesque parody of the bedside manner that Bartholomew had been trying to instil into him. Not receiving a reply, he pushed Bartholomew back down on the bed and slapped something icy and wet on his head with considerable force.

‘God’s teeth!’ gasped Bartholomew, his eyes stinging from the violence of Deynman’s cold-compress application.

‘You just lie there quietly,’ Deynman yelled, hauling the blanket up around Bartholomew’s chin with such vigour that it all but strangled him. Bartholomew wondered why Deynman was shouting. He was not usually loud-voiced.

‘Where is Michael?’ he asked.

Deynman favoured him with an admonishing look. ‘Brother Michael is asleep, as are all Michaelhouse scholars. Tom Bulbeck, Sam Gray, and I – we three are your best students – are the only ones awake.’

‘Not for long if you keep shouting,’ said Bartholomew, feeling cautiously at his head. Someone had bandaged it, expertly, and only a little too tight.

Deynman laughed. ‘You are back to normal,’ he said. ‘Crabby!’

Bartholomew stared at him in disbelief. Cheeky young rascal! ‘Where is Sam?’ he demanded coldly.

‘Gone for water,’ said Deynman, still in the stentorian tones that made Bartholomew’s head buzz. ‘Here he is.’

‘Oh, you are awake!’ exclaimed Gray in delight, entering Bartholomew’s room and setting a pitcher of water carefully on the table. He knelt next to Bartholomew and peered at him.

‘What is Deynman doing in my room?’ Bartholomew demanded. ‘What time is it?’

Gray sent Deynman to the kitchen for watered ale, and arranged the blanket in a more reasonable fashion.

‘You should rest,’ Gray said softly. ‘It is probably somewhere near midnight and you have been ill for almost two days. We wondered whether you might have a cracked skull but now you seem back to normal, I think not. But your stars are sadly misaligned.’

‘Two days?’ echoed Bartholomew in disbelief. ‘That cannot be right!’

But even as he said it, vague recollections of moving in and out of sleep, of his students, Michael and Cynric, hovering around him began to flicker dimly through his mind.

‘Easy,’ said Gray gently. ‘The kick Brother Michael said you took in that fight must have been harder than you realised. And, as I said, your stars are not good. You were born when Saturn was in its ascendancy and the conjunction of Mars and Jupiter on Wednesday…’

‘Oh really, Sam!’ exclaimed Bartholomew irritably. ‘You do not have the slightest idea when I was born. And if you had been to Master Kenyngham’s lecture last week, you would know there was no conjunction of Mars and Jupiter on Wednesday.’

Gray was not easily deterred. ‘Details are unimportant,’ he said airily. ‘But you were attacked on Wednesday night and it is late on Friday.’

‘Two days wasted,’ said Bartholomew, his mind leaping from his neglected teaching to the inquiries he had been pursuing with Michael.

‘We have not been idle,’ said Gray, not without pride. ‘While Deynman stayed with you, I read the beginning of Theophilus’s De urinis to the first-and second-year students, while Tom Bulbeck read Nicholas’s Antidotarium to the third, fourth and fifth years.’

Bartholomew regarded him appraisingly. ‘It seems I am no longer needed,’ he said, complimenting Gray’s organisational skills.

Gray looked at him sharply to see if he were being facetious, but then gave a shy grin. ‘I would claim it was all down to my talent for teaching but the students were only malleable because you were ill,’ he said in an rare moment of honesty. ‘Had you left me in charge and went drinking in the taverns all day, it would have been a different matter. We were all concerned for you. After all, since the plague, there is just you, Father Philius and Master Lynton who teach medicine. What would happen to us if you were to die?’

‘Nicely put,’ said Bartholomew.

‘We have had to turn away hoards of anxious women who came to enquire after you,’ announced Deynman, loud enough to be heard in every college in Cambridge as he returned with the watered ale. Tom Bulbeck slipped in behind him and came to squat next to Gray, inspecting his teacher anxiously. Deynman, choosing to ignore Gray’s gesture to keep his voice down, continued with his oration.

‘These ladies have been very persistent; we had a difficult job keeping them out of the College.’

‘Oh?’ said Bartholomew cautiously. ‘Which ones came?’

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

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

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

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

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

‘That is no woman,’ declared Deynman.

‘You should keep your voice down,’ advised Bartholomew. ‘Or she might hear you and then I will not be the only one with a cracked head.’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

When the mason arrived, Bartholomew handed him the small box that contained the money Wilson had given him for the tomb. The mason opened the box and shook his head, clicking his tongue.

‘Three years ago this would have bought something really fancy, but since the plague everything costs more – tools, wages… Even with the stone already bought, I can only do you something fairly plain.’

‘Really?’ said Bartholomew, his spirits lifting. ‘Master Wilson wanted an effigy of himself with a dozen angels, carved in the black marble and picked out in gold.’

The mason sucked in his breath and shook his head.

‘Not with this money. I could do you a cross with some nice knots at the corners.’

‘That sounds reasonable,’ said Bartholomew and a deal was struck. He did not know whether to feel relieved that the hideous structure Wilson had desired would not now spoil the delicate contours of the church, or guilt that his intransigence had meant that Wilson’s tomb-money had so devalued.

As he pondered, Michael sought him out, his face sombre. ‘Mistress Fletcher died yesterday,’ he said. He squeezed Bartholomew’s shoulder and then went to sit on the bed. ‘I went to her when word came that she was failing. She had fallen into a deep sleep in the afternoon and did not wake before she died some hours later. There was nothing you could have done and she would not have known whether you were there or not.’

Bartholomew looked away and said nothing. They sat in silence for a while. Michael played with the wooden cross around his neck, and Bartholomew stared out of the window into the sunny yard. He watched some chickens pecking about in the dirt and saw Deynman chase a hungry-looking dog away from them. Deynman spied Bartholomew gazing out of his window and waved cheerily. Absently, Bartholomew waved back.

‘Damn Bigod!’ he said in a low voice. ‘I promised her I would be there.’

Michael did not reply. Bartholomew stood up, knocking something from the window-sill as he did so. As he stooped to retrieve it, he saw it was the candle he had been looking for the night he and Michael had been attacked.

Pangs of guilt assailed him when he remembered thinking that Gray might have taken it. He replaced it on the shelf, wondering who had moved it in the first place. Cynric, perhaps, when he was cleaning.

Michael stood, too. ‘I am going to talk to Tulyet about your notion of persuading Lydgate to look at the ring on Thorpe’s skeleton,’ he said. He raised his hands in a gesture of defeat. ‘We have Kenzie murdered; a recently dead hand claimed to be a relic; riots possible every night and we do not know why; your raped and murdered prostitute; the attack against you in the night; and the child’s skeleton. All unsolved mysteries, and I can think of no way forward with any of them. Tulyet will help us because he is as baffled as we are and I can think of nothing else to do.’

Bartholomew picked up his bag. ‘I had planned to sit with Mistress Fletcher and watch Godwinsson at the same time. The French students were bound to go in or out sooner or later and I was going to follow them and question them about Joanna.’

‘Forget them for now,’ said Michael. ‘We know where to find them.’ He hesitated, then sat again, fiddling with the wooden cross that hung round his neck. Bartholomew waited, sensing the monk had something to say. He put the Galen in his bag, then perched on the edge of the table. Michael gave a heavy sigh.

‘Two days ago, when you were indisposed, I went to see Master Bigod of Maud’s Hostel. He denies totally the charge that it was he who attacked us in the street. I asked to see Will at Valence Marie but was told he was visiting a sick sister in Fen Ditton, and had been gone since the night the relic was found. Then I went to Godwinsson and, in the company of Guy Heppel, put the fear of God into Huw, their steward, and that scullion Saul Potter who you said kicked you. Do you know what I discovered?’

Bartholomew shook his head, setting his bag down on the table while he listened to Michael.

‘Nothing!’ spat Michael in disgust. ‘Not even the tiniest scrap of information. Huw and Saul Potter claim they spent the evening cleaning silver, and went to bed by eight o’clock. I collared other Godwinsson servants, and they confirmed that the hostel was locked up and everyone was asleep long before the church clock struck nine. It was past midnight before we were attacked.’ He turned to the physician. ‘Are you certain that it was Will, Huw, Saul Potter and Bigod you recognised?’

Bartholomew thought back to the attack: Huw swearing at him in Welsh, Saul Potter’s piggy eyes glittering as Bartholomew had torn away his hood, and Bigod demanding to know where something was.

‘I injured one as we fell – his hand broke,’ he said, the memory dim. ‘Did any of the men you spoke to have injuries? What about Will from Valence Marie? Perhaps he left Cambridge to hide the fact that he was wounded.’

Michael looked pained. ‘Damn! Your memory has played us false! You told me originally that the man had broken his arm, not his hand, and you said Will had been holding me down, not fighting with you. I inflicted no broken bones – although I certainly bit someone fairly hard – and so Will cannot be in hiding to cover his wounds.’

He banged his fist on the table in frustration. ‘I wondered at the time whether you might not have been rambling. You were weaving all over the road like a drunk. When I went haring off to confront Bigod and the others, I had no idea your injury was so serious. Gray warned us you might lose some memory after he consulted your stars. I should have waited.’

‘Stars!’ spat Bartholomew in disgust. ‘I do remember Bigod, Huw, Saul Potter and Will there. Others too. The lightning lit up their faces.’

Michael looked sceptical. ‘How many were there?’

Bartholomew thought, struggling with the blurred images that played in his mind. ‘Will and two others fought with you, while Huw, Saul Potter and Bigod fought with me.’

One of the Benedictines in the room above began to sing softly as Michael shook his head. ‘Wrong again, Matt. Only two had been allocated to me; one sat on my back, while the other held my gown over my face and almost smothered me. But there were five men fighting you. I saw them. I had been taken by surprise and was knocked to the ground before I could react. You had more time to defend yourself and were able to fight harder. Do you remember any words they spoke?’

For a brief moment, Bartholomew considered not answering, feeling foolish and vulnerable at his lapse in memory. ‘I heard Huw speak in Welsh, and Bigod asked me where something was,’ he said reluctantly.

‘I heard no Welsh,’ said Michael, ‘and I heard every word that was spoken, lying as I was immobilised. Damn! Should I apologise to Bigod for accusing him wrongly? The servants I do not care about but the Principal of a hostel is another matter.’

‘I am certain I saw those four,’ persisted Bartholomew. ‘And I heard and felt the sharp crack of a bone breaking…’

He stopped, aware that Michael was regarding him unconvinced.

‘I suspect I saw a good deal more than you, since I was pinned helplessly on the ground for several minutes while you fought,’ said the monk. ‘The faces of our attackers were very carefully concealed – I saw nothing. And I am sure they would not have left us alive had they the slightest suspicion that they might have been identified. Yet you claim to have recognised four of the seven. It must have been your imagination that led you to name Bigod, Will, Saul Potter and Huw. I can come up with no other explanation than that these were professional outlaws hired to collect something from you.’

‘But what?’ asked Bartholomew, uncomfortable at the way in which Michael was so blithely dismissing his recollections. ‘And why me, not you? You are just as deeply involved in all this business as me – perhaps more so, since you are the Senior Proctor.’

‘Perhaps it has nothing to do with “this business”, as you put it,’ said Michael. ‘I have given the matter considerable thought. The attack was most definitely aimed at you, since you were the one who was lured out on the pretext of a medical emergency; I was merely incidental. No one knows you have that ring you found at Godwinsson, except me, so it cannot be that – unless you were seen picking it up. The only answer I can come up with is that these men were hired by a patient of yours to get something…’

‘Such as what?’ interrupted Bartholomew in disbelief. ‘Medicine? Most people know I prescribe medicine perfectly willingly and do not need to be ambushed for it.’

‘Perhaps you took something in lieu of payment that someone wants back,’ suggested Michael. ‘You are often given all manner of oddments when people have no money.’

‘Exactly! ‘ said Bartholomew. ‘ “Have no money.” Which means that they also would not be able to afford to pay outlaws to get whatever it was back again. And I hardly think seedcakes, candle-stubs and the occasional pot of ink warrant such an elaborate attack. Anyway, as Gray will attest, I often overlook payment when a patient is in dire need.’

‘Yes, yes,’ said Michael testily. ‘But I can think of no other reason why you alone should be enticed out of college and searched for something. You have some rich patients – they are not all beggars.’

‘But they pay me with money,’ said Bartholomew. ‘And the motive for the attack was not theft, because neither of us was robbed.’

Michael was becoming impatient. ‘Perhaps your misaligned stars have led you to forget something obvious. Some transaction with a patient?’

‘I have not!’ said Bartholomew angrily. ‘And my stars are not misaligned!’

A distant screech of raucous laughter from the kitchens spoke of the presence of Agatha. For a frightening instant, Bartholomew, who had heard the laugh often, thought that it sounded alien to him. Gray’s physical diagnosis had been right: it was only to be expected that some of his faculties might be temporarily awry following a hefty blow to the head. Perhaps a clearer memory of the fight would emerge in time. Then again, perhaps it would not.

But Bartholomew knew that his stars had nothing to do with the fact that his memories were dim. Ironically, it seemed as though his reluctant adherence to teaching traditional medicine would backfire on him, if Gray was telling all and sundry that his master’s stars augured ill. People would treat anything he said with scepticism until he, or better yet, Gray, showed that his stars were back in a favourable position. He almost wished he had been discussing trepanation rather than astrology, after all.

Bartholomew was torn between doubt and frustration for Michael’s dilemma. The more he thought about it, the more he was certain that the men he had named were their attackers, but the details remained hazy. He rubbed his eyes tiredly.

‘You should rest,’ said Michael, watching him. ‘And I must go to see Tulyet.’

Checking that the Galen was in his bag, Bartholomew followed Michael out of his room. He felt claustrophobic in the College, and wanted to be somewhere alone and quiet, like the meadows behind St Peter without Trumpington Gate. Ignoring Michael’s silent glances of disapproval that his advice about resting was being so wilfully dismissed, Bartholomew walked purposefully across the courtyard, and up St Michael’s Lane. Less decisively, he wandered along the High Street and began to notice things he had not seen before: there was a carved pig on one of the timbers of Physwick Hostel; one of the trees in St Michael’s churchyard was taller than the tower; Guy Heppel had a faint birthmark on one side of his neck.

‘I am delighted to see you up and about,’ breathed the Junior Proctor, sidling up to him. He rubbed his hands up and down his gown in his curious way. ‘I was most concerned to hear your stars are so unfavourable.’

‘Thank you,’ said Bartholomew shortly. ‘But I can assure you that they are becoming more favourable by the hour.’

Heppel looked surprised at his vehemence. ‘I am glad to hear it. I was hoping to have my astrological consultation from you soon. My chest is a little better with that angelica you gave me, but now I have a stiffness in my knees. I almost went to Father Philius at Gonville Hall when you were ill – I am told he does an adequate job – but now you are well again, I am glad I waited. Brother Michael informs me you are by far the best man in Cambridge for stars.’

Bartholomew’s eyes narrowed and he walked away, leaving Heppel somewhat bewildered. He had not gone far when he saw Matilde. She approached him shyly and smiled with genuine pleasure. ‘Agatha told me you were better,’ she said. ‘I was worried.’

‘My stars are badly aligned, apparently,’ he said, turning to glower at the retreating figure of Guy Heppel, who was still rubbing his hands up and down the sides of his gown.

‘They have certainly put you in an ill-humour,’ she said wryly. ‘Or was that the doing of the Junior Proctor?’

‘It was the doing of Brother Michael, telling people I am good at astrological consultations. If he spreads that tale around, I shall never be able to do any work.’

Matilde smiled. ‘Then you should tell Heppel that his stars will augur well if he devotes himself to music, and persuade him to join Michael’s choir. Heppel sings like a scalded cat and it will serve Michael right.’

Bartholomew regarded her doubtfully. ‘Are you sure a scalded cat would not serve to improve Michael’s choir? I cannot imagine it could be any worse than it is. It used to be quite good but he has not spent the time needed on it because of his extra duties as Senior Proctor.’

‘Time has nothing to do with it, Matthew. It is not lack of practice that has made the choir what it is, but Michael’s policy of providing bread and ale after each rehearsal. For many folk, it provides the only decent meal they have in a week.’

‘I wondered why so many people were so keen to join,’ said Bartholomew. ‘I knew it had nothing to do with their appreciation for music.’

‘Even so, I am looking forward to hearing it on Tuesday.’ She looked at him anxiously. ‘Unless you have changed your mind, or you feel too unwell, that is.’

‘No, of course not,’ he said quickly, although his predicament with his two guests had completely slipped his mind. He forced himself to smile. ‘Just remember to bring something to stuff in your ears.’

After he had left Matilde, he met Oswald Stanmore, who asked whether his stars had improved. Bartholomew regarded him coolly and silently cursed Gray’s enthusiasm for the subject. Puzzled by the uncharacteristic unfriendliness, Stanmore changed the subject and told him about a fight in Milne Street the night before between the miller’s apprentices and students from Valence Marie.

Bartholomew barely listened, preoccupied with how he might neutralise Gray’s diagnosis. Stanmore put up his hands in a gesture of exasperation when he saw his brother-in-law was not paying him any attention, and let him go. The merchant then strode to the small building where his seamstress worked. She was there talking to Cynric, who had been courting her slowly and shyly for more than a year. Stanmore beckoned him over, and within moments Cynric was slipping along Milne Street behind Bartholomew.

The sun was hot but not nearly as strong as it had been.

White, fluffy clouds drifted across the sky affording temporary relief and there was a breeze that was still relatively free of odours from the river. Bartholomew continued to walk, acknowledging the greetings of people he knew but not stopping to talk to them. He passed St Bene’t’s Church, where he and Michael had been attacked, and reached St Botolph’s. Glancing across the churchyard to where Joanna and the other riot victims were buried, he saw a figure emerge from where it had been standing behind some bushes. Curious, and with nothing else to do, Bartholomew climbed over the low wall and walked towards the back of the church. He peered out round the buttresses and saw that as he had thought, the person cloaked and hooded, even in the hot sun – was standing by Joanna’s grave.

Bartholomew abandoned stealth and approached the mourner openly. The figure turned to see who was coming and then looked away, it was a man of Bartholomew’s height, taller even. Bartholomew drew level and was about to address him, when the man spun round and shoved Bartholomew so hard that he fell back against the wall of the church. Then he raced off along the path back towards the High Street. Bartholomew’s feet skidded on wet grass as he fought to regain his balance.

But as the man ran his hood fell away from his face and Bartholomew, for the briefest of moments, was able to recognise him.

Bartholomew tore after him but on reaching the High Street saw that the man had disappeared into the mass of people walking home from the market. As he looked up and down the road in silent frustration, he saw that Cynric had materialised next to him.

‘Did you see him?’ Bartholomew gasped. ‘It was Thomas Lydgate, standing at Joanna’s graveside.’

Cynric looked at him perplexed. ‘You are still addled, lad,’ he said gently. ‘There was no one here other than you.’