An Order for Death хмб-7

by Susanna GREGORY

  ‘What is this work of the Devil doing in our friary?’ he demanded. The fury in his voice brought the resting friars, including the gap-toothed Horneby, scurrying to see what was happening.

  ‘Ah, Horneby,’ said Michael with a predatory smile. ‘Just the man I wanted to see. You do not know where I might find young Simon Lynne, do you?’

  Horneby looked furtive. ‘He is probably in the garden, praying.’

  Even Lincolne looked doubtful. ‘He will be in the friary somewhere,’ he said to Michael. ‘I have been keeping our students in, because I do not want them attacked by violent Dominicans.’

  ‘Then I want to speak to Lynne,’ said Michael. He flicked his fingers at a youngster with bad skin. ‘Fetch him, if you please.’

  ‘Never mind Lynne,’ said Lincolne, turning his attention back to the book, away from the student who scrambled to do Michael’s bidding. He held the tome carefully by one corner, as if it were a dead mouse. ‘I want to know what this filth is doing in my friary.’

  ‘I imagine Faricius was reading it so he could refute Heytesbury’s arguments,’ said Horneby, although he was unable to disguise the doubt in his voice. ‘It is difficult to prove someone wrong if you are unacquainted with the essence of his argument.’

  Lincolne thrust the book into Horneby’s hands. ‘Burn it,’ he ordered uncompromisingly.

  ‘We have just returned from St Radegund’s Convent,’ said Michael, in the silence that followed. Evidently, none of the student-friars was easy with the notion of burning Faricius’s property. Horneby certainly did not hurry away to do his Prior’s bidding; he stayed where he was, cradling the book in his arms, although at the mention of St Radegund’s, he shot Michael one of the most furtive looks Bartholomew had ever seen, so that the physician suspected the student knew exactly where his friend had been. Lincolne merely seemed surprised by the monk’s statement.

  ‘What were you doing there?’ he asked in distaste. ‘It is not a place frequented by decent men.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ asked Michael innocently. ‘It is a community of Benedictine nuns.’

  ‘It is a community of loose women who wear Benedictine habits,’ corrected Lincolne. ‘Why the Bishop does not expel them and donate the buildings to the University is quite beyond me.’

  ‘Have you never been there, to observe the nuns at prayer?’ asked Michael casually, although Bartholomew was aware of the intense interest behind his seemingly careless question.

  ‘That would be an impossibility,’ said Lincolne, taking Michael quite literally. ‘I hear they do not keep their offices – or rather, they keep their offices at times that suit them, rather than when they are supposed to be.’

  ‘Do you know this from personal observation?’ pressed Michael, still trying to ascertain whether Lincolne was prepared to admit that he had been to one of Walcote’s nocturnal gatherings.

  ‘I know from rumours,’ replied Lincolne, frustratingly obtuse. ‘I say all my offices here or in the chapel. But you have not told us what took you to such a place, Brother.’

  ‘Matt was called there to physick the Prioress,’ lied Michael.

  ‘What was wrong with her?’ asked Lincolne. ‘Was it anything to do with the fact that she had to be carried through the streets of Cambridge in a drunken stupor just after dawn this morning? What did you recommend, Doctor? A dish of raw eggs and pepper, and that she should be more abstemious in the future?’

  ‘Is that what the Carmelites use?’ asked Bartholomew, answering with a question because he was reluctant to discuss the Prioress’s medical details with Lincolne.

  Lincolne nodded, unabashed by the implication that his colleagues should require such a remedy in the first place. ‘And if we have no pepper, we use salt.’

  Michael clearly wanted to press the matter of St Radegund’s further, but was aware that if he pushed it too far, Lincolne would grow suspicious, which might prove unproductive in the long term. He sighed and turned his attention to the open psalter, instead. At that moment, the boy with the bad skin returned to say that he could not find Lynne. Horneby’s unease visibly increased, although Lincolne did not seem particularly concerned.

  ‘He will be hiding up a tree or in an attic somewhere. He will turn up when he is hungry.’

  Bartholomew was watching Horneby, who fidgeted and shuffled under his penetrating gaze. ‘What do you think, Master Horneby?’ he asked, making the young man squirm even more. ‘Will Lynne appear at dinnertime?’

  Horneby nodded quickly, casting quick, agitated glances at his friends. Bartholomew was about to pursue the matter when everyone jumped at a loud, startled exclamation from Timothy.

  ‘What is this?’ demanded the monk, straightening from where he had emptied the contents of Faricius’s spare scrip on to his bed. Everyone craned forward to see what he had found. Between thumb and forefinger, Timothy held a large ring with a heavy stone that looked as if it were a ruby. Lincolne seemed astonished; Horneby, however, lost some of his ruddy colour.

  Bartholomew thought back to when Faricius had died: the student-friar had been almost desperate to locate his scrip. Was it because he thought it contained the ruby ring – that he had forgotten he had left it in his chest at home? The strings that attached the scrip to Faricius’s belt had been cut, and Bartholomew had assumed the scrip had been stolen by whoever had killed him. However, although the cut marks appeared recent, there was nothing to say that they had been made at the time of his death. Perhaps it had happened the previous day, or even earlier.

  Or was there a simpler, more sinister explanation: that whoever killed Faricius and stole his purse had replaced the scrip, complete with ring, among the dead friar’s personal possessions? Bartholomew supposed it was not impossible that some colleague, overwhelmed by guilt at what he had done, had sought to make amends by putting back what he had stolen. But that meant Faricius’s murderer was a Carmelite, the only ones to have free and unlimited access to the cells in the dormitory.

  While the others clustered around to look at the ring, Bartholomew picked up the purse. Its strings were old and worn. There was nothing to suggest they had been cut, and nothing to suggest that the killer had been clever and had replaced the newly cut thongs with old and dirty ones. The leather ties were of an identical colour to the purse, and had frayed in such a way that Bartholomew was fairly certain they were the originals.

  He rubbed a hand through his hair. What did this mean? That someone had stolen Faricius’s other purse, and that his personal possessions ran to more than one valuable ring? That Faricius was delirious when he had urged Bartholomew to locate his scrip, and that he had forgotten the one that held the ring was safe in his friary?

  ‘It is a ring,’ said Lincolne, stating the obvious as he took it from Timothy. ‘We do not encourage our friars to keep this sort of thing for themselves. I imagine he was given it, and that he intended to pass it to the friary’s coffer, but his murder meant that he could not do so.’ He slipped the ring into his own scrip.

  ‘Do you now?’ said Michael, raising his eyebrows to indicate that he was not so sure. He turned to the students. ‘And who gave this pretty bauble to Faricius for the Carmelite coffer?’

  ‘We have never seen it before,’ said Horneby immediately. ‘We do not know where it came from.’

  ‘What about the rest of you?’ asked Michael, glancing around at the assembled students. ‘Does anyone know who might have given Faricius this ring? It looks valuable, and I cannot see that he would have mentioned it to no one.’

  The chorus of denials was accompanied by shaken heads. Bartholomew studied the students carefully. Some appeared to be surprised by the find, while others were more difficult to read. Horneby licked nervous lips, and his eyes could only be called shifty. While Bartholomew could not be sure that he was actually lying, it was obvious that there was something about Faricius’s death that was making him anxious and even a little frightened.

  ‘How remarkable,’ said Michael mildly. �
�Faricius was presented with a valuable gift for the friary, and yet he shared news of his good fortune with none of you. Was he always so secretive?’

  ‘Perhaps the Dominicans put it there,’ suggested Horneby. ‘They want you to question Faricius’s good character, so that you will not blame them for his murder.’

  ‘And how do you imagine they got in?’ demanded Timothy, who clearly thought Horneby’s suggestion ludicrous. ‘Surely, in a busy place like this dormitory, it would be extremely difficult for a stranger to enter and start tampering with people’s private possessions?’

  Lincolne intervened. ‘Horneby’s suggestion was meant to be helpful, but we can all see it is implausible. But perhaps the ring had some sentimental value for Faricius, and he decided to keep it, rather than forfeiting it when he was ordained.’

  ‘He would never have broken the rules of our Order in that way,’ said Horneby hotly. ‘He was a good and saintly man.’

  ‘Keeping a ring from a loved relative does not make him wicked,’ said Lincolne gently, to calm him. He turned to Michael. ‘But it does not give a Dominican the right to murder him, either.’

  ‘No,’ said Michael. ‘It does not.’

  Bartholomew, Michael and Timothy left the friary none the wiser regarding Faricius’s death, Lynne’s mysterious behaviour or what Horneby was so clearly hiding, and began to walk back along Milne Street. Bartholomew told them what he had reasoned about the purse, and the two Benedictines seemed dispirited that there were more questions than answers. Dusk came early, because of the rain, and Michael announced that he was tired and that it was time to go home. Timothy returned to Ely Hall, while Bartholomew walked with the monk along Milne Street towards Michaelhouse.

  ‘There is Matilde,’ said Michael, pointing out a slender, elegant woman who was picking her way carefully among the piles of refuse that lined the sides of the road. ‘I wonder if she knows that the nuns of St Radegund’s are plying their trade in her line of business. Matilde! Hey!’

  His stentorian roar drew several startled glances from onlookers, and more than one of them smiled at the sight of the fat monk hailing a prostitute so brazenly on one of the town’s main thoroughfares. Matilde was also surprised to be addressed at such a volume, but her face lit with pleasure when she saw that Bartholomew was with Michael.

  ‘Matthew,’ she said warmly, as she waited for them to catch up. She looked at his wet cloak and the clay that clung to the bottom of his boots. ‘Where have you been? Visiting the lepers?’

  ‘Not today,’ replied Bartholomew. ‘I examined them about a month ago, and found them as hale and hearty as can be expected. Unfortunately, there is little else I can do for them.’

  ‘You ease their discomfort,’ said Matilde. ‘That is more than they expect. But the sisters tell me that you have more murders to investigate – including poor Will Walcote’s.’

  ‘The sisters,’ mused Michael, using the term Matilde always employed when discussing the town’s prostitutes. ‘It is odd you should mention sisters, Matilde. Matt and I went to St Radegund’s Convent this afternoon.’

  Matilde’s pretty face hardened. ‘Why were you there? It is no place for decent-minded men.’

  Coming from a courtesan, this was damning indeed. Bartholomew stared at her. In his eyes, she was the most attractive woman in Cambridge, and possessed a sharp mind that he greatly admired. So far, their relationship had remained frustratingly chaste, and was confined to occasional evenings spent in her house with some of her ‘sisters’ for company, or the odd stroll in the water meadows near the river. The more Bartholomew came to know her, the more he liked her, and he was under the impression that she no longer practised her trade. No one ever claimed to secure her favours, and he suspected that her position as unofficial spokeswoman for the town’s whores left her little time for physical liaisons with customers.

  ‘You know about the activities of the nuns at St Radegund’s?’ asked Michael.

  ‘I imagine those will be known from here to Ely,’ replied Matilde dryly. ‘But the sisters are not concerned. Most men are uncomfortable with employing nuns for those sorts of services, and find it disconcerting to beckon the woman of their choice from her prayers in the church.’

  ‘I did not see much praying when we were there today,’ said Michael. ‘They claimed the church was too cold.’

  ‘Cold or not, that is where you will find them of an evening. The church is always open for “parishioners”, so the men can walk in and signal to whoever it is they want.’

  ‘How sordid,’ said Bartholomew in distaste.

  Michael nodded agreement. ‘That sort of thing is much more pleasantly conducted in the conducive surroundings of a tavern. Churches are too stark for it.’

  ‘Thank you for that, Brother,’ said Matilde. ‘It is always good to know the views of monks on these matters. But not everyone at St Radegund’s is a nun, you know. Some are the daughters of noblemen, who have been left in the Prioress’s care until they can be married off.’

  ‘Most of them will be an unsaleable commodity if they remain there too long,’ said Michael with a chuckle. ‘It is scarcely a safe repository for virtuous young ladies.’

  ‘The worst of them all is that Tysilia,’ said Matilde disapprovingly. ‘I suppose men find her attractive because she is stupid. Presumably, her appalling lack of wits makes them feel superior.’

  ‘I take it you do not like her?’ asked Bartholomew mildly.

  ‘No,’ said Matilde shortly. ‘And if you meet her, you will see why. But I do not want to spoil a nice day by discussing her. What induced you to go to St Radegund’s in the first place? It is too early to secure the nuns’ personal services, although I am sure Tysilia would make an exception.’

  ‘I was following a clue regarding the murder of Will Walcote,’ replied Michael.

  Matilde nodded slowly. ‘Yolande de Blaston – you remember her; she is married to the carpenter who worked at Michaelhouse last year – saw his body being cut down on her way home from the Mayor’s house. Poor Walcote. He was a good man.’

  ‘He was,’ agreed Michael. ‘Yolande did not see anything else, did she? Did she spot anyone who should not have been out at that time?’

  ‘No one should have been out at that time – including her,’ said Matilde. ‘It was well past the curfew. She did not mention anyone else, but I will ask. But this does not explain why you went to look for answers at St Radegund’s Convent.’

  ‘We learned that Walcote had a series of secret meetings with various scholars,’ said Michael vaguely. ‘They were held at the convent.’

  ‘Oh, those,’ said Matilde. ‘Yolande has a long-standing arrangement with Prior Lincolne of the Carmelites, but he cancelled her twice to attend these meetings.’

  ‘But I have only just learned about them,’ said Michael, astonished that Matilde should be in possession of information to which he had not been privy. Bartholomew smiled, amused that Lincolne should be so damning of the nuns’ behaviour when he had a ‘long-standing arrangement’ with one of the town’s most popular prostitutes.

  ‘I have known about the meetings for months,’ said Matilde carelessly. ‘The first one must have been around the time that Master Runham of Michaelhouse was buried, because I recall Yolande telling me that Lincolne later gave her one of the coins he had retrieved from Wilson’s effigy, to compensate her for the inconvenience of being postponed.’

  ‘How much later?’ asked Michael. ‘I want to know exactly when the first meeting took place.’

  Matilde gave an apologetic shrug. ‘I am sorry, Brother, but I doubt whether Yolande will remember that. It was November or December.’

  ‘I do not suppose Lincolne told Yolande what was discussed at these meetings, did he?’ asked Michael hopefully.

  Matilde frowned as she tried to remember. ‘Not precisely, but I know the leader of the Franciscans was there. And dear old Master Kenyngham from Michaelhouse. If Kenyngham were present, then you can be assured that nothing
untoward was afoot.’

  ‘Nothing untoward involving Kenyngham,’ corrected Michael. ‘But Kenyngham is not one of the world’s most astute men, and he has a dangerous habit of assuming that everyone has good intentions. They have not. Kenyngham may not have understood what he was getting into.’

  ‘There is no suggestion that these meetings involved anything sinister,’ said Bartholomew. ‘They could have been discussing the term’s debating titles for all you know.’

  ‘In a convent that has a reputation for lewd behaviour? In the middle of the night? Without informing the Senior Proctor?’ Michael gave a snort of derision. ‘Do not speak drivel, Matt!’

  ‘Whatever it was must have been important,’ said Matilde thoughtfully. ‘Why else would such men risk going to a place like that at night? Still, I suppose it has the virtue of being the last place anyone would think of looking for them.’

  ‘Ask whether Yolande can recall anything that may help me,’ instructed Michael. ‘This case is quite baffling, and any information would be gratefully received.’

  ‘I can do better than that,’ said Matilde. ‘I have been feeling tired and bored lately, and I am in sore need of something to stimulate my wits. I think a brief sojourn at St Radegund’s might be exactly what is required.’

  ‘I do not think so,’ said Bartholomew uneasily. ‘It is not the kind of place you would enjoy at all. And anyway, I thought you did not like Tysilia.’

  ‘I do not,’ said Matilde. ‘And that is even more reason for me to pit my wits against hers and see whether her appalling stupidity is genuine.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ asked Michael.

  Matilde spread her hands. ‘What I say. I find it extraordinary that someone could be so dim-witted, and I cannot help but wonder whether it is a ruse to hide a very cunning mind.’

  ‘I thought the same thing,’ said Bartholomew. ‘I was even considering the possibility that she played some kind of role in these nocturnal meetings.’

  ‘I hardly think so!’ exclaimed Michael in disbelief. ‘Such as what?’