The others caught up with him, and they made their way silently to where St Mary's Church was a looming shadow against the dark sky. Father Cuthbert was waiting for them in the shelter of the porch, a huge black shape huddled up on a bench.
'Gilbert marked the grave with a rag on a stick,' he said, pulling a voluminous cloak around him against the cold. 'It is over there.'
'.Are you certain it is the right one?' asked Bartholomew, aware of the priest's nervousness. He did not wish to dig up the wrong grave — especially since some of the first plague victims had been buried in the churchyard.
Cuthbert nodded quickly, and withdrew further into the shadows of the porch. He clearly had no intention of leaving his shelter to brave the elements, or to be directly involved in the unpleasant task that lay ahead.
Bartholomew could not find it in his heart to condemn him for his attitude.
Cynric set up the lamp where it would be out of the rain, while Bartholomew took a spade and began to dig, grateful that Nicholas of York had not been considered important enough to have been given a tombstone that they would have had to move.
'No!' Father Cuthbert's voice was a hoarse cry. 'Not that one! The next one!'
Bartholomew peered at the mound Cuthbert indicated from the shelter of the porch. 'But this is the one that is marked.'
Cuthbert, reluctantly, left the porch, and came to stand next to the marker. 'It has been moved,' he said, surprised. 'Wretched children, I expect. I saw a group of them playing here late yesterday afternoon. That is the grave you need to dig, not this one.'
'How can you be sure?' asked Bartholomew, his resentment at the task imposed on him growing by the moment.
'Because when I said the funeral service for Nicholas, I stood under that tree, and water dripped down the back of my neck during the whole ceremony. I remember it clearly. I would not have stood so far away if he had been buried in this grave. I think this one is Mistress Archer's…'
'And she died of the plague,' Bartholomew finished for him, remembering her death vividly, one of the first he had witnessed. He shuddered. 'Really, Father, this affair is foolishness itself. Can we not merely assume the worst and say that Nicholas, too, was murdered? And then we can dispense with this distasteful business.'
Cuthbert gave a heavy sigh. 'Believe me, gentlemen, I tried as hard as you did to dissuade the Chancellor from this course of action, but he was immovable. I suspect the Bishop is behind it, and the Chancellor has little choice in the matter. Look,' he said, taking Bartholomew by the shoulder, 'you know what to expect, and you know how to avoid contamination. It is better that you do this than some of the beadles, who might well spread infection without realising what they are doing.'
Bartholomew nodded slowly. It was the first sense he had heard spoken since the business began. Cuthbert was right. Bartholomew had brought rags to wrap around their mouths and noses when they reached the coffin, and thick gloves to wear when he examined the body. Cynric had procured a bucket so that they could wash afterwards, and Bartholomew intended to burn any clothes that came in contact with the body. He doubted beadles would take such precautions.
He took up the spade a second time, and began to dig, while Cuthbert kicked around with his feet to hide the marks made on Mistress Archer's grave. Michael stood in the porch reading the licence, swearing to himself when he saw the ink had run in the rain, while Jonstan took the other spade and helped Bartholomew.
Despite the rain, digging was hard work. The last few weeks of hot, dry weather had baked the earth into a rock-like consistency. Bartholomew shed his cloak and tabard and dug in his shirt sleeves, grateful now for the rain that cooled him. Jonstan handed his spade to Cynric and went to sit in the porch next to Cuthbert to rest. When Bartholomew felt as though he had been digging for hours, the hole was still only thigh-deep.
The rain sluiced down into the bottom of the grave as they worked, making their task even more difficult.
Michael relieved Bartholomew, who went to join Jonstan and Cuthbert in the porch. Cuthbert was telling Jonstan about the proposed rebuilding of the chancel, and both men were keen to discuss something other than the task in hand. Bartholomew glanced up at the sky. It was still dark, and dawn would come later because of the rain, but, even so, progress was slow. The law was quite clear that all exhumations should be carried out under cover of darkness, and they might have to come back the following night if they did not hurry.
Cynric looked exhausted, so Bartholomew went to take another turn. He bent to rest his hand on the ground and dropped lightly into the gaping hole. He was appalled to hear a loud splinter, and felt one foot break through wood. The water was too deep to see anything, and there was a horrified gasp from Jonstan, watching from above.
'I think we have reached the coffin,' Bartholomew said unnecessarily, looking up at the others. He poked and prodded with his spade and discovered that the coffin had been buried at an angle. When he dug further, he saw that a large boulder had blocked progress on one side, and so Nicholas of York's feet had been buried lower than his head. Bartholomew was able to clear the soil away from the top half of the coffin, and poked around under water until he felt the lower part was relatively free. Cynric dropped him a rope and he tied it around the crude wooden box.
Michael and Jonstan helped Bartholomew to climb out, and all five of them began to heave on the ropes.
The coffin moved slightly, but it was immensely heavy.
Bartholomew imagined it must be full of water.
After several minutes of straining and heaving to no avail, it became clear that they were not going to be able to get it out, and that Bartholomew would have to examine the body in situ. He tied one of the rags around his nose and mouth, donned the thick leather gloves and reluctantly climbed back into the grave, more carefully than he had the last time. The wood was slick in the rain, and it was difficult to stand upright. Until Cynric lay full length on the ground and held the lamp inside the grave, it was impossible to see what he was doing.
He inserted a chisel under the lid and tapped with a hammer. The lid eased up, and he got a good grip with his fingers and began to pull. The lid began to move with a great screech of wet wood, and came off so suddenly so that he almost fell backwards. He handed it up to Michael, and all five of them peered into the open coffin.
Bartholomew moved back, gagging, as the stench of putrefaction filled the confined space of the grave. His feet slipped and he scrabbled at the sides to try to prevent himself from falling over. Jonstan gave a cry of horror, and Cuthbert began to mutter prayers in an uneven, breathless whisper. Michael leaned down and grabbed at Bartholomew's shoulder, breathing through his mouth so as not to inhale the smell.
'Matt!' he gasped. 'Come out of there!'
He began to tug frantically at Bartholomew's shirt.
Bartholomew needed no second bidding, and scrambled out of the grave with an agility that surprised even him.
He sank to his knees and peered down at the thing in the coffin.
'What is it?' breathed Cynric.
Bartholomew cleared his throat to see if he could still speak, making Jonstan jump. 'It looks like a goat,' he said.
'A goat?' whispered Michael in disbelief. 'What is a goat doing there?'
Bartholomew swallowed hard. Two curved horns and a long pointed face stared up at him, dirty and stained from its weeks underground, but a goat's head nevertheless, atop a human body.
'Was Nicholas of York a devil?' breathed Jonstan.
'Was he not human, and reverted to his true form after death?' He raised his great round eyes to Cuthbert, who stared aghast down into the grave, his lips moving as he muttered his prayers.
"Men do not change into animals after they die/ said Michael, but his voice held no conviction, and Bartholomew saw Cuthbert and Jonstan exchange disbelieving glances.
'Perhaps he was not a man,'saidjonstan again, crossing himself.
'Nonsense,' said Bartholomew firmly, realising that if they di
d not get a grip on themselves soon, their imaginations would get the better of them. 'You knew Nicholas.
Surely you would have noticed demonic qualities had he possessed them in life.'
He inhaled a deep breath of fresh air, thick with the scent of wet grass, took the lantern from Cynric, and leaned with it inside the grave. Shadows flickered eerily, but there was light enough to illuminate the peeling paint and the wood underneath.
'It is a mask!' he said, relief flooding through him. 'It is a wooden mask!'
'A mask? Why should Nicholas be wearing such a thing?' asked Cuthbert, his voice hoarse with horror.
For a few moments, no one said anything, and all five stared into the gaping hole at the strange figure below.
Bartholomew pulled himself together, and slid back into the grave to complete his examination. Anxious to finish as quickly as possible, he reached for the right hand to look for a tiny cut that might suggest Nicholas had died from the poison on the lock. Puzzled, he peered closer.
The hand he held was small and dainty, with paint on the nails, but was too decomposed for him to be able to see whether there had been a cut there or not. He straddled the coffin precariously, grabbed the mask by its horns and pulled as hard as he could. The mask came off with an unpleasant sucking sound to reveal the face underneath.
'What is this?' cried Cuthbert. That is not Nicholas!'
'He was a devil!' whispered Jonstan, crossing himself vigorously. 'He did change his form after his death.'
'You have the wrong grave!' said Michael accusingly, looking at Cuthbert.
Cuthbert stared at him, his face white with shock. 'I do not!' he whispered. 'This is Nicholas's grave without question. I am absolutely certain.'
Michael and Bartholomew exchanged a look of bewilderment.
The body whose face had been hidden by the mask was that of a young woman. Her eyes were sunken deep into her face, and the lips had stretched back to reveal fine, even teeth. That explained the delicate hand and painted nails, Bartholomew thought. He suddenly felt a great wave of compassion for her. Not only had she been brutally murdered, attested by the stab wound in her throat, but her body had been desecrated with the mask. But what was she doing there anyway? And where was Nicholas of York? Bartholomew took a deep breath and quickly looked under the woman to make sure there was not another corpse in the grave.
He was angry at the callousness of it all, and his anger brought him out of the sense of shock that had been dulling his wits. He bent to look at the woman.
Assuming that the coffin had not been changed after Nicholas's funeral, she had been dead for a month. The state of decay confirmed this to Bartholomew, taking into account the fact that she had died during warm weather and that the earth had been baked dry for several weeks.
The grave was only flooded now because of the sudden downpour. He looked at her feet, but they were wet, and even if the rain-water had not washed her feet clean, he would not have been able to identify a circle painted in blood on her rotting skin. The lamp above him fluttered in the wind and went out. Cynric swore and cursed in Welsh as he tried to re-light it, but the rain was coming down harder than ever and the wick was sodden.
Bartholomew waited in the dark, the water lapping about his ankles. The smell was overpowering, and it was becoming more and more difficult to resist the urge to turn around and scramble out.
I cannot light it,' said Cynric from above him, his voice unsteady.
'What shall we do, Father?' asked Bartholomew. 'There is no point in examining this woman when she is not Nicholas. Shall we re bury her and leave her in peace?'
'We must bring the body out,' said Cuthbert. 'If not, the Chancellor will order that you bring her out another night so that she can be identified and the whole matter investigated.'
'She cannot be identified now,' said Bartholomew.
'She has been underground too long. And I can tell you now that she died because she was stabbed in the throat. It does not take a physician to see that.'
'Bring her out, Matt,' said Michael. 'Father Cuthbert is right in that the Chancellor will demand an investigation, and I for one do not want to go through all this again tomorrow.'
Cynric handed Bartholomew a chisel. 'Make a hole in the bottom of the coffin to let the water drain,' he said. 'Then it will be easier to lift.'
Michael fetched the rope, and Bartholomew fumbled about trying to tie the knots in the darkness while Jonstan attempted to light a second lamp under the shelter of the porch. Eventually, Bartholomew thought the knots were secure, and Michael and Cynric began to pull.
With a slurp of mud, the coffin came free, sending water everywhere. Bartholomew steadied it until the others were able to heave it up and onto the ground.
Bartholomew found that his arms were too tired to allow him to climb out again, and he had a moment's panic until Michael offered his hand and hauled so hard that Bartholomew shot from the grave like a cork from a bottle. Cynric had put the lid back over the coffin and was enlarging the hole in the bottom to allow any water still remaining to drain away. Jonstan watched.
'It was that mask,' he said with a shudder. 'If it had just been the woman, it would not have been so bad. But that thing looks like something from hell.' He crossed himself yet again and backed away.
'I will unlock the church and we can put the body in the crypt out of sight,' said Cuthbert, clearly the more practical of the two. 'The goat mask can go in the charnel house until the Chancellor has seen it. Who would do such a thing to a corpse?'
But more to the point, who was she? Bartholomew thought. And where was Nicholas? Was he alive or dead?
He wanted to rub his eyes, but glimpsed his filthy hands and thought better of it. He and Michael had gained nothing from this grisly business. They had answered no questions, but had raised many more.
The sky was brightening noticeably by the time they had removed the woman's body and filled in the grave. Michael, white-faced, went with Jonstan to give a complete report to the Chancellor, while Cuthbert remained in the church to say prayers for the dead woman. Bartholomew looked down at his wet and muddy clothes despondently. The rain was easing off with the onset of dawn, but the day seemed cold and gloomy.
He and Cynric walked home, where they hauled buckets of water from the well to wash, and Bartholomew threw the gloves and his old clothes onto the ever-smouldering fires behind the kitchen. Bartholomew was down to his last shirt, and he hoped he would have an uneventful day in order to give Agatha time to do the laundry. Shivering, they went to the kitchen, where Cynric warmed some potage left over from the day before. When the bell chimed for Prime, Bartholomew was fast asleep in Agatha's chair next to the fireplace, and she did not waken him.
Michael returned later, having spoken to de Wetherset, and said he planned to continue his reading of Nicholas's book. Bartholomew spent the rest of the morning teaching, and was pleased with the way some of his students were learning, although he was finding Brother Boniface difficult. The friar seemed to have been talking to the fanatic Father William, for he was obsessed with the notion of heresy. Boniface proclaimed that Bartholomew teaching them surgery was heretical, and sparked a bitter argument, with Bulbeck and Cray defending Bartholomew's position, and Boniface and his fellow Franciscans opposing it. It was not an argument based on logic and reason, but on ignorance and bigotry on both sides. Bartholomew did not take part, and listened with a growing sense of weariness.
Ibn Ibrahim had warned him that some of the techniques and cures he had been taught would meet with hostility and suspicion, but he was unprepared for such reactions from his own students. He thought about the difference between Arab and Christian medicine, and wondered whether he had made the right decision in choosing the former. Naively, he had assumed that his greater success with diseases and wounds than his more traditional colleagues would speak for itself, and that in time people would come to accept his methods.
But Boniface claimed that Bartholomew's success was becaus
e he used methods devised by the Devil, while Gray and Bulbeck claimed he was blessed by God with a gift of healing, as though his painstakingly acquired skills were nothing.
As he listened to Boniface's raving, Bartholomew considered telling Kenyngham that he was impossible to teach. But all hostels and Colleges were finding it difficult to recruit students after the plague, with the exception of lawyers, and Michaelhouse could not afford to lose the Franciscans.
After the main meal of the day, eaten in silence, he went to St Man's in search of Michael. The clerks told him they had been unable to find Janetta or Froissart's kinsmen.
Bartholomew was relieved: he and Michael could not proceed until they had spoken to them, and the fact that they were unavailable would slow everything down and allow him to concentrate on his teaching duties.
He was about to return to Michaelhouse when he was hailed by de Wetherset, who wanted to know what could be discovered from the dead woman. Grimacing to register his reluctance, Bartholomew followed de Wetherset down into the small cellar under the altar.
The door leading to the stairs was locked, and the Chancellor motioned the ever-solicitous Gilbert forward to open it and precede them down damp steps into the musty crypt. Gilbert held back, his eyes huge with fear.
De Wetherset looked as though he would order Gilbert into the crypt, but he relented, and patted him on the shoulder.
'I have no taste for this either,' he said. 'Father Cuthbert!'
The priest waddled from where he had been scraping candle wax from the altar, took the keys from Gilbert, and puffed down the steps to the vault below. The crypt was little more than a passageway that ran under the altar from one side of the choir to the other. To the left was a small chamber protected by a stout door, where the church silver was kept. In the chamber, two coffins lay side by side on the ground: Froissart's and the woman's.
An Unholy Alliance Page 13