An Unholy Alliance

by Susanna GREGORY

  Stanmore gazed about him. "I am astonished this is all so well organised,' he said. 'You say Buckley overheard that half the mercenaries were garrisoned here and half in Primrose Alley?'

  'Primrose Alley?' said Tulyet sharply. 'Where Froissart lived?'

  'Froissart and his family were among the few people who survived the plague in Primrose Alley,' said Bartholomew. 'Because there were so many empty houses, and because no one wanted to live there if they could be somewhere better, de Belem used it to garrison his mercenaries. Poor Froissart probably discovered something incriminating. He ran to the church for sanctuary not for killing his wife, but to escape de Belem. That night, Gilbert hid in the crypt, to which he has the only set of keys, while the church was locked. He emerged from his hiding place, garrotted Froissart, and waited for "Father Lucius" to come to help him hide the body where it would not be found. Father Lucius, was, of course, de Belem, and he was let into the church by Gilbert, and not by Froissart, as the guards believed.'

  The guards saw de Belem, and described him as mean-looking with a big nose,' elaborated Michael.

  'For de Belem, used to dealing with the trappings of witchcraft, it would not have been difficult to make himself unrecognisable to guards more interested in dice than in watching the church, especially a man wearing the hooded robe of a friar.'

  'Gilbert is involved in all this?' asked Tulyet, amazed.

  'The Chancellor's clerk? I will send a man for him before he realises something is amiss and escapes.'

  'That is not necessary,' said Bartholomew. 'Have you noticed that you never see Janetta and Gilbert together?

  That is because they are one and the same.'

  'What?' exclaimed Michael, Tulyet, and Stanmore simultaneously. Michael continued, 'That is outrageous, Matt! Gilbert has a beard for a start, and Janetta is a woman! That fall you had at de Belem's has addled your wits!'

  'Go and see,' said Bartholomew. 'You will find that splendid head of hair will come clean off if you give it a tug.'

  'You do it,' said Michael primly. 'Monks do not pull women's hair!'

  Bartholomew went to where Janetta was being guarded with de Belem in the back of a small cart, followed closely by the others. Janetta smiled falsely at Bartholomew, and he smiled back as he reached out a hand towards her hair. Her smile faded, and she tried to move away.

  'No! What are you doing?'

  Bartholomew grabbed some of the hair and Janetta screamed. It was held in place firmly, so he pulled harder. Then the wig was off, and Gilbert's thin, fair hair emerged, plastered to his head. De Belem watched impassively, while Gilbert, barely recognisable without his beard, spat and struggled.

  'How did you know?' asked Tulyet in astonishment.

  'Because the wig may have fooled us, but it did not fool the town prostitutes,' said Bartholomew. 'Matilde told me the hair was a wig. I looked closely when I met Janetta in St Mary's churchyard, and I saw that she was right. And I was puzzled that a woman, obviously concerned with her appearance, would not take pains to hide her scarred face with the thick powders she wore on her cheeks on occasions.'

  'That would not be easy to do,' mused Tulyet thoughtfully. 'My wife has a mark on her neck that she does not like to be seen. When she cannot cover it with her clothing, she applies powders. The whole business is very time-consuming. If Janetta had needed to make a sudden appearance, there would not be time to start such a lengthy process. Better to be open about the scars from the start than try to hide them and have them exposed at a point that might be inconvenient.' "I also noticed that Janetta's hair partly hid her face when she spoke to me, but not when she spoke to the men. That was because I knew Gilbert, and he was taking precautions against being recognised. I was certain, however, when I grabbed him in the church earlier. It did not take a physician to know that the person I held was no woman!'

  Michael continued. 'Cuthbert drew attention to the fact that the woman in Nicholas's grave had sparse hair. She died a month ago, at the precise time Janetta made her appearance with her luxurious black hair.'

  'Nicholas's lover,' said Stanmore. 'Was she killed for her wigs, then?'

  Bartholomew was stumped. It was a possibility he had not considered.

  Michael answered instead. 'No, she was killed for something far more serious. The woman had thin, fair hair just like Gilbert's.'

  He looked at Gilbert, who refused to look back.

  Bartholomew gave an exclamation as Janetta's relationship with Gilbert suddenly became clear.

  'She was his sister!' he said. 'She was small like him, too. Tiny, in fact.'

  'Yes, his sister,' said Michael, still looking at Gilbert.

  'Janetta of Lincoln was no fictitious character, was she?

  She was your sister who was summoned from Lincoln to help with de Belem's plan. You knew Nicholas was working on a book, and that it might contain information dangerous or detrimental to you. Janetta came to insinuate herself into Nicholas's affections in order to discover exactly what he had learned. Cuthbert told us Nicholas was deeply in love, and that the woman seemed to reciprocate these feelings, so perhaps her affection turned her from her true purpose, and that was why she was murdered.'

  'And why Gilbert stole her body away from the crypt,' said Bartholomew. "I hope she lies somewhere peaceful now, without the desecration of that foul mask.'

  Gilbert gave a half-smile. 'You will never prove anything other than the fact that I occasionally assumed another identity,' he said.

  Tulyet shrugged. 'It does not matter. There is evidence enough to hang you already. Anything we learn now will make no difference to the outcome. We can prove two cases of kidnapping and the practice of witchcraft.'

  'We have never practised witchcraft,' said de Belem.

  'Everything we did had a rational explanation, and was only harmless fun. A joke. It is not my fault that people were afraid. We have killed no one, and all my property came to me perfectly legally. My lawyer, Piers Hesselwell, will attest to that. You have no proof, just a series of unfounded suppositions. I have powerful friends in the town and in Court. You will not hang me.'

  Bartholomew had a cold feeling in the pit of his stomach that de Belem might well be right. They had strong evidence — Tulyet's baby in de Belem's house, Buckley's kidnapping, and Stanmore's stolen cloth but it was so complex that he imagined a good lawyer could easily find alternative explanations that de Belem's powerful friends would choose to believe as the truth.

  He walked away, finding de Belem's confident gloating unbearable. He ached all over from his hard ride, and his head was beginning to throb from the hours of tension.

  A small stream trickled behind one of the rows of houses, and he crouched at the edge of it to scoop handfuls of water over his face. He heard a sound behind him and spun round, thinking it might be one of de Belem's men still lurking free, but relaxed when he saw it was only Michael.

  'Father Lucius has some potage for us,' he said. 'Come.

  We need something warm inside us if we are to face the rest of the day.'

  Bartholomew followed him to the small priest's house next to the church. It was little more than a single room with a lean-to shack at the back for animals. But the rushes on the floor were clean and the crude wooden table in the middle of the room had been scrubbed almost white. Bartholomew sat on a bench with Michael next to him. Stanmore was already there, sipping broth from a blue-glazed bowl. Lucius set other bowls on the table, and Bartholomew closed his cold fingers around one, grateful for the warmth after the chill of the stream.

  'De Belem is right, you know,' he said to the others.

  'A good lawyer will be able to overturn the evidence we have, especially if the court is full of his powerful friends.'

  Stanmore shook his head. 'There is no lawyer that good,' he said. 'And I too will hire one. It was my cloth he stole, and my man he murdered for it. For Will's sake, I will see he does not go free.'

  'But we cannot prove he killed the prostitutes,' said Bart
holomew. 'De Belem will claim he would not kill his own daughter, nor his woman.'

  'But we know they killed Janetta,' said Michael. 'And all the women died of wounds to the throat, like she did. It is too much coincidence not to be true.'

  'But the others had that circle on their feet, and we cannot show Janetta had one,' said Bartholomew. 'And we cannot really prove they killed Janetta. We have no witness, no firm, undeniable proof.' "I am still confused by much of this,' said Stanmore.

  'Pieces fit together, but I have a problem with the whole.'

  'We should clarify it,' said Michael. 'We have deduced so much that has been proven wrong over the last week, that we need to see whether we agree now.'

  Bartholomew grimaced. He was tired, and, like Stanmore, the complete picture still eluded him. There were pieces that still did not fit together, and he was not sure whether his mind was sharp enough to analyse them properly. He took a sip of the potage and almost choked as Michael slapped him encouragingly on the back.

  'Let us begin at the beginning,' he said heartily, and Bartholomew wondered where the fat monk's energy came from. 'We need to go back a long way, before all this business started, to Lincoln from whence Gilbert and his kin hail. In Lincoln there was a judge who punished petty criminals by disfiguring their faces. Gilbert must have been punished, rightly or wrongly, for some crime while visiting his family.'

  He paused, and Bartholomew recalled what Buckley had said to him as they sat in de Belem's yard waiting for Stanmore to come with the horses. 'Buckley remembered Gilbert's returning from Lincoln with the beard, because he wondered whether he might be able to grow one to hide the sores on his face. Buckley grew a beard, but was impressed that Gilbert's was so much fuller, while his own remained straggly. But Gilbert's scarred face could never sprout such luxurious growth, and the beard was false. He has worn it ever since, to hide the scars that betray him as a criminal.'

  'Well, no one would suspect he and Janetta were one and the same, as long as Gilbert wore a beard,' said Stanmore.

  'Then we come to the book,' said Michael, holding out his bowl to Lucius for more potage. 'Nicholas had been employed by the Chancellor to write a history of events concerning the University, so that there would be a record for future scholars. As the Chancellor told us, it contained information that could prove embarrassing in some quarters. It not only involved members of the University, but people from the town with whom scholars had had dealings. Nicholas appeared to have taken his task seriously. He joined the Guild of the Coming in order to see what he could learn, and was even elected their leader.'

  Bartholomew took up the tale. 'When de Belem learned from Gilbert that Nicholas was writing the book, he became nervous. Gilbert's sister was drafted in from Lincoln to worm her way into his affections to discover what he had learned.'

  'But Cuthbert thought that Janetta and Nicholas seemed happy together,' said Michael. 'She failed to tell de Belem and Gilbert what they wanted to know, and possibly even gave Nicholas information about them.

  And now we are stuck. What happened next?'

  Bartholomew pondered, smiling up at Lucius as he filled his bowl again. Stanmore looked from one to the other in anticipation.

  'Well, what do we know?' said Bartholomew. 'Cuthbert said that Nicholas felt he was in fear of his life, so he feigned his death. De Belem must have threatened him in some way. Nicholas, apparently, felt the only way he could be safe was if he were presumed dead. If he and Janetta were as fond of each other as Cuthbert believes, then the chances are that she helped him execute the plan.'

  'And of course we know how!' exclaimed Michael suddenly. 'Gilbert was able to switch Nicholas's body for Janetta's in the crypt yesterday because he is the only one with the keys. Janetta, who doubtless shared Gilbert's house, must have stolen his keys when Nicholas was sealed in his coffin and locked in the church for the night, and gone to let him out. How else would he have escaped the church and still kept secret the fact that he was alive?'

  'Gilbert must have suspected, or perhaps he woke to see the keys gone,' mused Bartholomew. 'He followed her to the church and saw Nicholas alive.'

  'But then what?' said Stanmore. 'A small man like Gilbert could not hope to overpower two people.'

  'He must have fetched de Belem,' said Michael.

  'Nicholas and Janetta had to make the coffin look as though there were still a body inside, and that would take a while. Gilbert would have had time. Then there must have been a skirmish in which Janetta was killed and Nicholas escaped.'

  'And why the mask?' asked Stanmore. 'Why would Gilbert bury his sister with that?'

  'Perhaps she had worn it to hide her face when she went to release Nicholas,' said Michael.

  'No,' said Bartholomew slowly. "I think de Belem probably wore it to frighten Nicholas when Gilbert fetched him. He probably meant to terrify Nicholas into revealing what was in the book before they killed him. The mask was huge, and perhaps dawn was coming by the time Janetta was killed and Nicholas had escaped.

  It was probably placed on Janetta merely to get rid of it so that de Belem would not have to carry it home through the streets, and Gilbert would not have to hide it in the church.'

  Michael nodded. 'And de Belem must have gained some information from Nicholas before he fled, because he knew there was something important in the book. De Belem then hired a professional thief to come to steal it for him. Gilbert could not steal it, because he had the keys to the church but not to the chest. And we know what happened to the friar.' "I see,' said Stanmore. 'But why bother with poor old Buckley?'

  'We know de Belem and some of the mercenaries went to kidnap Buckley at the same time that the friar went to steal the book,' said Bartholomew. 'They took everything from his room to make it look as if he had fled the town after some guilty deed — the theft of the book. But the plan misfired when the friar scratched his thumb on the lock and died.'

  'We suspect Gilbert went to check on the friar, found him dead, and tipped him into the chest in a panic,' said Michael. 'The friar had been told to steal the whole book, because not only did de Belem want the information about himself, he liked to know the secrets of others. We know he asked questions of old Tulyet and Hesselwell: de Belem liked to gather information so that he could use it against others.

  'Gilbert, panic-ridden because the plan had gone awry, did not steal the whole book as the friar would have done, he stole only the parts that involved him and de Belem. The Chancellor obviously did not deem these parts important because he did not miss them.

  But de Wetherset later removed sections he did deem important, thus muddying the evidence. Because Gilbert had taken the part that concerned de Belem, there was nothing left to shed light on the affair. Thus it seemed to us that Buckley lacked a motive for fleeing and taking all his belongings.'

  'Buckley told me he thought something had gone wrong, and he was a problem to de Belem,' said Bartholomew. 'De Belem was keeping him prisoner until the opportunity arose to use him, or his death, to further his plans.'

  'Now,' said Michael, leaning across to peer into Bartholomew's bowl to see if he had left any food.

  'Janetta died from a throat injury, Froissart was garrotted, and Nicholas was garrotted. This is not a common method of execution, and we are sure all were killed by one and the same. We know Gilbert killed Froissart because he had the keys to the crypt and could hide there unseen while the church was locked.'

  'Froissart's wife was garrotted,' said Stanmore. 'One of my-men told me.'

  The four men were silent, Lucius looking from one to the other in horror at such convoluted evil.

  'So Gilbert killed his sister when he found out she was planning to run away with Nicholas; he killed Froissart when he discovered something amiss in Primrose Alley; he killed Froissart's wife to make it appear as if Froissart had fled into sanctuary for her murder; and he killed Nicholas when he mustered the courage to return to Cambridge to look for Janetta,' said Bartholomew.

  'Gilbert
must also be the killer of the whores,' said Stanmore. 'Because their throats were slashed.'

  'Frances was not a whore,' said Bartholomew. 'Her last words that her killer was not a man must mean that it was Janetta. It was not a man in a mask at all, but the mysterious woman she had perhaps seen in and out of her father's house in the night.

  Oh, Lord!'

  'What?' said Michael. 'What have you thought of?'

  'Boniface,' said Bartholomew. The others looked at him uncomprehendingly. 'Frances asked Boniface to meet her in the orchard because she had something to tell him. He waited but she never arrived. I thought she was going to tell him something personal, but she must have been going to tell him about strange happenings at her father's house — the baby crying in the night, birds and bats in his attics, a room always locked where Buckley was captive. I imagine she thought that, as a friar, he might be able to secure the help of the other Franciscans and investigate. Perhaps she knew of her father's involvement with the guilds and considered he had become too deeply caught for his own safety.

  Gilbert guessed what she was about to do, followed her disguised as Janetta, and killed her in Michaelhouse.'

  'That makes sense,' said Michael. 'Her father's involvement with the coven was probably something that became an increasing worry to her as time went on. Perhaps she reached the end of her tether with her other problem.'

  'What problem?' asked Stanmore, interested.

  'Nothing that will concern her now, 'answered Michael quickly, catching Bartholomew's eye and wincing at his own near-indiscretion.

  'The wounds on Janetta, Frances, Isobel, and Fritha were not the same,' said Bartholomew thoughtfully.

  Tsobel's and Fritha's throats were slit; the others' were hacked.'

  Stanmore looked at him distastefully. 'It is all much the same,' he said. 'And anyway, they all had bloody circles on their feet. It stands to reason de Belem would not kill his own daughter and whore. I wonder if he knows Gilbert is their killer.'

  'He cannot,' said Bartholomew, 'or he would not have asked us to investigate. It was Gilbert as Janetta that warned us away from investigating — once in Primrose Alley and once in the churchyard; it was Gilbert who instructed Hesselwell to leave the head in Michael's room claiming it was the will of the high priest; and it was Gilbert who ordered Hesselwell to prepare the back gate of Michaelhouse with a substance that would burn. He knew we used the gate at night, and planned to set it alight as we emerged. Even if we were not killed or injured, we would have received another warning.