A Bone of Contention

by Susanna GREGORY

  Thorpe leaned forward and took the relic from Bartholomew's unresisting hands. He held the parcel in the air, and turned towards his scholars.

  'The bones of a martyr have been entrusted to us,' he announced in a strong, confidentvoice. There was a growl of approval. 'There will be many who will want to come to see them, and we must allow them to do so. But we have a sacred trust to ensure that they will always rest at Valence Marie!'

  There was a ragged cheer. Some of the scholars began to follow Thorpe as he led the way back along the bank of the Ditch to his college. Others remained with Bartholomew and Michael, and formed a tight escort that almost immediately began to jostle and shove them.

  Michael spoke rapidly in Latin to Bartholomew, trusting that his low voice and the speed of his words would render him incomprehensible to the students surrounding them. One or two moved closer to try to hear what he was saying, but most ignored him, their attention fixed on the silvery head of Thorpe leading his procession, and carrying his precious bones.

  'We are in a fix, Matt. Examine the wretched thing, but say nothing of what you find. It seems Thorpe has already convinced them that they have the hand of a martyr whether it is true or not.'

  Bartholomew staggered as a hefty student crashed into him, almost knocking him over. With difficulty, he refrained from pushing him back, but almost fell again as someone gave him a hard shove from behind.

  He felt Michael's warning hand on his shoulder, and did nothing.

  They reached Valence Marie, where Thorpe laid his bundle gently on the high table and unwrapped it. He called for water, and began to clean away the remaining mud. Underneath the filth, the bones gleamed yellow- white, and the ring on the little finger glittered in the golden rays of the early evening sun that lanced through the open windows. When Thorpe held up the relic for the scholars to see, there were murmurs of awe; one student even dropped to his knees, crossing himself.

  Michael stepped forward, but Bartholomew's arms were seized before he could follow. Michael glanced round at the sounds of the ensuing scuffle.

  'Might we examine the hand now that it is clean, Master Thorpe?' he asked politely. 'Then we will tell the Chancellor of your discovery.'

  'There is no need for a medical examination,' said Thorpe, eyeing Bartholomew disdainfully. 'It is perfectly apparent what we have here.'

  'But you said that any who wished to see it should be allowed to do so,' Michael pointed out. 'Does that courtesy not apply to Fellows of Michaelhouse?'

  Thorpe was silent for a moment as he considered. He was aware that if he refused to allow the Chancellor's representatives to examine the bones, rumours doubting their authenticity would surely follow. But he was also aware that a negative verdict by the University's senior physician could be equally damning, as it had proved to be with the bones of the child. He rose to the occasion.

  'You may examine the hand, as Fellows of Michael-house,' he said magisterially. 'But we will permit no unseemly treatment of it. No touching.'

  Bartholomew was released reluctantly, stumbling as he tripped over a strategically placed foot. He heard one or two muffled snorts of laughter coming from the students.

  'I see Michaelhouse has little to learn from the manners of the scholars of Valence Marie,' he remarked coolly to Thorpe, ignoring the way the Master's mouth tightened into a hard line. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Thorpe glare a warning at the offending students, whose sniggering ceased instantly.

  The now-cleaned bones lay on the muddy tabard.

  Bartholomew leaned forward to move them slightly but was not in the least surprised to feel Thorpe's restraining grip on his wrist. He was aware of the scholars edging towards him, mutters of anger and resentment rippling through their ranks.

  'You are invited to look, but I said you are not to touch,'

  Thorpe said firmly.

  Bartholomew pulled his arm away, peering closely at the hand. Although the bones appeared bright and clean, they were still joined together, mostly by brownish sinews.

  Thus they were not merely a disconnected collection of small bones, but a complete skeletal hand. He moved into a different position and inspected the ring. Finally, he straightened. Michael prepared to leave, but Thorpe blocked their way.

  'Well?' he asked, his eyes flicking from one to the other.

  Bartholomew shrugged. 'It is the hand of a large man,' he said simply.

  'It is the hand of a martyr,' said Thorpe loudly, so that the hall rang with his words. 'Why else would it be wearing a ring so fine?'

  Why indeed? wondered Bartholomew and followed Michael out of Valence Marie, into the fading rays of the evening sun. He took a deep breath and began to walk quickly back along the High Street towards Michaelhouse, suddenly longing to be safe inside its sturdy walls. For once, Michael did not complain about the rapid pace, obviously as eager to put as much distance between himself and Valence Marie as Bartholomew.

  After a few moments, when Michael was satisfied that they were not being followed by a crowd of resentful, antagonistic Valence Marie scholars, he repeated Thorpe's question. 'Well?'

  Bartholomew slowed his pace fractionally and looked at Michael. 'You saw I was prevented from conducting a proper investigation but I can tell you two things. First, however much those Valence Marie servants root around in the mud, I will wager anything you please that no more of the skeleton will ever be found; and second, the hand does not belong to the martyred Simon d'Ambrey, unless he was considerably bigger than I recall and he died fairly recently.'

  Michael stopped dead, but then glanced uneasily behind him and began walking again. They had reached St Mary's Church, near which the Chancellor had his offices. Michael took Bartholomew's arm and dragged him into the wooden building where Richard de Wetherset sat poring over documents in the fading daylight. He was a solid man, whose physical strength had largely turned to fat from a lifetime of sitting in offices. He had iron-grey hair and a hard, uncompromising will. Although Bartholomew appreciated de Wetherset's motives were usually selfless, and that he put the good of the University above all else, Bartholomew did not like the Chancellor, and certainly did not trust him. The Junior Proctor was with him, sitting on a stool and signing some writs, shivering in the pleasant breeze that wafted in from the window and snuffling miserably.

  De Wetherset scowled as Bartholomew and Michael entered, none too pleased that he was being interrupted while there was still daylight enough to be able to read the last accounts of the day's business transactions. As Michael told him what had happened, the Chancellor flushed red with anger, his documents forgotten.

  'This is the worst possible thing that could have hap pened,' he said, his voice low with barely restrained anger.

  'What does that fool Thorpe imagine he is doing? He is putting the fame and wealth of his college above the peaceful relations of the University with the town. There will be a riot for certain when this gets out: the town will demand this wretched hand for itself, and Valence Marie will refuse.'

  He sat back in his chair, the muscles in his jaws bulging from his grinding teeth as he considered the University's position.

  Heppel watched him anxiously. 'We must prevent another riot at all costs.'

  'You are right. We must inform the Sheriff immediately lest the townspeople start to gather outside Valence Marie.'

  De Wetherset stood abruptly and sent a clerk to fetch one of the Sheriffs deputies. He sat again, indicating that Bartholomew and Michael should take a seat on one of the benches that ran along the wall opposite the window.

  'Did you examine this confounded relic?' he asked.

  'Not as completely as I would have wished, but enough to tell me that the "confounded relic" no more belongs to a man twenty-five years dead in the King's Ditch than does my own,' Bartholomew replied. The Chancellor, not in the least surprised, gestured for him to continue.

  'The hand was severed from the arm. There are cut marks on the wrist bones where the knife grazed them.

/>   And, think of the skeleton of the child, also in the Ditch for some years. It was stained dark brown by the mud. The bones on the Valence Marie hand are almost white, and I think it doubtful that they have been in the Ditch for any length of time. And finally, some care was taken to leave the sinews in place so that the collection of bones would be identifiable as a hand. Except for the little finger. There, the sinews must have broken or come loose, because the finger is held in place by a tiny metal pin almost hidden by the ring.'

  'A pin?' exclaimed Heppel in astonishment. 'Are you suggesting, therefore, that someone planted this hand for Thorpe to find?'

  Bartholomew ran his hand through his hair. 'It is possible, I suppose. It is equally possible that he planted it himself. But all I can tell you for certain is that the hand was taken from a man — a man larger than any of us, and whether alive or already dead I cannot say — and boiled to remove the flesh. When one of the fingers came loose, it was repaired expertly with a pin.'

  Michael looked at him in concern. 'Another murder victim? Or someone desecrating the dead? How do you know that the bones were boiled?'

  'Come now, Michael,' said Bartholomew. 'You have gnawed on enough roasted joints to know the answer to that. The bones of the relic are whitish-yellow, a colour they are unlikely to keep when embedded in the black mud of the King's Ditch, and they have a freshness about them that suggests careful preparation. You must have noticed how easily the mud washed off when it was cleaned. Moreover, think about the choice of relic: a hand is manageable, and easily prepared — ring and all.

  It is not so repellent as, say, a skull but more inspiring than a thigh-bone or a rib. I am willing to wager anything you please that no other parts will be found until there is a market for them.'

  'And these bones belonged to a man larger than us?' asked de Wetherset, frowning. 'None of us is exactly petite!' He glanced at Heppel, swathed in a thick cloak against nasty draughts, and wiping his long, thin nose with a pale, white hand. 'Well, some of us are not.'

  Bartholomew held up his own hands. 'The fingers were at least an inch longer than mine and the bones were dense and thick. I suspect a large hand was deliberately chosen to make it impossible for us to dismiss it as that of a woman.'

  Ts it possible that Master Thorpe did all this? ' wondered Heppel in revulsion. 'Selected a large corpse, stole its hand and boiled it up?'

  Michael scratched his chin thoughtfully. 'He was desperate to find a relic in the Ditch and was most disappointed when Matt kept pronouncing that his finds were animal bones. Valence Marie is a new college and will benefit greatly from having a venerated relic on its premises, especially after the expense of dredging the Ditch in the first place.'

  'Or perhaps someone is using Thorpe's desperation to play a cruel trick on him,' mused de Wetherset. 'It would not be the first time one scholar made a fool of another.'

  'Or a townsman made a fool of the University,' pointed out Bartholomew.

  De Wetherset glared at him for a moment, but then accepted his comment with a resigned nod. 'The real question is what are we to do?'

  'Go to see Thorpe yourself, ask to see the hand and then point out the bright, new pin,' said Bartholomew promptly. 'He can hardly refuse to allow you to examine his relic, can he?'

  De Wetherset agreed reluctantly and rose. 'Are you sure about this pin?' he asked. 'I would not wish to be made a fool of either.'

  'You will see it,' said Bartholomew, 'especially if you pick the hand up.'

  As de Wetherset went to confront Thorpe, accompanied by a nervous Guy Heppel and two beadles, Bardiolomew and Michael walked home. It was almost dark, and the curfew was in force. The streets were virtually deserted but, with relief, Bartholomew detected none of the atmosphere of anticipation he had sensed the night before.

  Doors were firmly closed, and although voices came from some of the houses, most were silent and in darkness.

  Dawn came early and the summer heat was exhausting for people who worked hard for their meagre livings. The Statute of Labour had been passed the year before, an edict that made it illegal for people to seek better-paid work by leaving their homes. The Statute had decreed that wages should remain at the pre-plague levels, despite the fact that food prices had soared since then. Unrest and bitter resentment festered, although the labourers were far too exhausted from scratching paltry livings from the land to do much about their miserable conditions.

  'Thorpe was very masterly at manipulating the emotions of his scholars,' said Michael thoughtfully. 'I wonder if he could apply that talent to incite a mob to riot.'

  Bartholomew raised his eyebrows, and nodded. 'There was one other thing neither of us mentioned to de Wetherset,' he said.

  Michael nodded as they knocked on Michaelhouse's gates to be allowed in. 'I thought you had noticed,' he said. 'The ring on the relic had a blue-green stone, just like the colour of Dominica's eyes.'

  The next day dawned in a golden mist that was soon burned away by the sun. By the main meal at ten o'clock, it was so hot that Bartholomew had to tend to two students who were sick and dizzy from dehydration. As a special dispensation, and, because he had no wish for his scholars to be fainting around him as he ate, the Master announced that it would not be necessary to wear tabards in the College during lectures or meals until the evening. The austere Franciscans pulled sour faces at the slackening of discipline, although Bartholomew found the Master's announcement eminently sensible.

  By noon, the heat was so intense that Bartholomew, teaching in the College conclave, found it difficult to concentrate, and was very aware that his students were similarly afflicted. The conclave was a small room at the far end of the hall, and Bartholomew preferred teaching there than in the hall itself, where he had to compete for space with the other Fellows. The conclave, however, was bitterly cold in the winter when the wind howled through gaps in its windows, and unbearably hot in the summer when the sun streamed in. He tried blocking the sunlight by closing the shutters but that made the room unpleasantly stuffy. With the shutters open, the occasional breath of breeze wafted in, but students and master melted in the sunlight.

  Gray drowsed near the empty fireplace, Deynman's attention alternated between the insects in the rushes and picking at a hole in his shirt, and even Tom Bulbeck, Bartholomew's best student, appeared uninterested. The topic of the day was Galen's theories about how different pulse rates related to the heavenly spheres — a subject that even Bartholomew found complex and overly intricate.

  Finally, he gave up, and, pulling uncomfortably at his sweat-soaked shirt, allowed the students their liberty for the rest of the day, accompanied with strict rejoinders about obeying the curfew.

  Bulbeck hovered as the others left. Bartholomew smiled at him encouragingly.

  'Even the great physician Bernard Gordon, who taught at Montpellier, found it difficult to distinguish between subtle variations of pulse beats,' he said, assuming Bulbeck was concerned that he was taking too long to grasp the essence of Galen's hypothesis.

  Bulbeck gnawed at his lower lip. 'It is not that,' he said.

  He hesitated, aware that Gray and Deynman were waiting for him near the door. He made up his mind. 'It is this notion of heavenly bodies. I know you are sceptical of the role played by the stars in a patient's sickness — and the little I have seen of medical practice inclines me to believe you are right. So why must we waste time with such nonsense? Why do you not teach us more about uroscopy or surgery.'

  'Because if you want to pass your disputations and graduate as a physician, you will need to show that you can calculate the astrological charts that can be used to determine a course of treatment. What I believe about the worth of such calculations is irrelevant.'

  'The medical faculty at Paris told King Philip the Sixth of France that the Death was caused by a malign conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter,' said Gray brightly from the doorway.

  'I know,' said Bartholomew. 'And this malign conjunction was said to have occurred at precisely one
o'clock on the afternoon of 20 March 1345. The physicians at the medical school of Montpellier wrote Tractatus deEpidemia, in which they explained that the reason some areas were worse affected than others was because they were more exposed to evil rays caused when "Saturn looked upon Jupiter with a malignant aspect".'

  'But you do not believe that,' pressed Bulbeck. 'You think there is some other explanation.'

  Bartholomew thought for a moment, uncertain how much to tell his students of his growing dissatisfaction with traditional medicine. He had been accused of heresy more times than he could remember for his unorthodox thinking, and was ever alert to the possibility that too great an accumulation of such charges might result in his dismissal from the University. In the past, he had not much cared what his colleagues thought about his teaching, assuming that the better success rate he had with his patients would speak for itself. But he had moderated his incautious attitude when he realised that his excellent medical record would be attributed to witchcraft if he were not careful, and then his hard work and painstakingly acquired skills would count for nothing.

  'No, I do not believe that heavenly bodies were entirely responsible for the plague,' he said eventually. 'And I do not think that consulting a patient's stars will make much difference to the outcome of his sickness. I have found that my patients live or die regardless of whether I consult their stars to treat them or not.'

  'Father Philius at Gonville Hall believes astrology is the most powerful tool that physicians have,' said Gray, leaning nonchalantly on the door frame. 'He says treatment without astrological consultation is like treating a patient without seeing him at all.'

  'I am well aware of Philius's views,' said Bartholomew irritably. 'I have debated them with him often enough. But Philius will be at your disputations, Tom, and if you cannot convince him that you know your astrology, you will not pass, even if you are the best physician the world has known since Hippocrates.'