Bartholomew 06 - A Masterly Murder

by Susanna GREGORY

  When Thomas Wilson had died during the plague four years before, he had given Bartholomew money to pay for a splendid tomb to house his mortal remains. Bartholomew had been tardy in fulfilling his promise, and by the time he had commissioned a mason to carve the grave, Wilson’s bequest had devalued dramatically. Instead of the glorious affair he had envisaged, Wilson had been incarcerated under a plain slab of black marble with a simple cross carved on the top.

  Then Wilson’s cousin had come to Michaelhouse. John Runham had been appalled to discover his kinsman housed in something so stark, and immediately set about rectifying the matter. The elegant black slab was now topped by a life-sized golden effigy, and the plain stone rectangle that formed the body of the tomb was hidden by painted panels that blazed with gilt, reds, greens and blues. Unusually, Wilson’s statue was not lying on its back gazing longingly heavenward, as was the current fashion, but had been sculpted propped up on one elbow, looking towards where the scholars stood for prayers. Either Runham had modelled for it, or he had given very clear instructions to the mason, because the likeness of the carving to the dead Master Wilson was disconcertingly accurate, and more than once Bartholomew had experienced the uncomfortable sensation that Wilson was actually watching him.

  In front of the tomb was a small but sumptuous altar, so that the scholars could kneel to pray for Wilson’s soul – although it was not used by anyone except Runham. Bartholomew walked past it, hoping Runham would be too engrossed in his cleaning to notice him. He had almost reached the high altar at the eastern end of the church, when the new Master spoke.

  ‘You are late.’

  ‘I know.’ There was nothing more Bartholomew could say. He had no excuse to offer, and he was not prepared to apologise to Runham – he did not want to start the day with a lie.

  ‘You will pay the customary fine of fourpence to me after breakfast,’ Runham went on. ‘And next time you are late, the fine will be a shilling. You have sacred duties to perform, and I will not permit idleness and irresponsibility to interfere with them.’

  Bartholomew saw he would have to ask his colleagues to wake him in the future. He was a heavy sleeper, and usually only stirred when something disturbed him. He would be in desperate financial straits if he were obliged to pay Runham a shilling three times a week.

  ‘It will not happen again,’ said Runham softly.

  His voice was vaguely threatening, and again Bartholomew did not reply. He noticed that Runham had already lit the candles, found the right place in the Bible for the daily reading, changed the holy water in the stoop, set out the psalters, and arranged the sacred vessels that were required for the mass. In fact, Runham had already done all that Bartholomew was supposed to do in his capacity as priest’s assistant.

  Bartholomew glanced out of the window. It was still not fully light, and he knew he was not more than a few moments late. He could only suppose that Runham had deliberately arrived early enough to perform all Bartholomew’s chores, to drive home his point. It seemed petty, and the anger that Bartholomew had been fighting since he had first seen Runham beautifying Wilson’s tasteless little altar began to claw its way to the surface again.

  ‘You took advantage of my leniency last night,’ said Runham, laying down his cleaning rod and assuming a mien of religious contemplation. ‘You were told to return immediately after delivering Father Paul to his Friary, but you remained out much longer, and came back reeling and stinking of wine.’

  ‘I drank nothing after I left the feast,’ replied Bartholomew. ‘And I had two patients to attend – one with an injured foot and the other with swollen gums.’

  ‘I trust you did no harm by treating them when you were barely able to stand,’ said Runham unpleasantly. ‘It would not be the first time a physician left a patient dead because of an over-fondness for wine.’

  ‘They both survived my ministrations,’ said Bartholomew, determined not to allow Runham to provoke him. ‘But speaking of the dead, when do you plan to bury your book-bearer? I see poor Justus’s body still lies in the porch. It has been there since Thursday.’

  ‘I expect I will find a few moments to tend to that this week,’ replied Runham, patently uninterested in his book-bearer’s mortal remains. He moved to one side so that there was room for the physician to kneel next to him, and changed the subject. ‘Perhaps you would join me in a prayer for my cousin’s soul.’

  Bartholomew could hardly decline – no matter what he thought about Runham’s kinsman – so he dropped to his knees and clasped his hands in front of him, hoping that a prayerful attitude would serve to convince Runham to leave him alone. He felt the other man watching him, so he closed his eyes and pretended to be lost in his meditations.

  There was a powerful, sickly-sweet scent around the tomb that made Bartholomew want to avoid inhaling too deeply. He had noticed it before, and Michael claimed that proximity to Wilson’s private altar always made him sneeze. Runham often placed flowers nearby, and Bartholomew could only assume that the new Master invariably chose the ones with the strongest scents.

  ‘You did not like my cousin, did you,’ said Runham, so quietly that Bartholomew thought he might have misheard. He opened his eyes to look at the Master in surprise.

  ‘I built his tomb,’ he said levelly.

  ‘That is what I mean. The tomb you raised was a disgrace, and unfit for a man of my cousin’s mettle. He would have liked the one I provided much more.’

  ‘I am sure you are right,’ said Bartholomew, knowing that the hideous structure Runham designed would certainly have appealed more to Wilson’s inflated sense of self-importance. He closed his eyes. ‘And now that you have rectified matters, there is nothing more to be said.’

  ‘Have you made your decision?’ asked Runham, still in the same soft voice.

  Bartholomew opened his eyes again. ‘What decision?’

  ‘About whether to become a full-time physician for the town. I am sure that life as a layman will suit you much better than life as a scholar. And anyway, I find medicine sits oddly with the other subjects we teach – law, philosophy and theology.’

  ‘But a good deal of medicine is natural philosophy,’ said Bartholomew. ‘And it also overlaps with astrology, mathematics and geometry.’

  ‘But you do not teach your students astrology, do you?’ pounced Runham. ‘You claim that reading your patients’ stars is a waste of time, and your students would do better to tell their clients to wash their hands before eating, and not to drink water from the river.’

  ‘I did once,’ admitted Bartholomew. ‘But I have learned that if a physician provides what his patients expect from him, they are more likely to be cured. I suppose the mind has a powerful influence over the body in some people, and belief in a remedy’s efficacy will aid recovery.’

  ‘That sounds like heresy to me,’ said Runham, eyes narrowing. ‘Notions like that do Michaelhouse no good at all. I do not want you in my College, Bartholomew, and I do not want you near my saintly cousin’s tomb.’

  ‘You asked me to kneel here,’ said Bartholomew indignantly. He fought down the urge to retort that he did not want to be near Wilson’s revolting tomb, but contented himself with nodding curtly to the new Master and heading for the high altar, to try to expunge some of the murderous impulses he felt towards Runham. When he had gone, Clippesby emerged from behind a pillar.

  ‘You see, Clippesby?’ asked Runham, looking up at the wild-eyed Dominican. ‘Bartholomew is a dangerous man, and his heretical ideas will pollute the minds of our more impressionable students.’

  Clippesby nodded quickly, his gaze darting here and there as though he suspected he were not the only one skulking in the shadows and eavesdropping.

  ‘I heard what he said, Master Runham. I distinctly recall him claiming that he deliberately created a paltry tomb for the martyred Wilson, and he gleefully admitted to teaching his students how to heal using the Devil’s wiles.’

  ‘Well, he did not go quite that far,’ said R
unham, regarding the Dominican uneasily. ‘But you seem to have the right idea. Remember what you heard, Clippesby – I might need your testimony one day. And now our scholars are arriving, and I must ready myself to take my first mass as Master of Michaelhouse.’

  As he watched Runham preparing himself for the service, Bartholomew wondered why the lawyer had suddenly turned so hostile. Although they had never liked each other, they had always been polite, and Bartholomew had even treated Runham free of charge on a number of occasions for the unpleasant flaking of the skin that seemed to run in his family. Wilson had been similarly afflicted. But now he was Master, Runham had dispensed with his veneer of civility, and had become openly antagonistic. Was his rudeness simply a ploy to induce Bartholomew to resign his Fellowship, so that Michaelhouse would no longer offer the study of medicine to its students? Or did Runham hold a genuine grudge against Bartholomew for not creating his cousin a suitably monstrous tomb?

  The physician sighed and looked up at the ceiling, just beginning to glitter as the early morning light started to catch the gilt. He had the distinct feeling that his existence was about to change dramatically, and he knew he was powerless to do anything about it.

  Still immersed in his reverie, it was halfway through the mass when Bartholomew realised that Michael was not in the church. He was not unduly worried, because the monk often missed services when he was engaged in University business, although he hoped there had not been yet another death to claim the Senior Proctor’s attention. There were already four corpses for him to provide verdicts on: Raysoun, who had tumbled from the Bene’t scaffolding; his friend Wymundham, whose death so soon after Raysoun’s was an uncanny coincidence; Brother Patrick, stabbed in his hostel’s garden; and Justus, still lying in a rough parish coffin as he awaited the burial it was Runham’s duty to provide.

  Bartholomew glanced to the porch where Justus’s body lay covered by a piece of coarse brown sackcloth. As a suicide, Justus would not be buried in the churchyard, but would be relegated to unconsecrated land. Since the plague, the number of suicides among the poor had risen: many preferred to kill themselves quickly than suffer a lingering death by starvation. In fact, there were so many of them that a plot had been provided near the Barnwell Causeway. It was a desolate place hemmed in by scrubby marshland vegetation, and was prone to attack by wild animals. Unless Runham used his influence, it would be Justus’s final resting place, too.

  Whatever Bartholomew might think about Runham as a man, he had to admit that his masses were impressive. The lawyer injected a note of grandeur into his phrases, accentuated by the natural pomposity of his voice, so that the words seemed to take on a new and deeper meaning. And he had brought beautiful patens and chalices with him when he had first been admitted to Michaelhouse, along with a dazzlingly white altar cloth and some scented candles.

  Not all Michaelhouse Fellows were in a state to admire Runham’s exquisite performance, however. Some of them clutched their stomachs, and most were white-faced, suggesting that Bartholomew had not been the only one to have imbibed too much Widow’s Wine the previous night. William looked particularly grim; his heavy face was unshaven and there were red rims around his watery eyes. Even Kenyngham, seldom a man to over-indulge, seemed subdued and pasty-faced.

  Michael’s choir – minus their leader – was a sorry affair. Missed cues, flat notes and indistinct words were the least of their problems. Knowing they had performed poorly, they shuffled their feet and hung their heads as the mass came to an end.

  Michael was fiercely devoted to his singers, who afforded him moments of great pleasure and spells of agonised embarrassment in more or less equal measure. It was the largest assembly of musicians in Cambridge, and owed its size entirely to the fact that the College was in the habit of recompensing participants with bread and ale each Sunday. It comprised local men and boys with a smattering of co-opted scholars that justified it being called the Michaelhouse Choir. Master Kenyngham had possessed the good sense to understand that the choir helped to promote peaceful relations between the College and the town, and that the variable and unpredictable quality of the music was something that just had to be endured for the sake of concord. A glance at Runham’s grim face, however, told Bartholomew that the new Master did not intend to follow Kenyngham’s example of leniency and tolerance.

  ‘Your performance today was a disgrace,’ he announced to the assembled singers, once the mass was over. ‘I have never heard such a miserable sound purporting to be music. From now on, your services are not required. Those of you who are Michaelhouse scholars will be under the leadership of Clippesby – the new Fellow of music and astrology.’

  Clippesby stepped forward amidst gasps of disbelief. Michael had been master of the choir for more than a decade, and had devoted a huge amount of his spare time to making it what it was – a good deal better than it might have been.

  ‘These people have served the College faithfully for many years,’ said Kenyngham with quiet reason, taking Runham by the arm. ‘We cannot dismiss them now.’

  Angrily, Runham shook himself free. ‘You are no longer Master, and in future please keep your opinions to yourself. I have made my decision: the choir is disbanded.’

  ‘But Brother Michael has been teaching us a Te Deum,’ objected old Dunstan the riverman, his jaws working rhythmically over his toothless gums. ‘We have been practising for weeks, so that we will be ready to sing it at Christmas.’

  ‘Then you should have considered that before you embarrassed the College with your dismal racket today,’ snapped Runham.

  ‘But it was only because Brother Michael was not here,’ protested Isnard, the burly bargeman who liked to think he sang bass. ‘We are better when he conducts us.’

  ‘Michael is unreliable and too wrapped up in his other interests,’ said Runham. ‘That is why I am absolving him of the responsibility and conferring it on Clippesby. Michael is not a musician in any case – he is a monk with a smattering of theology, who spends most of his time politicking with the Chancellor and the Bishop, and meddling in affairs that do not concern him – even to the extent of fraternising with Oxford scholars, if Langelee is to be believed. Where is he this morning, anyway?’

  No one knew, and Runham, raising an imperious hand to quell the cacophony of questions and recriminations that rang through the nave from the dismissed choir, prepared to lead his black-garbed scholars back to Michaelhouse for breakfast. Bartholomew did not join them. He wanted to remain in the church for a while, to let the silence and solitude calm his temper before he was obliged to spend more time in the company of the new Master. There was also the fact that Runham would be expecting Bartholomew’s fine of fourpence and the physician was determined to make him wait for it.

  ‘But what about our bread and ale for today?’ cried Dunstan in a quivery, distressed voice. ‘It is all I will get – my daughter cannot spare me food on Sundays, when all her children are home.’

  ‘I cannot, in all conscience, squander College resources by paying for inferior services,’ said Runham pompously, processing out of the church with his scholars streaming behind him. His voice came back distantly. ‘There will be no bread and ale for you today – or ever again.’

  Pandemonium erupted as the outraged choristers began to argue among themselves, voices raised in accusation and recrimination. Then Isnard became aware of Bartholomew, still standing in the chancel.

  ‘Your College cheated us!’ he declared furiously, advancing on the physician. ‘You let us sing today, knowing that we would not be given our bread and ale.’

  Bartholomew thought that was possibly true as far as Runham was concerned, although the choir had done themselves no favours with the diabolical quality of their singing. He did not know how to answer.

  Isnard strode forward and grabbed him by the front of his tabard, while his angry friends gathered around in a tight circle. Too late, Bartholomew realised he should not have stayed in the church and that the choir would not care whe
ther he condoned the Master’s actions or not. He would be battered to a pulp because he wore a black tabard, and only later, when tempers had cooled, would the singers question whether he had really been party to Runham’s decision. He struggled, but the press of people was too great, and Isnard’s grip too tight. He closed his eyes tightly, waiting for the first blow to fall.

  ‘Leave him be, Isnard,’ came Dunstan’s reedy voice, miraculously cutting in over the others’. ‘That is no cur of Runham’s. That is Doctor Bartholomew, who set your leg for you last year.’

  Isnard hauled Bartholomew to one side, so that he could see his face in the pale light that filtered in through the east window. ‘So it is!’ the bargeman exclaimed, releasing the physician so abruptly that he stumbled. Helpful hands stretched out to steady him. ‘Sorry, Doctor, but all you scholars look the same in those black uniforms – especially in the gloom of this godforsaken place.’

  ‘I have never liked this church,’ agreed Aethelbald, Dunstan’s equally ancient brother, looking around him in distaste. ‘It is cold and dark and sinister – as though devils lurk in its shadows.’

  ‘Especially now that one is buried here,’ said Dunstan, pointing with a wizened finger at the glittering monstrosity of Wilson’s tomb.

  As one, the choir crossed themselves vigorously and gazed around, as if they imagined Wilson himself might emerge from his grave and drag them all down to the depths of Hell.

  ‘Wilson was a sinful, wicked man,’ said Aethelbald. ‘During the plague, he lurked in his room by day to avoid contamination, but at night he slipped out to meet his lover.’

  ‘Did he?’ asked Isnard, interested in this piece of gossip. ‘Was she a whore, then?’

  ‘She was,’ said Aethelbald with conviction. ‘She was also Prioress of St Radegund’s Convent, God rot her black soul.’

  ‘And he stole from people,’ added Dunstan, not wanting Aethelbald to have all the attention.