The Killer Of Pilgrims: The Sixteenth Chronicle of Matthew Bartholomew (The Chronicles of Matthew Bartholomew)

by Gregory, Susanna

  Bartholomew supposed he had a point, although he did not feel like admitting it. ‘Where are you going next?’

  ‘It is time I put my needs first, and my investigations second. I am going to ask Yffi why he has left us with no roof. Are you coming, or are you afraid I might say something to offend him, too?’

  With a sigh, Bartholomew followed him through Michaelhouse’s gateless entrance.

  The Carmelite Priory was a good deal calmer than it had been during the kerfuffle over the attempt to snatch St Simon Stock’s scapular. The shrine was busy, as usual, but it was now being guarded by two sturdy lay-brothers. Bartholomew and Michael arrived just as the visiting pilgrims emerged from it. The physician was surprised to see Horneby and Welfry with them.

  ‘You should be resting,’ he told the Carmelite.

  Horneby smiled. ‘I woke this morning feeling much better, although, as you can hear, I am still hoarse. Then Welfry said St Simon Stock might be willing to ensure I have a strong voice for the lecture I am to give in his honour, so we went to pray in his shrine.’

  Welfry crossed himself. ‘I hope he listened, and will be inclined to oblige. I am looking forward to Horneby’s address – the University is dull during term time, when everyone is too busy teaching to propound new theories, and I need something to enliven my life.’

  ‘I do not suppose you enlivened it by stealing my College’s gates, did you?’ asked Michael coolly. ‘Someone spirited them away this morning.’

  Welfry looked startled, then laughed when Michael explained what had happened. The monk was unimpressed by his reaction.

  ‘I would not have thought the Seneschal would delight in silly ventures,’ he said icily.

  ‘Then you do not know him very well,’ muttered Horneby.

  ‘I am all admiration for the hostels’ ingenuity today,’ declared Welfry, still smiling. ‘Taking the gates is not as clever as the trebuchet business, but—’

  ‘How do you know it was a hostel that stole them?’ Michael pounced.

  ‘Oh, come, Brother!’ exclaimed Welfry. ‘Of course it was a hostel. Who else would pick on a College? I shall have to think of an answering trick to—’

  ‘No,’ ordered Michael sharply. ‘This ridiculous rivalry has gone far enough. We shall have a war on our hands if it continues, and none of us want a bit of foolery to end in bloodshed.’

  Welfry sobered immediately. ‘Of course not, Brother. Forgive me. It must be because …’ He trailed off, and his hand went to the place where the little boot had been pinned. A hole in the material showed where it had been ripped away.

  ‘I heard you lost your signaculum,’ said Bartholomew. ‘I am sorry.’

  ‘So am I,’ said Welfry, genuinely downcast. ‘I know Dominicans are not supposed to own personal property, but that badge represented … It was my reminder that …’

  ‘It helped him keep his sense of fun in check,’ explained Horneby. ‘He thinks laughter makes him a poor friar, although I cannot say I agree. There is nothing wrong with making people smile, and if more men were like Welfry, Cambridge would be a happier place.’

  Welfry blushed, clearly uncomfortable with his friend’s approbation. He turned awkward and tongue-tied, uncharacteristically at a loss for words.

  ‘I had better do all I can to retrieve it, then,’ said Michael. ‘In the meantime, concentrate on your duties as Seneschal. That should keep you away from the temptations posed by practical jokes.’

  ‘Come, Welfry,’ said Horneby, taking his friend’s arm. ‘I have prepared the next part of my lecture and I would like you to read it. That should keep you out of mischief for a while.’

  Keenly interested, Welfry allowed himself to be led away. Michael watched them go.

  ‘There is something odd about their friendship,’ he said. ‘Welfry possesses an excellent mind, but he is too frivolous to put it to good purpose, so why does Horneby waste time with him?’

  ‘Horneby is not wasting his time,’ said Bartholomew. ‘Welfry has helped him a great deal with his sermon – probably more than Horneby will ever admit.’

  But Michael was not listening. He had fixed glaring eyes on Prior Etone, who was standing by the shrine with Yffi. He marched towards them, ignoring the greetings of Poynton and Fen as he stalked past. Not wanting to cause offence, Bartholomew hastened to wish the pilgrims good day.

  ‘Has Michael located the villain who stole my badge yet?’ demanded Poynton. His face was more flushed than usual, and his eyes had a yellow cast, both signs of poor health.

  ‘If he had, he would have told you,’ retorted Fen sharply, and it seemed that even his equable temper was being tested by Poynton’s constant belligerence.

  ‘I understand you stayed in the Griffin when you first arrived in the town,’ said Bartholomew, also sufficiently irritated by Poynton’s manner to go on the offensive. He did not share Michael’s suspicions about Fen as a suspect for the killer-thief, but Poynton was another matter entirely: he might well have lied about his badge being stolen, and the crimes did seem to have started the day he arrived. ‘It was owned by John Drax, who was subsequently murdered. Did you meet him?’

  ‘Yes – and we disliked him profoundly,’ Poynton declared. ‘I am not surprised God saw fit to end his miserable life. His ale was expensive, and he denied his regular patrons credit.’

  Fen smiled at the physician. ‘Speaking of wine, Thelnetham was here earlier, and he mentioned that you partook too heavily of it last night. Are you recovered? You are very pale.’

  ‘Thelnetham told you that?’ demanded Poynton, while Bartholomew wondered two things: why Fen should change the subject so abruptly, and why Thelnetham should have been discussing him with strangers. ‘But he is a Gilbertine, and you should not fraternise with them – we are to play them at camp-ball this afternoon, so they are the enemy.’

  ‘Poynton has been invited to join the Carmelites’ team,’ explained Fen, when the merchant had stamped furiously away. ‘Apparently, he is good at it, although I do not believe it is a pastime worthy of a pilgrim. But now you must excuse me, too, because I have not finished my prayers.’

  Bartholomew wanted to pursue the matter of Drax but Fen either did not hear or chose to ignore the question he began to ask. Thwarted, the physician walked towards Michael, who was engaged in a head-to-head confrontation with Prior Etone and Yffi.

  ‘—cannot rip the roof off my home,’ the monk was shouting, ‘then disappear on another job.’

  ‘But this is far more important than your roof, Brother,’ snapped Etone. ‘Yffi is to build us a proper shrine. The incident yesterday told us that we need something more secure, and we were delighted when he said he could begin work immediately.’

  ‘I am sure you were!’ yelled Michael. ‘But that is not the point. He has been engaged to repair Michaelhouse, and he cannot leave us with no windows and no roof while he makes you a temple.’

  Yffi sighed heavily. ‘All right. I will go to Michaelhouse, and my apprentices will stay here. Then everyone will be happy. And do not say that is unacceptable, Brother, because the work on your roof has reached the point where only a master mason can make headway anyway. My lads would have been standing around doing nothing, regardless.’

  Michael was clearly unconvinced, but Yffi grabbed a sack of tools and stalked towards the gate, indicating with a wave of his hand that his apprentices were to begin measuring out the new site. Etone immediately went to pester them with unwanted advice and directions.

  ‘Yffi has left his apprentices unattended, Brother,’ remarked Bartholomew, to stall the impending diatribe. ‘It is an opportunity to speak to them without a master prompting their replies.’

  A determined gleam came into Michael’s eyes. ‘So it is! And we need not worry about objections from Etone that we are distracting them, because Poynton and Fen have just dragged him off somewhere – probably to complain about impertinent questions from you. You did ask some, I hope?’

  ‘None that elicited helpf
ul answers.’

  ‘It was as Yffi told you,’ said Peterkin, when the monk ordered them to repeat their story. ‘We could not see the yard. It was dangerous upon that roof, and we were concentrating on our work.’

  ‘You were discussing Yolande de Blaston,’ countered Michael. ‘That was not concentrating.’

  The lad flushed. ‘We can talk about her and do our jobs at the same time. But how could we see anything down in the yard when we were lounging around the back of the …’ He faltered.

  ‘Lounging?’ pounced Michael.

  Peterkin tried to retract his words, but it was too late. The slip allowed Michael to launch into one of his aggressive interrogations, and he soon learned that Yffi and his lads had been idling out of sight when Drax’s body had been hidden.

  ‘The first we knew about it was when Agatha started fooling around with that dog,’ said Peterkin, speaking reluctantly and sulkily. ‘We all looked down at the yard then.’

  ‘Who initiated that discussion about Yolande?’ demanded Michael. ‘Yffi?’

  A sly grin stole across Peterkin’s face. ‘Yes, because it amused him when all you scholars started listening to us. We could not see the yard, but we could see into your hall, and we saw we had your undivided attention. And half of you are priests, too! You should know better.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Michael bitterly. ‘We should, because it was your lewd banter that let a killer deposit a corpse in our College. You are not innocent in this affair, and I intend to see you pay for it.’

  He turned on his heel and strode away, leaving the grin fading from Peterkin’s face, and his cronies exchanging anxious glances.

  Langelee invited Bartholomew to dine with him when the physician returned to Michaelhouse, plying him with fresh bread, roasted meat, sweetmeats and a very small goblet of wine.

  ‘If you are still thirsty, you can have some small ale,’ said Langelee, snatching the cup away before Bartholomew had taken more than a token sip. ‘You cannot be drunk for this afternoon.’

  ‘I will not be drunk,’ said Bartholomew testily, indicating that the Master should return it to him. It was good wine. ‘Not on a thimbleful of claret. Are you nervous?’

  ‘A little,’ admitted Langelee. ‘It is the biggest camp-ball game of the season.’

  ‘Well, just be careful,’ said Bartholomew, finishing the wine and standing to leave. ‘We do not want anything to happen to you.’

  ‘Nothing will happen to me,’ declared Langelee, following him across the yard. ‘But the opposition had better watch themselves. The Carmelites have recruited two of the louts from Chestre Hostel, and if they try anything sly, they will be sorry.’

  ‘There is no evidence that it was Chestre who stole the gates,’ warned Bartholomew, afraid Langelee might decide to punish the outrage on the field. ‘It may have been someone else.’

  ‘Of course it was them,’ said Langelee bitterly. ‘They have always hated us.’

  Bartholomew looked uncomfortably at the yawning gap in the College’s defences as they passed through it. It was disconcerting, and he felt acutely vulnerable, despite the student-guards on patrol.

  ‘Do you know how the two Orders came to challenge each other to an annual camp-ball game in the first place?’ he asked, as they walked up St Michael’s Lane.

  ‘After the plague, life was bleak, so the Gilbertines decided to cheer everyone up. They settled on sponsoring a bout of camp-ball because it is popular with townsfolk, as well as scholars. The Carmelites thought it a wonderful idea, and offered to fund the opposing team.’

  ‘And it always takes place on the day after the Feast of St Gilbert of Sempringham?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Langelee. ‘Because he founded the Gilbertine Order, and the canons are always in the mood for a bit of celebration around this time of year.’

  When they arrived, Langelee led the way to the large expanse of land behind the priory buildings, where the event was due to take place. Some games used the whole town as a playing field, but the canons were aware that this could prove dangerous to innocent bystanders, so, in the interests of safety, they had opted to confine the action to a limited area.

  The players had assembled in two knots, about thirty men in each. One group wore white sashes, to indicate they were fighting for the Carmelites, while the other had donned black for the Gilbertines. Langelee abandoned Bartholomew and raced towards the latter, tying a strip of dark material around his waist as he did so.

  Spectators were also gathering, forming a thick rim around the edge of the field. Although he had certainly been aware of the game being played in recent years, something had always happened to prevent him from attending them – emergencies with patients, or duties in Michaelhouse – so it was the first time he had ever been to one, and he was astonished by the number of people who had abandoned work to enjoy themselves there. He estimated there were at least a thousand of them. Many were townsmen, and he was surprised when he saw his sister and her husband standing to one side, waving small white flags. He had not known they favoured the Carmelites over the Gilbertines, and wondered why.

  Unfortunately, the game had also attracted the kind of students who were enjoying the hostel–College dispute. The feisty lads from Essex Hostel were there, and Michael and his beadles were struggling to keep them apart from the boys of Gonville Hall. Meanwhile, noisy contingents from Maud’s, Batayl and York hostels were standing provocatively close to equally belligerent representatives from Peterhouse and the Hall of Valence Marie.

  Emma de Colvyll and her household were also present, and had secured themselves a pleasantly sheltered spot under some trees. Emma, clad in a black cloak and perched on a high stool, looked more like a spider than ever, and Bartholomew noticed that she was being given a very wide berth by the other spectators. Odelina and Celia sat on either side of her, while their retainers stood in a row behind. They all carried white banners, and when Leccheworth happened to stroll past, Bartholomew idly asked what he had done to turn Emma against his Order.

  ‘There are two reasons why she dislikes us,’ explained the Prior, running a hand through his curiously raven locks. ‘First, because Heslarton is playing for the Carmelites, and second, because of Edmund House.’ He pointed to the abandoned property at the far end of the field. ‘I told you the last time you were here how we were forced to sell it to her during the Death.’

  ‘You said you were unsure why she will not sell it back to you now.’

  Leccheworth nodded. ‘And I remain unsure. I can only surmise she is doing it to show everyone that she does as she pleases, and does not care who she offends or annoys.’

  He took Bartholomew to meet the teams. Among the Gilbertines’ champions was Yffi, who studiously avoided Bartholomew’s eye, knowing he should not be playing camp-ball when he was supposed to be working on Michaelhouse’s roof. The giant Brother Jude stood next to him, fierce and unsmiling. Langelee was near the ale-bellied Gib and the scowling Neyll from Chestre, and Bartholomew experienced a twinge of unease when he caught Neyll glaring at the Master. Would they use the game to harm him? But there was no time to warn Langelee, because Leccheworth was pulling him away to greet the opposition.

  The Carmelites had recruited Poynton, Heslarton and a number of loutish lads from Essex, Cosyn’s and St Thomas’s hostels. They exuded a sense of grim purpose, although Heslarton hopped from foot to foot to indicate his delight at the prospect of some serious rough and tumble. His bald head gleamed pinkly, and his roguish smile revealed a number of missing teeth. Bartholomew took the opportunity to ask a few questions when he found himself next to the man and no one else appeared to be listening.

  ‘I understand you sold Drax a pilgrim badge,’ he began. ‘Why was—’

  ‘I did not!’ exclaimed Heslarton, regarding him belligerently. ‘I am a businessman, not a priest, and holy objects can be dangerous in the wrong hands. I leave such items well alone.’

  Bartholomew frowned. Was he telling the truth? He recalled that it w
as Thelnetham who had identified the seller; Clippesby had been unable to do so. Could the Gilbertine have been mistaken? He was spared from thinking of a reply, because Poynton bustled forward, shoving roughly past Heslarton, whose eyebrows went up at the needless jostling.

  ‘Your friend the monk is worthless – it has been four days since my badge was stolen.’ Poynton drew himself up to his full height. ‘But I have taken matters into my own hands. By representing St Simon Stock’s Order in this game, I shall win his approbation, and he will deliver the badge back to me by divine means. He told me as much in a dream.’

  ‘St Simon Stock appeared to you?’ asked Bartholomew, supposing it was only ever a matter of time before pilgrims began claiming miracles and visions. For many, visiting a shrine was an intensely moving experience, and he knew that alone was enough to affect impressionable minds.

  Poynton waved his hand. ‘Well, it was more of a nightmare, to be honest – one I had just a few moments ago, as I was lying down to summon my strength for the game – but I woke certain he applauds my decision to play. My fellow pilgrims agree with my interpretation, and are here to cheer me on.’

  He gestured to where the two nuns stood shivering together, looking very much as though they wished they were somewhere else. Fen was with them, his expression distant and distracted. They stood with a massive contingent of White Friars that included Horneby, whose neck was swathed in scarves to protect it from the cold. Welfry was next to him. He yelled something to the Carmelite team, and they responded with a rousing cheer. Horneby started to add something else, but Welfry rounded on him quickly, warning him to save his voice.

  ‘Are you sure you should be playing today?’ asked Bartholomew, turning back to Poynton. ‘The game is practised very roughly in Cambridge, and your health is not—’

  ‘My health is none of your concern,’ snapped Poynton furiously. ‘How dare you infer that I might have a disease! I am as hale and hearty as the next man.’

  He turned abruptly and stalked away. Bartholomew was familiar with patients refusing to accept the seriousness of their condition, but even the most stubborn ones tended not to use camp-ball games to challenge what their bodies were trying to tell them. But it was none of his affair, and he turned his attention to the spectators who lined the field.