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

by Gregory, Susanna

  ‘I live here, if you recall,’ replied Thelnetham acidly. ‘Beyond this porch is the entrance to my room. I was taking a little fresh air before retiring to it.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Bartholomew. He could not have said why, but he did not believe Thelnetham, and was under the distinct impression that he had been lurking. ‘What do you want?’

  ‘To do a colleague a good turn, actually.’ Thelnetham sounded offended. ‘Your students have begged beds elsewhere, because rain has invaded your quarters, and I wondered whether you might like a mattress on my floor. We are cramped, but we can manage one more.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Bartholomew, relenting. ‘It is kind, but the medicine room will suffice.’

  ‘That is awash, too,’ said Thelnetham. ‘It will be like sleeping at sea.’

  Bartholomew walked to the little chamber and saw with dismay that Thelnetham was right. He was tempted to accept his colleague’s offer, but something stopped him. He smiled awkwardly.

  ‘I appreciate your kindness, but I am almost certain to be called out by … by Emma tonight, so I doubt I will be sleeping much anyway.’ He looked away, never comfortable with fabrication, but better a lie than offending a man who was probably only trying to be neighbourly.

  Thelnetham sighed. ‘As you please. Does Emma’s tooth still pain her? She is a fool not to listen to your advice. Of course, the procedure will be painful, so her reluctance to let you loose on her jaws is understandable. Heslarton once had a molar drawn by a surgeon in Huntingdon, and he said pieces of bone were dropping out in bloody gobbets for weeks afterwards.’

  No wonder Emma was wary, Bartholomew thought. ‘How do you know this?’

  Thelnetham shrugged. ‘He must have mentioned it when I went to their house with Langelee to seal our arrangement about the roof. I saved you some cakes, by the way. You were late, and I did not think it fair that you should be left with the boring ones.’

  He passed Bartholomew a parcel wrapped in cloth and started to walk away. As he did so, Bartholomew heard an odd sound from the roof. He glanced up, then hurled himself backwards when something began to drop. A chaos of ropes and planks crashed to the ground, right where he had been standing. His heart thudded at the narrow escape.

  ‘The rain must have dislodged it,’ said Thelnetham, coming to peer at the mess. ‘It is a good thing you have fast reactions.’

  Bartholomew could not see his face, because the night was too dark. He frowned, watching the Gilbertine stride away, then shook himself. He was tired and it had been a long day – his imagination was running riot. He located the cakes he had dropped, and entered his storeroom.

  His mind was too active for sleep, so he lit a lamp and began to work on his treatise on fevers – intended to be a basic guide for students, but now an unwieldy collection of observations, notes and opinions – and ate a cake while he wrote. It was good, so he had a second, and then a third. He was reaching for the fourth when there was a sharp pain in his stomach. He gripped it for a moment, then dived for a bucket when he knew he was going to be sick.

  Afterwards, he did not feel like working. He lay in his damp bed, feeling his innards churn, and listened to the rain dripping through the ceiling.

  It was a miserable night. Bartholomew’s stomach pains subsided in the small hours, but the wind gusting through the shutterless windows made an awful racket among his bottles and jars, and no matter where he lay, the rain seemed to find him. At one point, he went to the hall in search of a dry berth, but the door had been locked in response to the missing gates. He returned to his own room, eventually falling asleep shortly before the bell rang to call everyone to morning prayers. He dozed through it, and was difficult to rouse when Michael noticed he was missing and came to find him.

  ‘Were you called out last night?’ asked the monk sympathetically, as Bartholomew crawled off the mattress and splashed water on his face from the bowl Cynric left for him each night – not that he needed a bowl, given the amount of rain that was available on the floor. ‘You look exhausted.’

  ‘I should have accepted Thelnetham’s offer of a dry bed,’ said Bartholomew ruefully. ‘I kept dreaming I was sailing down the river on a leaking boat. And about Jolye.’

  Michael picked up one of the Lombard slices from the table; miraculously, they had remained dry. ‘The rumour is spreading that he was murdered by the hostels. Trinity Hall claims that was why they sent rats to Essex – in revenge for his unlawful death.’

  ‘If Jolye was killed, then the culprits are more likely to be at Chestre – it was their boats that were being tampered with when he drowned. Perhaps they caught him and pushed him in.’

  ‘Perhaps, but we will never prove it,’ said Michael bitterly. ‘There were no witnesses, and you found nothing on the body to allow me to make a case.’

  They were silent for a while, Michael thinking about the youngster’s death while he stared at the Lombard slice he held, and Bartholomew hunting around for dry clothes.

  ‘I was out late last night,’ the monk said eventually. ‘Although I have nothing to show for it. After putting down the rat trouble, I interviewed camp-ball players in the King’s Head, but still cannot decide whether Poynton’s death was murder or accident. Then I was told that a yellow-headed stranger was drinking in the Griffin, so I went there.’

  ‘And what did you find?’

  ‘That he has a twisted foot – you would have caught him had he snatched Emma’s box and hared off up the High Street. He is not our man.’ Michael raised the cake to his mouth.

  ‘Do not eat that, Brother. They made me sick last night.’

  ‘Because you are unused to their richness,’ said Michael, taking a substantial bite. He gagged, and immediately spat it out. ‘Or more likely, because they were made with rancid butter. Nasty!’

  ‘Thelnetham gave them to me.’

  ‘He does not like you very much,’ said Michael, wiping his lips with a silken cloth. ‘I think he is jealous. He is a controversial thinker, which brings its share of fame and recognition. But you are our resident heretic, and you overshadow him.’

  Bartholomew was still too befuddled with sleep to tell him his theory was nonsense. He finished dressing, then walked across the yard to where their colleagues were gathering for church. It was raining again, and William was complaining about a patch of mould growing on his ceiling.

  ‘At least you have one,’ said Michael caustically. ‘I do not, while Matt spent half the night floating about on his mattress.’

  ‘Yffi will make good on the roof today, or he will answer to me,’ growled Langelee.

  He spun on his heel and led his scholars up the lane, leaving the slower of them to scramble to catch up with him. Bartholomew did not mind the Master’s rapid pace – it was cold and wet, and the brisk walk served to warm him a little. But even so, he shivered all through mass.

  Teaching finished at noon on Saturdays, but, unimpressed by his students’ performance, Bartholomew ordered them to attend a lecture Rougham was giving on Philaretus’s De pulsibus. They objected vociferously at the loss of a free afternoon, and he was obliged to send Cynric with them, to make sure they did not abscond.

  ‘You are driving them too hard,’ remarked Michael, watching them leave, a sullen, resentful gaggle that dragged its heels and shot malicious glances at its teacher.

  ‘They will fail their disputations if they do not work. They are not learning as fast as they should.’

  ‘They are not learning as fast as you would like,’ corrected Michael. ‘But at least your tyranny is keeping them away from the hostel–College trouble. They are lively lads, far more so than students in the other disciplines, and would certainly have joined in, had they had time. Thank God you have seen that they do not. Will you come to Chestre with me?’

  Bartholomew blinked at the abrupt question. ‘I thought you had decided not to tackle them until you had more evidence.’

  Michael grimaced. ‘That was about the murders, the pilgrim badge thef
ts and our missing gates. But they are material witnesses to what happened to Poynton, so they cannot object to questions about him. And if the occasion arises, perhaps I shall see what a little subtle probing on other matters brings to light. Besides, I am low on clues, so it is time to rattle a few nerves.’

  Bartholomew followed him over the road to Chestre Hostel. The rain had darkened its plaster to the point where it was almost black, and a strategically placed window shutter made the ‘face’ on the front of the building appear to be leering. Even Michael looked a little unsettled when he rapped on the door and it evinced an eerily booming echo that rumbled along the corridor within.

  ‘We have already told you all we know,’ said Kendale irritably, when the Senior Proctor and his Corpse Examiner were shown into the hall. ‘And I am busy.’

  He was teaching, and from the complex explanations chalked on the wall, Bartholomew could see he was deep into the mean speed theorem. He was sorry Kendale was unfriendly, because he would have liked to listen. However, he could see by the bored, bemused faces that Chestre’s students did not feel the same way.

  ‘But not too busy to offer a little hospitality,’ said Neyll, exchanging a sly grin with Gib and lifting a jug. Bartholomew felt sick at the thought of it: it was far too early in the day for wine.

  ‘It is the Feast Day of St Dorothea,’ declared Michael, raising an imperious hand to stop the Bible Scholar from pouring. ‘And we always abstain from strong drink then, to honour her. We cannot accept your generous offer, I am afraid.’

  Neyll opened his mouth to argue, but could apparently think of nothing to say, and closed it again. Bartholomew hoped the monk had not lied, for the excuse was something that could be checked.

  ‘Then state your business, so I can return to my lecture,’ ordered Kendale arrogantly. ‘Is it to ask yet more tediously bumbling questions about Poynton, like you did yesterday?’

  ‘Yes,’ replied Michael, equally haughty. ‘I want to know why Gib sobbed like a girl over his bruised leg, thus allowing Neyll to murder a pilgrim on the camp-ball field.’

  Even Bartholomew was taken aback by this assertion, and the students were livid. They flew to their feet, and for a moment the hall was a cacophony of clamouring voices.

  ‘That is not my idea of subtle probing, Brother,’ murmured Bartholomew, as Michael held up an authoritative hand for silence. It was ignored, and it was Kendale who restored calm.

  ‘Sit,’ he ordered his scholars. They did so immediately, and he turned to the monk. ‘I assure you there was no collusion between Neyll and Gib. And Neyll was only one of a score of men who inadvertently crushed Poynton, anyway. Clearly, the man owned a feeble constitution and should not have been playing such a rough game.’

  Bartholomew watched Neyll and Gib intently, but their faces were blank, and he could read nothing in them. Nor could he tell whether Kendale had had an inkling that his violent students might have committed a crime. Neither could Michael, apparently, because he changed the subject.

  ‘This business of our gates,’ he began, and Bartholomew saw Kendale’s hubris had nettled him into saying more than he had intended. ‘It was neither amusing nor clever.’

  ‘I quite agree,’ said Kendale. ‘Which is why we are not guilty. We would never demean ourselves with such a paltry trick. It is hardly in the same class as illuminating St Mary the Great!’

  ‘Your “fuses”,’ began Bartholomew, still hoping to learn something useful from that escapade. ‘No one can work out how you—’

  ‘True,’ interrupted Michael, cutting across him and concentrating on Kendale. ‘Stealing gates is an asinine prank, so I know you are innocent. However, your students—’

  ‘My lads had nothing to do with it,’ interrupted Kendale firmly. ‘And I suggest you look to a College for your culprit. They are the unimaginative ones, not we.’

  ‘It was Seneschal Welfry,’ declared Neyll, grinning. ‘He did it, so the hostels would be blamed. He had better not try anything like it on us, or I will slit his … I will not be pleased.’

  ‘There you are, Brother,’ said Kendale smugly. ‘Speak to Welfry – that fool in a Dominican habit, who takes it upon himself to answer the hostels’ challenges. Incidentally, the townfolk were disappointed by yesterday’s camp-ball. They said it was boring. So, I have decided to sponsor another game on Tuesday. It will be between the hostels and the Colleges, and any scholar will be welcome to join in.’

  Bartholomew was appalled, knowing exactly what would happen if a lot of young men were given free rein to punch other young men from foundations they did not like.

  ‘You cannot,’ said Michael, also trying to mask his shock. ‘It will be the same day as the Stock Extraordinary Lecture. You will never recruit enough players.’

  But he would, of course, because camp-ball was far more interesting to students than a theological debate, and Kendale knew it. He smiled languorously.

  ‘I am sure we shall rustle up sufficient support. And afterwards we shall provide free wine and ale, for players and spectators alike.’

  If the game itself did not lead to a fight, then Chestre’s powerful beverages would certainly do the trick. Bartholomew gaped at him, horrified that he should even contemplate such an irresponsible act.

  ‘I refuse you permission,’ said Michael coldly. ‘You cannot hold such an event without the consent of the Senior Proctor, and that will not be forthcoming.’

  Kendale held a piece of parchment aloft, and Bartholomew did not think he had ever seen a more maliciously gloating expression. ‘I do not need your consent, because I have gone over your head. Chancellor Tynkell has given me what I need, and he is head of the University, is he not?’

  ‘Only in theory,’ replied Michael icily. ‘Tynkell’s writ will be annulled within the hour.’

  ‘It will not,’ predicted Kendale. He smiled again. ‘I have powerful friends in the King’s court, and Tynkell is a lot more concerned about offending them than you.’

  ‘The game will be fun,’ said Neyll insolently, delighted by the monk’s growing alarm. ‘A chance for the hostels to demonstrate their superiority over the fat, greedy Colleges. It will be a great spectacle – for scholars and townsfolk alike.’

  ‘A bloody spectacle,’ muttered Michael. ‘Lord! There will be deaths galore.’

  ‘You cannot do it,’ blurted Bartholomew. ‘Please reconsider, Kendale! Surely, your conscience tells you that this is wrong?’

  ‘I am sponsoring a game and drinks for my fellow men,’ said Kendale, while his students sniggered. ‘That makes me a philanthropist. What can possibly trouble my conscience about that?’

  ‘I will not allow this to happen,’ warned Michael.

  ‘You can try to stop me,’ said Kendale softly. ‘But you will not succeed.’

  Michael was so angry as he stormed out of Chestre that he did not hear the jeering laughter that followed. White-faced, he stamped towards the High Street, and those who saw the expression on his face gave him a wide berth. Even Emma, who was walking with Heslarton and Odelina, closed her mouth and the remark she had been planning to make went unspoken. Odelina smiled coquettishly at Bartholomew, and reached out to snare his arm as he passed.

  ‘I am better,’ she said in a low, sultry voice. ‘You were right: a good night’s sleep banished my fever and rendered me hale and hearty again. I owe you a great deal.’

  ‘You owe me nothing,’ said Bartholomew shortly, aware that Heslarton was listening, and loath for the man to think his daughter might need protecting from predatory medics. Heslarton wore the broadsword he had been honing the previous night, and it looked sharp and deadly.

  ‘No, we do not,’ agreed Emma. Her malignant face creased into what he supposed was a smile. ‘But we are appreciative anyway. I might do you a favour one day, if it is convenient to me.’

  Bartholomew was not sure what to make of such an enigmatic offer, but he had more pressing matters to concern him at that moment, and he pushed Emma and her family fr
om his mind as he ran to catch up with Michael. Seeing that the red fury burned as hotly as ever, he put a calming hand on the monk’s shoulder. Michael shrugged it off.

  ‘Who does Tynkell think he is?’ he raged.

  ‘The Chancellor?’ suggested Bartholomew. ‘Kendale is right: he is supposed to be in charge.’

  ‘He has never been in charge,’ snarled Michael. ‘Not even in the beginning. It has always been me, so how dare he issue writs without my permission!’

  There was no reasoning with him, so Bartholomew followed him to St Mary the Great, where the Chancellor’s office comprised a chamber that was considerably less grand than the Senior Proctor’s. They arrived to find Tynkell laid low with stomach pains, something from which he often suffered, due to a peculiar aversion to hygiene. The room stank, and Bartholomew itched to put his sleeve over his mouth. The wrath drained out of Michael when he saw Tynkell looking so pitiful.

  ‘Why did you sign Kendale’s writ?’ he asked tiredly, slumping on to a bench.

  ‘Because he came with his loutish students and frightened the life out of me,’ replied Tynkell, nervously defensive. ‘And then he showed me letters from his kinsmen, who are close to the King, and said they would be displeased if I refused him.’

  ‘So?’ asked Michael. ‘Who cares about what they think?’

  ‘I do, and so do you. They might persuade the King to favour our sister University at Oxford, and then where would we be?’

  ‘We may not have a University if this game takes place,’ Michael pointed out. He reached for pen and inkpot. ‘You will issue a declaration withdrawing permission. You have the perfect excuse, in that it is on the same day as the Stock Extraordinary Lecture. You can claim the conflict slipped your mind. No one will hold it against you.’

  ‘It is too late,’ said Tynkell miserably. ‘Kendale has already made his intentions public, and people are looking forward to the free drinks. If we cancel now, the town will see us as a spoiler of fun, and we shall have a riot anyway.’