A Killer in Winter (10 page)

They were silent for a while, each thinking his own thoughts. Michael and William considered the problem of an awkward Sheriff
and a difficult murder, while Bartholomew found his mind returning to Philippa’s pretty face, flowing golden curls and slender
figure. He was disconcerted to find he could not remember certain details – what her hands looked like, for example – although
other things were etched deeply in his memory. He knew how she
laughed, that there was a freckle on the lobe of her left ear, that she liked cats but not dogs, and that she hated the smell
of lavender.

The hour candle dipped lower. A little less than three hours remained before Angel Mass marked the beginning of Christmas
Day, and there was an air of expectation and excitement in the College. Bartholomew opened a shutter and gazed through the
window. Lights burned in almost every room, as scholars elected to remain awake, rather than rise early. Snow was in the air
again, and came down in spiteful little flurries that did not settle. It had snowed when the Death had come, too, he recalled,
and the bitter weather had added to the miseries of both patients and the physicians who tended them. Philippa had disliked
the cold. She preferred summer, when the crops grew golden and the land baked slowly under a silver-white sun.

‘Did you discover the identity of the man we found dead among the albs?’ he asked of William, pulling his mind away from his
reverie.

‘No one knows him. Not even Bosel the beggar, who works on the High Street.’

‘You have spoken to Bosel?’ Michael was disappointed. ‘Damn! He was my best hope.’

‘I even asked the Dominicans whether they had killed him,’ William went on airily.

Bartholomew regarded him in disbelief. ‘But there was nothing on the body to suggest he was murdered. I told you I thought
he had died of the cold.’

‘How did the Dominicans respond to this subtle probing?’ asked Michael curiously. ‘Did they confess?’

William grimaced. ‘They did not. However, unlikely though it may seem, I believe they were telling the truth.’

‘And why is that, pray?’ asked Michael, amused.

‘Because most have not been outside their friary since this sudden cold spell began,’ replied William. ‘Dominicans are soft
and weak, and need to crouch in their lairs with roaring fires and plenty of wine.’ He took a deep draught
of his claret and stretched his feet closer to the flames with a sigh of contentment.

‘I can cross the Dominicans off my list of suspects, then,’ said Michael wryly. His expression hardened. ‘However, there is
one man I cannot dismiss: Harysone.’

‘Not this again,’ groaned Bartholomew. ‘There is no reason to think that Harysone had anything to do with this death, either.’

‘Only the fact that we saw him go into the church, and then moments later we discover a corpse in it. What more do you want?’

‘We did
not
see him go into the church,’ Bartholomew pointed out. ‘We saw him fiddle with the lock, but then we went to see Norbert’s
body and we do not know if he entered or not. The latch sticks, and Harysone would not be the first would-be visitor to be
thwarted. He may have given up and gone elsewhere.’

‘Well, it was not to another church,’ said William authoritatively. Bartholomew and Michael stared at him questioningly, and
the Franciscan looked pleased with himself. ‘I made a few enquiries about that, too. I asked in all the churches whether a
man matching Harysone’s description had visited on Thursday, and was told he had not.’

Bartholomew was doubtful. ‘But most would have been empty,’ he pointed out. ‘It was daytime, and people were working.’

‘Not so,’ said William, bristling with pride at his cleverness. ‘It is Christmas, and the time when peasants deck out the
churches with greenery. All of them were busy, except ours: in a scholars’ church like St Michael’s such pagan practices are
not permitted.’

‘I heard Langelee giving my choir – which comprises mostly townfolk – permission to deck it out this evening,’ said Michael
wickedly. ‘It will be as green with yew and holly as any other, come tomorrow.’

William shot out of his chair and looked set to stalk to the hapless building and strip it bare there and then. He
faltered when Michael pointed out that there was a frost outside, but a fire and wine inside. It did not take much to persuade
the Franciscan to sit and resume their discussion.

‘So,’ concluded Michael. ‘We do not know why Harysone wanted to enter St Michael’s, but we do know that he did not visit another
church. Therefore, I suspect that he
did
enter St Michael’s, and that his business there was successful.’

‘You cannot be sure about that,’ said Bartholomew, thinking that the monk was allowing his dislike of the man to interfere
with his powers of reason. ‘And anyway, if folk were merrily pinning holly to rafters, who knows what they did and did not
see? Harysone is not particularly noticeable; he could easily slip past people unobserved.’

‘We will know tomorrow, Brother, because you have
me
to help with the enquiry,’ said William confidently. He stood and stretched, unsteady from the amount of wine he had drunk.
‘But we should go to bed, and snatch an hour of sleep before Angel Mass. Tomorrow you and I will catch a killer, and Matthew
can face the woman who should have been his wife.’

Bartholomew winced and went to fill his cup again, feeling that he needed yet more wine to dull the peculiar sensation of
unease and dissatisfaction that gnawed at him. He heard a sudden yell, and whipped around just in time to see William shoot
across the floor in a blur of flapping habit and windmilling arms. The Franciscan collided with the door and went down hard.
For a moment, no one said anything, then William released a litany of curses that would have impressed the most foul-mouthed
of stable-lads. Bartholomew exchanged a startled glance with Michael, wondering how the friar had acquired such an extensive
vocabulary of secular oaths.

‘My leg,’ shouted William, more angry than in pain. ‘It is broken!’

‘It is not,’ said Bartholomew, inspecting it. ‘It is bruised.’

‘But you do not know the agony it is giving,’ bellowed
William, outraged. ‘It is growing more painful by the moment.’

‘Bruises are painful,’ agreed Bartholomew. ‘But it will feel better in a day or two.’

‘It
is
broken,’ said Michael with a wicked smile. ‘You will be confined to College for the next two months while it heals, William.
What a pity! It will be hard to lose my Junior Proctor for so long and the fines chest will suffer. Shall I fetch wood and
bandages for a splint?’

‘It is
not
broken,’ declared Bartholomew, wondering what the monk thought he was trying to achieve by contradicting his diagnosis. ‘So
it does not need a splint.’

‘It is and it does,’ said William firmly. ‘And I shall want crutches, too, although I cannot venture out of the College as
long as there is ice on the ground. I might slip and do myself an even greater mischief.’

‘Just splint it, Matt,’ advised Michael, preparing to fetch the equipment the physician would need. He lowered his voice,
so that William could not hear. ‘You will be doing us all a favour. I do not want his “help” to solve Norbert’s murder, and
this is a perfect chance for me to be rid of him without embarrassing tantrums.’

Reluctantly, Bartholomew set about immobilising the damaged limb, becoming even more certain as he worked that William was
exaggerating the seriousness of his injury. William made a terrible fuss, however, and his unfriarly shrieks soon had scholars
hurrying to the conclave to see what was happening. The other Fellows formed a silent circle around the stricken friar, while
the students jostled each other at the door in an attempt to see what was going on.

‘Langelee will pay for this!’ William howled, snatching with ill grace the goblet of wine Suttone offered him. ‘I told him
he should pay a carpenter to mend the floor, and not just hide the damage with a rug.’

‘I will hire one tomorrow,’ said Langelee tiredly. ‘We can probably raise the funds somehow.’

‘We cannot,’ said Wynewyk immediately. ‘We have spent
every last penny on supplies for the Twelve Days, and our coffers will be empty until Ovyng pays us rent for next term.’

‘Hiring a carpenter will not be necessary,’ said Kenyngham. ‘I had some training with wood before I became a friar. I shall
mend the floor – but not until the Twelve Days are over.’

‘Very well,’ said Langelee, although he did not seem happy with the notion of entrusting saws, hammers and nails to the other-worldly
Gilbertine, even if it would save the College some money. He turned to William. ‘Your leg will confine you to your room for
some days, but we shall have the floor mended by the time you have convalesced.’

‘Convalesced,’ mused William with a gleam in his eye. ‘I shall certainly convalesce – with good food and wine! But I cannot
abandon Michael completely. He can bring suspects for interrogation here, to Michaelhouse.’

‘I do not think so,’ said Michael hastily. ‘We do not want criminals and miscreants in the College, thank you very much!’

‘We do not,’ agreed Langelee firmly. ‘I am sure we can find some administrative duties to occupy your time, Father. There
is always teaching. That will not require you to walk.’

‘It will,’ cried William, seeing that he was about to exchange duties he enjoyed, for ones he did not. ‘I cannot teach unless
I pace. However, I am sure I can do something to help Michael.’

‘Yes, you can, actually,’ said Michael. ‘You can deal with the beadles’ claim for more pay that we have been avoiding all
year. Thank you for your kind offer. I accept most gratefully.’

William’s face was a mask of unhappiness as he was carried from the conclave.

After William had been settled in his room with a jug of wine, Bartholomew retired to his own chamber to nap until Angel Mass.
He slept well, despite his fears that he would not manage a wink, and wondered whether he owed that
to the wine or to the fact that William’s leg had allowed his pre-sleep thoughts to concentrate on medicine.

Just before midnight he woke, when the sky was at its darkest. He hopped across the icy flagstones in his bare feet, aiming
for the water Cynric left for him each day. The temperature had plummeted since he had retired, and the water had started
to freeze so he was obliged to smash a crust of ice with the heel of his boot. He lit a candle, then began to shave, jumping
from foot to foot in a futile attempt to stave off the painful, aching sensation in his legs that always accompanied standing
on Michaelhouse’s stone floors in the winter.

Shaving completed, he donned shirt and hose, then tugged on a pair of shoes – new ones in the latest fashion that were fastened
with an ankle strap and had stylish pointed toes. Over the shirt, he drew on a laced gipon – a garment with long sleeves and
a padded body that was thigh length and very warm. His scholar’s tabard went over that.

Quietly, so as not to wake the scholars who were still sleeping, he headed across the courtyard to see William. The friar’s
snores were loud enough to have made sleep impossible for the two students who had been instructed to stay with him that night.
One was Quenhyth, who sat selfishly close to the lamp as he read some medical tract; the other, a Franciscan novice called
Ulfrid, was rolling gambling bones on the windowsill to pass the time. Both looked up when Bartholomew arrived, and Quenhyth
went through an elaborate pantomime designed to ensure that his master knew he had been working.

‘William will fine you if he catches you playing with those,’ said Bartholomew in a low voice, addressing Ulfrid and trying
to ignore Quenhyth.

Ulfrid slipped the bones inside his scrip, although he did not appear to be disconcerted to be caught breaking the College’s
rules about games of chance. He was a pleasant lad, with a scarred face resulting from some childhood pox.

‘Sorry,’ he whispered. ‘But I won these bones in a bet with a man in a tavern, and it is hard to resist playing with things
that are new.’

Bartholomew struggled not to smile, thinking about the various Franciscan and University rules the student had just blithely
admitted to breaking – frequenting taverns, gambling and enjoying possessions. ‘What kind of bet?’ he asked conversationally.

Ulfrid was dismissive. ‘The fellow had written an essay – he called it a book – about fish, and claimed that Galen’s cure
for infected wounds was to allow a living crab to eat out the rotten parts. I told him that Galen recommended an oyster, not
a crab, and that it was but one of many remedies for that particular condition.’

Bartholomew was impressed. ‘You are not a student of medicine, yet you know Galen?’

Ulfrid grinned. ‘Your description of cures for infections last week was so vivid and horrible that you claimed the attention
of every student in the room, even though most were supposed to be listening to different lessons. You will not find a scholar
in the College who does not know Galen’s solutions for festering wounds. It served me well, though: it won me a pair of dice.’

‘I am glad to hear it was of some use,’ said Bartholomew, not sure what he should deduce about his teaching skills from Ulfrid’s
careless confidences. ‘The man who wrote this essay – was his name Harysone?’

Ulfrid nodded. ‘He is staying at the King’s Head while he persuades people to buy his book. However, if his knowledge of Galen
is anything to go by, I think folk should save their money.’

Bartholomew was inclined to agree. ‘Why was he making bets?’

‘He wants to make lots of people aware of his book,’ said Ulfrid disapprovingly. ‘You know how it is: if people know about
a thing they are more likely to buy it, regardless of whether it is good or bad. The same thing happened last
year with gum mastic – it was said to remove the scent of wine from the breath and was an excellent glue. People’s obsession
with it faded after a while, but not before enough had been sold to float the ark.’

‘So, Harysone is selling his wares,’ mused Bartholomew. ‘It seems he was telling Michael the truth. He said he was here to
dispense copies of his work.’