A Masterly Murder (40 page)

He clambered to his feet, coughing and staggering in the swirling dust. For several moments he was completely disorientated,
but then the dust began to clear and he could see that the entire mass of scaffolding which had been erected over the north
wing had collapsed, tearing with it part of the roof and all the gutters.

Had it been chance that two mysterious strangers were in Michaelhouse just as the scaffolding had fallen? Were they the same
pair that he had encountered the night that Runham had been elected Master? Bartholomew felt certain that they were.

‘Where is Michael?’ came Kenyngham’s worried voice from the crowd of scholars who milled about excitedly in the yard. ‘He
was in his room when I last saw him.’

With growing horror, Bartholomew saw that the eastern end of the north wing – where Michael’s room was located – had been
seriously damaged by the collapsing timber. And Bartholomew had quite clearly heard Michael’s
distinctive footsteps on the stairs moments before the whole thing had fallen!

Bartholomew gazed aghast at the rubble of Michael’s room, his stomach churning as his disbelieving mind tried to make sense
out of what had happened. Dust still swirled in hazy clouds, and somewhere there was a second crash as yet more staves and
supports tumbled to the ground. Scholars raced from their chambers, the hall and the conclave and stood in the yard in shock.
A few workmen, still illicitly working as the Sabbath light faded, joined them, and stood next to the scholars, white-faced
at the damage and the delay it would cause.

‘What has happened?’ cried Clippesby, as he dashed into the College from the lane. ‘I heard that terrible noise all the way
from the High Street! I have been visiting Master Raysoun at Bene’t.’

Suttone shot him an anxious glance. ‘Raysoun is dead,’ he said warily.

‘Yes,’ replied Clippesby, as if it were obvious. ‘But the dead like to be visited, and to be asked their opinions about this
and that. It helps pass the time of Eternity for them, and I often stop at Raysoun’s tomb to hear what he has to say.’

‘Perhaps you should go and lie down,’ began Suttone nervously, evidently deciding that the College could do without a madman
on the loose at that precise moment.

Clippesby waved a dismissive hand. ‘Later. What happened here? Has the whole north wing collapsed?’

‘Michael!’ whispered Bartholomew, who was still staring at the crushed shell that had been the monk’s chamber. ‘He was in
the building. I heard him on the stairs.’

‘Then we need to fetch him out,’ shouted Langelee,
darting forward and beginning to scramble through the wreckage.

The carpenter Robert de Blaston tried to haul him back. ‘No, not yet! It is not safe. Wait until it has settled.’

Langelee shook him off, and, oblivious to the danger to himself, continued to clamber across the dusty rubble to where the
door to Michael’s staircase had been located. Finally recovering his wits, Bartholomew followed his example, grazing hands
and knees in his desperation to reach the monk.

‘No!’ cried Blaston, advancing a few steps to snatch at Bartholomew’s tabard. ‘Your weight might bring more of it down. Wait
until we are able to assess it properly.’

He watched helplessly as Bartholomew tugged himself free, and he and Langelee picked their way through broken spars, smashed
tiles and endless tangles of rope.

‘I said you were working too fast,’ yelled Langelee furiously, casting an accusing glower over his shoulder at the carpenter.
‘And now look what has happened.’

Bartholomew stepped on a timber that was poorly balanced and it collapsed, sending him sliding down in another explosion of
dust. Choking and gagging, Langelee proffered a meaty hand to haul him up.

He was not the only one coughing. From somewhere deep inside the wreckage, Bartholomew could hear Michael.

‘Brother? Where are you?’ he yelled.

‘Sitting on the stairs in the hallway,’ the monk shouted back. ‘Has the scaffolding fallen? It is pitch black in here and
I cannot see a thing.’

‘Thank God!’ breathed Suttone, coming to join them. ‘For a moment, I feared the worst.’

‘Are you hurt?’ called Bartholomew.

‘No,’ said Michael. ‘I was just coming to help you with that pair of ruffians when there was a crash and everything
went dark. The exit is blocked, so I will wait in my room for you to excavate it.’

‘You do not have a room, Brother,’ said Langelee. ‘The roof was smashed when the scaffolding fell. Stay where you are and
wait for us to reach you.’

‘Well, just how long will that be?’ came Michael’s peeved tones. ‘I have better things to do than to sit around on dark staircases,
you know.’

Bartholomew exchanged a grin of relief with Langelee and Suttone. There was nothing wrong with the monk if he was able to
complain. The physician yielded to Blaston’s persistent tugs and moved away from the wreckage, allowing him and his workmate
Adam de Newenham to decide the best way to untangle the mess and free Michael. While the two carpenters stood together arguing
and planning in loud, important voices, Bartholomew sat on the steps to the hall and rested his arms on his knees. Across
the courtyard, he could hear Kenyngham taking a roll-call, ensuring that no one but Michael was unfortunate enough to have
been caught in the collapse.

He looked around the College, as if seeing it for the first time, gazing up at the black silhouettes against the sky, and
at the faint golden gleams of candles and firelight that filtered through badly fitting window shutters. Langelee came to
sit next to him, regarding the wreckage with a shake of his head.

‘I think your room and medical store survived, but anything you left on the windowsill will be destroyed, and there will be
dust everywhere – although I see you left the shutters closed, which will help. Poor Michael’s chamber is a lost cause, though.
Did he own anything valuable?’

‘Probably,’ said Bartholomew tiredly. ‘I do not know. We did not discuss that kind of thing.’

‘You sound like Father William,’ said Langelee disapprovingly. ‘There is nothing wrong with possessing a
few worldly goods to render life a little more tolerable, you know.’

‘It was good of you to risk yourself to help Michael,’ said Bartholomew, recalling the philosopher’s wild scramble through
the wreckage. He wondered whether Michael would have done the same for Langelee, and quickly concluded that the answer was
definitely no.

‘Guilt,’ said Langelee.

Bartholomew stared at him uncomprehendingly.

Langelee sighed. ‘You were right: I should not have mentioned the Oxford business to prevent Michael from standing as Master.
Unsavoury though it is to have dealings with that place, it was unfair of me to have used it against him.’

‘I studied at Oxford,’ said Bartholomew. ‘I do not understand why everyone has taken against it so. It is bigger than Cambridge,
so there are more fights, but it has an undeniable atmosphere of learning and scholarship. Some of the best minds in Christendom
are there.’

It was Langelee’s turn to gaze. ‘You are an Oxford man? Well, that explains a lot about you,’ he said rudely. ‘I thought you
learned your leeching in Paris.’

‘That was later. You realise that Michael will not readily forgive you for destroying his chance of becoming Master? He cannot
stand even now that Runham is dead, because your accusations still hang over him.’

‘But I just saved his life,’ Langelee pointed out. ‘We are even again.’

Bartholomew was certain Michael would not agree, and was equally certain that at some point in the future, Langelee would
pay dearly for his error of judgement in thwarting Michael’s ambitions.

‘So, what were you yelling about just before this happened?’ asked Langelee, changing the subject. ‘Did you
see the scaffolding about to fall? I heard you howling at the top of your voice when the whole lot crumbled.’

‘There were two men in the College whom I did not recognise,’ said Bartholomew, not sure what else he could say about the
mysterious cloaked figures who had fled when he challenged them.

Langelee regarded him askance. ‘It is not a crime for people to visit us, Bartholomew. I had a couple of guests myself, as
it happened. They left just before the scaffolding collapsed, so it was probably them you hollered at.’

‘Really?’ asked Bartholomew, his mind whirling. ‘Who were they?’

‘Simekyn Simeon from Bene’t and one of his College’s porters – a man called Osmun. Simeon and I have known each other for
years; he is in the service of the Duke of Lancaster and I met him often when I worked for the Archbishop of York. It was
he who invited me to Bene’t last week, so that I could meet the Duke.’

Bartholomew stared at him. Could it be possible that the two Bene’t men had done something to make the scaffolding collapse,
perhaps to spite Michaelhouse for poaching its labourers? Was it Simeon and Osmun who Bartholomew had grabbed as they tried
to leave? It could have been – as far as he could tell in the dark, they were about the right size and shape.

But surely it would have been somewhat brazen, not to mention risky, for the two Bene’t men to sabotage Michaelhouse while
visiting Langelee? Bartholomew rubbed his head. There was Clippesby, too: he had entered the College just after the two intruders
had left, claiming to be returning from Raysoun’s grave. Had he merely thrown off his cloaked disguise and re-entered the
College as himself, pretending to be as shocked by the incident as everyone else?

Or was the collapse merely an accident? Langelee was not the first to observe that the scaffolding had been thrown up in too
great a hurry, while the carpenters Blaston and Newenham did not seem surprised that the whole thing had come tumbling down
around their ears. Embarrassed and annoyed, but not surprised.

Bartholomew closed his eyes tiredly. At least now that Runham was dead the College should settle back into the routine of
its everyday affairs, especially if Kenyngham were to be Master again, to heal with kindness and understanding the rifts and
squabbles engendered by Runham.

‘Come on!’ shouted Blaston, turning to the watching scholars. ‘We can have that fat monk out in a few moments, if there are
willing hands to help.’

Bartholomew and Langelee moved forward with the others, while the carpenters carefully directed the removal of each timber,
so that the whole operation was conducted safely and efficiently and none of the scholars suffered so much as a splinter.
Lights flickered like great fireflies as Kenyngham, Clippesby and Suttone held lamps and the only sounds were the detailed
orders of the two carpenters. It was not long before the mess of wreckage was sufficiently untangled to allow Michael to climb
out. Brushing dust from his habit, he stepped daintily across broken timbers and smashed tiles to the safety of the courtyard
beyond.

‘I thought you were in your room when that lot came down,’ said Langelee, as he offered the monk a cup of wine to wash the
dust from his throat. ‘Kenyngham told me you had gone to rest.’

‘I had,’ said Michael, drinking deeply and holding out the cup to be refilled. Langelee grimaced but did as he was bidden.
‘I was fast asleep when Matt woke me with all that yelling. I was on my way down the stairs to see
what the fuss was about when the scaffolding fell.’ He gazed up at the ruins of his room and shuddered. ‘I see I would have
slept all too well had I been lying in my bed when that happened.’

‘I said it was all going ahead too quickly,’ reiterated Langelee, snatching the cup from Michael before he could demand yet
more wine. ‘I know about buildings – the Archbishop of York likes to raise them when he can get the money – and I told Runham
this was all moving forward far too fast.’

‘I need a drink,’ said Michael with a sigh, as though the two cups provided by Langelee had never existed. ‘I cannot bear
to watch my lovely College in such a state. Come on, Matt. The Brazen George awaits.’

‘We cannot go to a tavern and leave the others to do all the work,’ said Bartholomew, looking across to where students and
Fellows alike still laboured over the fallen scaffolding.

‘They are stopping,’ said Michael, watching Blaston clap his hands and announce it was too late and too dark to manage anything
more that night.

‘Good,’ said Langelee. ‘I will arrange some refreshment for everyone in the hall – assuming Michaelhouse has bothered to invest
in optional extras, like food and wine, of course. There is still some Widow’s Wine left, but no one but William and I seem
to like that.’ He strode away, hailing the cooks as he went.

‘Are you sure you are unharmed, Brother?’ asked Suttone anxiously, looking Michael up and down. ‘You are covered in dust.’

‘It will brush off,’ replied Michael. ‘And I am perfectly unharmed, thank you.’

‘Then I will go and ensure that Langelee does not turn his evening of refreshment into something that might be construed as
a celebration of Runham’s death,’
said Suttone. ‘The students have been itching to do exactly that all day, and such an occasion would do Michaelhouse’s reputation
no good at all.’

‘Oh, Lord!’ said Michael wearily. ‘I had not thought of that.’

‘I will enlist the help of Father William, if I can persuade him to leave his friary,’ said Suttone with a somewhat wicked
grin. ‘He will not allow any unseemly debauchery.’

‘He still has not returned?’ asked Bartholomew.

Suttone shook his head. ‘According to Paul, he remains afraid of being accused of Runham’s murder. Still, perhaps the notion
of students enjoying some refreshment without the benefit of his censuring eye will entice him out. I will send Deynman with
a message urging him to come back.’

‘Good idea,’ said Michael.

Suttone looked concerned. ‘But you should rest, Brother, to ensure you do not suffer another bout of your recent illness.
Your room is ruined, but you are welcome to use mine.’

‘You are most kind,’ said Michael, touched. ‘But the empty servants’ quarters will serve me for tonight.’ He watched Suttone
hurry across the yard, calling for Deynman. ‘He is a good man, Matt. I wish there were more like him in Michaelhouse.’