A Masterly Murder (48 page)

‘Simeon is lying,’ said Caumpes as they walked, shaking his head in puzzlement. ‘He knows which lazar hospital de Walton will
be in, because it was he who arranged it – St Giles in Norwich.’

‘When did de Walton leave?’ asked Bartholomew.

‘Yesterday,’
said Caumpes. ‘I cannot imagine why Simeon did not tell you. It is not a secret, and there is nothing shameful in sending
a sick colleague somewhere he will be properly cared for. All the Fellows came to see the poor man on his way yesterday, and
I at least have promised to travel to Norwich to see him soon.’

‘You will not be allowed in,’ said Michael. ‘Lazar hospitals do not encourage visitors.’

‘De Walton is my friend,’ said Caumpes simply. ‘So I will try.’ He stopped at the gate and waited for Osmun to open it. ‘Goodbye,
Brother, Doctor. I hope you convict your thief.’

‘So do I,’ said Michael fervently.

He and Bartholomew had barely started the walk back to Michaelhouse, when they heard a yell. It was Walter, the lazy ex-Michaelhouse
porter, racing down the street after them as though he were being pursued by the hounds of hell. Agatha the laundress was
not far behind. Walter grabbed Michael’s arm and began demanding back his old job in piteous, wheedling tones.

‘Please take me home to Michaelhouse. I promise I will never sleep on duty again.’

‘We will see,’ said Michael, firmly disengaging his arm and attempting to walk on.

‘I am returning to Michaelhouse myself,’ announced
Agatha, with every confidence that she would be welcomed back, and that any laundress appointed in her absence would be summarily
dismissed. ‘I will move into my old quarters immediately. I do not know who killed Raysoun and Wymundham, Brother, but these
Bene’t men are trying my patience to the limits.’

‘Have you learned anything at all?’ asked Michael, although the flatness of his voice suggested that he predicted that she
had not.

She sighed, and Bartholomew saw that her own lack of success was as disheartening to her as it was to Michael. ‘Nothing. And
you should not have asked me to go there, Brother. Those Bene’t scoundrels are followers of the Devil.’

‘Really?’ asked Michael with quickened interest. ‘What makes you say that?’

‘Because, as God’s chosen, I should have been able to recognise the guilty man immediately, but they called on the Devil to
hide him from me. Still, I did my best. And now I am going home to Michaelhouse. Good wages and a big room are no compensation
for bad company and lazy underlings.’

She began to move majestically along the High Street, tossing a bundle of belongings to Walter, who was obliged to carry it
for her.

‘If she is being reinstated, you can take me, too,’ Walter whined, oblivious to the fact that a porter who slept on duty was
not in the same league as a laundress who ran the domestic side of the College with ruthless efficiency. ‘Please! That Osmun
is a brute. He will kill me if I stay at Bene’t!’

‘Osmun is an animal,’ agreed Agatha, walking next to Bartholomew. ‘He and Simeon dreamed up such a vile story about poor de
Walton. And Caumpes and Heltisle believed every word of it.’

‘What are you talking about?’ asked Michael. ‘De Walton has leprosy, and is currently on his way to a lazar hospital in Norwich.’

‘Well, maybe he does have leprosy,’ said Agatha. ‘I thought he looked a bit peaky. But he is no more travelling to Norwich
than you are. That is a story fabricated by the Duke of Lancaster’s henchman, so that Heltisle and Caumpes will not be able
to see him any more.’

‘So, where is de Walton?’ asked Michael, trying not to show his bewilderment at Agatha’s annoyingly piecemeal story. ‘And
why should Simeon want to keep him from the others?’

‘Simeon wants de Walton away from the others, because Bene’t is full of bitterness and rivalry,’ said Agatha knowledgeably.
‘It is really no different from Michaelhouse. And he has the poor man imprisoned in one of the outbuildings down by the King’s
Ditch. I saw Simeon taking him there yesterday,
after
de Walton was supposed to have gone to Norwich.’

‘Will you tell us how to find it?’ asked Michael.

‘Now?’ asked Agatha calmly, preparing to make her mighty bulk change direction.

‘We will go when it is dark,’ said Michael. ‘Tonight.’

It was only noon, and there was a long time to go before Michael’s midnight raid on the shed in Bene’t College’s grounds.
Michael went to question his beadles yet again about their nightly intelligence-gathering in the taverns. Meanwhile, Bartholomew
was anxious about the amount of time that had been squandered by the building work and Runham’s death, and was keen to remedy
the matter by organising a debate for his undergraduates. But none of his students were anywhere to be found in Michaelhouse,
and with no Cynric to round them up, Bartholomew was obliged to hunt them down himself.
With ill grace, feeling that trawling the taverns for his truants was a waste of an afternoon, he set out.

His first port of call was the King’s Head, a busy establishment near the Ditch with a reputation for brawls. The deafening
roar of drunken voices stopped the instant he entered, and he realised that he had forgotten to remove the tabard that marked
him as a scholar. While scholars regularly patronised the King’s Head, they never did so wearing uniforms that proclaimed
their academic calling. Eyes that glittered in the firelight regarded him with such hostile intent that he backed out quickly;
to linger would mean an attack for certain.

As the door closed behind him, the bellow of conversation resumed, and he berated himself for being so careless. He took off
his tabard, shoved it into the medicine bag he always wore looped over his shoulder, and began to walk towards the next inn
on his list. He smiled to himself as he went: even the short spell he had spent inside the King’s Head told him that his students
were not there, and that the reason they were not enjoying its dubious hospitality was probably because Ralph de Langelee
was there. The burly philosopher had been sitting at a table at the far end of the tavern, drinking a jug of ale with a slim,
neat man who looked as if he wished he were elsewhere.

Bartholomew turned from the High Street to Luthburne Lane, a dark, muddy street that ran along the back of Bene’t College,
where a sign that dangled on a single hinge told that the run-down building to which it was attached was the Lilypot, an insalubrious
inn with a reputation as a haunt for criminals and practising lawyers. Bartholomew was about to enter, when he saw a familiar
figure drop lightly from the wall that ran along the rear of Bene’t, brush himself down and then walk jauntily in the direction
of the King’s Ditch. It was Simekyn Simeon, and
the Bene’t Fellow had not noticed Bartholomew standing in the gloomy portals of the Lilypot.

Curious as to what should induce the elegant courtier to jump over walls instead of using the front gate, like most law-abiding
men, Bartholomew started to follow him, taking care to keep some distance between him and his quarry as Cynric had taught
him to do. Simeon moved quickly and stealthily, casting quick, furtive glances behind him as he went. Bartholomew began to
wonder whether any Fellow at Bene’t was able to walk around the town in a normal manner, given that he had personally observed
Wymundham, Caumpes and now Simeon stealing about the streets.

Between Luthburne Lane and the King’s Ditch was a small area of pasture that the townsfolk used for grazing their cattle during
the summer months. During the winter, it was a weed-infested wilderness lined with mature trees on one side, and the sturdy
grey walls of the Hall of Valence Marie on the other. Simeon hurried to a small coppice of hawthorn trees, lifting his tabard
so that it would not trail in the long grass. Bartholomew hoped the courtier had not worn his exquisite calfskin shoes, since
generations of cows had browsed the area. An eloquent string of expletives and a slackening of pace as Simeon inspected his
foot indicated that he had.

When he reached the prickly haven of the hawthorns, the Bene’t man glanced around him and, apparently satisfied that he had
not been observed, lowered himself carefully on to a fallen tree-trunk and began to scrape at his shoe with a stick. Since
Bartholomew was sure the fashionable Simeon had not forged his way through the foliage for some pleasurable exercise and that
he was likely to be meeting someone, he skirted the thicket and climbed up the steep bank of the Ditch behind. Lying on his
stomach, he found he could look down on Simeon
but Simeon was unlikely to see Bartholomew unless he happened to glance up. He slipped his medicine bag off his shoulder,
laid it on the grass next to him, and settled down to see what would happen.

Fortunately, he did not have long to wait, which was a blessing. Not only was it cold lying in wet grass under a dark sky
that promised rain, but the noxious stench of the Ditch was making him feel sick. Another person was moving across the scrub,
looking every bit as furtive as had Simeon. At first, Bartholomew assumed Simeon’s liaison was no more sinister than a clandestine
meeting with a woman, for the figure that inched its way across the pasture was elfin, protected from the weather by a thick
cloak that hid everything except some brown shoes. But then the newcomer reached up to push back the hood, and Bartholomew
saw that it was no woman whom Simeon greeted in the manner of an old friend.

‘I was waylaid,’ the newcomer explained, perching on the tree trunk and pulling his cloak more tightly around him. ‘That dreadful
Ralph de Langelee spotted me, and I was obliged to pass the time of day with him in a place called the King’s Head. Are Cambridge
scholars allowed the freedom to carouse in the town’s inns? We certainly do not permit that sort of thing at Oxford.’

‘Langelee allowed himself to be seen in a tavern with an Oxford man?’ asked Simeon, amused. ‘He is a confident fellow! Rumour
has it that he plans to be Master of Michaelhouse now that the old one is dead. He will not win the votes of that gaggle of
old women and bigots by fraternising with William Heytesbury of Merton College in an establishment like the King’s Head!’

Heytesbury! thought Bartholomew, suddenly recognising from his own days at Oxford the delicate features of the famed nominalist.
It was the discovery of Michael’s letters to him that had destroyed the monk’s ambitions
to succeed Kenyngham as Master of Michaelhouse. And now it appeared that Michael was not the only one with Oxford connections:
it seemed Langelee had his own association with the Merton man. Bartholomew had seen them himself in the King’s Head together
only a few moments earlier.

‘The tavern was full of townsmen,’ Heytesbury went on with a shudder. ‘At one point, a University doctor had the temerity
to enter wearing his tabard, and, judging from the hostile reaction of the inn’s patrons, I suspect he was lucky to leave
alive.’

‘It is good to see you, Heytesbury,’ said Simeon warmly. ‘You are a bright spark of culture and decency in this den of louts.
Would you believe that I am obliged to remain here until Bene’t is completed? It might take months, at which point I shall
be too ancient to be of use to anyone.’

‘You will never be too old for fun,’ said Heytesbury, smiling and clapping his friend on the back. ‘But it is a pity your
Duke chose this godforsaken hole into which to plough his money. He should have given it to Oxford.’

‘I did my best to tell him that,’ said Simeon. ‘He declined to listen to a mere squire. But what did Langelee want with you?
I am also acquainted with him, for my sins. I have been obliged to waste several evenings in his company, because I am too
polite to tell him to go to the Devil.’

Heytesbury sighed. ‘He wanted to know about my dealings with Brother Michael. The stupid man apparently used Michael’s association
with me to prevent the monk from becoming Master of Michaelhouse. From my personal impression of that good Brother, I imagine
that Langelee is headed for a serious fall.’

Simeon raised his eyebrows. ‘Are you serious? You
think that fat glutton can best a man like Langelee, with his years of experience as the Archbishop’s spy?’

‘Should I trust Michael then?’ asked Heytesbury thoughtfully. ‘Should I go ahead with this arrangement that will make Oxford
richer by two churches and a farm in exchange for some information that is neither here nor there to us?’

‘Why not?’ asked Simeon. ‘It sounds to me as if you cannot lose.’

‘That is what worries me,’ said Heytesbury, frowning. ‘It seems like an offer made in Heaven, where we gain and Cambridge
loses. That is why I came in person to see Michael, and that is why I asked you to meet me, so that you can give me your impressions
of the man. He claims he plans to use the information only to secure himself the Chancellorship next year, but I remain sceptical.’

‘I think you credit him with too much cunning,’ said Simeon dismissively. ‘Brother Michael is a bumbling Benedictine who cannot
even explain the deaths that have occurred in Bene’t College. I doubt he will raise his eyes from the dinner table long enough
to be a threat to you.’

That Simeon had so badly misread Michael suggested that Langelee was not the only one in line for a hard fall. Bartholomew
knew Michael well enough to be convinced that if Heytesbury and the monk struck some kind of deal, then Heytesbury would not
be the one to leave with the better half of the bargain. He shifted slightly in his hiding place, growing chilled and stiff
from lying still. He bumped against his medicine bag, which clinked softly as the birthing forceps inside it knocked against
a glass phial. Fortunately, the two men below did not hear.

‘Now,’ said Simeon, shivering slightly as a gust of wind brought the first spots of rain. ‘I have fulfilled my part of our
arrangement by informing you that you
need not fear Brother Michael. What do you have for me?’

Heytesbury rummaged under his cloak and produced a leather bag. ‘New shoes, cut in the latest court fashion with toes that
curl; a ham from the Duke’s kitchen; and a silk sheet, so that you will not have to endure Bene’t’s rough blankets.’