An Unholy Alliance (8 page)

Michael sought out the lay-brother who had locked the church the night before, a mouselike man with eyes that roved in different directions. He was clearly terrified.

Bartholomew led him away to talk, but the man’s eyes constantly strayed in the direction of the dead friar.

‘What time did you lock the church last night?’ asked Bartholomew gently.

The man audibly gulped and seemed unable to

answer. Michael became impatient.

‘Come on! We do not have all day!’

The man’s knees gave out and he slid down the base of a pillar and crouched on the floor, casting petrified glances around him. Bartholomew knelt next to him.

‘Please try to remember,’ he said. ‘It is important.’

The man reached out and grabbed his sleeve, pulling him close to whisper in his ear. ‘At dusk,’ he said, glancing up at the imposing figure of Michael with huge eyes. Michael raised his eyes heavenward, and went to gather together the other clerks with whom they would need to talk, leaving Bartholomew alone to question the lay-brother.

‘At dusk,’ the man repeated, watching Michael’s

retreating back with some relief. “I doused the candles and went to see that the catches on the windows were secure. I put the bar over the sanctuary door as usual, and checked that the tower door was locked.’

‘How did you do that?’ asked Bartholomew.

The lay-brother made a motion with his hands that indicated he had given it a good shake. ‘Then I made sure the sanctuary light was burning and left. I locked the door behind me and gave the keys to Father Cuthbert.’

‘Why did Father Cuthbert not lock the church himself?’

asked Bartholomew.

‘He does when he can. But he has pains in his ankles sometimes, so I lock up when he cannot walk.’

Bartholomew nodded. He had often treated Father

Cuthbert for swollen ankles, partly caused by the great pressure put on them by his excess weight, and partly, Bartholomew suspected, caused by a serious affinity for fortified wines.

‘Did you notice anything unusual?’ he asked.

The man shook his head hesitantly, and Bartholomew was certain he was lying.

‘It would be better if you told me what you know,’ he said quietly. He saw sweat start to bead on the man’s upper lip. Then, before he could do anything to stop him, the man dived out of Bartholomew’s reach and scuttled out of the church. Bartholomew ran after him and saw him disappear into the bushes in the churchyard.

He followed, ignoring the way the dense shrubs scratched at his arms. There seemed to be a small path through the undergrowth, faint from lack of use, but a distinct pathway nevertheless. Bartholomew crashed along it and suddenly found himself in one of the dismal alleys that lay between the church and the market-place, his feet skidding in the dust as he came to a halt.

This was one of the poorest areas of the town, a place where no one valuing his safety would consider entering after dark. The houses were no more than rows of wooden frames packed with dried mud. One or two of the better ones had ill-fitting doors to keep out the elements, but most only had a blanket or a piece of leather to serve as a door.

But it was not the homes that caught Bartholomew’s eye. The lay-brother had disappeared, but others stood in the alley, a group of scruffy men who moved towards him with a menace that left Bartholomew in no doubt that he was not welcome there. He swallowed and began to back towards the pathway in the bushes, but two of the men moved quickly to block his way.

The alley was silent except for the shuffling of the advancing men. There were at least eight of them, with more joining their ranks by the moment, rough men wearing jerkins of boiled leather and an odd assortment of leggings and shirts. Bartholomew wondered whether he would be able to force his way through them if he took off as fast as he could and made for the market square.

A look at the naked hostility on the men’s faces told him he would not succeed. These men meant business.

Fear mingled with confusion as he wondered why his blundering into the alley had resulted in such instant antagonism.

They moved closer, hemming Bartholomew against

one of the shacks. He clenched his fists so that they would not see his hands were shaking; he was nearly overwhelmed with the rank smell of unwashed bodies and breath laden with ale fumes. One of the men

made a lunge for his arm and Bartholomew ducked

and swung out with his fists blindly. In surrounding him so closely, the men had given themselves little room for movement. Blows were aimed, but lacked

force, although judging from several grunts of pain, Bartholomew’s own kicks and punches, wildly thrown, were more effective.

A leg hooked around the back of his knees and sent him sprawling backwards onto the ground, and he knew that it was all over. He twisted sideways to squirm out of the reach of a kick aimed at his head, but was unable to move fast enough to avoid the one to his stomach. The breath rushed out of him and his limbs turned to jelly so that he was unable to move.

‘Stop!’

It was the deep voice of a woman that Bartholomew heard through a haze of dust and shuffling feet. The men moved back, and by the time Bartholomew had

picked himself up and was steadying himself against a wall, the alleyway was deserted except for the woman.

He looked at her closely. She was dressed in a good quality, but old, woollen dress of faded blue, and her hair, as black as Bartholomew’s own, fell in a luxurious shimmering sheet down her back and partly over her face.

Her features were strong and bespoke of a formidable strength of character, and although she would not have been called pretty, there was a certain attraction in her clear eyes and steady gaze. As Bartholomew looked more closely, he saw two scars on each jaw, running parallel to each other. Not wishing to make her uncomfortable by staring, he looked away, wondering whether the scars marked her as a member of some religious sect. He had heard that self-mutilation had been common in Europe during the plague years, and it was possible that the scars had been made then.

‘Who are you?’ he asked.

She looked at him in disbelief and let out a burst of laughter. “I save your life, and what do you say? “Thank you”? “I am grateful”? Oh, no! “Who are you?”!’ She laughed again, although Bartholomew was too shaken to find the situation amusing. That she obviously held some sway over the band of louts who had just tried to kill him he found of little comfort.

“I am sorry,’ he said, contrite. ‘Thank you. May I know your name?’

She raised black eyebrows, her blue eyes dancing in merriment. ‘All right, then,’ she said. ‘My name isjanetta of Lincoln. Who are you and what were you doing in our lane?’

‘Your lane?’ he asked, surprised. ‘Since when did the streets of Cambridge become private property?’

The laughter went out of her face. ‘You have a careless tongue for a man who has just been delivered from an -unpleasant fate. And you did not answer my question.

What are you doing here?’

Bartholomew wondered what he could tell her. He

thought of the terrified face of the lay-brother and was reluctant to mention him to this curious woman. He also wondered why he had been so foolish as to chase the man when he easily could have found out his address from Father Cuthbert.

“I must have taken a wrong turning,’ he said. He looked around him and saw that his bag had gone, containing not only all his medical instruments and some medicines, but his best scholar’s tabard too.

Janetta stared at him, her hands on her hips. ‘You are an ingrate,’ she said. “I stop them from killing you, and you repay me with rudeness and lies.’

Bartholomew knew that she was right and was sorry.

But, despite the sunshine filtering down into the alley from the cloudless sky, Bartholomew felt something menacing and dark in the alley and longed to be gone.

He straightened from where he had been leaning against the wall and took a deep breath.

“I saw a small path leading through the bushes in St Mary’s churchyard,’ he answered truthfully. “I followed it and it finished here.’

She continued to stare at him for a few minutes. ‘You were following it at quite a pace,’ she said. “I thought you were being pursued by the Devil himself.’

He grimaced and looked up and down the alley to

see which way would be the best to leave. She followed his eyes.

‘You will only be safe while you are with me,’ she said.

‘Would you like me to walk with you?’

Bartholomew ran a hand through his hair and gave her a crooked smile. ‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘How is it that you seem to have so much control over these people?’

She gestured that he was to precede her down the alley.

Although Bartholomew could see no one, he knew that they were being watched. The silence of the alley was a tangible thing. He glanced at Janetta walking behind him, striding purposefully.

She smiled at him, showing small, white teeth. “I have taken it on myself to give them a community spirit, a sense of worth and belonging.’

Bartholomew was not sure he knew what she meant, but kept his silence. All he wanted to do was leave the filthy alley and go back to the relative peace and sanity of Michaelhouse. For some reason he could not place, the woman made him uncomfortable. He glanced behind

them, and was alarmed to see that a crowd of people had gathered, and was following them down the alley, its silence far more menacing than words could ever be.

Janetta also glanced round, but seemed amused.

‘They wonder where you are taking me,’ she said.

Then they were out of the alley and into the colour and cheerful cacophony of the market-place. Gaudy canopies sheltered the goods of the traders from the hot sun, and everywhere people were calling and shouting.

Dogs barked and children howled with laughter at the antics of a juggler. Somewhere, a pig had escaped and was being chased by a number of people, its squeals and their yelling adding to the general chaos.

He turned to Janetta, who still smiled at him.

‘Thank you,’ he said again. ‘And please tell whoever stole my bag that there are some medicines in it that might kill if given to the wrong person. If he or she does not want to give it back to me, the medicines would best be thrown into the river where they will do no harm.’

She nodded slowly, appraising him frankly. ‘Do not come here uninvited again, Matthew Bartholomew,’

she said.

Without waiting for a response, she turned and strode jauntily back down the alley, leaving Bartholomew staring after her, wondering how she had known his name when he had not told her.

‘What happened to you?’ exclaimed Michael in horror, looking at Bartholomew’s torn and dirty clothes.

Bartholomew took his arm and led him back through the churchyard to the bushes where he had followed the lay-brother. But however hard he looked, he could not find the path. It simply was not there. He stood back, bewildered.

‘What is going on, Matt?’ asked Michael impatiently.

‘What have you been doing? You look as though you have been in a fight.’

Bartholomew explained what had happened and sat

on a tree-stump in the shade of the church while Michael conducted his own search of the bushes.

‘Are you sure there was a path?’ he asked doubtfully.

‘Of course I am!’ Bartholomew snapped. He leaned forward and rested his head in his hands. “I am sorry, Michael. It was a nasty experience and it has made me irritable.’

Michael patted his shoulder. ‘Tell me again about this woman. Pretty, you say?’ He perched on the tree-stump next to the physician.

Bartholomew regarded him through narrowed eyes

and wondered, not for the first time, whether Michael was really the kind of man who should have been allowed to take a vow of chastity.

‘Tell me what you discovered from the clerks,’ he said, to change the subject.

‘They said they had noticed the friar praying in the church for the last three days. Some of them spoke to him, and he said he was travelling from London to Huntingdon and had stopped here for a few days to rest and pray. They did not ask why he was travelling.

They also do not know exactly where he came from in London. He seemed pleasant, friendly and polite, and none of them thought it strange that he should spend so much time in this church.’

‘Is that all?’ asked Bartholomew. Michael nodded.

‘Then we are really no further forward. We still do not know who he was or why he was in the tower, except that he probably travelled some distance to be there. And that poor lay-brother was terrified of something, and I did not like the atmosphere in that shabby alleyway.’

‘You should not frequent such places, then,’ said Michael. ‘Although I would have imagined you would be used to them by now.’

“I thought I was,’ said Bartholomew. He thought he knew most of the poorest parts of town through his patients, bat had not been called to the alleys behind the market square since the plague. Like the little settlement by the castle, the people who lived in the hovels near the Market Square had either died or moved to occupy better homes when others died.

He and Michael sat in companionable silence for a few-moments and then Michael stood. ‘Stay here,’ he said. “I will send Cynric back with your spare tabard. If Alcote sees you dirty and dishevelled, he will fine you on the spot, and now you need to buy a new tabard you cannot afford it.’

He ambled off, and Bartholomew leaned back wearily.

Now that the excitement had worn off, he felt tired and sick. He wondered whether everything fitted together the dead friar, the poisoned lock, the disappearing lay brother and Vice-Chancellor, the murdered women, and the sinister alley - or whether they were all independent incidents that just happened to have involved him. He felt more than a little angry at the Chancellor. He wanted to teach and to practise medicine, not to become involved in some nasty plot where women and friars were killed, and that forced him to exhume dead clerks.

He squinted up and watched the leaves blowing in the breeze, making changing pools of light over the tombstones in the graveyard. He could hear the distant racket from the market-place, while in the church some friars were chanting Terce.