The Mark of a Murderer (23 page)

‘Pull him out, and I will try to narrow it down,’ offered Bartholomew. ‘I only glimpsed him for a moment, but he may yield
more information after a proper examination.’

‘I suppose I can arrange for the well to be drained,’ said Tulyet unenthusiastically. ‘Not tomorrow – I am too busy with preparations
for the Visitation – but perhaps the day after.’

‘I kill him,’ insisted Dickon, determined to have their attention and stamping his small foot to get it. ‘He kill one man,
so I kill him. Like my father.’

Bartholomew frowned, wondering whether from the vantage point of the wall the boy had witnessed other acts of violence. ‘What
exactly did you see, Dickon?’

‘I saw him kill,’ replied Dickon impatiently, as though Bartholomew had not been paying proper attention. ‘And I kill him.’

‘When?’ pressed Bartholomew, aware that Tulyet was more anxious than ever. He imagined it would not be pleasant to have an
infant son so eager to commit murder with his toys. ‘Today? When you saw those two men fighting with Michael and me?’

‘No,’ said Dickon, as if it were obvious. ‘When I played with my dog.’

‘Before yesterday, then,’ said Tulyet. ‘That was when his dog died.’

‘The dog
died
?’ repeated Bartholomew uneasily. ‘Did he shoot it?’

‘He says not,’ said Tulyet. He grasped another solution like a drowning man with a straw. ‘Eudo must have done it, intending
to aim at Dickon! Lord! What kind of man shoots at a child?’

‘One whom that child is attacking,’ suggested Bartholomew. He had seen for himself that Dickon was a fair shot, so it was
entirely possible he had honed his skills on people.

Tulyet knelt next to his son. ‘This is important, Dickon. What did you see?’

‘The big one has blue eyes and a little knife. He was splashing in the water. Pow!’

‘He means Eudo,’ surmised Michael. ‘Eudo is tall with blue eyes. And Eudo’s victim must be the body in the cistern, not Chesterfelde,
because Chesterfelde was never in the water. If he had been, he would have been left there, not fished out and dumped in the
hall.’

‘I kill
him
!’ insisted Dickon, stamping his foot again when the adults insisted on ignoring him.

‘Who?’ asked Tulyet, becoming exasperated. ‘The man with the blue eyes?’

Dickon nodded proudly, and Tulyet looked troubled.

‘He did shoot Eudo,’ acknowledged Bartholomew. ‘He wounded him, but not seriously, although it was enough to make him think
he was under attack by beadles.’

‘God save us,’ muttered Tulyet, rubbing his eyes. ‘I have told him never to shoot at people, but the moment he disobeys me,
he saves the life of two friends. And he knows it. He thinks he has done the right thing. What shall I do?’

Bartholomew had no answer, and was grateful the child was not his to mould into a sane and law-abiding adult. He considered
Paxtone’s contention that Tulyet was not Dickon’s father – that the Devil had had something to do with it – and began to think
his colleague might be right.

‘You should go home,’ said Abergavenny, indicating the slime adhering to the scholars’ clothes. ‘If you hang around smelling
like that, you will have half the dogs in the county slathering after you.’

‘That is good advice,’ said Duraunt. ‘It is chilly, so you can borrow my cloak and . . .’ He looked around for a suitable
candidate ‘…and Polmorva’s to keep you warm until you reach your rooms.’

‘Not mine,’ objected Polmorva. ‘I do not want it smelling like a latrine, thank you.’

‘You can buy another,’ said Spryngheuse. ‘Give it to them.’

Polmorva’s expression was disdainful. ‘If I lent it to Bartholomew, it would come back ruined. I remember how he treated his
clothes in Oxford, and he has not changed.’

Spryngheuse removed his own, with its hem of coarse grey fur. ‘Take mine, then. We are not all uncharitable, and I am happy
to be of service to the men who will catch Roger de Chesterfelde’s killer.’

Reluctantly, Michael stripped off his filthy habit, revealing baggy silken underclothes that would have had most of the women
in the town green with envy; he was a man who knew how to cater to his earthly comforts. They, too, were stained, but he declined
to remove them, despite Bartholomew’s assurances that no one was very interested in what lay beneath.

‘He will make an exception for the occasional whore, I imagine,’ Bartholomew heard Polmorva mutter to Eu. ‘I do not see a
fellow like
that
depriving himself when the mood so takes him.’

Bartholomew set a cracking pace through the darkening streets to Michaelhouse, and when he arrived, he led Michael straight
to the lavatorium, a sturdy structure behind the stables. It comprised woven twig walls, a thatched roof, and a stone floor
inlaid with drains. Thick beams supported suspended leather buckets that contained water, so that bathers could stand under
a trickle of water while they washed. An oversized hearth in the
middle of the shed not only supplied warmth on winter days, but allowed water to be heated, too.

Bartholomew decided vigorous scrubbing was the only way to deal with the unpleasant aroma that clung to him, and for some
time his Welsh book-bearer Cynric was occupied with stoking up the blaze and fetching pail after pail of water from the well.
The night porter, amused by the notion of two Fellows trapped in a well, repeated the tale to anyone who would listen, and
it was not long before Michael had an audience of scholars and servants, eager to hear the details of his latest daring encounter
with dangerous criminals. Even Agatha was present, despite the fact that the lavatorium was strictly out of bounds to the
College’s only female employee. She stood with her powerful hands on her hips, shaking her head in disapproval of the attack,
and even Master Langelee was not brave enough to point out that she should not be there.

‘Please, Brother,’ urged Suttone. He was fond of a good story, especially one that might be adapted to fit with his predictions
about the return of the plague – and what better example of human depravity than the attempted murder of two University officials?
‘Tell us again how you came to be hurled into the cistern, and how you spent hours whispering words of encouragement to Bartholomew,
to keep him swimming.’

‘Go away,’ ordered Michael imperiously. The massive silken under-tunic concealed most of his bulk, leaving only a pair of
sturdy white calves for the curious to view. ‘All of you. A man’s ablutions are his own affair, and not to be carried out
in front of a crowd.’

‘We are here to make sure you do them properly,’ said Agatha. ‘After all,
I
am the expert on washing things around here.’ She raised her chin and gazed around challengingly, and no one had the courage
to point out that her expertise was limited to their clothes, and that their
persons were entirely outside her jurisdiction. She took a step towards him.

‘Stay back, madam,’ shrieked Michael, clutching a piece of sacking to his chin like a reluctant maiden on her wedding night.

‘You have nothing I have not seen a thousand times before,’ said Agatha contemptuously. ‘Besides, I like men with a bit of
meat on them, not skin and bone like you.’

There were a number of awed glances, as scholars and servants alike contemplated the kind of suitor favoured by Agatha, if
Michael was ‘skin and bone’ by comparison. Bartholomew’s imagination reeled, and he found himself reviewing the medical problems
that would be associated with such elephantine proportions.

‘She must like them immobile,’ he heard Deynman whisper to his friend Falmeresham. ‘Brother Michael is so fat he can barely
walk, so anyone bigger must be unable to move at all.’

‘Probably so they cannot escape,’ Falmeresham whispered back. ‘Poor bastards!’

‘I do not care how you like them, madam,’ snapped Michael haughtily. He glared at Deynman. ‘And I am
not
fat; I just have big bones. But I am not going to wash with you watching me like cats with a mouse. Go away, or I shall fine
the lot of you for …for pestering.’

‘Pestering,’ mused Bartholomew. ‘That sounds a useful charge for a Senior Proctor’s armoury.’

Deeply disappointed that they were to be deprived of an evening’s entertainment, the onlookers drifted away, speculating about
what might have happened to culminate in Michael falling inside a cistern. Bartholomew heard Suttone suggesting to William
that Oxford men might have orchestrated the attack, and closed his eyes wearily, suspecting that William would repeat this
as fact, and it would not be long before gossips like Weasenham the
stationer began to spread the rumour. He hoped it would not result in Cambridge scholars accusing their Oxford rivals of trying
to spoil their attempts to impress the Archbishop, sure it would be the first step in a violent altercation if they did. Polmorva
would not pass up an opportunity to exchange inflammatory remarks, and then the situation would spiral out of control, just
as it had done on St Scholastica’s Day. Soon everyone had gone except Langelee and Cynric, who were stoking up the fire. And
Agatha.

‘You, too, madam,’ said Michael coolly. ‘I cannot do anything with a woman gazing at me.’

‘I am here to help,’ Agatha declared, waving a bag of lavender. ‘I do not want my scholars smelling like latrines – imagine
what
that
would do for my reputation as laundress.’

‘My cloak desperately needs your attention,’ intervened Langelee diplomatically, removing the garment and handing it to her.
It was a handsome thing, with rabbit fur around the neck. ‘Would you be so kind? The sooner you wash it, the sooner I can
have it back.’

‘It is grimy,’ agreed Agatha, inspecting it. She yawned, to make the point that Langelee was asking her to work rather late
that evening. Then she left, making for the area behind the kitchens where she usually pummelled the life out of the scholars’
clothes. Michael tiptoed to the door and peered around it, to make sure she had gone. Satisfied she was not lurking in the
shadows, longing for a glimpse of his flabby nakedness, he returned to his hot water.

‘Use this,’ said Langelee, proffering a block of hard fat that was strongly scented with mint and rosemary. ‘It can disguise
the most rank of odours. Chancellor Tynkell gave it to me.’

‘Then it does not work,’ said Bartholomew, declining to
take it. ‘Besides, I do not want to “disguise” the smell. I want it gone.’

Prudishly, Michael retreated behind a screen before divesting himself of his under-tunic, then began to smear the bar all
over himself, flapping and splashing like a beached whale, so Langelee was obliged to retreat or risk being soaked.

‘I had the pleasure of speaking Welsh today,’ said Cynric as he brought more water for the monk to fling around. It was the
first civil word he had spoken to Bartholomew for two weeks. He was hurt and indignant that his master should visit Matilde
at night, and risk moving around the dark streets without an escort. Cynric prided himself on his skill with stealth, and
resented the fact that he was ordered to remain at home when he felt his role was that of nocturnal protector.

‘With whom?’ asked Bartholomew, dunking his head and repelled by the slime that still rinsed from his hair. ‘Warden Powys
of King’s Hall?’

‘William of Abergavenny, a visiting merchant from Oxford,’ replied Cynric, hurling a bucket of water at Bartholomew before
he was ready and making him splutter. ‘We met when I was your book-bearer in Oxford some twenty years ago, although I did
not expect to see him here. We recognised each other in the King’s Head this afternoon.’

‘That villain,’ said Michael disapprovingly. ‘He is travelling with a spicer and a tanner, but
he
is the one I regard as the most dangerous.’

‘You are probably right,’ said Cynric. ‘He has a cunning mind, make no mistake about it. It comes from living among the English
for so long.’

‘Did he tell you anything about the case he is here to investigate?’ asked Bartholomew. He did not point out that Cynric also
spent a lot of time in England.

Cynric grinned. ‘He cannot keep secrets from an old countryman like me. He was glad to be speaking the tongue of princes,
you see, and barely stopped talking the whole time we were together. He is here to look into the murder of a merchant called
Gonerby, who died during the Oxford riots.’

‘That is no secret,’ said Michael. ‘He and his friends have been quite open about what they came here to do.’

‘The secret is this,’ said Cynric, enjoying the fact that he had information Michael did not. ‘This Gonerby died not from
a sword wound, as the tanner told you, but from a bite. They lied about what caused his death.’

‘A bite?’ asked Bartholomew. ‘From a dog?’

‘No,’ said Cynric. ‘Because then Abergavenny would have had an easy task in solving the murder: just find a man with a vicious
pet. But no dog killed Gonerby. The bite was inflicted by a devil in the guise of a man: Gonerby’s throat was torn out.’

Bartholomew gazed at his book-bearer in horror, while Langelee started to laugh at such a ludicrous notion. Michael paused
in his scrubbing to regard Cynric sceptically.

‘Someone
bit
Gonerby to death? But that is not possible! Is it, Matt?’

‘Apparently, it is,’ said Cynric stiffly, not liking the way his information was being received by the scholars, and replying
before Bartholomew could speak. ‘He was bitten in the throat, which severed some important vessel. He bled to death.’

‘Can this be true?’ asked Michael, turning to Bartholomew. ‘Can a human bite kill like that?’

‘Possibly,’ replied Bartholomew, his thoughts tumbling in chaos. Michael regarded him oddly before turning his attention back
to the book-bearer.

‘How does Abergavenny know this? Were there tooth marks on Gonerby’s neck? Did someone actually see what happened?’

‘Both, apparently,’ said Cynric. He looked pleased, gratified that Michael was sufficiently intrigued to ask questions. ‘Abergavenny
saw the rips himself, and said they matched those of a person’s teeth in all respects. He said the wound was a terrible thing
to behold.’