A Masterly Murder (3 page)

‘I imagine the quality of the scenery was not uppermost in his mind,’ said Bartholomew. ‘He probably saw this only as somewhere
he would not be disturbed.’

Michael nodded. ‘Few people wander here after dark. Well, it is obvious what happened: Justus came here alone last night intending
to drink himself into oblivion, became overly despondent – as he often did when he was in his cups – and decided to do away
with himself.’

Bartholomew could see no reason to disagree with him. ‘The cord was fairly taut around his neck, but not so tight as to leave
a mark. He must have knotted it there, and then slowly slipped into unconsciousness from lack of air. There is no damage to
his hands, so he did not fight against it.’

‘And he is still in possession of his clothes and dagger, which suggests to me that he lay undisturbed until Cynric found
him this morning,’ concluded Michael. ‘Poor man.’

Cynric arrived with two porters and a stretcher, and Bartholomew and Michael began to walk back to Michaelhouse while the
servants followed with the body. Bartholomew noticed that the corpse had been
covered as an automatic mark of respect, although a filthy horse-blanket hastily snatched from the stable had been used.
There would be little mourning for the book-bearer, and Bartholomew wondered whether any of his colleagues would even bother
to attend his burial.

‘Come on, Matt,’ said Michael, taking his arm, and hauling him along with surprising speed for a man who looked so flabby.
‘We can still make the midday meal if we are quick! I was only able to grab a lump of bread before you sent for me.’

‘A missed meal will do you no harm,’ said Bartholomew, eyeing the monk’s substantial girth critically. ‘It might even prove
beneficial. I do not think it can be healthy to be so fat.’

‘What nonsense you speak sometimes,’ said Michael scathingly. ‘Being a Master of Theology, the Senior Proctor, an adviser to the Bishop of Ely …’

‘Spy for the Bishop of Ely,’ corrected Bartholomew.

‘…
and
a Fellow of Michaelhouse is a tiring business, and I need all the sustenance I can lay my hands on. Anyway, how did you come
by this ridiculous notion that well-built men are unhealthy? Even a half-wit can see that the people who are ill most frequently
are those who do not have enough to eat. Nearly all your patients are skinny people with appetites like sparrows.’

‘But most of my patients are poor. The poor tend to be thinner than the rich, because they cannot afford the luxury of gluttony.’

‘Well, there you are then,’ said Michael triumphantly. ‘Everyone knows the poor are subject to more diseases than the rich,
and you have just acknowledged that poor people are thin.
Ergo
, being thin makes you susceptible to a greater number of illnesses. You are a strange sort of physician, Matt, always flying
in the face of logic to form
your own peculiar theories. No wonder your medical colleagues are convinced you are a heretic.’

‘I do not have many medical colleagues left,’ said Bartholomew dismally. ‘Those who survived the plague have either died or
moved on to more lucrative positions. Only Master Lynton from Peterhouse and Robin of Grantchester remain.’

‘You should not claim Robin of Grantchester as a colleague,’ advised Michael. ‘First, he is a surgeon, not a physician. And
second, he kills more people than he saves. I hear he is going to amputate Master Saddler’s leg today, even though Saddler
will gain more from a priest than a surgeon, from what I am told.’

‘Robin plans to operate?’ said Bartholomew, surprised. ‘Saddler will not survive if he does. Amputation might have saved him
two weeks ago, but not now. Robin is a fool to try.’

‘He is a fool with three shillings in his pocket,’ said Michael. ‘He always collects payment in advance – if he did the honourable
thing and only charged patients who lived, he would starve. And speaking of starving, there is the bell for the midday meal.’
He beamed happily, Justus and the unsavoury image of Cambridge’s surgeon firmly pushed from his mind as he anticipated happier
things. ‘We are just in time.’

Leaving the monk to hurry to his meal, Bartholomew went to wash in the basin of water that always stood on the floor of his
room. It was a peculiarity of his that he always rinsed his hands after touching corpses, much to the disdainful amusement
of his less fastidious colleagues. As he scrubbed them dry with a piece of sacking, he gazed out of his window.

In the dull, metallic light of November, the College looked stark and comfortless. With the exception of the
hall and conclave, none of the windows had glass, and the scholars were faced with two choices: to close the shutters and
have a room that was cold and dark, or leave them open for one that was very cold but light enough to see in. To compound
the problem, Michaelhouse only provided fuel for fires in the communal rooms, not for individual chambers. Some scholars could
afford to buy their own wood, but Bartholomew, with nothing but his Fellow’s salary of four marks a year, could not. His training
as a physician might have made him rich, but he found it more satisfying to treat the diseases and ailments of the poor, than
to dispense purges and astrological advice to the wealthy. The fees paid by the few who could recompense him for his services
only just covered the expenses incurred in providing for his less affluent clients.

He finished drying his hands and walked outside to the courtyard. The College was looking decidedly shabbier than it had done
a year before, and parts were in desperate need of maintenance. Michaelhouse’s founder had originally intended the yard to
be cobbled, but somehow this had never transpired, and the rectangular patch of land enclosed by the hall, conclave and kitchens
at one end, the porters’ lodge and a sturdy wall at the other, and flanked by two opposing ranges of rooms where the scholars
lived, was little more than a square of churned-up mud, the treacherous slickness of which was legendary throughout the town.

The hall itself was a handsome building, and had once been the home of a wealthy merchant called Roger Buttetourte. Buttetourte
had used only the best materials, and his mansion had been built to last. The same was not true of the accommodation ranges,
however. Michael’s room, which was above Bartholomew’s, had such a large hole in the roof that his students complained the
moon shone through it and kept them awake. Bartholomew’s
own chamber had walls that ran dark with mildew, while the plaster fell away in rotten clumps, exposing the damp stones underneath.

Bartholomew picked his way across the quagmire of the yard, and climbed the steep spiral staircase that led to the hall. It
had been a long time since breakfast, and, like Michael, the other scholars were hungry, so Bartholomew found he was the last
to arrive. The high table, where the Fellows sat, was on a dais at the south end of the hall, while at right angles to it
were two long trestle tables for the students and commoners. Every scholar was already at his place, standing behind the benches
with his hands clasped in front of him as he waited for Master Kenyngham to say grace.

Beaming benignly, the Master waited until the physician reached his seat, while Michael sighed impatiently, his eyes fixed
on the freshly baked bread. Bartholomew’s students nudged each other and grinned; their teacher’s absent-mindedness when he
was engaged in medical matters often meant he was late for meals and it had become something of a joke with them.

As Bartholomew came to stand between Michael and Father William, he saw that two seats, which had been empty since a pair
of Fellows had left to take up posts in Westminster Abbey, were occupied. He realised that the newcomers must be their successors,
and studied them with interest.

One was the Dominican friar whom Master Kenyngham had mentioned the previous evening. He had a pale face and hair that stood
up in a peculiar comb around the edge of his tonsure, and there was a fanatical gleam in his eyes. Bartholomew felt his heart
sink. Here was no compliant cleric who would turn a deaf ear to the insults hurled at him and his Order by the belligerent
Franciscan Father William, and the physician sensed that
it would not be long before the two men found something to argue about.

The other newcomer wore the white robes of a Carmelite, and Bartholomew’s spirits sank even further. Even if the Dominican
and the Franciscan managed a truce, one of them would be bound to initiate some kind of dispute with the Carmelite. There
were several Orders of mendicant friars in Cambridge, each of which loathed the others, and Michaelhouse had now managed to
appoint representatives from three of them. He supposed he should be grateful that Kenyngham, who was a Gilbertine, and Michael,
who was a Benedictine monk, usually remained aloof from the unseemly rows in which the others engaged with such fervour.

But the Carmelite, unlike the Dominican, did not look like the kind of man who enjoyed dissent. He was short and round, with
a cheery red face that was creased with laughter lines. He smiled at Bartholomew when he saw he was being assessed, and Bartholomew
smiled back, liking the merry twinkle in the man’s eyes and the fact that he was not too overawed by Michaelhouse’s formality
to acknowledge a new colleague with a gesture of friendliness.

While Kenyngham flicked lovingly through his psalter to select the reading of the day, Bartholomew leaned around Father William
and tapped the lawyer, John Runham, on the arm.

‘I have some bad news,’ he whispered. ‘Your book-bearer is dead.’

‘Dead?’ asked Runham, startled. ‘I do not think so! Justus served my dinner last night.’

‘He died after that. Cynric found his body near Dame Nichol’s Hythe this morning.’

‘Damn!’ muttered Runham, gazing at him irritably. ‘What did he do? Jump in the river?’

‘He tied a wineskin over his head,’ said Bartholomew, feeling sorry for Justus in having a master who cared so little for
him. Bartholomew would not have taken news of Cynric’s demise with such casual indifference. ‘He suffocated.’

Runham gave a mirthless smile. ‘That sounds like Justus. If he had to take his own life, wine would have been involved somehow.
Curse the man! Now I will have to find a replacement and I am busy this week. What a wretched inconvenience!’

‘Especially for Justus,’ retorted Bartholomew before he could stop himself. How Runham received the news of his book-bearer’s
death was none of his affair, and it was not for him to be judging his colleagues’ relationships with their servants.

‘Especially for me!’ hissed Runham vehemently. ‘You know how difficult it is to find reliable staff these days – we have the
Death to thank for that, carrying off so many peasants. Justus could not have chosen a worse time to abandon me. I am willing
to wager he did it deliberately.’

Shaking his head crossly, he turned to face the front, leaving the physician repelled by such brazen self-interest. He hoped
Runham would remember that it was his responsibility to bury his dead servant, and that he would not leave the corpse to fester
in the church for days until he decided he had sufficient time to undertake the necessary arrangements.

‘Are we ready?’ asked Kenyngham, cocking his head questioningly at Bartholomew, who realised that he had not assumed the attitude
of prayerful contemplation usually required when the Master intoned the reading of the day. He bowed his head, and Kenyngham
began to read, pausing at random moments to reflect on the sacred words in a way that had Michael sighing in hungry
impatience. When Kenyngham had finally finished – or had paused sufficiently long to make his listeners suppose he had –
there was a scraping of chairs and benches on the rush-strewn floor as the Fellows and students took their seats.

Kenyngham, however, remained standing, his psalter still open in his hands. For several confusing moments, no one spoke or
moved. The servants were loath to begin bringing the food to the tables if their saintly Master were still in the throes of
his prayers, while the scholars, who knew Kenyngham might continue to read until he had completed the entire book unless stopped,
shot each other uneasy glances. Michael was the only one hungry enough – or irreligious enough – to remind the Master that
he was not alone in an ecstasy of religious contemplation, but in his hall with the entire College waiting for its dinner.

‘The food is getting cold,’ he stated baldly.

Startled, Kenyngham glanced up from his psalter and regarded Michael in surprise, clearly having forgotten entirely where
he was. He gazed around the hall at the watching scholars.

‘Ah, yes,’ he said, recollecting himself. ‘I have an announcement to make.’

Another long pause ensued as his eyes slid downward to the hallowed words of the psalter, which were apparently more demanding
of his immediate attention than his six Fellows, eight commoners and forty or so students.

Blind Father Paul smiled indulgently. ‘That man is a saint,’ he whispered in admiration. ‘His whole existence is taken up
with spiritual matters.’

‘He is short of a few wits,’ murmured Runham unpleasantly. ‘I swear he barely knows where he is most of the time – unless
it is in a church. It is not good for the Master
of a College to be so …’ He hesitated, deliberating what word would best describe the eccentric Master of Michaelhouse.

‘Unworldly,’ suggested Bartholomew.

‘Holy,’ countered Paul.

‘Odd,’ stated the loutish Ralph de Langelee flatly, a man who
had decided to become a scholar because his duties as spymaster for the Archbishop of York were not sufficiently exciting.
He entertained high hopes that the scheming and intrigues in the University might furnish him with the adventure and exhilaration
he craved. For the most part, he had not been disappointed.

‘Unsuitable,’ finished Runham firmly.

‘What did you want to tell us, Master Kenyngham?’ prompted Michael, eyeing the food
on the platters near the screen at the far end of the hall.

Kenyngham cleared his throat, then beamed paternally at the assembled scholars. Before his mind could wander again, William
almost snatched the psalter from him. Closing it, he laid it on the table. Kenyngham patted him on the head, as an adult might
do to a child, much to the friar’s consternation and the students’ amusement.