A Trail of Ink (5 page)

Arthur also heard the argument and peered at me under a furrowed brow. I left Master John’s door and walked to the nearest of the three windows. Arthur followed.

From beside the window I could hear the dispute plainly. I had the gist of the quarrel in less time than it takes to pare a fingernail. The inhabitants of the Hall were divided into two opposing camps, each accusing the other of complicity in the matter of their warden’s stolen books. Occasionally I thought I heard Master John over the din, trying to calm the debate. A man might as well try to arrest the wind as silence an Oxford scholar who wishes to make known his opinion.

In addition to the three windows, the east wall of the hall included a door. It was behind me as I stood at the window, so I heard, rather than saw, the door open abruptly and immediately slam shut. Arthur and I turned and watched Master John stalk across the yard toward his chamber. He had not seen us against the wall, for the open door blocked his view, although the afternoon sun bathed the enclosure in a golden glow.

Wyclif did not hear us follow; he was muttering to himself as he strode. So he pushed through his chamber door and slammed it in our faces unknowingly. Arthur stared goggle-eyed, first at me, then at the door. I was accustomed to scholarly disputes. Indeed, I had shouted my way through several in my youth. But such discord was new to Arthur. He thought he was to spend some days in the peaceful company of scholars and masters. But there are few men so disputatious as scholars. Arthur was learning this and the knowledge startled him. I think had I released him at that moment he would have sought out the Stag and Hounds, mounted the old palfrey, and scurried off for Bampton.

I rapped on Master John’s chamber door and a heartbeat later it was flung open.

“What?!” Wyclif roared, then clamped his lips shut when he saw it was me. “I beg pardon, Master Hugh. I thought… never mind what I thought. Come in.”

Master John held open the door and stood to one side as a welcome. Arthur, his cap in his hands, followed me into the gloomy chamber. The scholar had had no time, and perhaps no desire, to light a cresset to bolster the thin light of a late October afternoon which managed to penetrate the chamber through a single narrow window.

There were but two benches in the room. Arthur noted this and stood aside, in a shadowy corner, as Wyclif motioned to a bench and sat silently upon the other. Neither of us spoke for a moment.

“You forgot some business in Oxford?” Master John finally asked.

“No. I am come to offer my service, as you desired, in the matter of your stolen books.”

“Ah,” Wyclif smiled. “Some good tidings for a change.”

“You have made no progress in discovering the books, or who it was who took them?”

“None. And the issue divides the Hall… more so than it already was.”

“I… we, uh, overheard some debate just now.”

“Hah. Debate. Indeed, Master Hugh, you are a tactful man. The monks and seculars are at each other’s throats, each thinking the other’s responsible.”

“And you,” I asked, “what think you?”

Wyclif was silent, his lips pursed and brow furrowed. The only sound was Arthur shifting his weight from one foot to another.

“Thinking on my loss leaves an ache, so I try not to think on it at all.”

“You are successful?”

“Nay,” Wyclif grimaced. “‘Tis sure that the more a man tries not to consider a thing, the more he will so do.”

“You think much on the loss, then?”

“Aye, but to no purpose.”

The ringing of a small bell interrupted our conversation. “Supper,” Master John muttered. “I care little for food this day, but you and your man are hungry, surely. Come.”

Wyclif led the way from his chamber across the yard to the hall. The scholars who preceded us there were in muttered conversation but fell silent when they saw Master John’s scowl.

Supper was a pottage of peas, leeks, and white beans, with a maslin loaf, wheat and rye. Saturday is a fast day. Nevertheless I detected a few bits of bacon flavoring the pottage. A man watching might have thought this a monastic house where the residents observed silence while in the refectory. There was no resumption of the afternoon argument. The scholars ate warily, one eye on their fellows, the other on Master John.

Arthur and I ate heartily. We’d enjoyed no dinner. We might have dined at the Stag and Hounds when we left the horses, and, indeed, Arthur had peered beseechingly at me as we left the place. But I have dined many times at the Stag and Hounds. Too many times.

It was dark when we left the hall. A sliver of moon gave enough light that I did not stumble on the cobbles of the yard. Arthur did. The ale served with supper was fresh. Arthur drank copiously.

Master John led us to his chamber, and while he lighted a cresset I resumed my bench and Arthur took his place in the corner. But he did not remain standing. His back slid down the wall until he was seated in a crouch on the flags. He released a contented belch as the descent concluded.

“Lord Gilbert has released you to do service for me?” Wyclif inquired.

Aye.

“I am in his debt.”

“Not yet. I have found no books nor a malefactor.”

“Ali, but you will. I have faith.”

Arthur greeted Master John’s judgment with a snore. The scholar smiled and peered into the corner where Arthur sat, elbows on knees and head on arms.

“You will be weary from your journey this day. I will have straw brought to the guest’s cell for your man and you may seek your rest. Time enough on the morrow to begin your search.”

Scholars at Canterbury Hall take no morning meal. So when Arthur and I left our cell and made our way to Master John’s chamber, my stomach growled as loudly as Arthur’s snores. Arthur seemed not to notice.

Master John was awaiting my arrival. His door squealed open on rusty hinges a heartbeat after I rapped my knuckles upon it. Why, I wondered, must those hinges protest so? Canterbury Hall and its buildings were but four years old. A scholar’s life is consumed with the ethereal, I think, while the realities are as lost to him as feathers upon the breeze. Greasing hinges is, to Master Wyclif, a gossamer reality.

“Master Hugh, you slept well?”

“Aye,” I lied.

“I did also. For the first time in many days. You will soon find my books.”

I was not so confident as Master John, but saw no purpose in disillusioning the hopeful scholar.

“You did not rise for Matins,” Wyclif observed. “And I was loath to wake you. You must have rest, and your wits about you, if you are to find my books.”

“If I am to do so I must first know all that happened the day they went missing. Especially I would know of any event out of the ordinary.”

Master John scratched the back of his head, thought for a moment, then replied, “‘Twas a normal day. A lecture in the morning. After dinner a disputation… which was a little less disputatious, perhaps, than ordinary.”

“How so?”

“Canterbury Hall is a new foundation, created by the Archbishop four years past. ‘Twas begun with good intentions,” Wyclif sighed, “but as with many noble designs, things have gone much awry.

“The Archbishop’s plan was to bridge the gap at Oxford between monks and secular fellows. So Canterbury Hall is to have four monks, from Canterbury, and eight secular scholars. There were four wardens before me, in but four years. The first was a monk of Canterbury. The secular scholars drove him out. The next were seculars, and the monks would not have them.”

“There is much discord in the house?”

“Ha,” Wyclif sniffed. “I have tried to calm my charges, but my soft answers have not turned away wrath. They argued before I came, and they will continue no matter what I do. The monks are particularly contentious. They wished for another of their house to be appointed warden. When this was not so they became angry. And as the secular fellows outnumber them two to one, they feel any criticism as a disparagement which must be promptly answered, else their antagonists will overwhelm them.”

“And now each faction accuses the other of stealing your books?”

“Aye. You overheard yesterday’s dispute?”

“We did.”

“As I am no monk, the secular fellows are convinced tis the monks who have done this… to force me out.”

“And you, what do you think?”

“Monks or seculars,” Wyclif mused, “it must be one or the other guilty.”

“Not some thief from outside the Hall?”

“The porter saw no stranger about the Hall.”

“It was while you were at supper they were taken?”

Aye.

“So had some miscreant been about, it might have been too dark for the porter to see him?”

“Aye,” Wyclif agreed.

“Them scholars’ gowns is black,” Arthur commented from his corner. “Make ‘em hard to see of a night… did a man not want to be seen.”

“While you supped, did any leave the table, seculars or monks?”

“Nay,” Wyclif spoke firmly. “‘Tis a puzzle. No stranger sought entrance from the porter, nor was any such seen about. So the deed must have been done by one within the Hall. But we were all at supper.”

“Your logic, Master John, is impeccable, as always. But it must be flawed. Even though all of your scholars, secular and monks, were at table, it seems sure that one of them, at least, gave guidance in this matter.”

“To whom?”

“Ah, you have me there. This is what I must search out. The porter says none were about, but as all the residents of the Hall were at their meal, there was surely one, or more, to do the theft.”

Master John went to scratching the back of his head again. “Aye, it must be as you say. But why, if the thief was a stranger to the Hall, must it be a scholar gave direction?”

“How would an alien know which chamber was yours, or know the value of your books… or know that you kept them in your chamber rather than in the library?”

“An’ ‘twould take more’n one, I’m thinkin’,” Arthur commented. “I seen scholars carryin’ books on the street. One thief didn’t get many books away by hisself. How many was took?”

“Twenty-two,” I replied.

“One thief didn’t get twenty-two books over the wall,” Arthur declared.

Over the wall! A man wearing a scholar’s black gown could go over the wall near where Master John’s chamber butted against it. Such a man might pass about the yard in little danger of being seen. The porter would be looking out from the gatehouse toward St John’s Street. The scholars would be at their meal.

“Come,” I urged, and led the way from Master John’s chamber into the yard. The scholar and Arthur followed obediently into the morning sunlight, questioning expressions upon their faces.

There were but three short lengths of the Canterbury Hall wall which were exposed to the yard. Most of the wall formed the exterior of the hall, the kitchen, the scholars’ cells, and the chapel. But on either side of the entrance gate the interior of the wall was exposed, and on the south extension there was a short length of open wall, between Master Wyclif’s chamber and the hall. I turned my steps in that direction.

The cobbled yard extended here to the wall. I studied the cobbles, and looked to the top of the wall. The stones were silent.

The wall about Canterbury Hall is not imposing. I stood on my toes, reached as high as I could, and came within a hand’s breadth of the top of the enclosure. A man would need but a short ladder to climb over the wall, but the cobbles at my feet would leave no mark if a ladder had once rested there. Outside the wall, however, might be another matter.

Master John and Arthur studied me while I studied the wall and the cobbles at its base. While I examined the wall a bell rang from the nearby priory Church of St Frideswide. I recognized the bells. I had heard them ring out to summon students to battle during the St Scholastica Day riots, when I was new to Oxford as a student at Balliol College.

“Time for mass,” Wyclif explained. Arthur and I followed him to the chapel as scholars left their cells and moved silently across the yard to join our small procession.

I could not keep my thoughts on worship. My mind reviewed what I had learned of Canterbury Hall, which was little enough. I pondered monks and antagonistic secular scholars, the weight of twenty-two books, and ladders.