An Unholy Alliance (19 page)

Michaelhouse, and was clear and fresh. The bread, however, was the same: grainy and made with inferior flour. There was some cheese too, but that had been left in the sun and was hard and dry, and sat in a rancid yellow puddle.

They discussed the advantages and failings of the Cambridge examination system for a while, and then Jonstan began to chat to Bartholomew about his duties as junior Proctor. Next to him, de Wetherset and Harling talked about a guild meeting that was to be held the following day. Bartholomew listened to them while appearing to be paying close attention to Jonstan’s some what tedious account of the Proctor’s statutory responsibilities. They were discussing a proposed meeting of the Guild of the Purification, and from what Hailing was telling de Wetherset, trouble was expected.

‘You recall what happened last time,’ he said. ‘The following day, St John Zachary’s Church was full of spent torches and someone had drawn a sign on the altar in what looked to be blood.’

Bartholomew listened intently, strands of the mystery twining together in his mind. The goat mask on the woman in Nicholas’s grave was clearly a demonic device, which might mean that the murders of the other women were also connected to witchcraft. The large man in the orchard who had bitten him had worn a red mask, obviously a satanic trapping.

Was this the clue he needed to tie it all together?

Perhaps he would see whether Stanmore had learned anything else. Then they needed to find Froissart’s family and Janetta of Lincoln. The reappearance of his bag told him that Janetta was most definitely in Cambridge, despite the claims of de Wetherset’s clerks that they could not trace her. Should he try to seek for her himself? But she would know Bartholomew

wanted to see her, and if she did not want to see him, nothing would be served by him risking his safety to go in search of her.

Of course, another thing he could do would be to talk to some of the friends of the women who had been killed. Some of them might have some indication of who the killer might be. Perhaps they were unwilling to talk to Tulyet, whose men were, after all, the ones who arrested them if they were caught touting for business on the town’s streets. He decided he would ask Sybilla.

She was the only prostitute he was aware he knew, and Sybilla had been the one to find Isobel.

And there was another thing: Frances de Belem had been killed in Michaelhouse grounds, but Physwick Hostel was a mere stone’s throw away. He looked

around at the men sitting with him at High Table de Wetherset, Harling, and Jonstan. All high-ranking and well-respected University men, but was one of them the lover of Frances de Belem? Bartholomew

reconsidered them: de Wetherset, stocky with pig-like features; Harling with his greased black hair and bad complexion; Jonstan with his odd tonsure and long teeth. Could she have fallen for any of these men?

He would not have thought so, but Edith, his sister, frequently told him he did not understand women, and misjudged their likes and dislikes.

He became aware that Jonstan had asked him a question and was awaiting an answer, beaming affably, his large blue eyes curious. Bartholomew was embarrassed and reluctant to reveal to the pleasant Jonstan that he had not been listening to a word he had said.

‘Oh, yes,’ he said, smiling and hoping it was the expected response.

Jonstan looked puzzled, but shrugged. ‘That is what my mother always told me,’ he said, ‘but I have never yet met a physician who agreed with her until now. I must encourage her to eat more of them.’

Oh lord! thought Bartholomew. I hope whatever it is does not make her sick!

After leaving Physwick Hostel, Bartholomew, on the Chancellor’s orders, went to the Castle to talk to Richard Tulyet about discovering another victim of the killer. De Wetherset could not conceal two bodies from the Sheriff, and reluctantly conceded that he was obliged to tell him that the killer had claimed another.

De Wetherset repeated his previous instruction that the -death of Froissart should not be made known to the Sheriff, lest it should somehow lead the killer to strike again.

Bartholomew was shown into the same office in the keep that Michael had visited the previous day. At first, Tulyet refused to speak to Bartholomew, shouting angrily that he had better things to do than gossip with idle scholars. Bartholomew asked the sergeant to inform him that another victim had been found, and was escorted begrudgingly into Tulyet’s office.

Bartholomew could tell in an instant that Michael had antagonised Tulyet, and he was irritated with his friend.

If the killer were to be tracked down, they would work a lot more efficiently by cooperating, than by bickering and playing power games.

He tried to begin the interview on a positive note by asking Tulyet about his wife and baby. When Tulyet’s baby was born, it was a strange yellow colour. The midwife sniffed imperiously and announced that it suffered from an excess of yellow bile and should be bled to relieve it of a dangerous imbalance of humours. Bleeding was usually the province of barber-surgeons, but, since the plague, there was only the unsavoury Robin of Grantchester, and Bartholomew had been called in his place.

Bartholomew had declined to bleed the baby, and had prescribed a wet nurse and a mild concoction of feverfew, comfrey, and camomile to relieve its fever and bring healing sleep. Employing a wet nurse allowed the mother to rest, and both child and mother began to recover rapidly, despite the midwife’s dire predictions. But when Bartholomew examined the mother afterwards, he found a wound from the birth that would mean she was unlikely to have another child. The last time he saw them, both had been happy and healthy, and Bartholomew saw with pleasure that neither required his sendees any longer.

Tulyet sat behind a large table, writing, and looked up with open hostility when Bartholomew asked after his child.

‘By what right do you ask about my family?’ Tulyet demanded belligerently.

Bartholomew was nonplussed. People usually expected him to ask them how they were, and he wondered if Tulyet had had an argument with his wife. He changed the subject and began to tell him about finding the dead woman that morning. Tulyet leapt to his feet in dismay.

‘Another woman, you say? Dead, like the others, with her throat cut?’

Bartholomew nodded and waited for the Sheriff to calm himself before continuing.

‘She must have been killed and placed in Nicholas’s coffin about a month ago. The Chancellor and his clerks saw the body in the chapel the night before his funeral.

Father Cuthbert says the coffin was sealed before the church was locked for the night, because Nicholas was to be buried the next morning. His body must have been removed and the woman’s put there instead.’

‘But why?’ said Tulyet, shaking his head slowly. ‘I do not understand why.’

‘Nor I,’ said Bartholomew. “I cannot believe that whoever put her there could have anticipated that Nicholas would be exhumed at a later stage. I think her body was intended to be found before the burial for some reason.’

‘The murderer intended her to be found in Nicholas’s coffin?’ Tulyet rubbed at the sparse beard on his chin.

‘That makes sense. His other victims have been left in places where they would be found - including your College, Doctor.’

‘There was something else,’ said Bartholomew. ‘There was a goat mask on the body.’

Tulyet gaped at him. ‘A goat mask? Are you jesting with me?’

Bartholomew shook his head. Tulyet stared out of the door across to where his men were practising sword drills half-heartedly in the fading daylight.

‘Well,’ he said, standing abruptly. ‘I can think of no reason for that. It is odd, I suppose. But stranger things have happened.’

Not much stranger, thought Bartholomew, surprised by Tulyet’s dismissal of the desecration. He found himself wondering whether Tulyet was really as initially shocked by the revelation as he appeared to be. He changed the subject yet again.

‘Have you noticed a common element to the deaths of these women?’ he asked. ‘Has a mark or a sign been left to identify their deaths as the work of one person?’

He wanted to know whether the first victim, Hilde, had had a circle on her foot.

‘Oh yes,’ said Tulyet, bringing cold eyes to bear on him.

‘Cut throats and no shoes. Signature enough, would you not say?’

‘Have you noticed anything else?’ persisted Bartholomew.

Tulyet

regarded him suspiciously. ‘What sort of thing

did you have in mind, Doctor?’ he asked softly, disconcerting Bartholomew with his icy stare.

‘Nothing specific,’ Bartholomew lied badly. He wished he had not attempted to question Tulyet. He should have left it to Michael, who was more skilled at investigative techniques than him. He recalled the rumours that Michael, de Belem and Stanmore had told him, that the Sheriff was not investigating the deaths as carefully as he might, and began to wonder whether there might be a more sinister reason for his inactivity.

Tulyet moved closer to him, fingering a small dagger he wore at his belt. ‘Are you hiding information from us, Doctor?’ he asked menacingly. ‘Have you learned something about this while you have been after the Chancellor’s business?’

Bartholomew inwardly cursed both de Wetherset for sending him on this errand when the clerks seemed to have been spreading news of their investigation all over the town, and his own inabilities to mislead people convincingly. Michael would not be experiencing difficulties now, and neither would de Wetherset. He shook his head and rose to leave. Tulyet forced him to sit back down again. Bartholomew glanced out of the open door. He could overpower Tulyet as easily as he could a child, for the man was slight and Bartholomew was far stronger, but he would never be able to escape across the bailey and through the gate-house without being stopped by Tulyet’s men. Tulyet had been watching him, and shouted for two guards to stand by the door.

‘You are right, Doctor,’ he said, drawing his dagger and playing with it. ‘If you were to run, you would never leave the Castle alive. I could arrest you now and question you until you tell me what I want to know, or you can volunteer the information. Which is it to be?’

Bartholomew thought quickly. He had come to Tulyet with the intention of telling him the little he knew about the murders of the women - the circle on their feet and its possible link to the guilds, the link between the goat in the coffin and witchcraft, and the fact that the murders of the women might somehow be related to Nicholas of York. But now he had doubts. How could he be sure that Tulyet was not a member of one of the guilds that dabbled in black magic? His reaction to the goat had been odd, to say the least. Perhaps he already knew who the killer was, but his hands were tied because of his membership of a guild. From what Bartholomew understood of guilds, Tulyet would be unlikely and unwilling to arrest a fellow member.

‘I know nothing more than what I have told you,

except,’ Bartholomew said, trying to quell his tumbling thoughts, ‘that I wondered whether the other dead women might have been marked in some way. Perhaps with something from a goat, like the mask on the woman we found this morning.’ He convinced himself he was telling Tulyet the truth. He knew very little, and was merely guessing at the tenuous links between the murders, witchcraft, the guilds, and the University.

‘What nonsense are you speaking?’ said Tulyet angrily.

‘You saw four of the victims yourself. Did you notice a goat attached to them?’

“I did not say it would be a whole goat,’ said

Bartholomew testily, ‘and you asked me what I knew, and I am telling you. I am only trying to ascertain whether there was something common to all victims that might give some clue as to the murderer’s identity.’

‘Well, your suggestion is ludicrous,’ said Tulyet. He replaced his dagger in its sheath and leaned close to Bartholomew. “I will let you go this time, Doctor.

But you will report to me anything that you discover about the deaths of the whores while you investigate the body in the chest. If I think for a moment that you are withholding information from me, I will issue a warrant for your immediate arrest, and no amount of protesting and whining from your University will be able to help you.’

Bartholomew rose, not particularly unsettled by

Tulvet’s threat. The Sheriff was underestimating the combined power of the University and the Church. His arrest would be considered a flouting of the University’s rights to be dealt with under Canon law, and the Sheriff would have no option but to release him once University and Church swung into operation. This protection was exactly the reason why most University scholars took minor orders.

Tulyet shadowed him out of the Castle, and Bartholomew was aware that he was watched until he was out of sight.

He deliberately dawdled, stopping on the Great Bridge to see how much more of its stone had been stolen since the last time he looked. If the Sheriff had time to waste on trying to make him feel uncomfortable, let him waste it, he thought, leaning his elbows on the handrail and peering down at the swirling water below.

Later, back at Michaelhouse, he told Michael what had happened.

‘I will tell de Wetherset and the Bishop,’ said the fat monk. ‘They will not countenance your arrest. Tulyet must either have a very inflated idea of his own powers, or what you said must have rattled him.’

‘But why?’ said Bartholomew. ‘Is he connected? Is that why he has made so little progress in catching the killer?’

Michael thought for a while. ‘It is possible,’ he said, ‘and I am even more prepared to think so because I do not like the man. I wonder why he reacted so oddly at the mention of the goat mask.’

‘Perhaps he is a member of one of the guilds that is connected to witchcraft,’ said Bartholomew. ‘I have been told that the Devil is supposed to appear in the form of a goat/

‘Yes. Cloven feet and horns,’ said Michael. ‘Like the painting of the Devil devouring souls on the wall of our church.’

Bartholomew thought about the painting. Depictions of hell and purgatory were common in all the town’s churches. No wonder people like Father Cuthbert