A Bone of Contention (28 page)

The man came back to the chest and Bartholomew heard the clink of metal. It had been his tools he had put there. A few moments later, there came the sound of metallic rasping as something was filed into shape. The sconce was tried again, but to no avail. The man advanced on the chest once more, then sat on it heavily.

A loud snap exploded in Bartholomew's ears as the pottery handle broke under the man's weight. Bartholomew heard him curse and stand to inspect the chest. By now, Bartholomew almost wished he would be discovered, just to end the unbearable tension. The lid had been forced down over the broken handle, which was now wedged firmly between the lid and the side of the chest. With horror, Bartholomew saw the man's fingers curl under the lid as he attempted to prise it open.

Fortunately for Bartholomew, the attempt was a halfhearted one; with a grunt, the man gave up and sat down again, forcing the lid to jam further shut with his weight. The whistling was resumed, accompanied by filing in time with the rhythm of the tune. It seemed to go on for ever. Bartholomew eased himself into a slightly more comfortable position and waited.

Alter an age, a voice drifted down into the chamber.

The workman called back, and Bartholomew heard them share a joke about the eccentricity of a mistress who wanted new sconces fitted in rooms that nobody used.

At last, the man seemed happy with the sconce's fitting, and his whistle receded as he climbed the ladder. There was a deep thump as the upper trapdoor was dropped into place and then there was silence.

Taking a deep breath, Bartholomew pressed his back to the lid of the chest and pushed. Nothing happened.

He tried again but the lid was stuck fast. Bartholomew felt his heart begin to pound and his mouth go dry.

What could he do? He could hardly call for help! He took several deep breaths and concentrated on using even ounce of his strength in forcing the lid to open, lust when it seemed the task was impossible, and he was on the verge of giving up in despair, it flew up with a tremendous crash that reverberated all around the small chamber. Bartholomew winced at the noise and stood shakily, his legs wobbling and burning with cramp and tension. And came face to face with Cecily Lydgate.

As Cecily opened her mouth to scream, Bartholomew raised his hands in a desperate gesture to beg her silence, and saw that he still clutched the rusty knife that had been at the bottom of the chest. In the light from the lamp in the new sconce — that Cecily had evidently been in the process of lighting — he saw that it was not rusty at all, but thickly coated in dried blood.

Cecilv saw the knife, too, and the scream died before it reached her throat. She looked at Bartholomew with a rank fear that sickened him. Unsteadily, he climbed out of the chest and walked towards her. His blood began to circulate again, sending unpleasant buz/ing sensations down his arms and legs. He longed to be away from this dank cellar and its vile secrets.

'What will you do with me?' Cecily asked, her bulging eves flicking from Bartholomew's face to the knife in his hand.

'N'othing, if you do not shout,' Bartholomew replied, wondering how he could extricate himself from the Situation without harm to either of them.

They were both silent while Bartholomew moved his weight from foot to foot to try to speed up the process of easing his cramp.

'Master Bigod's retainers are looking for you outside,' she said finally.

Bartholomew grimaced. 'Because the villagers told them I had come?'

Cecily nodded, her eyes fixed on the knife. 'But they will not think to look here. My husband said you were clever.'

Not a great compliment from one whose intellect Bartholomew did not rate highly. He said nothing, but closed the chest so he could sit on it. Cecily stayed where she was.

'Why are you here, Mistress?' he asked, gesturing around the gloomy basement. 'It can scarcely compare with your handsome house in the town.'

Her pale grey eyes suddenly filled with tears that dropped down her wrinkled cheeks. 'I am safe here.'

'Safe from whom?' asked Bartholomew, although he had already guessed at the answer.

'Safe from him. From Thomas.'

'Do you think your husband would harm you?' Bartholomew asked. He was not surprised she was afraid:

Lydgate seemed to be a man who might resort to violence if it suited him.

'He killed Dominica!' she said in a sudden wail, muffling her face in one of her wide sleeves. Bartholomew cast a nervous glance up at the trapdoor. If she carried on so, someone would come to investigate. He thought about her accusation. Could it be true? Lydgate had no alibi for the night that Dominica had died. Indeed, he had worse than no alibi: he had given one that had proven to be false. Could Lydgate have killed his daughter? Was his appearance at her grave remorse, rather than grief? He o-lanced at the knife in his hand, some of the dried blood t-›.staining his palm, and wondered whether it had been used on Dominica. He almost cast it away from him in disgust, but if he were unarmed, Cecily would certainly raise the alarm.

Once the matter was out in the open, Cecily began to talk with evident relief. 'As soon as the riots started most of the students left, spoiling for mischief. I was grateful Dominica was safe, away from the town. Then Edred came back, breathless and limping and said he had seen her in the company of a man near the Market Square. Thomas was furious. He knew she had been seeing a student but she would not tell us which one. Thomas set out into the night, and I followed, hoping to find her first so that I could warn her.'

She paused, wiping first her eyes, then her nose, on the ample material of her sleeves. 'I went to all the places where I thought she might be — her friends, a cousin, the church. And then I saw Thomas, standing with his dagger dripping, and Dominica lying there with her clothes all drenched in blood. There was a man there, too, also dead — her lover, I presume. Thomas did not see me. I ran to Maud's, and Thomas Bigod ordered one of his servants to bring me here.'

'Is this where you kept Dominica before she died?' Bartholomew asked, gesturing to the underground chamber and trying to force his bewildered mind to make sense of the details.

'Yes, with the chest across the trapdoor. But she got out when a sen-ant brought her food. The servant claimed she stabbed him but I do not believe Dominica could do such a thing.'

Bartholomew and Cecilv simultaneously looked at the bloodstained knife. Cecily's hands flew to her throat. But the poor girl had been kept a prisoner in the painted dungeon, so who could blame her for using violent means to escape? Bartholomew thought Dominica must have disposed of the knife in the chest before she left.

Bartholomew did not doubt that Cecily believed the story she had related to him, but was what she saw really what had happened? He had seen no stab wounds on Dominica — assuming she was Joanna, of course — and so if Lydgate had killed her, it had not been with his blood-dripping knife. But two students had died from knife wounds that night, although, whatever Cecily might believe, neither of them could have been Dominica's lover because James Kenzie had been murdered the night before. And who had raped Dominica? Surely not Lydgate!

Bartholomew was certain that Lydgate might kill given the right circumstances — for a short while he had given serious consideration to the possibility that Lydgate might have killed Cecily, and was only claiming she had left him to explain her sudden absence. And he definitely had something to hide, or why would he be so hostile to Michael and his inquiries, and give Tulyet a false alibi?

Bartholomew recalled Tulyet saying that Cecily's room had appeared to have been ransacked. When he asked her about it, thinking she would confirm his suspicion that she had done it herself in her haste to pack up a few belongings, she denied that she had returned to the hostel after seeing the dead Dominica. In fact, she was horrified.

'Did you see it?' she cried. 'Did they take anything?'

'What do you mean? Who?'

'Those thieving students, of course! They all know I have one or two paltry jewels in my room, and they must have been looking for them! Did they get them?'

'I have no idea; I did not see your room. But your husband would have noticed whether anything was missing, surely?'

She calmed down somewhat. 'That is true. He would not let a stone lie unturned if he thought we had been relieved of any of our meagre inheritance.'

Her reactions seemed a little more fervent than a 'meagre inheritance' should warrant, and Bartholomew wondered what riches the Lydgates had secreted away in their house. If Dominica had silver rings with blue-green stones to give away to casual lovers, then their fortune was probably substantial. But there seemed no point in pursuing that line of thought any further, so he let it drop.

'Has Bigod lost something, or want something he does not have?' he asked instead, thinking about the attack on him in the High Street and hoping Cecily might be able to shed some light on it. He fiddled with the knife in his hands. 'Something important?'

'Such as what?' she asked, her voice unsteady as she fixed her eyes on the blood-stained weapon.

'Such as a ring?' Bartholomew suggested.

She looked confused. 'Dominica lost a ring. Well, it was my ring, really, but she took it without asking and then lost it.'

'With a blue-green stone?' Bartholomew asked.

Cecily's eyes narrowed and Bartholomew saw her fear mingle with suspicion. 'How do you know that? Did Thomas tell you?'

Bartholomew shook his head slowly, but decided there was nothing to be gained by telling this embittered woman that her daughter had given the ring to her lover, whose identity Cecily still did not know. He thought for a while, information and clues tumbling around in his mind in a hopeless muddle, while Cecily watched him like a cornered rat.

'When Brother Michael asked Edred where he had been the night James Kenzie — the Scot from David's Hostel — was murdered, you did not contradict him when you knew he was lying,' he said after a few moments. 'You knew Edred did not return to Godwinsson with Werbergh because Werbergh accompanied you. Why did you not expose him?'

Cecily wiped her nose again. 'When Huw, our steward, said you wanted to see us, Thomas told me to say nothing, even if I heard things I knew were not true. He said you and the Benedictine wanted to destroy our hostel and that unguarded words might help you to do it.'

Bartholomew supposed her answer made sense. 'Who knows you are here, besides Master Bigod?' he asked.

'No one,' said Cecily, surprised by the question. 'It would be too risky to trust anyone else.'

'Then who was Bigod speaking with just now? He mentioned that there would be a riot on Thursday.'

'There was no one here except Thomas Bigod and me,' she said, genuinely bewildered. 'You must have imagined it, or perhaps he was speaking to a servant. None of them know I am hiding here.'

Bartholomew knew he had imagined nothing of the sort, but then recalled that the voice he had half- recognised had joined the conversation after he had heard Cecily return to her bottle-dungeon. He looked down at the knife in his hand.

'So, what do we do now?' he wondered aloud. 'If I leave you here alive, you will raise the alarm and Bigod will come after me. If I bind and gag you. you will tell them I was here when they release you, and they will have little problem in hunting me down in the town.'

Her eyes flew open, wide with terror. 'No! I will help you escape! I will create a diversion that will allow you to slip away, and I will tell them nothing!'

Bartholomew raised his eyebrows at this unlikely proposition-'Did you love your daughter, Mistress?' he asked.

She blinked, confused by the sudden change in direction.

'More than she believed,' she answered simply.

'Would you like to see her killer brought to justice?'

Her eyes glittered. 'More than you can possibly imagine.'

'Then you must trust me, and I must trust you. I do not think your husband killed Dominica.' He quelled her stream of objections with a steady gaze. 'I do not doubt what you saw but I examined what I believe was Dominica's body and there was no knife wound on it. She was killed by a blow to the head. Whoever's blood was dripping from your husband's knife, it was not Dominica's. I suspect Dominica was already dead when Lydgate found her. Perhaps the blood came from the body of the man you said was next to her. Last night, I saw Lydgate at what I think is Dominica's grave 'She is buried then? Where?'

'St Botolph's Church. I will show you where when this is over. Officially, she is recorded as a woman called Joanna and no one wants to investigate why she died lest it spark another riot. But I will try to find her killer, Mistress.'

Her face was chalky white as she tried to come to terms with the new information. 'Why?' she asked eventually.

'Wrhat makes you want to avenge my Dominica?'

Bartholomew was unable to find an answer. He could hardly say her hair reminded him of Philippa's. In truth, he did not know why finding her killer had become important to him. Perhaps it was merely because he had been told not to. He shrugged.

Oddly, this unpleasant, vindictive woman seemed to accept that his motives were genuine without further explanation. She nodded, and came to perch next to him on the chest. Bartholomew let the knife clatter to the floor. An understanding had been reached. They sat silently for a while, until Cecily spoke.

'Since I have been here, I have asked myself again and again why Thomas should have killed Dominica. She was the only person he has ever truly loved — we both did. If it had not been for her, I suspect Thomas and I would have embarked upon separate lives many years ago. Although I saw him standing over her with the knife, a part of me has always been reluctant to accept that Thomas would destroy the most important thing in his life, and this is why I am prepared to accept your reasoning. Perhaps it was not Dominica's blood I saw on the weapon, but that of her lover laying next to her. I am sure Thomas would have no compunction in slaying him.'

'Perhaps,' said Bartholomew carefully.