A Killer in Winter (14 page)

‘I tried to save you,’ said Abigny. ‘I suggested you would have no room because of various relatives who were staying. It
would have been easy to agree, and to direct us to the Brazen George.’

Edith smiled. ‘It was good of you to try to get us off the hook. But manners dictate that Walter, Philippa and you should
stay with us. However, I wish I had known then that Oswald and Walter would argue constantly. Walter is a difficult man.’

‘We will be on our way tomorrow,’ said Abigny comfortingly. ‘And I will make sure it is at first light – before Walter is
awake enough for squabbling.’

‘Thank you,’ said Edith sincerely. She looked up, as more people began to force their way into the already crowded room.

‘Jugglers,’ said Abigny in surprise, as he saw the newcomers. He began to back away. ‘You must excuse me. I dislike this kind
of thing.’ He left the chamber with an abruptness that verged on the rude.

Edith watched him go with raised eyebrows. ‘How odd! I thought he enjoyed professional entertainers. He was always a young
man ready for singing and dancing.’

‘He is no longer a young man,’ Bartholomew pointed out, leaning against the wall as he watched the entertainers Langelee had
hired elbow their way through the throng. Agatha apparently needed more time for the boar to cook, and was searching for ways
to keep minds off growling stomachs. The jugglers’ progress towards the Master was unmannerly, and Turke’s face turned an
angry red when one jostled him hard enough to make him spill his wine. The juggler regarded Turke challengingly, as though
daring him to make a scene, then sneered disdainfully when the fishmonger looked away and began mopping at the stain on his
gipon.

Langelee nodded to them to begin their performance, and
a hush fell over the room as they lined up. They were a shabby pack of individuals, whose costumes had seen better days and
whose faces were heavily painted. There were two men and two women, all wearing red tunics, grubby yellow leggings and scarlet
and gold chequered hats. Clippesby’s assessment had been accurate: the two men and one woman could juggle after a fashion,
but the performance of the other female, who stood apart and played the whistle with one hand and a drum with the other, was
jerky and irregular, as though she could concentrate on a rhythm or on producing the correct notes, but not on both at the
same time.

Her eccentric tunes did nothing to help her colleagues. They missed their cues, and the floor was soon littered with fallen
missiles. Abandoning juggling, they turned to tumbling, which consisted of cartwheels that threatened to do serious injury
to their spectators, and the kind of forward rolls that even Michael could have managed. Everyone was relieved when Agatha
arrived, flour dusting her powerful forearms and boar fat splattered across her apron.

‘Tell the Master the meat is done, and that folk should come and get it while it is hot,’ she whispered to Bartholomew.

‘Good,’ said Bartholomew. ‘It is not safe here with all these flailing legs and arms. I do not want to be setting broken limbs
for the rest of the day.’

‘I do not like them,’ said Agatha, gazing belligerently at the hapless jugglers. ‘I have never seen such a paltry display
of tumbling.’

‘They do leave a bit to be desired,’ agreed Edith. ‘I am surprised Master Langelee hired them. They are called the Chepe Waits,
and were the very last troupe to be offered employment in the town this year. Michaelhouse has done a great kindness by taking
them in; the weather is so foul at the moment that anyone without a roof will surely perish before dawn.’

‘Let us hope we have a roof to wake up to,’ said Agatha grimly. ‘And that this uncivilised brood has not stolen it
from over our heads. I told the Master that I did not want them in my College, but he said it was too late, because he has
already paid them. I suppose he chose them because they are inexpensive.’

‘Perhaps that is why they are called the Chepe Waits,’ suggested Bartholomew, unable to resist the obvious.

Agatha gazed at him blankly for a moment before understanding dawned and she released a raucous screech of laughter that silenced
conversation in the rest of the room as though a bucket of water had been dashed over its occupants. If Agatha was surprised
to find herself the sudden centre of attention, she did not show it. She glanced around imperiously.

‘Boar’s done,’ she announced. ‘And the burnt bits have been scraped off the pies.’

‘You heard the lady,’ said Langelee, beaming around at his guests. ‘Dinner is served.’

Bartholomew was not at all amused to discover that his colleagues had contrived to seat Philippa next to him during the feast,
and soon became exasperated by their tactless nods, winks and jabs to the ribs. Having Giles Abigny on the other side was
not much of a consolation, either, since his old friend made little attempt to converse and seemed intent on imbibing as much
of Michaelhouse’s wine as Cynric would pour him. Bartholomew remembered Abigny as an amiable and amusing drunk, who had been
the instigator of many a wild celebration of nothing. But the years had turned him morose, and he sank even lower into the
pit of self-pity when he was inebriated. Bartholomew braced himself for a trying afternoon.

The boar made its appearance, complete with rosemary twined about its feet and an apple in its mouth. It was ‘sung in’ by
a reduced version of Michael’s choir, which could nevertheless muster sufficient volume to drown all but the most boisterous
conversation. Agatha had prepared other seasonal foods, too – mutton, veal, cheese, apples and souse.
Bartholomew disliked the pickled pig feet and ears that comprised ‘souse’, and was surprised when Philippa offered to eat
his share.

She ate his share of Christmas frumenty – hulled wheat with spices that had been boiled in milk – and cakes, too, and devoured
even more sugar comfits than Michael. Bartholomew wondered whether her healthy appetite derived from unhappiness, and tried
to imagine what life would be like with the stout, aggressive fishmonger who sat on her other side. He found he could not,
and was mystified – and a little hurt – that Philippa should have abandoned him in favour of such an unattractive specimen.
He supposed the lure of wealth held more appeal than he had appreciated.

Once memories of the slender lady he had known were expunged from his mind, Bartholomew began to see some of the old Philippa
in the woman who sat gorging herself at his side. Her voice had not changed and her facial expressions were familiar, and
he found himself recalling things about her that he had forgotten. He remembered walking in the water meadows by the river,
and eating hot chestnuts on another Christmas Day, laughing when they scalded their fingers and burned their tongues.

‘You have changed,’ he said. ‘I barely recognised you.’ He stopped short of total honesty by confessing that he had not recognised
her at all.

‘I was slimmer,’ she said, leaning back to allow Cynric to fill a bowl with rich beef stew. ‘But I was unhappy then, locked
away in that convent.’

‘Were you?’ asked Bartholomew, surprised. He had always believed their courtship had been a whirlwind of delight for both
of them.

‘Not with you,’ she added hastily, sensing that she might have offended him. ‘But under the eagle eyes of that abbess. Then
there was the Death hanging over us. We knew it was coming, but all we could do was wait to see who would live and who would
die. It was not pleasant.’

‘I suppose not,’ said Bartholomew, thinking his first years
at Michaelhouse – until the plague arrived and Philippa left – had been among the happiest of his life. He had just completed
his medical training, and was finally free to put all he had learned into practice. It had been an exhilarating and fascinating
time, and his dalliance with Philippa had only added to the pleasure.

‘I hope you are not angry with me,’ she said, digging into the stew with a large horn spoon that she produced from the pouch
she carried at her side. ‘I know it must have been a shock, to learn I had decided to bestow my affections on another man.’

‘It was,’ said Bartholomew vaguely, thinking it would be rude to say otherwise. In truth, he barely recalled what he had felt
when her terse missive informing him of her marriage had arrived. By that time, she had been gone for more than a year, and
he had been busy with his teaching and patients. He remembered thinking he had not missed her as much as he should have done,
and that he should have visited her in London. He had been upset when the letter came, but could not recollect whether it
was because he had lost a woman he had loved or because it was rather insulting to be treated in so cavalier a manner. He
decided to change the subject.

‘Do you have children?’

‘Walter has three sons from a previous marriage – his first wife, Isabella, died during the Death. Our physician has been
calculating horoscopes to tell us when to try for babies, but I think his arithmetic is lacking.’ She gave him a sidelong
glance. ‘I do not suppose …?’

‘Do you live near the fish markets?’ asked Bartholomew, hastily seizing on another topic before she demanded that he spend
the rest of the day deciding when Walter should avoid apples or eat fiery spices to turn him into a rampant and potent lover.
He disliked producing horoscopes, and there was something about their randomness that made him certain they were worthless
anyway.

‘Friday Street,’ she said, reaching for a dish of lemon
butter. ‘It is a very pleasant road, and our house is the best one. It is old – dating back to the Conqueror – but I like
it. It was the house that made me choose Walter over John Fiscurtune, who owned a smaller home nearby. Fiscurtune had also
asked me to marry him.’

‘Old houses are often better than new ones,’ said Bartholomew diplomatically, watching her eat the flavoured fat with her
spoon. ‘Since the plague, craftsmen have been in such high demand that many do not care whether their work is good or bad.’

‘Pass the butter,’ came Michael’s aggrieved voice from further along the table, indicating that he was unimpressed by the
fact that Philippa had not seen fit to share it.

‘I see you have not changed, Brother,’ retorted Philippa icily, relinquishing the bowl. She turned to Bartholomew. ‘He is
still a fat, greedy man.’

Bartholomew decided that the subject of appetites and weight was one he would be wise to avoid with both Philippa and Michael.
‘You were telling me about your house,’ he prompted.

‘Walter made some additions to it, which means we can
say
it is new,’ she replied. ‘It has pretty columns around the main door and large arched windows, like those of the Temple Church
on the River Thames. There are two sleeping chambers on the upper floor, a separate kitchen block, and it has a latrine with
a roof.’

Bartholomew was genuinely impressed. Most latrines were open to the elements, which allowed for the dispersal of poisonous
miasmas, but made for chilly and unpleasant experiences in inclement weather. ‘How deep is the pit?’ he asked curiously, wondering
whether Turke had gone with the recent fashion for a shallower trench that could be emptied regularly, or had opted for a
deep one that would be used until full and then sealed.

‘Matthew wants to know how deep is our latrine pit,’ said Philippa to her husband in a voice loud enough to silence the buzz
of conversation around her.

‘Could you not think of anything more pleasant to discuss?’ hissed Clippesby disapprovingly behind her back. ‘Why can you
not talk about music or art?’

‘The depth is about the height of a man,’ said Turke proudly. ‘And we have it cleaned
once a month
! I will not have it said that Walter Turke has smelly latrines. I always say that a man who does not pay attention to his
latrines is a man who cannot be trusted.’

He shot Stanmore a look that indicated he thought his host’s sanitary arrangements left something to be desired. Stanmore
bristled angrily, and was only stopped from making a rude retort by Edith’s warning hand on his arm. Turke ignored the furious
cloth merchant and turned to Langelee.

‘How often do you have Michaelhouse’s emptied?’

‘Fairly regularly,’ said Langelee vaguely, not meeting Bartholomew’s eye. He had recently elected to go from twice a year
to once, overriding the physician’s objections that it was unhygienic. ‘But I would not recommend lingering in them.’

‘Edith tells me you are on a pilgrimage,’ said Bartholomew to Philippa, deciding that he had better prove Michaelhouse men
were capable of discussing subjects nobler than sewage disposal.

‘It is Walter’s pilgrimage,’ said Giles Abigny in a low, angry voice, speaking for the first time since the meal had started.

The physician saw that this topic would be no less contentious than latrines, and sensed that the winter journey was a source
of dissent among the three travellers. Fortunately, Langelee was regaling Turke, Edith and Stanmore with a tedious account
of how many hazelnuts the orchard had produced that year, and Bartholomew had only Abigny and Philippa to worry about. Nevertheless,
he decided that yet another subject was probably necessary in the interests of harmony.

‘It is cold for the time of year,’ he ventured hopefully.

‘It
is
cold,’ agreed Abigny bitterly. ‘And no time to go traipsing across the country. But Philippa wanted to be the
dutiful wife, and I insisted on accompanying her. So, here we all are.’

‘Could Walter’s journey not have waited until spring?’ asked Bartholomew, giving up on diplomacy and deciding to yield to
whatever topics his guests wanted to discuss.

‘He needs to atone for a sin,’ said Philippa, clearly reluctant to elaborate. ‘Since it is a serious sin, it was decided he
should leave immediately. The saints are more likely to grant him forgiveness if we travel in terrible weather, anyway, and
then perhaps they will bless us with a baby.’

‘The fact that Walter has failed you in that area has nothing to do with sin,’ said Abigny nastily. ‘Fiscurtune was murdered
in November, and Walter was limp long before that.’