A Masterly Murder (29 page)

‘They are perfect,’ he said, performing a few trial grabs with them, and making the blacksmith and his assistants wince. ‘They
could well save a woman’s life.’

‘Good,’ said Matilde warmly. ‘That is what we hoped. And we are friends again now – I was angry with you but it is impossible
to be cross with you for long. But I should go. Poor Yolande de Blaston had just learned that she is to bear her tenth child,
and she is all but overwhelmed with the first nine. She is in sore need of a little cheerful company and a lot of practical
advice about managing household expenses.’

‘You might do better telling her how to avoid unwanted pregnancies in the first place,’ said Bartholomew, before he could
stop himself.

‘Really, Matthew!’ exclaimed Matilde, and Bartholomew could see that not all her shock at his blunt suggestion was feigned.
‘What a dreadful thing to say to a respectable woman!’

‘Sorry,’ muttered Bartholomew, mortified.

‘I should think so,’ she said. ‘You should not believe all you hear, you know.’

And with that enigmatic statement, she was gone,
weaving in and out of the late afternoon crowds and clutching a piece of bright green ribbon in her slender fingers.

When Bartholomew felt he had outstayed his welcome at the forge, brandishing and snapping his new forceps, he carefully wrapped
them in some clean cloth and slipped them inside his medicine bag, where they all but doubled its weight. He supposed he should
leave them in his storeroom, to be collected whenever he was summoned to a childbirth, but was too pleased to abandon them
just yet. Somewhat guiltily, he began to make a list in his mind of all the pregnant women he knew, in anticipation of putting
his latest acquisition to practical use.

He realised that he had delayed his visit to St Bene’t’s Church for far too long, and left the forge to set off down the High
Street. But he needed the permission of the Master of Bene’t College to examine the bodies: he did not want to be caught tampering
with the corpses of another College’s scholars without first obtaining the blessing of their Master. Physicians in Italian
universities had a sinister reputation for using dead human bodies to teach anatomy, and Bartholomew did not want to be accused
of prospecting for potential subjects.

When he reached the part of Bene’t College that faced the High Street, he saw that his medical colleague, Master Lynton, must
have done as he had threatened and complained to the Sheriff about the unsafe state of the scaffolding. Parts of it had been
dismantled, and the incessant clatter that had driven Bartholomew to distraction at Michaelhouse was refreshingly absent.

Like all the Cambridge Colleges, Bene’t was being built to repel invaders. There was a substantial gatehouse, which comprised
a stocky tower with an entrance large enough to allow a cart through it, some chambers on the
upper floors, and a dim little hole in which the porters lurked. Since the door was usually kept closed, anyone wanting to
enter or leave the College was obliged to pass the porters first.

Bartholomew tapped on the gate and waited to be admitted. He knew the porters were in their lodge, because he could hear the
click of bone against bone as dice were rolled and the muted sniggers of one player as he won a game. He knocked again, a
little louder.

‘Go away,’ came an irritable voice from within. Bartholomew recognised it as that of Osmun. ‘Bene’t College is closed to visitors.’

‘I have come to see Master Heltisle,’ called Bartholomew. ‘I have business with him on behalf of the Senior Proctor.’

‘That is too bad,’ came the reply. ‘Shove off.’

Although Bartholomew knew of the Bene’t College porters’ reputation for rudeness,
he had never experienced it first hand. He considered doing as they suggested, unwilling to become embroiled in a physical
confrontation. But he was a doctor of the University and one of its most senior Fellows, and he did not see why he should
be sent away by a mere porter, especially given that his purpose for entering the College was to try to solve the murders
of Bene’t’s own scholars.

‘Tell Master Heltisle I am here to see him,’ he snapped. ‘At once.’

‘He is busy,’ growled Osmun, and a clatter from within suggested that the dice were being rolled again. ‘Shove off, or I will
break your arms.’

Bartholomew gazed at the closed door for a moment, debating what to do. He stepped forward and put his hand to the wicket
door. It was unlocked, so he pushed it open, stepped across the threshold and started to walk across the courtyard towards
the hall, hoping to find a
student who would tell him where the Master’s rooms were located.

‘Hey, you!’ bellowed Osmun in disbelief, tearing open the door to the porters’ lodge and pounding after him. ‘I told you the
College was closed. Now get out, before you regret it.’

‘You cannot just close a College,’ said Bartholomew. ‘And I am on University business.’

‘I do not care what you want or who you are,’ snarled Osmun, grabbing a handful of Bartholomew’s cloak and beginning to haul
him towards the gate. ‘You cannot come in.’

Before he could be throttled, Bartholomew quickly undid the clasp and slipped out of his cloak, leaving the startled porter
with a handful of cloth. More determinedly than ever, he began to walk towards the hall again, aware that several students
had emerged from their rooms and were watching the scene in the courtyard with nervous interest.

‘I have come to see Master Heltisle,’ he shouted to them. ‘Please fetch him.’

Osmun lunged, and Bartholomew deftly side-stepped him, so that the burly porter staggered and all but lost his balance. Seeing
his comrade in difficulties, a second porter emerged from the lodge. Like Osmun, he was thickset and heavy featured, and wore
the ugly striped hose and ridiculous blue cap that were the uniform of the Bene’t servants. Osmun had supplemented his with
the peculiarly patterned tunic in which his cousin Justus had died, while at his waist hung Justus’s blunt dagger – although
even that could cause a serious injury. The physician began to have second thoughts about his moral stand as the pair of them
began to advance on him.

‘The Senior Proctor will not be pleased to hear that you laid hands on his agent,’ he blustered, backing away.

‘You are on Bene’t property,’ snarled Osmun, snatching at Bartholomew and missing again. ‘What I do to you here is none of
the Senior Proctor’s business.’

‘And this is how you represent your College, is it?’ demanded Bartholomew. ‘By attacking Fellows of the University and disregarding
the authority of the Senior Proctor?’

‘The Senior Proctor is not here, is he?’ said Osmun with a cold smile. ‘And the authority in Bene’t is me. What I say goes,
and those who do not believe me must learn the hard way.’

‘Like the Fellow you fought last Saturday?’ asked Bartholomew, recalling Michael’s beadle telling of Osmun’s arrest for riotous
behaviour. ‘Is that what you were doing? Teaching him a lesson?’

‘Maybe,’ said Osmun. ‘I spent a night in the proctors’ prison, but that miserable Henry de Walton learned something of College
rules, so it was worthwhile.’

Bartholomew recalled that it was Henry de Walton whom Adela had described as a ‘snivelling little man’ who complained about
the state of his health. The foppish Simeon had not liked him much either.

None of the students who ringed the courtyard had gone to fetch Heltisle, and Bartholomew realised he had been foolish to
enter Bene’t College alone, when it was apparent that at least two of their number had met ends that were far from natural.

‘De Walton now does what he is told,’ said the second porter, circling Bartholomew like a dog with a cornered rat. ‘We do
not tolerate Fellows who are critical, and who do not put their loyalty to the College above all else.’

The notion that Fellows at Bene’t were not permitted to express themselves freely sounded sinister to Bartholomew. Was that
how Michaelhouse would be under Runham? Would Clippesby be the equivalent of
Osmun, listening at doors to see whether his colleagues were voicing discontent, and meting out physical punishment to those
who spoke out against him?

His thoughts had distracted him, and he did not move quickly enough to avoid Osmun’s sudden lunge. With an expression of intense
satisfaction, the porter found himself in possession of a handful of the physician’s tabard. Bartholomew tried to struggle
free, but Osmun was not about to let him go a second time.

‘I have him, Ulfo!’ he shouted, as the second porter darted to his assistance. ‘It does not take two Bene’t porters to rid
the College of a worm like this.’

‘Osmun! What is all this unseemly skirmishing in our courtyard?’

With relief, Bartholomew glanced behind him to see the Master of Bene’t College standing there. Heltisle was a tall, handsome
scholar with the easy confidence of a man born to power and wealth. He had been a clerk on the King’s Bench before he had
forsaken law for academia, and was apparently a man destined for great things in the University, and perhaps beyond. One of
his Fellows, a small, sharp-eyed man with stained teeth and a blotched complexion, hovered at his side, watching the spectacle
in front of him with disapproval.

‘This man was trying to break into our College,’ said Osmun sullenly, before Bartholomew could reply. ‘Me and Ulfo were just
throwing him out.’

‘His tabard suggests he is a Fellow from Michaelhouse,’ said the Fellow who stood with Heltisle. His voice had the soft burr
of a local man. ‘You are right, Osmun: we want none of that filth in Bene’t. Get rid of him.’

With malicious vindictiveness, Osmun and Ulfo began hauling Bartholomew towards the gate. Bartholomew was not aware of particular
ill-feeling between the two Colleges – other than the usual suspicion and rivalry that
characterised any relationship between most academic institutions – and did not understand why the mention of Michaelhouse
should evoke such a hostile reaction.

‘Wait,’ commanded Heltisle, striding forward to inspect Bartholomew as though he were a pig in a market. ‘Do you not recognise
this man, Caumpes? He is Matthew Bartholomew, one of the two physicians who attended Raysoun when he fell from the scaffolding
…’

‘Yes,’ said Bartholomew, trying to pull free of the porters. ‘Osmun summoned me on the advice of Master Lynton. I am sorry
I was unable to do anything to save Raysoun.’

Heltisle regarded him curiously. ‘I am sure you did your best on that score. But you did not allow me to finish what I was
going to say. After Raysoun died, both you physicians registered complaints with the Sheriff about the state of our scaffolding.
You told him it was dangerous.’

Lynton had said he would do just that, Bartholomew recalled, and the fact that some of the scaffolding had already been dismantled
suggested that Sheriff Tulyet had acted on it. If Heltisle had been informed that two physicians had voiced objections, then
Lynton must have added Bartholomew’s name to strengthen his cause.

‘At the time, we thought the complaint was made out of concern for us and for public safety,’ Heltisle went on coldly. ‘But
now we know the truth, and it has nothing to do with the well-being of anyone except the scholars of Michaelhouse.’

‘What do you mean?’ asked Bartholomew.

‘The only reason you complained to the Sheriff was so that you could poach our builders
to work for you instead,’ answered Caumpes bitterly.

‘What?’ exclaimed Bartholomew, horrified. ‘I have poached no builders …’
But Runham might well have done, he realised suddenly. With a shock, he guessed exactly where some of the dismantled scaffolding
had been re-erected, and why Michaelhouse’s had such a used look about it. It also explained why Runham was able to recruit
so many workmen in such a short period of time – he had simply gone to an existing building site and offered the men wages
that they could not afford to decline.

With a sinking heart, Bartholomew saw he should have guessed how Michaelhouse’s army of builders had been raised. There was
Robert de Blaston, the carpenter, for a start. Bartholomew had known he was working for Bene’t, because at Matilde’s house
Yolande had related how her husband said Raysoun was a drunk, given to clambering on the Bene’t scaffolding to seek out shirkers.
And then Bartholomew had seen Robert de Blaston at Michaelhouse: it was he who had overheard Clippesby mention the big chest
of gold Runham had gathered to pay the workmen’s wages. Blaston had been working at Bene’t, and Michaelhouse had poached him,
just as Heltisle and Caumpes were claiming.

‘You have no answer, do you?’ asked Heltisle softly, as he hesitated. ‘You know you have done Bene’t a grave disservice, and
you have no excuse to make.’

‘It was clever of you,’ added Caumpes. ‘First you urge the Sheriff to impose new safety measures on our workforce, hampering
the speed of their progress, and irritating and frustrating them so that they are ripe for rebellion; and then you offer them
new jobs at higher wages.’

‘But I did not speak to the Sheriff about your scaffolding,’ protested Bartholomew. ‘It
was
dangerous, but I did not mention it to the Sheriff.’

‘But you went to his house the very next day,’ said Caumpes. ‘You were not man enough to visit him openly
in the Castle, so you sneaked to his home. I saw you myself, shaking the man’s hand on his doorstep.’

‘I had been summoned to physick his son,’ said Bartholomew, not liking the way his movements had been watched. ‘Not that it
is any business of yours.’

‘So, what do you want here?’ asked Heltisle icily. ‘Have you come to offer us compensation for what your College has done
to mine?’

‘The Senior Proctor asked me to come,’ he said, wishing he had never agreed to become Michael’s menial. ‘He wants me to examine
the bodies of Wymundham and Raysoun, to ascertain the precise causes of their deaths.’

‘I am sure he does,’ said Caumpes nastily. ‘The Senior Proctor – a Michaelhouse man to the core – is trying to use the deaths
of those two unfortunates to bring our College to the brink of ruin.’