The Tainted Relic (40 page)

‘Your beadles said I might find you here,’ he said pleasantly. ‘I understand you have been looking for me–to ask about the fact that the Roughe brothers have been trying to kill me.’

If Michael was disconcerted by the bald pronouncement, he masked it. ‘Yes,’ he replied. ‘You are aware of what Kip and John have been doing?’

Tomas smiled as he took a seat. ‘It is difficult not to notice a crossbow bolt that misses you by the length of a finger, or a horse that tries to ride you down. They also shook the ladder when I climbed it yesterday–endangering Bartholomew into the bargain. Of course I have noticed.’

‘And what have you done about it?’ demanded Michael.

‘Nothing. Their attempts are clumsy, and I am never in real danger–although the crossbow bolt was a little close for comfort.’

‘Why are you so sanguine about it?’ asked Bartholomew. ‘Most men would confront their would-be assassins and demand to know what they are about.’

‘I do not need to ask; I know exactly why they have taken against me. None of the other Cambridge Dominicans is a scholar, and neither they nor their servants understand why I devote my life to books. Also, I am from a university in a country they have never heard of, and I look, speak and behave differently from them. I am a stranger, a foreigner, and therefore suspect. Their dislike of me is simple ignorance, no more and no less.’

Bulmer had admitted as much and so had the Roughe brothers, and Bartholomew supposed that, even in a university town, it was possible for advanced scholarship to be considered an unnatural vice. Also, the Black Friars tended to be local–even Welsh and Irish scholars were regarded as aliens, so someone from the mysterious-sounding Pécs would be an obvious target for their petty hatreds. Michael was not content with Tomas’s explanation, however.

‘They think you are an inquisitor. Are you?’

‘There are Dominican inquisitors who report incidents of heresy to our Master-General, but they are Englishmen, who blend in with the host community. They are not foreigners whom no one will trust. Such a ploy would be pointless.’

‘Is that a yes or a no?’ pressed Michael.

‘It is a no,’ replied Tomas, a little impatiently. ‘I am just a scholar and a priest.’

Michael was about to ask him more about his interest in Witney’s death–and
his
stance on Holy Blood relics–but there was a knock on the door and one of Michael’s beadles entered.

‘You are asked to go to the river, near the quays, Brother,’ he said breathlessly. ‘There has been an accident, and the dead man is said to have been staying in St Bernard’s Hostel.’

Bartholomew jumped to his feet. ‘Who? Seton?’

The beadle shook his head. ‘An old man wearing a White Friar’s habit.’

‘Do you mean Father Andrew?’ asked Tomas in an appalled whisper. ‘Dead?’

Bartholomew glanced at him, startled by his sudden pallor. Afraid he might swoon, he leaned forward to take his arm. Tomas did not notice, and fixed his dark, intense eyes on the beadle as he waited for a reply.

‘I did hear his name was Andrew,’ acknowledged the beadle.

‘God save us!’ breathed Tomas. When he raised his hand to cross himself, it shook so much that he was barely able to complete the motion.

‘What is the matter?’ asked Bartholomew, certain there was more to his shock than hearing about the death of a man he had, by his own admission, never met. As proctor of Pécs, he would have seen death on a daily basis–assuming he had been telling the truth about his previous vocation, of course.

‘I have not been entirely honest with you,’ said Tomas, accepting the remains of Bartholomew’s ale and taking a tentative sip. ‘You were right: I do have more than a passing interest in this case. I am one of many Dominicans scattered across the country whose task it is to listen for information about Holy Blood relics and their movements. And Andrew’s sounded particularly important.’

‘An inquisitor?’ demanded Michael angrily. ‘You just denied that.’

‘Not an inquisitor,’ said Tomas. ‘An
observer
. It is not the same thing.’

‘It is,’ declared Michael. ‘Remember that fish-head John Roughe left on me at your priory? It sat on my shoulder without my knowledge and surveyed us all with its flat, watchful eyes. Well, that is what your kind is like, Tomas. A fish-head perched on the shoulders of honest men.’

Bartholomew and Michael hurried towards the quays with Tomas at their heels. Michael had tried to dissuade the Dominican from coming with them, but the man was insistent. His face was grim as they walked, leading Bartholomew to wonder whether they had learned all there was to know about his connection to the relic and its carriers.

Because it was the end of a market day, the streets were choked with carts, and people and animals were everywhere. Cattle lowed as they were driven towards Slaughterhouse Row, while chickens flapped and geese strutted in hissing gaggles. A dog barked furiously at a herd of sheep, and a donkey brayed its displeasure at the cacophony. The smell of animal dung and urine was overpowering, so strong under the baking summer sun that Bartholomew felt himself become breathless from want of clean air.

It took some time to make their way through the crowds and reach the riverside quays. These were a series of ramshackle piers, used to unload goods brought on the flat-bottomed boats that traversed the fens. The active ones in the southern part of the town were in better repair than the disused ones behind Michaelhouse, and it was to the dilapidated set that the beadle led them. The jetty Michaelhouse owned was among those that were virtually derelict, and anyone venturing on to it was taking his life in his hands. The area surrounding it was seedy and abandoned.

Tomas looked around. ‘I do not like this place. It feels eerie.’

‘Only because it is quiet after the hubbub of the main roads,’ said Bartholomew, who was used to it. ‘It can be quite pleasant on a balmy summer evening.’

‘Well, it is not pleasant now,’ retorted Tomas sharply. ‘On a blazing afternoon with the sun at its hottest and more flies than leaves on the trees.’

Because July had been so dry, the river was considerably lower than usual. Stripes of dried black slime on the jetty’s legs showed it was down by half the height of a man. The beadle pointed, and Bartholomew saw someone standing in the chest-high water at the end of the pier. The figure was leaning forward, so its head was just below the surface. A group of people had gathered to gawk at the spectacle, and Bartholomew saw Urban among them, sitting on a discarded barrel with his head in his hands. He appeared to be crying.

‘We left the body where it was, so you could see for yourself,’ said the beadle to Michael. He frowned. ‘It is an odd way to die. If he had stood up straight, his head would have been above the water, and all he would have had to do was call for help. There was no need for him to drown.’

Before the monk could reply, Tomas darted forward and began to wade towards the corpse. The river shelved quickly, and water soon reached his waist. In his haste, he stumbled and disappeared completely. Bartholomew tensed, half expecting to be looking for a second body. The river was not deep, but its bottom was foul, and it was not unknown for a man’s legs to become entangled in weeds or mud and for him to find himself unable to reach air again. But Tomas burst spluttering to the surface, and continued to make his way to the pathetic figure that bobbed up and down in the waves he created.

Bartholomew inched his way along the pier, aware that the boards had become very much more rotten since he had last ventured on to them. He warned Michael to stay where he was, suspecting the whole thing might collapse if too much weight was placed on it. When he reached the end, he knelt, noting that some of the planks had recently snapped off. The new breaks were bright, contrasting starkly with the dark green of the weathered ones. Tomas was just below him, struggling to lift Andrew’s face above the surface. It was already far too late, but Tomas urged him to breathe anyway.

‘There is nothing you can do,’ said Bartholomew, leaning down to touch his shoulder. ‘He has been dead too long.’

‘His feet are stuck,’ said Tomas in a voice that held a hint of panic. ‘I cannot pull him out.’

‘Mud,’ explained Bartholomew. ‘It is notoriously sticky in this part of the river, which is why no one is swimming here, even though the day is hot. Folk know to bathe elsewhere.’

‘Andrew was a stranger,’ said Tomas bitterly. ‘He did not know to avoid this stretch of water. Besides, the mud is not as thick as you think. I am standing next to him, but I can still extricate my feet.’

Bartholomew regarded him intently. ‘What are you saying? That something else is holding him there?’

Tomas rubbed a shaking hand over his eyes. ‘I do not know. However, I can tell you one thing: the pouch containing his relic has gone.’

‘Perhaps it was washed off during his death struggles. He told us Witney had damaged the cord that held it around his neck.’

‘He would not have been that careless–not when he knew its loss would mean his death.’

‘Give me his hands,’ instructed Bartholomew. He saw where the Dominican was going with his assumptions, but was loath to accept that the relic had claimed another victim. ‘I will pull him up.’

Tomas obliged, and Bartholomew took the frail arms and braced himself to haul. It was harder than he had imagined, and he was beginning to think he might have to enlist help when the river finally yielded its prize with a sticky plop and a gurgle of thick, black mud. He pulled the body on to the pier and knelt to examine it.

There was little to see. There was no wound on Andrew’s head to indicate he might have been stunned before he entered the water, and no marks on hands or arms to suggest he had been involved in a struggle. He leaned on the old man’s chest and watched frothy bubbles emerge from his mouth, leading him to suspect drowning as the cause of death. The only odd thing was that Andrew’s pupils had contracted to tiny points, no larger than the hole made by a needle. While Tomas waded out of the river, Bartholomew carried the old man to the bank, where Urban was waiting. Michael took Bartholomew’s arm and tugged him to one side.

‘I have just spoken to Urban. He tells me Andrew was ill last night, and was beginning to accept that he might not have the strength to carry his True Cross to Norwich. He said he went out this morning, and when he returned, he no longer had the relic.’

‘He lost it?’ asked Bartholomew, slow to understand.

‘He gave it to someone,’ explained Michael. ‘Someone who would take it north. Then he told Urban that he would die today, and, sure enough…’

‘I thought his plan was to pass the thing to Urban,’ interrupted Bartholomew, refusing to accept that some ancient curse was the cause of the old man’s death.

‘So did Urban.’

‘I saw them earlier today,’ said Bartholomew, struggling to recall whether the pouch had been around Andrew’s neck at the time. He decided it was not, and concluded that Andrew must have just returned from passing it to his elected carrier. The old man had been tired, and the physician recalled his relief as he had sat on the churchyard wall. Urban, perching next to him, had been weeping–perhaps because he had just been told that he was not to be trusted with his master’s quest. Had the novice been sufficiently hurt by the lack of trust to kill his master?

Bartholomew stared at Andrew’s pale, water-logged features and wondered whether he had believed so strongly that he would die once the True Cross was out of his possession that he had jumped into the river of his own accord. The mind exerted a powerful force on the body, and it would not be the first time a man had willed himself to death.

Because Andrew was a visitor to Cambridge, and Urban seemed incapable of dealing with his master’s body, it was Michael who arranged for it to be taken to St Botolph’s Church. Bartholomew, Tomas and Urban carried the sad burden, and when they arrived Tomas took Urban to pray in the chancel, while Bartholomew manhandled Andrew into the parish coffin and Michael hunted for candles. When they had completed their sorry duties, Bartholomew studied Urban. His face was tear-streaked, and his shoulders slumped, as though he had been deprived of something very dear to him. The physician could not decide whether the loss related to his teacher, or to the fact that the relic was gone and he was no longer obliged to play a part in its journey.

‘Tomas is interrogating him,’ said Michael, watching. ‘Except
his
enquiries sound rather more desperate and meaningful than did mine.’

Bartholomew watched the Dominican, and conceded that Michael was right. The expression on Tomas’s face was more agonized than an informal discussion warranted, and it was clear that Andrew’s death–or perhaps the disappearance of the relic–had grieved him as deeply as it had Urban. He walked over to them, wanting to hear what was said for himself. While Tomas’s reaction to Andrew’s sudden demise was odd, he still liked the man, and did not want Michael to draw all the conclusions regarding his behaviour.

‘I thought he trusted me,’ Urban was saying, scrubbing his face with his sleeve. ‘I could not believe it when he said he had asked someone else to take it. I promised
I
would do it. I even offered to touch it, to prove my sincerity.’

‘You did?’ asked Tomas uneasily. ‘When?’

‘The day we arrived.’ Urban sniffed. ‘I would have done anything he asked!’

‘I am sure he knew,’ said Tomas kindly. ‘I imagine he had grown fond of you, and did not want to load you with such a heavy burden.’

‘Barzak’s curse,’ said Urban numbly. ‘He was right–he said he would die the day the relic left his care. When he handed it to me, I hesitated. Perhaps that gave him second thoughts. I was a coward, when I should have been bold.’

‘Being wary of handling holy relics shows good common sense, lad,’ said Michael. ‘Only a fool seizes them up as one might grab marchpanes at a feast. I doubt your caution reduced your standing in his eyes. But before we explore his death further, there is something I would like to ask. Have you ever been on the roof of St Bernard’s Hostel?’