knows your business, anyway.’
‘He does,’ replied Michael. ‘But I am not expecting any progress on the Oxford matter until Ascension Day at the earliest – a good six weeks from now.’ He turned to Bartholomew and lowered his voice conspiratorially. ‘We are talking about my plans to surrender a couple of farms and a church to Merton College at Oxford University in exchange for a few snippets of information.’
‘Right,’ said Bartholomew carefully. He knew Michael had been engaged in a series of delicate negotiations with an Oxford scholar for several months, and that the monk tended to tell different people different stories about his motives and objectives. The arrangements were supposed to be secret, but a Michaelhouse scholar named Ralph de Langelee had made them public the previous year in an attempt to discredit Michael and prevent him from becoming the College’s new Master. It had worked: Langelee had been elected instead.
‘What happens on Ascension Day?’ asked Janius curiously. He crossed himself and gave a serene smile. ‘Other than the spirit of our Lord rising to heaven, that is.’
‘Other than that, William Heytesbury is due to come to Cambridge to finalise our agreement,’ said Michael. ‘He is keen to secure the property for Merton, but he still does not trust me to deal with him honestly.’
‘And does he have cause for such distrust?’ asked Timothy bluntly.
Michael’s expression was innocence itself. ‘Why should he? I have two farms and a church that are nearer Oxford than Cambridge, and I propose to transfer them in exchange for a little information and a document or two. It is a generous offer. Those Oxford men are so used to dealing with each other, that they do not recognise a truthful man when they see one.’
Bartholomew, however, was sure Heytesbury had good cause to be suspicious of Michael’s ‘generous offer’. Whatever it entailed, the monk would make certain it was Cambridge that emerged with the better half of the bargain. He was surprised that Timothy, who seemed to know Michael well, should need to ask.
‘Here comes Prior Lincolne,’ said Timothy, looking down the street to where the leader of the Carmelite Order in Cambridge was hurrying towards them. ‘We will leave you to your sorry business, Brother. Come to see us soon: you are always welcome in Ely Hall.’
‘Thank you; I imagine I shall need a dose of sanity and calm after dealing with this murder,’ said Michael, as the Benedictines walked away. He rearranged his face into a sympathetic smile as the Carmelite Prior reached him. ‘Accept my sincere condolences for this dreadful incident, Father.’
Lincolne did not reply. His eyes lit on the spots of blood that splattered the ground, and he pushed past Michael to enter the church. Lincolne was a man of immense proportions. Bartholomew was tall, but Lincolne topped him by at least a head, a height further accentuated by a curious triangular turret of grey hair that sprouted from his scalp in front of his tonsure. The first time Bartholomew had seen it, when Lincolne had arrived in Cambridge to become Prior after the plague had claimed his predecessor, he thought a stray ball of sheep wool had somehow become attached to the man’s head. But closer inspection had revealed that it was human hair, and that it was carefully combed upward in a deliberate attempt to grant its owner a hand’s length more height. Lincolne was broad, too, especially around the middle, and his ill-fitting habit revealed a pair of thin white ankles that looked too fragile to support the weight above them.
He knelt next to Faricius and began to recite the last rites in a loud, indignant voice that was probably audible back at his friary. He produced a flask of holy water from his scrip and began to splash it around liberally, so that some of it fell on the floor.
‘Do you have any idea what happened?’ asked Michael, watching the proceedings with sombre green eyes.
‘What happened is that the Dominicans murdered Faricius,’ Lincolne replied, glaring up at Michael. Holy water dribbled from the flask on to Faricius’s habit. ‘Faricius was one of my best scholars and hated violence and fighting. I will have vengeance, Brother. I will not stand by while you allow the Black Friars to get away with this.’
‘I would never do such a thing,’ objected Michael, offended. ‘I am the University’s Senior Proctor, appointed by the Bishop of Ely himself to ensure that justice is done in cases like this.’
‘I have been at the Carmelite Friary in Cambridge since I was a child,’ Lincolne went on, as if Michael had not spoken. ‘Yet, in all that time, I have never witnessed such an act of evil as this.’
‘An act of evil?’ asked Bartholomew, thinking it an odd phrase to use to describe a murder.
‘Heresy,’ hissed Lincolne, spraying holy water liberally over himself as well as over the dead student. ‘Nominalism.’
‘I beg your pardon?’ asked Michael, startled. ‘What does nominalism have to do with anything?’
Lincolne pursed his lips in rank disapproval. ‘It is a doctrine that came from the Devil’s own lips. It denies the very existence of God.’
‘I do not think so,’ said Bartholomew, surprised by the Carmelite’s assertion. ‘Nominalism is a philosophical doctrine that…’
He trailed off as Lincolne fixed him with the gaze of the fanatic. ‘Nominalist thinking will destroy all that is good and holy in the world and allow the Devil to rule. It was because people were nominalists that God sent the Great Pestilence five years ago.’
‘I see,’ said Bartholomew, who had heard many reasons for why the devastating sickness had ravaged the world, taking one in three people, but never one that claimed a philosophical theory was responsible. ‘So, you are saying that the plague took only nominalists as its victims? Not realists?’
‘I think God sent the Death to warn us all against sinful thoughts – like nominalism,’ declared Lincolne in the tone of voice that suggested disagreement was futile. ‘And that wicked man, William of Occam, who was the leading proponent of nominalism in Oxford, was one of the first to die.’
‘But so were a number of scholars who follow realism,’ Bartholomew pointed out. ‘The plague took scholars from both sides of the debate. That suggests a certain even-handedness to me.’
‘Gentlemen, please,’ said Michael impatiently. ‘This is neither the time nor the place to be discussing philosophy. We have a dead student here. Our duty is to discover who murdered him, not to assess the relative virtues of realism and nominalism.’
‘Then tell the Dominicans that,’ snapped Lincolne. ‘They are nominalists – every last one of them – and now a Carmelite lies dead.’ He rammed the stopper into the flask’s neck and heaved himself to his feet. He towered over Michael, and Bartholomew could not help but notice how the curious topknot quivered as if reflecting the rage of its owner.
‘It was the proclamation you wrote and pinned to the door of St Mary’s Church that precipitated this sorry incident,’ said Michael sharply. ‘And Faricius paid the price.’
‘That is grossly unfair–’ began Lincolne indignantly.
Michael cut through his objections. ‘I sincerely doubt whether the student-friars – Dominican or Carmelite – genuinely feel strongly enough about a philosophical debate to kill each other: your notice was merely the excuse they needed to fight. And I will have no more of it. The next person who nails a proclamation to any door in the town will spend the night in the proctors’ cells.’
‘The Carmelites are a powerful force in Cambridge, Brother,’ said Lincolne hotly. ‘We have forty friars studying here; the Dominicans only have thirty-three. You should think very carefully before you decide to take the side of the nominalists.’
‘I am not taking any side,’ said Michael firmly. ‘Personally, I am not much interested in philosophy. And numbers mean nothing anyway. At least half a dozen of your forty are old men, who will be no use at all if you intend to take on the Dominicans in a pitched battle. They will, however, be valiant in the debating halls, which is where I recommend you resolve this disagreement.’
His green eyes were cold and hard, and even the towering Lincolne apparently decided Michael was not a man to be easily intimidated. The Prior knelt again and began to straighten and arrange the folds of Faricius’s habit, to hide his temper.
‘Now, I need to ask you some questions,’ said Michael, seeing that Lincolne seemed to have conceded the argument. ‘You say Faricius was a gentle man, but did he have any enemies? Did he beat anyone in a debate, for example?’
Lincolne glowered at the sarcasm in Michael’s voice. ‘I am aware of no enemies, Brother. You can come to the friary and ask his colleagues if you wish, but you will find that Faricius was a peaceable and studious young man, as I have already told you.’
