because Langelee was just one in a line of alliances completed within a matter of weeks that impresses even me.’
Bartholomew supposed he should not be surprised to hear that Julianna had made the most of her time in Cambridge, and realised that Michael had been right – living in Michaelhouse was blinding him to the ways of the world. He smiled at Matilde and thanked her for her hospitality. Michael glanced at his grandmother, who appeared to be asleep, and made no move to leave.
‘Your grandmother has a habit of pretending to doze when she is fully awake,’ said Bartholomew tartly, reluctant to leave the fat monk alone with Matilde. ‘I would not tarry here if I were you, Brother.’
Michael sighed, and levered his massive bulk from Matilde’s best chair to follow Bartholomew out into the street. As Matilde stood on the doorstep to bid them farewell, Bartholomew saw Dame Pelagia snap awake and reach for the wine he had left in his cup.
‘Thank you for looking after my grandmother,’ said Michael. ‘You will find she will be no trouble, and will know when to make herself scarce.’
Matilde looked through the half-open door at the old lady, who had drained the remains of Bartholomew’s wine, and was now looking to see if the other cups were empty. ‘I will enjoy the company,’ she said, smiling. ‘I have a feeling she has a great many fascinating stories to help pass the long winter evenings.’
Bartholomew, watching the old lady settle herself comfortably by the fire with a cup in either hand, was sure she had.
The rest of the day was spent at Michaelhouse, teaching in the chilly hall. Great grey clouds that threatened more rain had rolled in, and the room was dark and gloomy. In one corner, a student of Alcote’s strained his eyes to read Cicero’s
In front of the empty hearth, Ralph de Langelee strutted back and forth, waving his meaty arms around as he expounded Aristotle to three bemused students who would fail their degrees if they repeated his peculiar logic in their disputations. John Runham was giving a lecture on the
Like Alcote’s students, Michael’s Benedictines were obliged to manage without him – he was with Vice- Chancellor Harling at St Mary’s Church discussing the ambush and composing a message to inform the Bishop of what had happened – and they sat quietly in the middle of the room analysing one of St Augustine’s
Michaelhouse Fellows had a choice as far as teaching in the hall was concerned: they could close the shutters and sit in the dark, or they could open the shutters and have daylight – along with the full force of the elements that blasted in through the glassless tracery. Since reading was difficult in the dark – and Michaelhouse finances did not stretch to providing candles during the night, let alone in the daylight hours – wintertime lectures were usually given to rows of pinched, frozen faces poking out from improbable collections of bed covers, extra clothes and even rugs.
The disputations for students of medicine had been scheduled for the next afternoon and, feeling a huge sense of urgency that his class should succeed, given the chronic shortage of qualified physicians since the plague, Bartholomew grilled the would-be healers relentlessly, firing questions in rapid succession that had them reeling.
When the bell rang to announce the end of the morning’s teaching, so that the hall could be cleared and made ready for the midday meal, the students heaved sighs of relief, and escaped from their demanding master as quickly as they could. Bartholomew, however, was worried. While not even in his wildest dreams did he imagine Deynman would be successful, he had expected Bulbeck, Gray and the others to do well, and was perturbed that their answers to his questions were hesitant and incomplete.
While the Bible Scholar stumbled his way through some incomprehensible genealogy from the Old Testament as they ate, Bartholomew toyed listlessly with his boiled barley and soggy cabbage, his appetite waning further still when he discovered a well-cooked slug among the greens. The more he thought about it, the more he resented losing two valuable days to the ambush in the Fens when he should have been concentrating on his work.
After Kenyngham had ended the meal by reading grace, Bartholomew rounded up his students, and marched them off to the conclave for some additional lessons, abandoning his own plans to work on his treatise on fevers that afternoon. He taught until the light faded and the young men were no more than dark shapes with voices that were hoarse with tiredness, and then he continued until he became aware that at least two of them were asleep, exhaustion and the dark taking their toll. Reluctantly, he released them and went to his room, feeling far more anxious about their impending examinations than they were. He sat at his table and lit a vile-smelling tallow candle, intending to write a paragraph or two about contagion before he retired to bed.
He heard one of Michael’s room-mates snoring in the chamber above him, and the slap of sandals on the wooden floor as someone moved around. Agatha’s favourite cockerel crowed once in the darkness, and somewhere in the town a group of people was singing at the tops of their voices. Firelight flickered temptingly from the kitchen, and Agatha’s raucous laughter wafted across the yard as she sat chatting with the other servants. And then it was silent. He wrote three sentences and promptly dozed off, waking abruptly when he almost set his hair alight as his head nodded towards the candle. With a sigh, he doused the flame, and groped his way over to the bed, wrapping himself in his blanket and shivering until he fell asleep.
He awoke the following morning feeling refreshed and far more hopeful about his students’ chances of passing their disputations than he had been the day before. He went with Father Paul to prepare the church for the morning service, ate a hearty breakfast of warmish oatmeal and grey, grainy bread, and set about his teaching with renewed enthusiasm. By the time the bell rang to announce the end of the day’s lessons, he was pleased with the progress his students had made, and felt that all but Deynman should do his hard work justice – Deynman’s was a case beyond all earthly help.
He visited three patients with a recurrence of the winter fever that he was certain was caused by drinking from the well in Water Lane. Because it was easier and quicker to use the Water Lane well than the one in the Market Square, people were still becoming ill and, short of sealing it up, Bartholomew did not know how to stop them: claiming that invisible substances were seeping into it from the river was not a sufficiently convincing reason to make them change the habits of a lifetime.
When he had finished with the winter-fever patients, Bartholomew then went to St John’s Hospital to tend a man with a palsy. On the way back, he met Michael, who had been investigating a burglary in nearby St Clement’s Hostel – the outlaws had struck again.
Since they were close, Bartholomew persuaded Michael to walk up Castle Hill to see Sheriff Tulyet and describe to him, first hand, their experiences with the outlaws on the Cambridge to Ely causeway. Michael regarded the hill with apprehensive eyes, but agreed that it would be courteous to visit the beleaguered Sheriff, to see if their personal account of the ambush in the Fens might help him to catch the men who were terrorising the public highways and attacking property in the town.
They walked towards the Great Bridge, and paid the toll to be allowed to cross it. They trod carefully, wary of the rotten timbers that had crumbled away to reveal the swollen, stinking river below, and of the low sides, where the stone had been plundered to repair buildings in the town. Carts creaked across it, horses picking their way cautiously and stumbling as their hooves turned on the uneven surface. Their owners yelled, cajoled and
