there with you.’
Bartholomew tugged the scarf from his face and gratefully accepted a cup of wine someone pushed into his hand.
‘Matilde!’ he exclaimed in pleasure. ‘Why are you here?’
‘Half the town is here,’ she said, gesturing to where a crowd had gathered. ‘It would look suspicious if I remained at home. It is not every day that a corpse is discovered in one of our wells.’
Bartholomew coughed again and Matilde thumped him on his back.
‘You are getting too old for this kind of thing,’ she teased. ‘You should let your students do it. Rob Deynman offered to go.’
Bartholomew looked to where his student was warding off those people who would have come to ask Bartholomew questions before he had recovered his breath – including Harling, which was risky, and Edith, which was downright rash – and smiled.
‘How is Dame Pelagia?’ he asked softly, even though no one else was near.
Matilde smiled. ‘In better health than you at the moment, and splendid company. She had told me stories beyond my wildest imaginings.’
Bartholomew shot her a curious glance and wondered what kind of life Dame Pelagia had led to enable her to tell tales to astonish the worldly-wise Matilde. The uncharitable thought flashed through his mind that they might have been in the same business before Pelagia undertook her monastic vocation. Or was he being unfair?
Matilde helped Bartholomew to his feet and Edith came rushing towards him.
‘What were you thinking of, volunteering to go down there?’ she demanded angrily, hands on hips. ‘It was a dangerous thing to do!’
‘Someone had to do it,’ he said, fending her off. ‘And I am less sensitive about this kind of thing than most.’
Edith sighed and exchanged a look of resignation with Matilde. ‘You do not deserve good women to worry over you,’ she said. She hesitated and looked away towards the river. ‘My words were over-hasty yesterday. I know you meant no offence to Oswald and I am sorry we quarrelled with each other.’
Bartholomew rubbed his eyes and smiled wanly. ‘I should have thought before I made such an accusation. But Thorpe–’
Edith raised her finger to stop him from speaking. ‘We will only argue again if we pursue that subject. It is enough that we are friends again.’ She embraced him in a sudden fierce hug. ‘There. Now Master Harling wants you, and the Sheriff is waiting.’
Bartholomew left her, and went to where Michael and Tulyet stood over the body that he had recovered from the well. Harling bustled up, smoothing down his immaculate tabard where Deynman had dared to lay his hands on it.
‘That boy is a menace,’ he said to Bartholomew, glowering at Deynman over his shoulder. ‘I am tempted to pass him through his disputations simply to remove him from the town.’
‘I might hold you to that,’ said Michael opportunistically. ‘I have been wondering how Michaelhouse might raise sufficient funds to buy him a degree.’
Tulyet bent down to lift the cover from the face of the dead man, so that Bartholomew could see it. He was not familiar, but had been in the water for at least a month and his features were all but unrecognisable. Harling glanced down and shuddered, looking away quickly.
‘His own mother would not know him,’ said Tulyet, regarding the Vice-Chancellor sympathetically. ‘But his red tunic suggested to me that he might be one of Thomas Deschalers’s lads. I just asked Deschalers if any are missing, and he informed me that one of his apprentices left Cambridge about a month ago, rather abruptly, leaving a note that said he was going to become a monk. Apparently the lad was given to unpredictable behaviour, and Deschalers did not give it another thought. I suspect this is him, and that he found God in a way he did not anticipate. His death cannot be natural.’
‘He must be the apprentice Father Philius was called to attend at Oswald’s house,’ said Bartholomew, kneeling next to the body. ‘There are still blisters just visible on his lips and if I look in his mouth–’
‘Not here, Matthew,’ said Harling, touching him on the shoulder and glancing nervously at the crowd that watched them.
‘Why not?’ muttered Michael. ‘You realise, Master Harling, that you are depriving Matt of a God-sent opportunity to revolt at least thirty people all at once – Edith and Matilde among them.’
Bartholomew glanced up at the crowd, many looking with horrified eyes at the bloated features of the apprentice. He pulled the cover over the dead man’s face to hide it from sight and stood up, brushing mud from his knees.
‘I would say, from the blisters and the time he has been in the water, that he is almost certainly the apprentice Philius saw dead,’ said Bartholomew. ‘What was his name?’
‘Will Harper,’ said Tulyet.
‘So that solves one mystery,’ said Michael to Bartholomew. ‘Philius was summoned in a belated attempt to help an apprentice who died after drinking poisoned wine. After Philius left, the body must have been bundled down the well to hide it.’
‘And the cases of fever started about three weeks ago,’ said Bartholomew. ‘Which would be about sufficient time for the body to begin festering in the water. No wonder people became ill! I was wrong about the river after all.’
‘But correct in your theory that the fever was caused by poisoned water from this well,’ said Michael. ‘That a corpse was responsible is not an explanation that springs readily to mind. You cannot be blamed for not guessing that.’
Bartholomew shook his head, disgusted with himself. ‘I should have checked the well earlier. I even told you about the similar case I had seen in Greece, where the cause was a dead goat in a stream. I should have known.’
Tulyet’s men loaded the body onto a cart and took it away, leaving an ominous trail of water behind it. Realising there was nothing more to be seen, the crowd began to break up, talking about the incident in hushed voices as they went. Bartholomew looked around for Matilde, but she had already gone, and Edith was busily ushering her husband’s apprentices homewards.
‘So,’ said Michael, to distract Bartholomew from looking too obviously for Matilde as they began to walk back to Michaelhouse. ‘We can now be certain that Philius spoke the truth. He claimed to have seen a dead apprentice and here is the body. Philius assumed the lad was Stanmore’s because he had been called to Stanmore’s premises, and thus misled us. And the blisters around this apprentice’s mouth suggest that he met his death in the same way as did Armel.’
‘Oswald does not approve of his apprentices drinking,’ said Bartholomew, ‘although they have developed a number of ingenious plans to deceive him. I suspect that this was one such plan that went terribly wrong.’
‘Let us recap what we know. One of Oswald’s lads – Thorpe, no doubt – bought the wine in the Brazen George, as seen by Gray and his cronies, but it was Will Harper who drank it. When he became ill, they called Philius – not you, because they knew you would have told Stanmore – but when Philius declared him dead, they decided to hide the body and send Deschalers a note purporting to be from Harper saying he was bound for the cloister.’
Bartholomew nodded. ‘The whole plan is the kind of ill-conceived venture frightened teenagers might dream up, not anticipating that the corpse would poison the well or that Father Philius might mention the incident to someone else. Poor Isaac probably felt perfectly justified in confiscating the wine from them when he went with Philius to Oswald’s house that night.’
‘But he died for it,’ said Michael soberly. ‘And so did Philius. Did these apprentices, emboldened by their success in ridding themselves of Will Harper’s corpse, kill Isaac for stealing their wine?’
‘No,’ said Bartholomew, frowning in concentration. ‘The people who killed Isaac also stole the bottles from Michaelhouse and terrified Walter out of his wits. And, anyway, you saw the killers as they knocked you over – you did not mention that they were the size of Oswald’s apprentices.’
‘They were not,’ said Michael as they stepped through the wicket-gate into Michaelhouse. ‘Two at least were bigger than Thorpe. But I cannot think on an empty stomach. I am off to the kitchen to see if Agatha has left anything edible lying around. Are you coming?’
