He looked at Bartholomew with glistening eyes, and Bartholomew wondered whether he had been drinking.
'I think Edred stole the ring. I think he knows more about Kenzie's death than he is telling,' said Werbergh in a rush. 'He was also gone all night when the riot was on and I believe he was out fighting. Perhaps he has a taste for violence; when I asked him where he had been the next day, he gave me this black eye.'
Bartholomew remembered Werbergh's bruised face the day after the riot and saw that his cheek remained discoloured. Edred had been limping. So what had the other duplicitous friar been doing? 'And where were you when the town was ablaze, Brother Werbergh?' Bartholomew asked.
'In Godwinsson, virtually alone,' said Werbergh unhappily.
'I have no taste for rough behaviour. I imagined I might get hurt if I went out fighting.'
'What about the French students at Godwinsson? Were they out that night?'
Werbergh, once he had started informing on his colleagues, was more than ready to continue. 'Of course.
They love fighting, and they boast that they are good at it. Two came back later and said that their friend had been killed.'
'Did they say anything about what they had done that night?'
'Oh, yes. They spoke in great detail about the tremendous fight they had had with ten townsmen all armed with massive broadswords. They say they were lucky to survive but that Louis had been treacherously stabbed in the back before being overwhelmed.'
So, the Frenchmen's pride had been injured, Bartholomew thought, and they were unwilling to admit that Louis had been killed by a woman. Perhaps it was better that way. He did not like to think that the Godwinsson students might take revenge on the Tyler household for his death. Werbergh could tell him nothing more and Bartholomew let him go, watching him thoughtfully as he weaved his way through the throngs of tradesmen making their way home.
CHAPTER 6
Thunder rolled again, distantly, and another silver fork of lightning illuminated the darkened courtyard of Michaelhouse. Bartholomew sipped the sour ale he had stolen from the kitchens and watched through the opened shutters of his room. The night was almost dripping with humidity, even in the stonewalled rooms of the College and, from low voices carried on the still air, Bartholomew knew he was not the only person kept awake by the heat and the approaching storm.
He thought about Mistress Flecher. She would find the night unbearable with her failing lungs. She would be unable to draw enough air to allow her to breathe comfortably and would feel as though she were drowning.
He considered going to visit her, perhaps to give her a posset to make her sleep more easily, but distant yells and the smell of burning suggested that a riot of sorts had broken out in some part of the town. The streets would be patrolled by the beadles and the Sheriffs men and he had no wish to be arrested by either for breaking the curfew.
Sweat trickled down his back. Even sitting in his room sipping the brackish ale was making him hot. He stood restlessly and opened the door, trying to create a draught to cool himself down. The lightning came again, nearer this time, lasting several moments when the College was lit up as bright as at noon. In the room above, he heard Michael's heavy footsteps pacing the protesting floorboards, and the muttered complaints of his roommates for keeping them awake.
While the evening light had lasted, Bartholomew had read his borrowed book, then had fallen asleep at the table with his head resting on his arms. He had woken stiff and aching two hours later, his mind teeming with confused dreams involving Philippa, Matilde and Eleanor, and wild collections of bones arising from the King's Ditch.
Philippa. He thought about her now, humorous blue eyes and long tresses of deep gold hair. He had not realised how much he missed her until he knew she would not be returning to him. He wondered how he had managed to make for himself a life that was so lonely.
A creak from the room above made him think of Michael, a Benedictine monk in major orders. Bartholomew often wondered, from his behaviour and attitudes, how seriously the monk took his vow of chastity. But Michael had deliberately chosen such a life, whereas Bartholomew had not, although he might just as well have done. He wondered whether he should take Michael's advice and become a friar or a monk, devoting himself entirely to his studies, teaching and patients. But then he would never be away from his confessor, because he liked women and what they had to offer.
He went to lie down on his bed to try to sleep, but after a few minutes, rose again restlessly. The rough blanket prickled his bare skin and made him hotter than ever. He paced the room in the darkness, wondering what he could do to pass the time and divert his mind from dwelling on Philippa. Since candles were expensive they were not readily dispensed to the scholars of Michaelhouse, and
Bartholomew had used the last of his allowance that morning to read before dawn. When the natural light faded, most reading and writing ceased and the scholars usually went to bed, unless they took the considerable risk of carousing in the town. Then Bartholomew realised that he did have a spare candle, given to him in lieu of payment by a patient. He had been saving it for the winter, but why not use it now, to read the Galen, since he could not sleep?
He groped along the single shelf in his room, recalling that he had left it next to his spare quills. It was not there.
He wondered if perhaps Cynric had taken it, or Michael.
But that was unlikely. It was more probably Gray, who had taken things from Bartholomew without asking before. He took another sip of the warm ale, and then, in disgust at its rank, bitter flavour, poured it away out of the window.
'The Master has forbidden the tipping of waste in the yard. At your own insisting, Doctor,' came the admonishing tones of Walter, the night porter, through the open window. Bartholomew was a little ashamed.
Walter was right: Bartholomew had recommended to Kenyngham that all waste should be tipped into the cesspool behind the kitchen gardens, following an outbreak of a disease at Michaelhouse that made the bowels bleed.
Bartholomew had been proven correct: the disease had subsided when the scholars were not exposed to all kinds of unimaginable filth on their way from their rooms to meals in the hall.
'What do you want, Walter?' Bartholomew asked testily, setting the empty cup on the window-sill. 'It is the middle of the night.'
Walter's long, morose face was lit by a flicker of lightning and Bartholomew saw him squint at the brightness.
Both looked up at the sky, seeing great, heavy-bellied clouds hanging there, showing momentarily light grey under the sudden flash.
'A patient needs you. Urgent.' It was no secret that Walter resented the fact that Master Kenyngham had given Bartholomew permission to come and go from the College during the night if needed by a patient. Such calls were not uncommon, especially during outbreaks of summer ague or winter fevers.
Walter glanced up at the sky again. 'You will probably get drenched when this storm breaks,' he added, in tones of malicious satisfaction.
Bartholomew looked at him in distaste, confident that Walter would be unable to make out his expression in the darkness of his room.
'Who is it?' he asked, reaching for his shirt and pulling it over his head, grimacing as it stuck unpleasantly to his back. He tucked it into his hose, and sat on the bed to put on his boots. Walter was right about the rain and Bartholomew had no intention of tramping about in a heavy downpour in shoes. He knew well what sudden storms were like in Cambridge: the rainwater would turn the dusty streets into rivers of mud; in the mud would be offal, sewage, animal dung and all manner of rotting vegetation.
Wearing shoes would be tantamount to walking barefoot.
