towards her. The rain was coming down in sheets; by the time they reached her door they were drenched.
Wordlessly, Michael pushed past her into the small room beyond and Bartholomew sank gratefully on to the rush-strewn floor. Eleanor kindled a lamp, exclaiming in horror as she recognised them when the room jumped into brightness. Mistress Tyler dispatched her for wine, and bundled the younger girl away to bed.
'The commotion awoke us but we would have been able to do little to help,' said Hedwise, wringing her hands. 'We would have tried, though, had we known it was you, even if it had only been throwing stones from the window.'
'It is better that you stayed out of it,' said Michael. 'I doubt you would have been able to help and you may have brought reprisals upon yourselves. Did you ask us here without knowing who we were, then?'
Mistress Tyler nodded. 'We saw only two men attacked and needing help.'
Michael was impressed, certain that such open charity would not be available to anyone from Michaelhouse, especially if the morose Walter were on gate duty. He turned back to Bartholomew, and saw a large red stain on the front of his shirt. He took a strip of linen from Eleanor, bundled it into a pad, them pushed it down hard, as he had seen Bartholomew do to staunch the blood-flow from wounds.
Bartholomew looked at him in bewilderment. 'What are you doing?'
'Stopping the bleeding,' Michael answered assertively.
Now the first shock of the attack was over, he was beginning to regain some of his customary confidence; the terrifying feeling of helplessness he had experienced when he was being suffocated was receding.
Bartholomew sat up, pushing Michael's hands away.
'What bleeding?' he asked, holding his head in both hands as it reeled and swam at his sudden movement.
'You are bleeding,' answered Michael, applying his pressure pad again firmly.
Bartholomew shook his head and instantly regretted it.
He hoped he was not going to be sick in Mistress Tyler's house. He saw the red stain on his shirt but knew it was from no injury of his own. At some point in the struggle Bartholomew had scored a direct hit on one man's nose, and blood had splattered from him on to Bartholomew as they fell to the ground together.
Michael gazed at Bartholomew's shirt with wide eyes, looking so baffled that Bartholomew would have laughed had his head not ached so.
'Did you not check there was a wound first?' asked Bartholomew, his voice ringing in his head like the great brass bells at St Mary's Church.
Michael shrugged off this irrelevance. 'If the blood is not yours, what ails you?'
'A bump on the head,' Bartholomew replied.
'Is that all?' Michael sighed. 'Then we should stop pestering Mistress Tyler and return to Michaelhouse.'
'Stay a while,' insisted Eleanor, returning from the kitchen with a bottle and some goblets. 'At least wait until the rain stops.'
'And take a little wine,' said Mistress Tyler, filling a cup and offering it to Bartholomew. 'You look as though you need some.'
Michael snatched it and drained it in a single draught.
'I did,' he said, handing the empty goblet back with satisfaction. 'I was almost suffocated, you know.'
'We saw,' said Eleanor, with a patent lack of interest in Michael's brush with death. She knelt next to Bartholomew and offered him another goblet. 'Drink this, Matt. It is finest French wine.'
'He needs ale, not wine,' said Hedwise scornfully, appearing on his other side with a large tankard of frothy beer. 'I brewed this myself.'
'Rubbish!' snapped Eleanor, thrusting her goblet at Bartholomew. 'Everyone knows that wine is the thing for sudden shocks. Ale will do him no good at all.'
'With respect,' said Bartholomew, pushing both vessels away firmly, 'I would rather drink nothing.' He felt queasy and the proximity of alcoholic fumes was making his stomach churn. He struggled to stand, hindered more than helped by the sister on either side of him.
'Are you ready?' asked Michael archly, when the physician had finally extricated himself from their helpful hands.
Bartholomew nodded and followed Michael towards the door.
'See you next Tuesday,' said Eleanor, beaming as she opened it for him.
'And I shall see you the following Sunday,' said Hedwise, raising her chin in the air defiantly as she glowered at her sister.
Sensing an unseemly disagreement in the making, Mistress Tyler hauled them both back inside and closed the door quickly. Bickering voices could be heard through the open window.
Once they began to walk along the High Street, Bartholomew wished he had stayed longer. Walking made him dizzy and he wanted to lie down. He lunged across the road to retrieve his medicine bag that had been upended and searched during the fight. Michael took his arm and guided him away from some of the deeper potholes, some rapidly filling with rain.
'You are in for one hell of a day at the Founder's Feast,' remarked Michael unkindly. 'That Eleanor has set her sights on you and she will be none too pleased when she sees she has a rival for your affections.'
'Eleanor has done nothing of the sort,' muttered Bartholomew, rubbing his eyes to try to clear them.
'She is probably just interested in hearing your choir.'
Michael shook his head firmly. 'You want to watch yourself, Matt, dallying mercilessly with all these ladies.
If you are not careful, you will end up like Kenzie — murdered in the King's Ditch. There is nothing as venomous as a woman betrayed.'
'Oh, really?' asked Bartholomew. 'Over the last four years or so, I have seen a good deal more venom expended by the men of the town than by the women.'
'We should be considering what has just happened, not discussing your love life,' said Michael, suddenly serious, perhaps because he knew Bartholomew was right. 'What did those men want from you? Did you know them? It seems that Walter was right when he did not recognise the messenger as one of Mistress Fletcher's family. We were foolish to have walked into such an obvious trap.'
Bartholomew put his hand to his head in an effort to stop it spinning and closed his eyes. That was worse. He opened them again.
'They thought you were Oswald Stanmore,' he said, leaning heavily on Michael.
Michael caught him as he stumbled. 'Watch where you are going! I imagine my dark robe misled them.'
'They were from Godwinsson,' Bartholomew said, trying to concentrate on the way ahead, them wincing as a flash of lightning lanced brightly into his eyes. The rain was pleasant though, drenching him in a cooling shower and clearing the blurring from his eyes.
'Godwinsson? How could you see that in the dark?' queried Michael in disbelief.
'You should not ask me questions if you do not think I can answer them,' Bartholomew retorted irritably. 'There were lightning flashes and I saw their faces quite clearly.
One was Huw the steward, and another was the servant I saw emptying the slops while I was hiding in Godwinsson 's back yard — Saul Potter, I think he is called. And one of the ones who fought you was Will from Valence Marie — the fellow who keeps digging up bones.'
'That puny little tyke?' exclaimed Michael. 'Are you certain?'
Bartholomew nodded cautiously, his hand still to his head. 'And the one demanding to know where 'it' was I think may have been Thomas Bigod, the Master of Maud's.'
Michael whirled around. 'Now I know you must be raving! Why would Master Bigod attack us in the street?
Or rather, attack you, since I think this whole business has nothing to do with me — it was to you the message was sent. What did you say to Father Eligius when you went to Valence Marie this afternoon that has set the servant after you so furiously? Did you press him too hard about the Frenchmen?'
Bartholomew could not imagine he had said anything to Eligius, or anyone else, to warrant such a violent attack.
'I simply asked him if he knew where I might find his college's French students. He told me that they had gone to London.'
