'You have no right!' Lydgate was yelling. 'The man is dead! Can you not leave him in peace even for his last few hours above ground?'
'Like your students have done, you mean?' asked Michael innocently. 'The ones you told me would keep a vigil over him until tomorrow?'
Lydgate's immediate reply was lost in his outraged spluttering, and Bartholomew smiled to himself, uncharitably gratified to see this unpleasant man lost for words.
'If I hear that you have let that witless physician near him, I will complain in the strongest possible terms to the Chancellor and the Bishop.' Lydgate managed to grate his words out and Bartholomew imagined his huge hands clenching and unclenching in his fury. 'I will see you both dismissed from the University!'
'Why should you object so strongly to Doctor Bartholomew examining your student's body, Master Lydgate?' asked Michael sweetly. 'You have no reason to fear such an examination, surely?'
Once again came the sounds of near-speechless anger.
'There are rumours that he is not himself,' Lydgate managed eventually. 'I would not wish his feebleminded ramblings to throw any kind of slur on my hostel!'
'Can a slur be thrown, or should it be cast?' Michael mused. Bartholomew smiled again, knowing that Michael was deliberately antagonising Lydgate. 'But regardless of grammatical niceties, Master Lydgate, I can assure you that my colleague is no more witless than you are.'
Bartholomew grimaced, while Lydgate appeared to be uncertain whether Michael was insulting him or not. He broke off the conversation abruptly and pushed past Michael towards the door. Bartholomew edged behind one of the smooth, round pillars and waited until Lydgate had stormed through the church to the altar before slipping out to join Michael. Michael took his arm and hurried him to a little-used alley so that no one would see them emerge from the churchyard.
'So, you think I am as witless as Lydgate, do you?' said Bartholomew, casting a reproachful glance at the fat Benedictine.
'Do not be ridiculous, Matt,' Michael replied. 'Lydgate is a paragon of wit compared to you.' He roared with laughter, while Bartholomew frowned, wondering whedier there was anyone left in Cambridge who was not intimately acquainted with the alignment of his stars — even Lydgate seemed to know all about them. Michael saw his expression and his laughter died away.
'Witless or not, I would sooner trust your judgement than that of any other man I know,' he said with sudden seriousness. 'Even that of the Bishop. And as for your stars, I have far more reason to trust your judgement in matters of physic than Gray. If you say you are well, why should I doubt you?'
Bartholomew smiled reluctantly. Michael continued.
'So I am inclined also to believe you over the matter of the identities of our attackers, despite my reservations the day before yesterday when you gave me answers that I thought conflicted with what you had said earlier. What you say makes no sense, but that is no reason to assume you were mistaken. We will just have to do more serious thinking.'
Bartholomew was more relieved than he would have thought possible. Some of his irritability began to dissipate and he found himself better able to concentrate on Werbergh.
'So,' said Michael cheerily, 'tell me what your witless mind has seen that the genius of Lydgate has sought to hide.'
'The evidence is crystal clear,' began Bartholomew. 'I judge, from the leakiness and swelling of the body, that.
Werbergh has been dead not since yesterday morning, but a day or two earlier. He probably died on Friday night or Saturday morning. At some point, he was immersed in water, although he did not die from drowning. His robe is still damp, the skin is slightly bloated which is consistent with his body being in water after death, and in the hair on one arm I found more river weed. Although there are marks on the body that are consistent with the shed collapsing on him, the fatal wound was a blow to the; back of the head — like Joanna, Kenzie, and possibly the skeleton of the child.'
Michael's face was grave. 'You believe Werbergh was murdered then?'
'Well, it was certainly not suicide.'
'Could the wound have been caused by the falling shed? 'It could,' said Bartholomew, 'but in this case it was-not.
There is no doubt that the shed collapsed, or more: likely was arranged to fall, on Werbergh: there are wounds; where slivers of wood can be found, but they were inflicted ' some time after he died. The injury to the back of his head was caused by something smooth and hard — the pommel of a sword perhaps, or some other metal object — and has no traces of wood in it. Had that wound been caused by the falling shed, I think it would have contained splinters, given the fact that the timber was so rotten.'
Michael scratched at his cheek with dirty fingernails, his face thoughtful. 'Well, this explains all too clearly why Lydgate did not want you to examine Werbergh.
Few would know these signs, or think to look for them, if the death appeared to be an accident.'
'Do you think Lydgate killed him?' asked Bartholomew.
'His actions are certainly not those of an innocent man.'
'They most assuredly are not,' agreed Michael. 'But if we try to report our findings to the Chancellor now, Lydgate will claim you are incompetent to judge because of your unfavourable stars.' He resumed scratching his cheek again. 'So, we will keep this knowledge to ourselves.
And thinking he has managed to fool us might lead the killer — whether it is Lydgate or someone else — into making a mistake. I spoke to the Godwinsson scholars yesterday and all had alibis for the alleged time of Werbergh's death, but now we need to know what they were all doing on Friday night, not Sunday.'
'Kenzie first and now Werbergh,' said Bartholomew. 'I wonder where those Scottish lads were on Friday night.
Perhaps they grew tired of waiting for justice and took it into their own hands to avenge Kenzie's death.'
True,' said Michael, nodding slowly as he ran through the possibilities in his mind. 'Since Master Lydgate seems to have an aversion to you, I will go alone to chat informally to the scholars of Godwinsson, to see if I can find out what was afoot on Friday night. Meanwhile, how would you like to visit David's to see how our Scottish friends are?'
Bartholomew shrugged assent. Michael rubbed his hands together and then clapped Bartholomew on the back. 'We will outwit whoever is responsible for these crimes, my friend, you and I together.'
Despite the cooler weather of the last two days, David's Hostel was stifling. The shutters were thrown open but the narrow windows at the front of the house allowed little air to circulate: the large windows at the back allowed the sun to pour in but faced the wrong direction to catch the breeze. Bartholomew imagined that the decrepit building, although unhealthily hot in the summer, would j be bitterly cold in the winter.
Meadowman, the David's steward, showed Bartholomew into the large room that served as the hostel's hall, while Fyvie hurried away to fetch the Principal. Davy Grahame and Ruthven were seated at the table with a large tome in front of them, while the older Grahame played lilting melodies on a small pipe in a corner with one or two other students.} Through the window, Bartholomew could see the brother of the student who had been ill. He was stripped to the waist and was splashing around happily with a brush and a bucket of water. From the envious eyes of some of the others, Bartholomew could see that cleaning the yard and escaping from academic studies was regarded more as a privilege than a chore. Ivo the scullion clattered about noisily in the kitchen as usual, and Meadowman went back to polishing the hostel pewter.
Robert of Stirling, the brother of the student cleaning the yard, rose when he saw Bartholomew and began fumbling in the scrip tied around his waist. Shyly he offered Bartholomew a silver coin, muttering that it was for the medicine he had been given. Bartholomew, who could not recall whether he had been paid or not, waved the money away with a shake of his head. The student pocketed his coin again hurriedly, giving Bartholomew a quick grin.
'Have you found Jamie's murderer yet?' he asked, the smile fading.
Bartholomew was aware that, although no one had moved, everyone in the room was listening for his answer.
'Not yet,' he said. What more could he say? They were really no further forward than they had been when he and Michael had first imparted the news of Kenzie's death to his friends several days before. And now there was a
