Michael rubbed his cheeks with his hands. 'Nothing,' he said softly. 'Not so much as a whisper.'
Gray stood to pour him a cup of watered wine from the supply on the window ledge. As he flopped back on the bed again, he winced as he sat on something hard. He pulled it from underneath him and shot Bartholomew a guilty glance.
'Master Radbeche's Galen,' said Bartholomew, recognising the rough leather binding. 'I must return that today.'
'I saw it yesterday afternoon when I put the package from Jonas in your room,' said Gray, defensively. 'I thought I might borrow it since you were out. I brought it here to read last night, but I fell asleep,' he finished lamely.
'You should ask before you take things,' said Bartholomew mildly, pleased that Gray was prepared to undertake voluntary reading, but concerned that he should borrow David's Hostel's precious tome without permission.
'It is an interesting text,' said Gray, detecting that Bartholomew's admonition held an underlying note of approval and keen to turn it to his advantage. 'Although I must say that the last chapter was the most interesting of all. And not by Galen,' he said with a laugh.
'How do you know it is not by Galen?' asked Bartholomew.
Although Gray was a quick student, he rarely used his intellectual talents to the full and was far too lazy to instigate a debate that would mean some hard thinking. 'Are you so familiar with his style and knowledge of medicine that you are able to detect mere imitation from the master himself?'
'Oh, no! ' said Gray hastily, knowing that he would never be able to take on Bartholomew in a debate about the authenticity of Galen. 'But the last chapter is not about medicine at all. Have you not read it? It is a collection of local stories — like a history of the town.'
Michael made a sound of irritation at this irrelevance and drained the wine from his cup. 'So what? Parchment is expensive and scribes often use spare pages at the end of books to record something else so as to avoid waste. If you are surprised by that, Sam Gray, then you are revealing that you have read far fewer books than you should have done at this point in your academic career.'
'I was not surprised by it,' said Gray hotly. 'I was just pointing out to you that the last chapter was considerably more interesting than boring old Galen.'
He scrambled to his feet and brought the book over to Bartholomew. 'Your marker is here,' he said, indicating a point about three-quarters of the way through, where Bartholomew had reached. 'And the interesting chapter is here.'
He opened the book to the last few pages. The text was in the same undisciplined scrawl that characterised the rest of the book, complete with spelling errors, crossings out and ink blots. Gray was right about the content: there was nothing medical about the subject of the last chapter and parts were illustrated with thumb-sized sketches. The drawings were good, and Bartholomew suspected that the anonymous scribe derived a good deal more pleasure from his illustrations than his writing.
'See?' said Gray. 'Here is a bit about how William the Conqueror came in 1068 and ordered that twenty-seven houses should be demolished so that the Castle could be built. And here is a description of the fire that almost destroyed St Mary's Church. My uncle remembers that very wel1-'
'Does he?' asked Bartholomew, startled. The fire in St Mary's, he knew, had been in 1290, and Gray's uncle was certainly no more than forty years old.
'Oh, yes,' said Gray. 'He often tells the story about how he dashed through the flames to save the golden candlesticks that stood on the altar.'
'So, it runs in the family,' muttered Michael, also aware of the date of the fire. 'That explains a lot.'
'What do you mean?' demanded Gray. 'My uncle is a very brave man.'
'What else is in this history?' asked Bartholomew quickly, before tempers could fray. While Michael's sharp, sardonic wit might best Gray in an immediate argument, Michael would then be considered fair game for all manner of Gray's practical jokes, not all of them pleasant or amusing.
'There is a bit about the hero Hereward the Wake, who fought against William the Conqueror in the Fens,' continued Gray, giving Michael an evil look. 'And a paragraph about Simon d'Ambrey who was shot in the King's Ditch twenty-five years ago and whose hand is in Valence Marie. The whole thing ends with a tale about some Chancellor called Richard de Badew who funded Clare College before the Countess came along and endowed it with lots of money in the 1330s.'
Intrigued, now that the University and not the town was the subject of the text, Michael came to sit next to them, peering at the book as it lay open on Bartholomew's lap.
'The rest of the book is undoubtedly Galen,' said Bartholomew, flicking through it. 'I have read it before, although this is by far the worst copy I have ever seen.'
'It was the book!' exclaimed Gray suddenly, grabbing Bartholomew's arm. 'The attack in the street, your room searched. It was the book they wanted!'
'Whatever for?' asked Bartholomew, unconvinced. 'It is a poor copy of Galen at best and certainly not worth killing for.'
'Not for the Galen. For the bit at the end,' insisted Gray, eyes glittering with enthusiasm. 'Perhaps it contains information about the town that no one knows.'
'Perhaps Hereward the Wake is alive and well and wants to read it,' said Michael, laughing. 'Or maybe this long-dead Chancellor, de Badew.'
'It was no apparition that brained me in the High Street,' said Bartholomew firmly. That was Will, Huw, Saul Potter and Bigod. And it was Edred who searched my room.'
He leaned back against the wall and began to study the book with renewed interest. Were the local stories significant, or was the copyist merely using up leftover paper at the end of his book, as Michael suggested?
The leather covers of the tome were thick and crude, and inside, an attempt had been made to improve their appearance by pasting coloured parchment over them.
Bartholomew ran his fingers down them and then looked closer. He was wrong — the parchment had not been placed there to make the inside cover look neater, but to hide something. He picked at it, uncertain. Michael watched silently. Both were scholars with a love of learning and of the books that contained it. Damaging one of these precious items was an act alien to both of them.
Gray took it from him, and with a decisive movement of his hand, ripped the parchment away. Bartholomew and Michael, as one, winced at the sound of tearing, but looked with interest at what spilled out into Gray's hands.
While Gray performed a similar operation with the front cover, Bartholomew and Michael read the documents that had fallen from the back.
Bartholomew felt sick. 'These are copies of letters sent by Norbert to me after he fled to Dover,' he said in a low voice. 'They date from a few weeks after he left, to the last message I had about fifteen years ago and are signed with the name of his sister, Celinia.'
'Who is Norbert?' asked Gray, intrigued.
Bartholomew sighed. 'He was accused of burning the tithe barn at Trumpington when we were children. I helped him escape.'
'And this,' said Michael, waving another document in the air, 'is a list of times and dates suggesting meetings, along with names and addresses. They include Mistress Tyler, Thomas Bigod, Will of Valence Marie, Cecily Lydgate, and the Godwinsson servants Saul Potter and Huw, to name but a few. You were right, Matt. It was Bigod, Will, Potter and Huw who attacked us — for these parchments.'
'Do you think they are involved in starting the riots, then?' asked Gray, his eyes alight with excitement.
Bartholomew turned the letters over in his hands. 'That seems something of a leap in logic, but does not mean that you are wrong. The only thing finding these documents has made clear to me is that Norbert may have returned to the area. Why else would his letters be here?'
Mistress Tyler's house was silent and still. Tulyet's sergeant kicked at the door until it gave way and forced his way in, shouldering aside the splintered wood to stand in the small chamber on the ground floor. Bartholomew peered in. The room was bare except for a heavy chest, a table and some shelves. Tulyet pushed past him and began to climb the ladder that led to the upper chamber where the women had slept. He shook his head in disgust as he descended.
