CHAPTER 12
Michael claimed the stench of burning in the hostel had made him thirsty and, reluctantly, Bartholomew went with him to the secluded garden at the Brazen George. The landlord obligingly told three indignant bakers that they had to leave so that Michael and Bartholomew could talk in private, then brought them a large platter of roast lamb smothered in a greenish, oily gravy. Michael scraped the sauce away with Bartholomew's surgical knife, muttering in disgust when he discovered a piece of cabbage lurking in it.
'People who eat things that grow in the dirt will die young, Matt,' he pronounced firmly. 'And there is always the danger that there might be a worm or a slug served up with them.'
'Time is running short. We need to try to sort out some of this mess before it is too late.'
'Very well,' said Michael, his mouth full. 'We had just deduced that the kindly Father Andrew is none other than the villainous martyr Simon d'Ambrey himself. Sit down and eat something, Matt. You will wear yourself out with all that pacing.'
Bartholomew sat next to him and toyed with his food, trying to make some sense out of the mass of fact and theories. Michael carefully trimmed the fat from a piece of meat and ate it, pushing the lean part to one side.
'All right, then. Let me start. Father Andrew is too old to be your Norbert, but Father William has exposed him as a fraud, and there is clearly something untoward about the man: John of Stirling told us that Father Andrew had some kind of hold over the rioters last night, and there were all your suspicions that he was not all he seemed the way he splattered ink when he wrote, the fact that you think you heard him while you were sneaking around: the Chesterton tower-house, and so on. He is clearly up to, no good. Meanwhile, we learn from Lydgate that he once i roasted a martyr in the barn but, conveniently, no body is ever recovered. With one of those leaps of logic of which you are so fond, it is clear that Simon d'Ambrey escaped ' the fire in Trumpington, was never shot at the King's Ditch, and now he has returned to take his revenge on the town that so wronged him.'
He leaned back against the wall, pleased with what he had reasoned. Bartholomew rubbed a hand through his '' hair as his mind still grappled with the complexities of the evidence they had acquired.
'Who can blame him?' Michael added, gnawing on a bone. 'You all behaved abominably. I told you days ago that I thought the town had abused him.'
Bartholomew watched him. 'If all this is true, then d'Ambrey has succeeded in his revenge. The King, whose spy Heppel is probably here because of the growing unrest, will see the town as a hotbed of insurrection and he will clamp down on it hard. He will raise taxes, send more soldiers and shorten trading hours, so that ‹ Cambridge will be unable to compete with other market ' towns. Gradually, her wealth and influence will decline. j Perhaps the University might even flounder, and take away another source of income, resented by the town though it may be. And as Cambridge sinks further into poverty — the poverty that d'Ambrey once fought so hard to reduce — he will have had his vengeance on the town.'
'Now this is beginning to come together,' said Michael with satisfaction, scrubbing the grease from his face with the sleeve of his habit. 'Although I cannot yet see where Norbert fits into all this — unless he and d'Ambrey are in it together.'
'They may be,' said Bartholomew thoughtfully. 'But something else became clear to me when the charming Lydgates were baring their souls. I think I now know what the two acts were that Matilde's client told her about.'
'From something the Lydgates said?' asked Michael, frowning. 'I cannot see what.'
'The riots were instigated to mask two acts,' said Bartholomew slowly. 'We thought at first that these acts might be burglaries, such as the one at the house next to Oswald, or perhaps the destruction of the Market Square.
But now I think these were just coincidental. The two acts were matters much closer to d'Ambrey's heart: the first was his daughter Dominica's supposed death, and the second involved Will finding a suitable hand to use as a relic.'
'You reasoned this from something the Lydgates said?' asked Michael, unconvinced.
'Only the first one — Dominica's supposed death,'
Bartholomew admitted. 'We need to review what we know and it involves Joanna.' Michael raised his eyes heavenwards. 'No, listen to me, Michael! It will make sense if you listen! A short while ago, Joanna, a prostitute from Ely and Agnes Tyler's niece, came to Cambridge.
Mistress Tyler was not happy with her guest, because Joanna started some unofficial business from her home, putting her good name at risk — we had that from Jonas the Poisoner's wife and from the old river men. Obviously, Mistress Tyler would not want Joanna's clients calling at her house with three daughters to protect. Meanwhile, Dominica wanted to escape from the Lydgates, and what better way than to pretend she was dead? And Joanna had long, fair hair, like Dominica.'
'Now, just a moment,' said Michael, sufficiently startled to pause in his repast. 'Are you saying that Mistress Tyler plotted to have Joanna's body mistaken for Dominica's?'
'Yes,' said Bartholomew earnestly. 'Either she plotted with Dominica herself, or with d'Ambrey, who might well want his daughter back from the man who almost killed him in the tithe barn fire.'
'Why?' demanded Michael. 'Why should a perfectly law-abiding, honest woman like Mistress Tyler plot with a fallen martyr and his murderous daughter to have her niece killed and her body given the identity of another?'
'I have no idea what her motive might be,' said Bartholomew.
'But we know that the Tyler family are involved in something sufficiently sinister to force Eleanor to try to stop me from asking too many questions — and I am sure that something involves Joanna. Eleanor has virtually ordered me to stop investigating Joanna's death twice once in the High Street and once at the Feast — and even the apothecary's wife suspects their sudden flight had something to do with Joanna.'
'All right,' said Michael grudgingly. 'We will ignore the motive for now — for your convenience — and concentrate on what we know. Continue.' He picked up Bartholomew's knife and began to prod the bones to see if there was any more meat to be salvaged.
'This plan would allow Dominica to be free of the Lydgates and her life at Godwinsson. She could help d'Ambrey in the last stages of his revenge against the town, along with his other faithful friends — Master Bigod, Saul Potter, Huw, Ivo, and so on, the ones whose names were recorded in the hidden documents in the Galen.
And afterwards, she could go wherever d'Ambrey might take her.'
'I see,' said Michael. 'So, the plan was to kill Joanna and leave her for Lydgate to find. You told me that her face was battered, which would make her difficult to recognise. Dominica knew her father's eyesight was failing and he would be easy to fool. He was not a man given to reason anyway, particularly when enraged. He would storm off into the night searching for Dominica, see a blur of golden hair and assume his daughter was dead.' He shook his head. 'Unpleasant though it may seem, I suppose it is a just revenge on a man who had tried to kill d'Ambrey twenty-five years ago, and deprived him of seeing his daughter grow up.'
Bartholomew took up the tale. 'Edred must have been in on the deception — he tried to steal the Galen with Norbert's documents in it, so we can assume he was in their pay. Edred was the one who told Lydgate that he had seen Dominica in the streets of Cambridge. Naturally, Lydgate raced out to bring her back, while Edred and Cecily followed. Dominica knew the places Lydgate was most likely to look, so Joanna was killed at one of them by Godwinsson's Frenchmen, who first raped her.'
'No,' said Michael, stopping him. 'She was killed in Mistress Tyler's house — we saw the bloodstains — and then dumped at a place Lydgate would be likely to look.
That was why Mistress Tyler would not allow you to try to oust the looters from her house, and why she — a woman who knows how to look after herself and her property chose to abandon her house and spend the night with Jonas and his wife.'
Bartholomew nodded. It was beginning to make sense.
'Meanwhile, Cecily took the opportunity to run away from her husband, while Edred, after he had helped her, sneaked back and ransacked her room. Lydgate told us he had stolen a crucifix.'
'So, we have reasoned out Matilde's 'first act',' said Michael. 'Ah, here comes the landlord with a pie. Apple!
