De Wetherset made an impatient gesture. 'They were all killed by wounds to the throat, and she, like the others, is barefoot. How much of a coincidence is that?'
Father Cuthbert peered over Bartholomew's shoulder.
'What happened to her hair?'
Bartholomew looked at the wispy strands attached to the woman's head and shrugged. 'I suppose hair falls out when the skin rots. Or perhaps she had an illness which made her hair thin.'
'Then she will be easy for Tulyet to identify,' said de Wetherset. 'There cannot be many bald women in Cambridge.'
'I know some women who have used powerful caustics on their hair to dye it, and I have been called to treat the infections they cause,' said Bartholomew thoughtfully.
'Once the scalp has healed, the hair does not always grow again, and they need to wear veils and wimples.'
'Really?' queried de Wetherset with morbid fascination.
'How curious. The King's grandmother, Queen Isabella, always wears a wimple. I wonder if she is bald, too.'
Bartholomew stared at the woman in the coffin. Who was she? Had she been killed by the three men who had been in Michaelhouse's orchard two nights before? Or was there more than one group of maniacs in the town?
Seven deaths — the five women, the friar and Froissart, plus Nicholas and Buckley missing. Were they dead too?
Or were they the murderers? 'Did you see Nicholas dead?' asked Bartholomew.
De Wetherset looked momentarily taken aback by the question, and then understanding dawned in his eyes. 'Yes,' he said. 'I saw him here in the church, although I must confess I did not poke and prod at his body as I have watched you do to corpses. A vigil was kept for him by the other clerks the day before his funeral. Then his coffin was sealed and left in the church overnight, and he was buried the following morning.' He turned to Cuthbert, who nodded his agreement with de Wetherset's account.
'So, he must have been taken from his coffin that night,' said Bartholomew, 'and replaced with the dead woman wearing the mask.'
De Wetherset swallowed hard. 'Do you think Nicholas may not have been dead after all?' he said. 'That he might have killed the woman and put her in the coffin that was intended for him?'
Bartholomew shrugged non-committally. 'It is possible,' he said. 'But how? You say the coffin was sealed the night before his funeral, so how did he get out to kill a woman and put her in his coffin? And why was she wearing the mask?'
'Perhaps she came to let him out,' said de Wetherset, 'and he killed her so that there would be a body in his coffin the next day when we came to bury it.'
'That seems unlikely,' said Bartholomew. 'Why would a woman take such a risk? Was your clerk the kind of man to conceive such an elaborate plot, and then kill?'
De Wetherset shook his head firmly. 'No. Nicholas was a good man. He would never commit murder.'
Bartholomew remained doubtful, knowing that extreme events might drive the meekest of men to the most violent of acts. Perhaps one of the covens had come to the church to perform some diabolical ceremony over Nicholas's body and had exchanged his body for hers, although Bartholomew could think of nothing that might be gained from such an action. He drew the sheet over her, covering her from sight. Cuthbert shuddered.
'Now will you look at the mask?' asked de Wetherset.
Bartholomew looked at him in surprise. 'What can I tell you about that? You can see as well as I what it is.'
'You are always thorough when you look at corpses,' said de Wetherset, 'and if you are as thorough with the mask, you might uncover some clue I have overlooked.'
Bartholomew trailed reluctantly after him into the small charnel house in the churchyard and looked down at the mask. In the bright light of day, it was a miserable thing, poorly carved and cheaply painted.
But the horns and the top of the skull were real, which Bartholomew had not realised before.
'The horns probably came from the butchers' market/ he said. 'And as for the mask, I have seen nothing like it before, and I cannot tell you where it came from. It must belong to one of the covens.'
'Covens?' said de Wetherset suspiciously. 'What do you mean?'
Bartholomew repeated the information Stanmore had given him, while de Wetherset narrowed his eyes.
'So you know about that,' he said. Bartholomew shot him an irritable glance. De Wetherset was not surprised by the information because he had known all along.
What else was he keeping from them? 'Do you know about the Guild of the Holy Trinity too?'
'That is not a coven, is it?' asked Bartholomew, confused.
'Indeed not,' said de Wetherset. 'It is a group of people who are dedicated to stamping out sin and evil lest the plague come again. They are the antithesis of the Guild of the Coming and the Guild of Purification, or whatever blasphemous names these covens have chosen for themselves.'
'Could the Guild of the Holy Trinity be responsible for the murders?' asked Bartholomew. 'People who believe that prostitution is one of the sins that brought the plague? Do you know who is a member? What about Master Jonstan? He seems opposed to prostitution.'
'So am I,' said de Wetherset. 'But I am not a member of the Guild of the Holy Trinity, and neither is Jonstan.
But Cuthbert is, and so was Nicholas.'
Bartholomew chewed on his lip, trying to understand.
'So Nicholas was in a guild that is known for its antagonism to the prostitutes. A month ago he died, but in his coffin is found not Nicholas, but a murdered woman.'
'Yes,' said de Wetherset, studying Bartholomew intently. 'Curious, is it not? I can see you are thinking that Nicholas might be the killer, freed from his coffin and stalking the town. But I am more inclined to believe that the disappearance of his body is the work of the covens, perhaps because he took an active stance against them. Perhaps they worked some sort of vile spell to bring him from his eternal rest.' 'I do not believe the dead can walk, Master de W'etherset,' said Bartholomew, 'and we should not allow that rumour to escape, or the town will revolt for certain if they think our dead clerks are killing their women.
Perhaps Nicholas's body was stolen as you suggest. But the mask is the problem. Why go to the trouble of leaving this poor woman wearing the mask unless she was meant to be found — meant to be seen like this?'
De Wetherset looked appalled. 'Are you saying that someone knew we would exhume Nicholas?' he said.
Bartholomew spread his hands. 'Not necessarily. Perhaps the mask and the woman's body were meant to be found before he was buried, or even during the funeral seremony. I do not know. But why would anyone go to such trouble unless it was meant to be seen by others?'
'It could just be a person with a fevered brain,' said de Wetherset.
'Well, that goes without saying,' said Bartholomew drily, 'but I still think whoever did it intended his work to be found.'
De Wetherset shuddered again. 'I do not like being near this thing. Come with me back to my hostel and have something to eat. Have you ever been to Physwick Hostel?' Bartholomew shook his head and de Wetherset gave him a sidelong glance. 'I find it odd that Cambridge is small in some ways — one can never walk anywhere without seeing someone one knows — and yet you have never been inside Physwick, even though our gate lies almost opposite yours!'
Bartholomew smiled. It was not so odd. Hostels and Colleges were very competitive, and scholars were generally discouraged from wandering from one to the other.
Less than a month before, students from one hostel had attacked those from another, and the result had been a violent fight. And only the previous week Alcote had tried to fine some unfortunate who had been caught dining in St Thomas's Hostel until the Master had intervened.
He thought the Chancellor must know this, but perhaps he was making desultory conversation to take his mind away from the unpleasant events of the day.
'I must wash my hands first,' Bartholomew said, thinking of his examination of the woman's decomposing
