‘We have come to say our farewells at last,’ said Abigny, leaning against the wall. He was smiling, and Bartholomew saw again the carefree young man with whom he had once shared a room. A great weight had been lifted from Abigny. ‘We are going to Walsingham, to complete our pilgrimage. Personally, I would be just as happy to go home, but northward we shall venture.’
‘What about Turke?’ asked Michael baldly. ‘Will you leave him here while he rots?’
Philippa winced. ‘I wanted to take him with us. It was his pilgrimage, after all, and I think he needs to complete it. But the embalmer says he will not last, so we have compromised.’ She held a small box in her hands, which she passed to Bartholomew.
‘What is it?’ It was heavily sealed, so he could not open it.
‘Walter’s heart. We will carry it to Walsingham and leave it there. Meanwhile, young Quenhyth is going home to make peace with his father over the misunderstanding with the Waits and the chalice he accused them of stealing. He has offered to accompany the rest of Walter to Chepe. It is very kind of him.’
‘Very,’ said Bartholomew, shoving the box back at her with some distaste. ‘Quenhyth will take good care of Walter. The lad has his faults, but unreliability and carelessness are not among them.’
She turned to Michael. ‘When I return home, I shall send funds from my inheritance that will help to establish a new Dympna.’
‘All right,’ said Michael warily. ‘Although I am not sure we need another of those.’
‘It will be safe in the hands of good men,’ said Philippa.
‘Ailred was a good man,’ Bartholomew pointed out.
Abigny pointed to the sky, and took his sister’s arm. ‘We should go, or we shall have to delay our departure until tomorrow – and I am certain Edith and Oswald want us gone.’
‘Edith has offered us her home when we return from Walsingham,’ said Philippa shyly. She glanced at Bartholomew. ‘When I come back, with all stains of these horrible events wiped from my conscience, perhaps I could stay a while in Cambridge, and you and I could resume our friendship Perhaps where we left off, all those years ago?’
Bartholomew smiled. ‘It is a tempting offer, but we have both changed over the years. Although I shall always remember you with affection, my heart belongs to another.’
‘That is a shame,’ said Philippa, disappointed. ‘But I wish you happiness nonetheless. Do not spurn her because she is poor, and make the mistake I made.’
‘I will not,’ promised Bartholomew.
The huge drift of snow outside Bene’t College did not thaw as quickly as was hoped, but attacking it with shovels proved to be hard and futile work, so the citizens of Cambridge were obliged to let it melt in its own time. It did so gradually, and people commented on its slowly diminishing size when they passed it on the High Street. Children played on it, using its slick sides for sliding, while some enterprising souls caused a good deal of delight by carving faces into it. Morice’s was one that was prominently featured, and Agatha’s was another.
Weeks passed, until eventually it dwindled to the point where people barely noticed it was there. Then, one morning, only the very base remained. It was Kenyngham who discovered its grisly secret. He was walking from Michaelhouse to his friary when he saw the hand of the long-dead Josse protruding from it. He knelt, sketching a benediction and muttering prayers for the soul of a man who had lain unmissed and undiscovered for so long. There was a piece of parchment clutched in Josse’s hand. Kenyngham removed it from the dead, white fingers, and read the message.
It was from John Fiscurtune the younger to Ailred, and informed the friar of the imminent visit of his nephew and his ‘plan’ to relieve Turke of more money. Kenyngham recalled the events that had unfolded that Christmas with a shudder. He folded the parchment carefully, and put it in his scrip, intending to hand it to Michael later. But first, there was a man’s soul to pray for, and Kenyngham lost himself in the sacred words of a requiem for a man he had never met.
Sheriff Tulyet tried hard to discover the dead man’s identity, but Josse had carried nothing to give him any clues, and a week later he was buried in an unmarked grave in a quiet corner of St Botolph’s churchyard. Quenhyth, recently returned from delivering Turke’s body to Chepe, heaved a sigh of relief. He had been afraid that someone clever, like Michael or Bartholomew, would tie the time of Josse’s death to one of the days that Quenhyth had slipped out of Michaelhouse and had gone to the King’s Head. Gray had told Quenhyth on two occasions that someone there had a note from his father, but both times the summons had transpired to be a cruel joke that had seen Quenhyth fined by William for being in a tavern. In normal circumstances, Quenhyth would have ignored Gray’s message, but he had left home on bad terms with his family, and he had so desperately wanted them to write and tell him that all was forgiven.
Quenhyth recalled the day vividly. It had been after dusk, and the streets were deserted as he had struggled through the blizzard to the inn. When he had seen Josse, he had stopped dead in his tracks and stared in disbelief. It was the man who had stolen away his lovely Bess and broken his young heart: Josse was older and more handsome, and the fickle tavern wench had abandoned Quenhyth for the sturdy messenger without a backward glance. To soothe his hurt, Quenhyth had decided to give up his apprenticeship as a fishmonger and become a physician instead, wanting to change every aspect of his unhappy life.
When the snow had sloughed off Bene’t College’s roof to land on Josse, Quenhyth’s first reaction had been to rush across and begin digging him out. But he had stopped himself. If Quenhyth could not have Bess, then Josse should not have her, either. He had stood for a long time, staring at the pile of snow and thinking about what would be happening underneath. And then he had gone to the tavern.
When he attended Josse’s requiem – the only person to do so – Quenhyth felt a grim satisfaction. Life was definitely looking better: he was reconciled with his father, Gray had left Michaelhouse to take up a new appointment in Suffolk, and no one had discovered his connection with the messenger he could have saved. Yes, he thought; things were turning out very well indeed.
Two weeks later, Kenyngham met Bosel the beggar, who made his customary plea for spare coins. The elderly friar emptied his scrip in search of pennies, and did not notice Josse’s forgotten parchment flutter to the ground. Bosel noticed, however, and snatched it up as soon as Kenyngham had gone. He peered at it this way and that, but since he could not read, the obscure squiggles and lines meant nothing to him. He sold it to Robin of Grantchester for a penny.
Robin suffered from poor eyesight when the light was dim, and could not make out the words, either. He did not care what it said anyway, because parchment was parchment, and too valuable not to be reused. He scraped it clean with a knife, then rubbed it with chalk, and sold it for three pennies to Godric, the principal of Ovyng Hostel. Robin went to spend his windfall on a jug of spiced ale at the King’s Head, where he listened, yet again, to Agatha relating the tale of the camp-ball and the gargoyle at St Mary the Great.
Later that night, Godric wrote a prayer on the parchment he had purchased from Robin. Then he folded it, and took it to the grassy mound in St Michael’s churchyard, where Ailred had been laid to rest. He scraped a shallow hole and inserted the prayer inside, before bowing his head and walking away.