‘You cannot be sure about that,’ said Bartholomew, thinking that the monk was allowing his dislike of the man to interfere with his powers of reason. ‘And anyway, if folk were merrily pinning holly to rafters, who knows what they did and did not see? Harysone is not particularly noticeable; he could easily slip past people unobserved.’
‘We will know tomorrow, Brother, because you have me to help with the enquiry,’ said William confidently. He stood and stretched, unsteady from the amount of wine he had drunk. ‘But we should go to bed, and snatch an hour of sleep before Angel Mass. Tomorrow you and I will catch a killer, and Matthew can face the woman who should have been his wife.’
Bartholomew winced and went to fill his cup again, feeling that he needed yet more wine to dull the peculiar sensation of unease and dissatisfaction that gnawed at him. He heard a sudden yell, and whipped around just in time to see William shoot across the floor in a blur of flapping habit and windmilling arms. The Franciscan collided with the door and went down hard. For a moment, no one said anything, then William released a litany of curses that would have impressed the most foul-mouthed of stable-lads. Bartholomew exchanged a startled glance with Michael, wondering how the friar had acquired such an extensive vocabulary of secular oaths.
‘My leg,’ shouted William, more angry than in pain. ‘It is broken!’
‘It is not,’ said Bartholomew, inspecting it. ‘It is bruised.’
‘But you do not know the agony it is giving,’ bellowed William, outraged. ‘It is growing more painful by the moment.’
‘Bruises are painful,’ agreed Bartholomew. ‘But it will feel better in a day or two.’
‘It is broken,’ said Michael with a wicked smile. ‘You will be confined to College for the next two months while it heals, William. What a pity! It will be hard to lose my Junior Proctor for so long and the fines chest will suffer. Shall I fetch wood and bandages for a splint?’
‘It is not broken,’ declared Bartholomew, wondering what the monk thought he was trying to achieve by contradicting his diagnosis. ‘So it does not need a splint.’
‘It is and it does,’ said William firmly. ‘And I shall want crutches, too, although I cannot venture out of the College as long as there is ice on the ground. I might slip and do myself an even greater mischief.’
‘Just splint it, Matt,’ advised Michael, preparing to fetch the equipment the physician would need. He lowered his voice, so that William could not hear. ‘You will be doing us all a favour. I do not want his “help” to solve Norbert’s murder, and this is a perfect chance for me to be rid of him without embarrassing tantrums.’
Reluctantly, Bartholomew set about immobilising the damaged limb, becoming even more certain as he worked that William was exaggerating the seriousness of his injury. William made a terrible fuss, however, and his unfriarly shrieks soon had scholars hurrying to the conclave to see what was happening. The other Fellows formed a silent circle around the stricken friar, while the students jostled each other at the door in an attempt to see what was going on.
‘Langelee will pay for this!’ William howled, snatching with ill grace the goblet of wine Suttone offered him. ‘I told him he should pay a carpenter to mend the floor, and not just hide the damage with a rug.’
‘I will hire one tomorrow,’ said Langelee tiredly. ‘We can probably raise the funds somehow.’
‘We cannot,’ said Wynewyk immediately. ‘We have spent every last penny on supplies for the Twelve Days, and our coffers will be empty until Ovyng pays us rent for next term.’
‘Hiring a carpenter will not be necessary,’ said Kenyngham. ‘I had some training with wood before I became a friar. I shall mend the floor – but not until the Twelve Days are over.’
‘Very well,’ said Langelee, although he did not seem happy with the notion of entrusting saws, hammers and nails to the other-worldly Gilbertine, even if it would save the College some money. He turned to William. ‘Your leg will confine you to your room for some days, but we shall have the floor mended by the time you have convalesced.’
‘Convalesced,’ mused William with a gleam in his eye. ‘I shall certainly convalesce – with good food and wine! But I cannot abandon Michael completely. He can bring suspects for interrogation here, to Michaelhouse.’
‘I do not think so,’ said Michael hastily. ‘We do not want criminals and miscreants in the College, thank you very much!’
‘We do not,’ agreed Langelee firmly. ‘I am sure we can find some administrative duties to occupy your time, Father. There is always teaching. That will not require you to walk.’
‘It will,’ cried William, seeing that he was about to exchange duties he enjoyed, for ones he did not. ‘I cannot teach unless I pace. However, I am sure I can do something to help Michael.’
‘Yes, you can, actually,’ said Michael. ‘You can deal with the beadles’ claim for more pay that we have been avoiding all year. Thank you for your kind offer. I accept most gratefully.’
William’s face was a mask of unhappiness as he was carried from the conclave.
After William had been settled in his room with a jug of wine, Bartholomew retired to his own chamber to nap until Angel Mass. He slept well, despite his fears that he would not manage a wink, and wondered whether he owed that to the wine or to the fact that William’s leg had allowed his pre-sleep thoughts to concentrate on medicine.
Just before midnight he woke, when the sky was at its darkest. He hopped across the icy flagstones in his bare feet, aiming for the water Cynric left for him each day. The temperature had plummeted since he had retired, and the water had started to freeze so he was obliged to smash a crust of ice with the heel of his boot. He lit a candle, then began to shave, jumping from foot to foot in a futile attempt to stave off the painful, aching sensation in his legs that always accompanied standing on Michaelhouse’s stone floors in the winter.
Shaving completed, he donned shirt and hose, then tugged on a pair of shoes – new ones in the latest fashion that were fastened with an ankle strap and had stylish pointed toes. Over the shirt, he drew on a laced gipon – a garment with long sleeves and a padded body that was thigh length and very warm. His scholar’s tabard went over that.
Quietly, so as not to wake the scholars who were still sleeping, he headed across the courtyard to see William. The friar’s snores were loud enough to have made sleep impossible for the two students who had been instructed to stay with him that night. One was Quenhyth, who sat selfishly close to the lamp as he read some medical tract; the other, a Franciscan novice called Ulfrid, was rolling gambling bones on the windowsill to pass the time. Both looked up when Bartholomew arrived, and Quenhyth went through an elaborate pantomime designed to ensure that his master knew he had been working.
‘William will fine you if he catches you playing with those,’ said Bartholomew in a low voice, addressing Ulfrid and trying to ignore Quenhyth.
Ulfrid slipped the bones inside his scrip, although he did not appear to be disconcerted to be caught breaking the College’s rules about games of chance. He was a pleasant lad, with a scarred face resulting from some childhood pox.
‘Sorry,’ he whispered. ‘But I won these bones in a bet with a man in a tavern, and it is hard to resist playing with things that are new.’
Bartholomew struggled not to smile, thinking about the various Franciscan and University rules the student had just blithely admitted to breaking – frequenting taverns, gambling and enjoying possessions. ‘What kind of bet?’ he asked conversationally.
Ulfrid was dismissive. ‘The fellow had written an essay – he called it a book – about fish, and claimed that Galen’s cure for infected wounds was to allow a living crab to eat out the rotten parts. I told him that Galen recommended an oyster, not a crab, and that it was but one of many remedies for that particular condition.’