‘Why there?’ asked Michael.
‘Because it was dark and secluded, I imagine,’ said de Walton. ‘You do not want to row further than needful when you have a corpse in your boat.’
‘And so it is Caumpes you fear,’ said Michael. ‘Not Simeon or those cursed porters?’
De Walton shook his head miserably. ‘Caumpes is fiercely loyal to Bene’t, and will do anything to protect it. I sympathise with him to a point: it was horrible to see the likes of Wymundham giving us a reputation for quarrelling and slyness, but I cannot condone murder for it.’
‘Why did you not tell us this when Wymundham’s body was found?’ demanded Michael irritably. ‘It would have saved a good deal of time – and a good deal of agitation on your part.’
‘I was afraid. I hope to God you are able to prove all this and arrest Caumpes, because I am a dead man if you do not.’
‘Who else knows he is the culprit?’ asked Michael.
‘Only Simeon. He said he would pay Osmun to help me leave Bene’t safely, and then he would seek out more evidence that will confirm Caumpes’s guilt before passing the matter to you. It was he who said that Caumpes will not think to look for me here.’
‘Then Simeon was wrong!’ came a sudden yell from outside. There was a crash and a thump, and with horror Bartholomew saw that the door had been slammed shut. He leapt towards it and thudded into it with his shoulder, but the bar had been replaced and all he did was bruise his arm.
‘I told you to leave!’ screamed de Walton in terror. ‘Now he will kill us all!’
‘He will not kill us,’ snapped Michael impatiently, refusing to yield to the panic that had seized de Walton. ‘If we make enough noise, someone will come and let us out.’
‘But they might be too late, Brother,’ said Bartholomew in a soft voice, looking upwards: smoke had began to seep through the loose planks of the roof.
Suddenly, there was a dull roar, as the pitch that had been used to render the roof watertight caught alight. Bartholomew ducked as burning cinders began to rain down on his head. Then, faster than he would have imagined possible, the whole ceiling was alive with yellow, flickering flames and the air was sharp with the acrid smell of burning.
‘We are trapped!’ shrieked de Walton. ‘We are all going to be burned alive!’
Bartholomew coughed as swirling smoke seared the back of his throat. It billowed downward relentlessly, bathing everything in a dull grey so that he could not even see the candle Michael held in his hand. A burning timber smashed to the ground, just missing him, and immediately the floor began to smoulder. Flames flickered this way and that, running up the tinder-dry walls and licking at the pile of blankets that had covered de Walton.
De Walton began to scream, so that Bartholomew thought the flames were already consuming him. He snatched up a blanket and groped his way forward, but it was only terror that was making the Bene’t scholar shriek; he crouched in his corner like a hunted animal, wailing and howling. Another timber crashed from the roof with a terrific tearing sound, and de Walton’s yowls of fright grew louder still. Bartholomew groped around the walls, trying to find something he might use to smash open the door.
‘Out of the way,’ ordered Michael, hauling him back with a powerful hand. He took a deep breath, crouched down with his shoulder hunched into his side, and ran at one of the walls like an enraged bull. The wooden side of an ancient lean-to provided no obstacle for a man of Michael’s strength, and he was through it and powering out into the fresh air beyond almost as though it did not exist. Bartholomew followed, dragging the hysterical de Walton after him by the scruff of his neck.
‘That was impressive!’ gasped Bartholomew, eyes smarting as he glanced back at the hole in the wall, now surrounded by a halo of flames.
‘I recognised that voice,’ shouted Michael furiously, gazing around him while Bartholomew bent over de Walton, who sobbed and retched in the grass. ‘It was Caumpes!’ He clutched Bartholomew’s arm and pointed into the darkness. ‘And there he is! After him!’
Peering through the gloom with watering eyes, Bartholomew could just make out dark shadows moving through the trees on the path that led to the College. Michael was after them in an instant, dragging Bartholomew with him. They ran blindly, barely able to see where they were putting their feet. Bartholomew stumbled over woody cabbages when he strayed from the path, then fell heavily when he lost his footing over the gnarled root of a pear tree.
‘Got you!’ he heard Michael yell in triumph.
He scrambled to his feet, his haste to help Michael making him more clumsy than ever. Someone grabbed him and he struck out, trying to dislodge the grip on his tabard.
‘Bartholomew, stop!’ he heard someone yell. ‘It is me! Simekyn Simeon! Stop this flailing before one of us is hurt!’
Bartholomew could just make out the soft features of the Duke of Lancaster’s squire peering at him. The man Michael had seized with such glee was Heltisle, who was gazing around him in confusion, not understanding why two Michaelhouse men should be attacking him in his own gardens.
‘Damn! I thought you were Caumpes,’ panted Michael, releasing the Bene’t Master impatiently and scanning the surrounding trees.
‘Caumpes is over there!’ shouted Simeon, pointing to a shadow that was moving quickly and purposefully towards the opposite end of the grounds. ‘And he is escaping!’
‘I thought it was Caumpes I saw skulking in the trees,’ snapped Michael, regarding him accusingly. ‘But it was you.’
‘We were not skulking,’ objected Heltisle indignantly. ‘This is my College. If anyone was skulking, it was you!’
‘We have no time for this,’ said Michael, leaning against a tree with a hand to his heaving chest. ‘Caumpes is getting away. Chase him, Matt, or he will elude us.’
Wondering why Michael could not pursue his own villains, Bartholomew set off at a run across the grassy swath towards Luthburne Lane, the narrow alley that ran along the back of Bene’t College. The shadow bobbed ahead of him, moving fast because he was on familiar ground.
Aware of footsteps behind him, Bartholomew glanced round to see Simeon on his heels. He slowed, uneasy with the Duke’s henchman at his back, and certainly not keen on the notion of a knife between his shoulder blades. Caumpes may have ferried Wymundham’s body to Horwoode’s garden, but Bartholomew felt he had no cause to trust any of the Bene’t men yet. The fact that it had been Simeon who had visited Langelee in Michaelhouse before the scaffolding had collapsed and almost killed Michael made Bartholomew far from certain that Caumpes was the only Bene’t man with murderous inclinations.
Simeon shoved him forward. ‘Do not stop! We can catch him. Quick, climb over the wall.’
He formed a stirrup of his hands, and Bartholomew found himself projected upward, so that he could grasp the top of the wall that surrounded the College. It was not as high as the one that protected Michaelhouse, nor as thick. He straddled the top, and leaned down to offer Simeon his hand. The courtier grasped it, and scaled the wall in a way that suggested he had not spent all his time playing lutes and writing poetry for the Duchess’s ladies-in-waiting.
‘We have lost him,’ said Bartholomew, looking up and down a lane that was still and silent. ‘I cannot see him any more.’
‘There!’ yelled Simeon, grabbing Bartholomew’s arm so violently that the physician almost lost his balance. ‘He is heading for the river. Come on!’
He leapt from the top of the wall and began to run. Reluctantly, Bartholomew followed.
‘He will not be able to pass through the town gate,’ he gasped, breathless from the chase. ‘The soldiers will stop him.’