‘He will use his boat,’ yelled Simeon. ‘We must prevent him from reaching it. Hurry!’
The foppish, effeminate scribe suddenly seemed a good deal more energetic than Bartholomew. He led the way along the path that ran parallel to the King’s Ditch, towards where it passed one of the three main entrances to the town – the Trumpington Gate. Ahead, Bartholomew saw a shadowy figure climb the leveed bank of the Ditch and drop down the other side.
‘That is where we keep the boat,’ shouted Simeon, running faster. Bartholomew struggled to keep up with him, his heart pounding and the blood roaring in his ears. He scrambled up the bank, feeling his leather-soled shoes slip and slide on the wet grass. He reached the top and saw a dark shape moving into the middle of the canal. Caumpes had found his boat and was about to escape by rowing past the gate to the river beyond.
‘I will alert the guards,’ said Bartholomew, tugging on Simeon’s sleeve. ‘They will stop him.’
‘They will not listen to you,’ said Simeon. ‘But they know I am the Duke’s man; I will go. You follow him along the canal bank, and grab the boat if it comes close enough.’
Bartholomew gazed at him in the darkness. ‘I do not think that is very likely …’ he began.
Simeon gave him a shove that all but sent him into the murky, sluggish waters of the Ditch, then tore off towards the guardhouse, yelling at the top of his lungs. Bartholomew regained his balance and began to trot along the top of the slippery bank, keeping his eyes glued on the dark shape that was being propelled steadily away from him.
‘You cannot escape, Caumpes!’ he shouted, knowing that Caumpes was very likely to escape if he reached the river before Simeon roused the guards.
‘Damn you, Bartholomew!’ yelled Caumpes, rowing furiously. ‘Everything was beginning to come right until you and that fat monk interfered.’
‘Stop!’ yelled Bartholomew. ‘You are a killer and you will not go free.’
Caumpes’s bitter laughter verged on the hysterical. ‘I am not the man you seek. I have killed no one.’
‘But you tried,’ shouted Bartholomew, thinking that if he could engage Caumpes in conversation, the man would have less breath for rowing. He could see Caumpes quite clearly in his boat, which was moving at a brisk walking pace along the still waters of the Ditch. It was only a few feet away from him, and if Bartholomew had not known about the treacherous currents that seethed in the seemingly sluggish waters and of the sucking mud and clinging weeds that lined its bottom, he might have considered leaping in and grabbing the skiff to prevent Caumpes’s escape. ‘That fire almost killed three people.’
In the faint glow of the lamps from the gatehouse, Bartholomew could see Caumpes close his eyes in an agony of despair. ‘Stupid!’ he muttered. ‘It was a stupid thing to do.’
‘Where will you go?’ called Bartholomew, frantically searching for a topic that would slow Caumpes’s relentless advance towards the freedom of the river. ‘Your whole life is at Bene’t.’
For a moment, Caumpes faltered, and the rhythmic pull of oars in the water was interrupted.
‘Everything I have done was for the good of Bene’t,’ he said, his voice so low as to be all but indiscernible. ‘Tampering with the Michaelhouse scaffolding was for the good of Bene’t, so that the workmen would return to us and not waste their time on Runham’s cheap courtyard. And I became embroiled in all this just so that I could raise the money for our own buildings to be completed.’
‘Is that what all this is about?’ asked Bartholomew. ‘Money for buildings?’
‘Do not judge me, Bartholomew,’ cried Caumpes, agitated. ‘I love my College. I swore a vow of allegiance to it, and if that entails using my skills as a buyer and a seller of goods to greedy town merchants, then so be it.’
‘How can killing your colleagues be good for Bene’t?’
‘You are wrong about that,’ said Caumpes. ‘You will have to look elsewhere for your murderer.’
‘I do not believe you,’ said Bartholomew, but something in Caumpes’s quiet conviction disturbed him. He felt as though all the answers he and Michael had reasoned out were slipping away from him, and that there was a darker, more ruthless plan than Caumpes’s desperate attempts to protect a College whose petty rivalries and quarrels were tearing it apart.
They had almost reached the Trumpington Gate, and Bartholomew could hear Simeon’s exasperated yells as he argued with soldiers loath to leave their warm guardhouse on some wild-goose chase thought up by scholars. Bartholomew saw that Caumpes was going to slip past them, and that would be that. Once he was on the river, he would be free: he could head north to the mysterious, impenetrable wilderness of the Fens, or he could travel south towards London. Or he could just disappear into the myriad ancient ditches and waterways that surrounded the town and lie low for a day or two until the hue and cry had died down.
Bartholomew gazed at the little skiff with a feeling of helplessness. He glanced around quickly, to see if there were another boat he could use to give chase. There was nothing except a length of rope that lay coiled on the bank. He snatched it up and, keeping a grip on one end, hurled the other as hard as he could towards Caumpes. It landed squarely on the Bene’t man’s head before slithering harmlessly to the bottom of the boat. Contemptuously, Caumpes shoved it away from him, and then began rowing for all he was worth.
He was already past the guardhouse, and the infuriatingly slow figures that walked sedately towards the bridge would never stop him. Bartholomew hurled the rope a second time, feeling it catch on something. He heard Caumpes swear and scramble about to try to disentangle it. Bartholomew hauled with all his might, then stumbled backward as Caumpes managed to free it. Bartholomew threw it a third time, putting every last fibre of strength into hurling it as hard as he could, while the little boat bobbed farther and farther away from him.
Caumpes was ready, and caught the rope as it snaked towards him. Then, while Bartholomew was still off balance from the force of the throw, he jerked hard on his end, and the physician went tumbling down the bank and into the fetid waters of the Ditch below.
Bartholomew heard the exploding splash and felt the agonising chill of the Ditch as it soaked through his clothes. He spat the vile-tasting water from his mouth in disgust, kicking and struggling against the clinging mud and weeds that closed around his feet and legs. In the distance, he saw Caumpes’s boat move a little faster as it neared the stronger current of the river, and then it was gone.
‘Take my hand,’ instructed Simeon, slithering down the bank of the King’s Ditch to Bartholomew, who floundered and flapped like a landed fish. ‘Do not struggle, or we will never get you out. I saw a sheep drown here only last week.’
Bartholomew stopped struggling and reached out to grab Simeon’s hand, trying not to snatch at it and pull the Duke’s man into the water with him. The mincing courtier had surprising strength, and it was not long before Bartholomew was extricated from the weeds and mud of the King’s Ditch to stand dripping on the bank. For the second time that day, Bartholomew stank like a sewer.
‘When I said you should stop Caumpes, I did not mean you to dive in after him,’ said Simeon dryly. ‘He is not that important.’
‘He is a killer,’ said Bartholomew, teeth chattering uncontrollably.
‘Yes, he probably is,’ agreed Simeon. ‘But even so, it was foolish of you to jump into the water to stop him. I will track him down anyway.’
Bartholomew spat again, trying to clear his mouth of the revolting taste of sewage and refuse. He wondered whether he would fall victim to the intestinal diseases that plagued those of his patients who drank from it. The sulphurous taste made him think that people who preferred it to walking a short distance to one of the town’s wells were probably insane, and beyond anything he could do for them.