‘In a week, that might be immaterial,’ said Paul. ‘You might not be a member of Michaelhouse by then. But you must not let him force you to do something you do not want, Matthew. Fight him.’
A grey-robed lay-brother answered the door and ushered Paul inside. When the gate had closed behind them, the rage at Runham’s cavalier behaviour towards the old Franciscan began to boil inside Bartholomew again. Michael touched him on the shoulder.
‘Will you come with me to Mayor Horwoode’s house to see about this body he found? Then I will walk back to Michaelhouse with you. There have been outlaws in the town again, and it is not safe for a man to be alone.’
‘Master Runham only gave me permission to see Paul to the Friary,’ said Bartholomew bitterly. ‘What will he say if he learns I have disobeyed his order to return to the College immediately?’
‘He can say what he likes,’ said Michael indignantly. ‘But he will not know unless you tell him.’
‘I do not think I will be much use to you tonight,’ said Bartholomew. ‘I have had too much of that strong red wine.’
‘So have I,’ admitted Michael, although he did not appear to Bartholomew to be drunk. ‘But I never let that interfere with business. Come on.’
‘How could Runham do that to Paul?’ blurted Bartholomew angrily. ‘Paul has been a loyal College member for years.’
‘I will think of some appropriate way to repay him,’ vowed Michael. ‘He will not get away with this.’
‘Such as what?’
‘I am working on it,’ said Michael vaguely. ‘I need to think of a way to avenge myself on Langelee first. But when I turn my attentions on Runham, I will hit him where it hurts – his reputation and possibly his pocket. So, keep your fists to yourself until I have had time to devise a plan. I do not want him applying to the Chancellor to have your Fellowship annulled because you have deprived him of his teeth or broken his nose – much as he might deserve it.’
‘Runham may be right, you know,’ said Bartholomew as they walked. ‘It might be better if I resigned my Fellowship and concentrated on being a physician.’
‘That is arrant nonsense,’ said Michael brusquely, again scratching his bad arm. ‘You would never survive without your Fellow’s stipend. The few patients who pay you cannot subsidise the rest of your practice, and I cannot see you abandoning the poor to do horoscopes for the wealthy. And what about your teaching? You have always said it is important to train new physicians to replace the ones who died during the pestilence.’
‘If you keep aggravating your arm like that, you will end up with an infection,’ said Bartholomew, watching as the monk’s scratching became more and more furious. ‘Let me see.’
‘No,’ said Michael, pulling his arm away impatiently. ‘Here we are: Horwoode’s house.’
Horwoode’s home was one of the finest buildings in the town, with a red-tiled roof and a near-perfect plaster-wash of saffron yellow. It was surrounded by a large walled garden, the far end of which was bordered by the King’s Ditch. The walls were almost twice as high as Bartholomew stood tall, and he imagined it would not be an easy matter to climb over them.
‘This is a terrible shock,’ said Mayor Horwoode, as they waited for a servant to kindle a lamp. His mammoth wife, Gerta, was with him, and she put one of her substantial arms around his shoulders to warm him as he shivered in the chill of the night.
He was a man in early middle years, whose prematurely balding head was fringed with a circlet of bushy grey hair. As Mayor, he was reasonably successful, because he had a talent for delaying decisions for so long that they no longer needed to be made. But while people were grateful that plans to extend the Castle at the town’s expense had been shelved, they were concerned about delayed repairs to the Great Bridge and the postponement of dredging the festering open sewers in the High Street.
‘First Raysoun and now Wymundham,’ said Horwoode. ‘I still cannot believe it.’
‘You know them?’ asked Bartholomew, surprised that the town’s Mayor should stoop to a friendship with mere scholars.
‘We were acquainted,’ corrected Horwoode. ‘Besides being Mayor, I am also master of the Guild of St Mary, one of the two societies that founded Bene’t College. Raysoun and Wymundham were Fellows of Bene’t.’
‘How did Wymundham come to be in your garden?’ asked Michael. ‘Did you invite him there?’
‘I most certainly did not,’ said Horwoode indignantly. ‘I do not want scholars in my home. They are a slovenly, dirty brood – it must be from reading all those books.’
His wife cleared her throat meaningfully, and Horwoode seemed to realise that he was addressing two of the ‘slovenly, dirty brood’. He smiled, revealing a set of small white teeth, and did not seem to be in the slightest discomfited by his gaffe.
‘Here we are,’ he said cheerfully, as his servant finally managed to ignite the pitch on the torch. ‘Now I can show you Wymundham’s body.’
He took the light, and began to lead the way along narrow stone paths that wound between vegetable plots. At the beginning of winter they were mostly empty, with the exception of a few scraggly cabbages. The herb garden was full, though, brimming with sage, rosemary and mint, their rich scents mingling with the earthy aroma of a nearby compost heap.
Horwoode walked deeper into his domain, until Bartholomew began to wonder whether they were going to meet the King’s Ditch – the filthy, stinking canal that swung around the eastern side of the town in a great arc and formed part of its defences. No sooner had the thought passed through his mind when something loomed up out of the darkness in front of them. It was the great bank of the Ditch itself, heavily leveed to prevent flooding.
‘Here,’ said Horwoode, stopping at a shape on the ground. ‘This is him – John Wymundham.’
Bartholomew knelt beside the limp form, and saw that it was indeed the scholar who had been so distressed at the death of his colleague two days before. The body was damp from the evening dew, and the eyes were open and glassy. The mouth was agape, the tongue slightly swollen and dark, and a slight cut on one lip showed where a tooth had been broken. There was no other wound that Bartholomew could see – no stab marks or crushed skull or signs that Wymundham had been strangled – and he was not wet enough to have drowned.
‘How did you come to find him?’ asked Michael of Horwoode, while Bartholomew examined the body. ‘He is a long way from your house, and no rational man chooses to wander about in gardens after dark.’
Horwoode regarded him oddly. ‘Well, I do, as a matter of fact. I like the peace of these grounds and the solitude they offer – no step-children whining at my heels or townsmen wanting favours. I met Henry Tangmer, the Guildmaster of Corpus Christi, earlier today. He is refusing to donate more funds for Bene’t’s buildings, and it was not a congenial encounter. I walked down here after he had left, to let the peace of the garden soothe my ragged temper.’
‘When was this?’ asked Michael.
‘Perhaps an hour ago,’ said Horwoode. ‘I sent for your beadles immediately. Wymundham is a scholar and so his death is the concern of the proctors, rather than the Sheriff. It gave me quite a fright stumbling over a corpse in the dark, I can tell you!’
‘When was the last time you came to the bottom of the garden?’ enquired Michael. ‘I ask only so I can ascertain how long the body has been lying here.’
‘About three days ago,’ said Horwoode. ‘No one else in my household uses the garden in the winter, so questioning them is unlikely to help you, although you are welcome to try.’
There was something puzzling about the body in front of him, and Bartholomew struggled to control his wine-befuddled wits to concentrate. He was sure Wymundham had died because he had been unable to breathe – the blueness of his face and the swollen tongue attested to that. The physician climbed unsteadily to the top of the bank and looked around. There was no evidence of a struggle, and there was nothing there that Wymundham could have used to suffocate himself.