‘I heard what he said, Master Runham. I distinctly recall him claiming that he deliberately created a paltry tomb for the martyred Wilson, and he gleefully admitted to teaching his students how to heal using the Devil’s wiles.’
‘Well, he did not go quite that far,’ said Runham, regarding the Dominican uneasily. ‘But you seem to have the right idea. Remember what you heard, Clippesby – I might need your testimony one day. And now our scholars are arriving, and I must ready myself to take my first mass as Master of Michaelhouse.’
As he watched Runham preparing himself for the service, Bartholomew wondered why the lawyer had suddenly turned so hostile. Although they had never liked each other, they had always been polite, and Bartholomew had even treated Runham free of charge on a number of occasions for the unpleasant flaking of the skin that seemed to run in his family. Wilson had been similarly afflicted. But now he was Master, Runham had dispensed with his veneer of civility, and had become openly antagonistic. Was his rudeness simply a ploy to induce Bartholomew to resign his Fellowship, so that Michaelhouse would no longer offer the study of medicine to its students? Or did Runham hold a genuine grudge against Bartholomew for not creating his cousin a suitably monstrous tomb?
The physician sighed and looked up at the ceiling, just beginning to glitter as the early morning light started to catch the gilt. He had the distinct feeling that his existence was about to change dramatically, and he knew he was powerless to do anything about it.
Still immersed in his reverie, it was halfway through the mass when Bartholomew realised that Michael was not in the church. He was not unduly worried, because the monk often missed services when he was engaged in University business, although he hoped there had not been yet another death to claim the Senior Proctor’s attention. There were already four corpses for him to provide verdicts on: Raysoun, who had tumbled from the Bene’t scaffolding; his friend Wymundham, whose death so soon after Raysoun’s was an uncanny coincidence; Brother Patrick, stabbed in his hostel’s garden; and Justus, still lying in a rough parish coffin as he awaited the burial it was Runham’s duty to provide.
Bartholomew glanced to the porch where Justus’s body lay covered by a piece of coarse brown sackcloth. As a suicide, Justus would not be buried in the churchyard, but would be relegated to unconsecrated land. Since the plague, the number of suicides among the poor had risen: many preferred to kill themselves quickly than suffer a lingering death by starvation. In fact, there were so many of them that a plot had been provided near the Barnwell Causeway. It was a desolate place hemmed in by scrubby marshland vegetation, and was prone to attack by wild animals. Unless Runham used his influence, it would be Justus’s final resting place, too.
Whatever Bartholomew might think about Runham as a man, he had to admit that his masses were impressive. The lawyer injected a note of grandeur into his phrases, accentuated by the natural pomposity of his voice, so that the words seemed to take on a new and deeper meaning. And he had brought beautiful patens and chalices with him when he had first been admitted to Michaelhouse, along with a dazzlingly white altar cloth and some scented candles.
Not all Michaelhouse Fellows were in a state to admire Runham’s exquisite performance, however. Some of them clutched their stomachs, and most were white-faced, suggesting that Bartholomew had not been the only one to have imbibed too much Widow’s Wine the previous night. William looked particularly grim; his heavy face was unshaven and there were red rims around his watery eyes. Even Kenyngham, seldom a man to over-indulge, seemed subdued and pasty-faced.
Michael’s choir – minus their leader – was a sorry affair. Missed cues, flat notes and indistinct words were the least of their problems. Knowing they had performed poorly, they shuffled their feet and hung their heads as the mass came to an end.
Michael was fiercely devoted to his singers, who afforded him moments of great pleasure and spells of agonised embarrassment in more or less equal measure. It was the largest assembly of musicians in Cambridge, and owed its size entirely to the fact that the College was in the habit of recompensing participants with bread and ale each Sunday. It comprised local men and boys with a smattering of co-opted scholars that justified it being called the Michaelhouse Choir. Master Kenyngham had possessed the good sense to understand that the choir helped to promote peaceful relations between the College and the town, and that the variable and unpredictable quality of the music was something that just had to be endured for the sake of concord. A glance at Runham’s grim face, however, told Bartholomew that the new Master did not intend to follow Kenyngham’s example of leniency and tolerance.
‘Your performance today was a disgrace,’ he announced to the assembled singers, once the mass was over. ‘I have never heard such a miserable sound purporting to be music. From now on, your services are not required. Those of you who are Michaelhouse scholars will be under the leadership of Clippesby – the new Fellow of music and astrology.’
Clippesby stepped forward amidst gasps of disbelief. Michael had been master of the choir for more than a decade, and had devoted a huge amount of his spare time to making it what it was – a good deal better than it might have been.
‘These people have served the College faithfully for many years,’ said Kenyngham with quiet reason, taking Runham by the arm. ‘We cannot dismiss them now.’
Angrily, Runham shook himself free. ‘You are no longer Master, and in future please keep your opinions to yourself. I have made my decision: the choir is disbanded.’
‘But Brother Michael has been teaching us a Te Deum,’ objected old Dunstan the riverman, his jaws working rhythmically over his toothless gums. ‘We have been practising for weeks, so that we will be ready to sing it at Christmas.’
‘Then you should have considered that before you embarrassed the College with your dismal racket today,’ snapped Runham.
‘But it was only because Brother Michael was not here,’ protested Isnard, the burly bargeman who liked to think he sang bass. ‘We are better when he conducts us.’
‘Michael is unreliable and too wrapped up in his other interests,’ said Runham. ‘That is why I am absolving him of the responsibility and conferring it on Clippesby. Michael is not a musician in any case – he is a monk with a smattering of theology, who spends most of his time politicking with the Chancellor and the Bishop, and meddling in affairs that do not concern him – even to the extent of fraternising with Oxford scholars, if Langelee is to be believed. Where is he this morning, anyway?’
No one knew, and Runham, raising an imperious hand to quell the cacophony of questions and recriminations that rang through the nave from the dismissed choir, prepared to lead his black-garbed scholars back to Michaelhouse for breakfast. Bartholomew did not join them. He wanted to remain in the church for a while, to let the silence and solitude calm his temper before he was obliged to spend more time in the company of the new Master. There was also the fact that Runham would be expecting Bartholomew’s fine of fourpence and the physician was determined to make him wait for it.
‘But what about our bread and ale for today?’ cried Dunstan in a quivery, distressed voice. ‘It is all I will get – my daughter cannot spare me food on Sundays, when all her children are home.’
‘I cannot, in all conscience, squander College resources by paying for inferior services,’ said Runham pompously, processing out of the church with his scholars streaming behind him. His voice came back distantly. ‘There will be no bread and ale for you today – or ever again.’
Pandemonium erupted as the outraged choristers began to argue among themselves, voices raised in accusation and recrimination. Then Isnard became aware of Bartholomew, still standing in the chancel.