Bartholomew gazed blankly at him.
‘My fourpence,’ repeated Runham impatiently. ‘If you recall, I fined you for your unwarranted lateness at church this morning. I told you to pay it after breakfast, but you defied me in that, so I will have it now.’
‘Will you fine me, too?’ demanded Michael hoarsely from the bed. ‘I missed mass totally.’
‘You had an excuse,’ said Runham, although the tone of his voice suggested that he considered it a poor one. ‘But Bartholomew did not. Give me the fourpence now, or I shall be obliged to fine you an additional fourpence for late payment of a forfeit.’
Bartholomew found the correct change. ‘Wash it before you handle it too much,’ he advised, as he slapped the coins into the Master’s upturned palm. ‘It came from a patient with a fatal contagion, and I would not like to see the disease strike you, too.’
He was maliciously gratified to see Runham blanch and hastily drop the money into his hat. The new Master scrubbed his fingers vigorously on the side of his tabard as he left, and through the window Bartholomew saw him running to the lavatorium once he reached the yard.
‘That must be one of the first times he has ever voluntarily washed his hands,’ said Bartholomew, turning to grin at Michael.
‘Was it true?’ asked Michael. ‘Did the coins really come from a patient with a contagion?’
Bartholomew shook his head. ‘If I thought a contagion might be carried on them, I would hardly keep them in my purse. I am not keen to have Runham as Master, but I am not ready to kill myself over it.’
Michael gave a weak grin. ‘Either you have been practising your lie-telling, or I am more ill than you are letting on. You had me convinced!’
Bartholomew smiled, and gazed across the brown mud of the courtyard below.
In the evening, Gray came to ask Bartholomew to tend a sick stable boy in Agatha’s quarters. The lad was afflicted with an ailment that Gray claimed he could not diagnose. The physician sat on the straw mattress and took the boy’s hand in his, noting that the pulse was strong and steady and the skin cool and dry, even though he appeared to be insensible. There was a small bruise on one leg, presumably from some childish game of rough and tumble, but nothing else seemed amiss. Bartholomew sat back, and stared thoughtfully at the thin face with its tightly closed eyes.
‘It is all right, Roger,’ he said kindly. ‘You will not be thrown out of Michaelhouse with nowhere to go like the other servants. I will have a word with my brother-in-law and I am sure he will find you something.’
Roger’s eyes flickered open. ‘Do you promise?’
Bartholomew nodded, and left him to the relieved ministrations of Agatha, who bared her terrifying teeth to indicate pleasure. Where a normal mortal might have quailed at the sight of the fangs honed to a primeval sharpness bearing down on him, Roger just smiled with a child’s easy acceptance of the peculiar.
When Agatha had agreed to undergo some beauty treatment at Deynman’s hands earlier that summer, she had been lucky that Bartholomew had discovered what was in progress and had prevented matters going further. And Deynman was lucky to be alive, given Agatha’s fury when a mirror revealed that the painful scrapings and grindings had not given her the pearly white smile she had been promised, but the uneven fangs of a demon. Deynman had still not been forgiven for his crime, and even his slow wits sensed he needed to avoid unnecessary meetings with the laundress if he wanted to survive to become a physician.
Gray followed Bartholomew into the yard. ‘Runham told us Roger would be dead by this evening. He was wrong.’
‘Runham is not a physician,’ said Bartholomew tartly. ‘And neither will you be if you listen to men like him telling you about your own profession. Roger knew that as long as he pretended to be ill, Michaelhouse would not cast him into the streets. It did not take much to work that out.’
‘How is Brother Michael? asked Gray, deftly changing the subject away from his misdiagnosis. ‘I hope you have managed to keep Runham away from him!’
‘I certainly have,’ said Bartholomew fervently.
‘Will he live? Brother Michael, I mean.’
‘Yes,’ said Bartholomew, surprised by the question. ‘He is not that ill.’
‘I thought his condition must be serious, because you have spent so long with him today,’ said Gray. His eyes grew round with feigned innocence. ‘I do not suppose it is providing you with an excuse to miss the misery of meals in the hall under the eagle eyes of Runham, is it?’
Bartholomew wondered whether it was as obvious to Runham himself. ‘Michael does have a fever,’ he said vaguely. ‘And I confess I am surprised by the speed at which the infection has spread.’
‘Fat men succumb easier to fevers than thin ones,’ said Gray wisely. ‘Master Saddler was fat, and look what happened to him. His leg rotted, and even Robin of Grantchester’s delicate surgery could not save him.’
Amused by Gray’s statement of ‘fact’, Bartholomew trudged back across the sticky morass of the yard to Michael’s room. The two sombre Benedictines who shared the room had moved to the now-vacant servants’ quarters, and had prepared a straw mattress so that the physician could sleep next to his patient. Thoughtfully, one of them even left a candle stub, so that Bartholomew would be able to see what he was doing if Michael needed help during the night.
Outside, the sounds of evening gradually faded to sounds of night. The lively chatter of students in the yard was replaced by the soft murmur of scholars in their rooms, and the clank and clatter from the kitchens was eventually stilled to the occasional sharp crack as the fire spat. Bartholomew lit the candle and tried to work on his treatise on fevers, until he fell asleep at the table.
By the following day, Michael was essentially better, but slept most of the time and had lost his appetite. To Bartholomew’s surprise, he even declined some of his favourite delicacies from the kitchen. He was not too ill to remind Bartholomew of his promise to visit Simekyn Simeon at Bene’t College, however, and insisted that the physician went there that morning. Bartholomew did not want to become embroiled in the insalubrious affairs of another College, recalling that the murdered Wymundham had told him he would be better not knowing what they were, and he took his time readying himself to go out.
At last he could delay no longer, and began to walk slowly across the yard to the gate. He had taken no more than a few steps when he saw a man wearing the distinctive blue tabard of a Bene’t scholar striding towards him. From under the tabard protruded a pair of shapely legs clad in striking yellow and green striped hose. Bartholomew knew very well that neither they, nor the bright gold-coloured hat that sat at a jaunty angle on the man’s head, were part of the prescribed uniform of Bene’t, and was astonished that the Master allowed one of his Fellows to flaunt the rules so flagrantly.
The man greeted him cheerfully. He was younger than Bartholomew, and wore his long dark hair in elaborate ringlets of the kind currently in favour at the King’s court. He was rather more plump than a man of his age should have been, indicating that he had not been eating College fare for very long, and he had the kind of glowing complexion that more likely resulted from a carefree existence of hunting and falconry than of a life spent in study.
‘My name is Simekyn Simeon, Fellow of Bene’t College,’ he said, favouring Bartholomew with an impressively courtly bow. ‘I know it is an unlikely appellation, but it is the one with which my parents saw fit to encumber me.’
‘Matthew Bartholomew,’ said Bartholomew, grateful that he did not have to go through life with a name better suited to a court jester.