Harold regarded him warily. ‘Yes, why? I hope you are not going to tell me they are stolen. I bought them from Master Caumpes in good faith, and he has never sold me anything illegal before.’
‘He sells items like this to you regularly?’
‘Yes,’ said Harold. ‘Why do you ask?’
‘No reason,’ said Bartholomew. ‘I just saw him coming out of your shop a few moments ago, and I wondered what scholar could afford to buy jewellery from the best goldsmith in the town.’
Harold smiled. ‘You would be surprised, Doctor. Not all your colleagues are as penniless as you. But Caumpes brings me items to sell or to melt down occasionally, and has done for years. I admit I was wary at first – we gold merchants are often offered pilfered goods, and I would lose my licence if my Guild thought I was doing anything illicit. I took what he had offered me to Sheriff Tulyet and to other members of the Guild, but nothing was identifiable as stolen.’
‘Does that mean they are not?’
Harold smiled again at Bartholomew’s forthright question. ‘No, but I told Caumpes exactly what I was going to do, and he was quite happy for me to check them before making my purchase. Had they been dishonestly obtained, he would have demanded them back and approached another merchant.’
‘How much gold has he offered you?’
‘I do not think I should tell you Caumpes’s secrets, Doctor,’ said Harold. ‘But I have been doing business with him for years – since he decided to abandon his own career as a merchant and become a scholar instead. You know that the University does not pay well, and its scholars need something more than their stipends to keep body and soul together. Caumpes comes to me when and if he has items he thinks I might want. He trades spices to Master Mortimer the baker, too.’
‘Spices?’
Harold shrugged. ‘Pepper, cinnamon, saffron and so on. But over the last few days, it has been gold and pieces of jewellery that he has had to sell.’
Bartholomew was puzzled. How did Caumpes have access to such items? Had they belonged to Wymundham or Raysoun, and Bene’t was selling them and keeping the profits, rather than passing the dead scholars’ possessions to their next of kin? Unlike Harold, Bartholomew was certain Caumpes’s business could not be entirely honest, because of the furtive way he had approached and left the shop. Bartholomew decided he would pass the information to Michael, and then they could discuss how it fitted in with the Bene’t scholars’ deaths – if indeed it did.
He told Harold about the new medicine for his lungs, left him to his gold fumes, and started to walk back to Michaelhouse to resume work on his treatise on fevers. On the way, he met Matilde, who smiled shyly at him.
‘Did you read my message?’ he asked anxiously. ‘For some reason known only to herself, Adela Tangmer has announced that we are to marry, even though she did not see fit to ask me first.’
‘And I take it you would not have accepted her offer, if she had?’ asked Matilde.
Bartholomew laughed. ‘I do not think so! And I suspect she would not take me anyway. I do not know enough about horses to interest her.’
‘Well, I am glad. I confess I was shocked when I heard the news.’ She hesitated. ‘I do not suppose you still have my green ribbon, do you? It was extremely rude of me to hurl it at you after you had given it to me. I am sorry, and I would like it back.’
‘I gave it to Robert de Blaston for Yolande,’ said Bartholomew apologetically. ‘He said it would cheer her.’
‘It would,’ agreed Matilde, although disappointment was clear in her face. ‘Never mind. How are your various investigations proceeding: Brother Patrick of Ovyng Hostel, Wymundham and Raysoun of Bene’t College, and now Runham of Michaelhouse?’
‘Put like that, they form quite a list,’ he said. ‘And they are Brother Michael’s cases, not mine.’
‘But you always help him in such matters. He would not be nearly so successful without your help, despite the high opinion he holds of his own abilities.’
‘You have heard about Runham’s death, then?’ he asked.
She nodded. ‘How did he die? There are rumours that he died by his own hand, that he was so delighted with his ever-growing coffers that he had a fatal seizure, and that one of the scholars did away with him. Which is true?’
‘We do not know,’ he said, looking down at his feet so that she would not see he was lying.
‘Murdered, then,’ she said immediately.
‘We think so,’ he admitted reluctantly. ‘But please do not feed that into your information network just yet – at least not until we can narrow our list of suspects from virtually every man, woman and child in Cambridge.’
‘Runham was just as unpopular as his nasty cousin, Master Wilson,’ observed Matilde. ‘Did you know that during the Death, Wilson used to sneak out of Michaelhouse every night to visit his mistress, the Prioress of St Radegund’s Convent?’
‘I did know,’ said Bartholomew. ‘It was how he came to catch the plague in the first place. During the day he stayed in his room and refused to see anyone, but at night he must have believed the sickness lost some of its potency, because he visited the Prioress regularly.’
‘He was a strange man,’ said Matilde. ‘One night, I remember coming back very late from sitting with one of the sisters who was ill, and I saw him gliding through the streets like the Grim Reaper. Someone cried out to him, begging him to give last rites – Wilson was an ordained priest and he was wearing his priest’s habit.’
‘But he ignored the plea and continued on his way to his lover?’ asked Bartholomew, knowing Wilson to have been a man devoid of compassion, particularly where it posed a risk to himself.
To his surprise, Matilde shook her head. ‘The dying man was a rich merchant, who had been abandoned by his terrified family. He said Wilson could have all he could carry from the house, if he would grant absolution.’
‘And Wilson agreed?’ asked Bartholomew in astonishment. ‘After skulking in his room all day to avoid contamination, he then went into the house of a sick man who offered him money?’
Matilde nodded. ‘I was intrigued, and so I hid in the shadows to watch. Moments later – Wilson must have furnished a very fast absolution – he came out, so loaded down with silver plates and gold cups that he could barely walk. Then he staggered off in the direction of Michaelhouse.’
Bartholomew shook his head in disbelief. ‘I have always wondered how Wilson managed to contract the disease. I assumed he would have run through the streets to reach the convent, and declined contact with anyone. So now I know.’
‘According to the sisters, that was not the only time. You know what it was like – people were terrified of dying unabsolved, and were prepared to give a willing priest all they owned in this world to help them safely into the next. By all accounts, Wilson made a tidy profit from the sick, because he helped people like Adela Tangmer’s mother, Sheriff Tulyet’s sisters, and Mayor Horwoode’s first wife, who were all wealthy citizens.’
‘And Wilson then gave it to me to pay for his own tomb,’ mused Bartholomew. ‘How ironic!’
‘But enough of Wilson,’ said Matilde with a shudder. ‘Even now I find him a repellent character. What about these more recent deaths?’
‘Wymundham and Raysoun are buried, and although I know Wymundham’s death was no accident, I have no idea whether the same was true of Raysoun’s. Michael’s beadles have been visiting taverns every night to see what they might learn – about Patrick as well as the Bene’t men – but they have heard nothing.’
‘But I told you Patrick was a shameless gossip. You should investigate the people he gossiped about,’ suggested Matilde.
‘I tried doing that at his hostel,’ said Bartholomew. ‘But it led nowhere. Perhaps the beadles will have better luck.’