‘But I do not like horses,’ he objected. ‘They smell of manure and rotten straw. And I am not keen on the way they slobber on your hands when you try to feed them.’
She gazed at him before releasing a raucous peal of laughter. The monks’ indignation increased, and they marched down the nave towards the west door. The vagrant snored on, and the clerk finished packing away the meagre tools of his trade and followed the monks, smiling at the unrestrained guffaws that echoed around the church. Bartholomew was not sure what Adela found so amusing.
‘They do smell,’ she said, when she had finally brought her mirth under control. ‘But so do people. And as for slobbering, all I can say is that you must have met some damned strange nags in your time. But I did not come to talk to you about horses, pleasant though that would be. I came to tell you about the dead friar at Ovyng Hostel. Matilde told me you were looking into it.’
‘Matilde?’ asked Bartholomew curiously. ‘How do you know her?’
‘Irrelevant,’ said Adela. ‘But the day Brother Patrick died–’
‘You are not one of the sisters, are you?’ he asked, unable to see many men wanting to romp with the energetic, mannish Adela, but knowing there was no accounting for taste.
She laughed again, hard and long, wiping the tears from her eyes as she did so. Bartholomew had not meant to be so outspoken, and was glad she had not taken offence at his blunt and impertinent question. He was tired, and knew he needed to pull himself together if he did not want inadvertently to insult someone else.
‘Really, Matthew!’ she gasped when she could speak.
‘Do you really think my father would allow me to run with the women of the night? He is a town burgess and the Master of the Guild of Corpus Christi – a respectable and influential man. I know he is more lenient with me than most parents would be, but there are limits.’
‘So how do you know Matilde, then?’
‘You do her an injustice if you think the “sisters” are her only interest.’
‘The birthing forceps,’ said Bartholomew, aware of their reassuring weight in his medical bag. ‘She said you helped her to design them.’
‘I did,’ said Adela. ‘I showed her the pair I use to ease foals from their mothers on occasion. But I also know her because she distributes food to the poor every Thursday afternoon, and I sometimes help with the odd donation of bread or meat.’
‘I did not know she did that,’ said Bartholomew.
‘There is a lot you do not know about her,’ replied Adela. ‘But unless you shut up and listen, you will not know what I have to tell you, either.’
‘Very well. Go on, then.’
‘It is about the death of that Franciscan – Brother Patrick. What I have to tell you occurred on the same day that I met you and Edith in the Market Square, when your sister told me she liked my favourite brown dress. Do you remember?’
‘Yes,’ said Bartholomew warily, recalling that he had been concerned that Adela would know that a compliment was not what Edith had intended.
‘I waited for a while – the friars always drop the price of their rat poison at sunset – and then I went to collect my horse, which I had tethered outside this church. I had to leave him here, because there was absolutely nowhere else. I told you finding somewhere to leave a horse is such a problem in Cambridge–’
‘Brother Patrick?’ prompted Bartholomew.
‘Well, I was just walking through the churchyard to collect the nag – it was Horwoode, if you remember him, the beast with the thin legs? – when I saw a Franciscan friar come racing from the church all white-faced and shocked-looking. He was running so blindly that he collided with me, and all but took a tumble in the mud.’
Bartholomew found it amusing and not entirely surprising that Adela seemed to have weathered the impact far better than had the friar: it had been he who had almost fallen, not her.
She put her hands on her hips and looked disgusted. ‘He ran off up Shoemaker Lane without uttering the most basic of apologies, as if the Devil himself were on his heels. Naturally, I was curious to know what had provoked such a reaction.’
‘Naturally,’ said Bartholomew. ‘So, what did you do?’
‘I came in here, to see what had frightened him. Men can be a bit feeble at times, and so I was anticipating that he had seen a spider or a mouse or some such thing, and had taken flight. But instead I saw a group of scholars standing at the high altar.’
She seized his arm in a grip that had tamed the wildest of horses, and hauled him to the spot where the gathering of scholars had allegedly taken place. Bartholomew was not sure where her involved tale was leading.
‘Some people would claim that insects and small rodents have a lot in common with scholars,’ he said, rubbing his arm where her fingers had pinched.
‘Very true,’ she agreed with a wheezy chuckle, positioning him at the low rail that separated the sanctuary from the main body of the church. ‘These scholars stood in a line along this bar, as you and I are standing now.’
‘But why should this friar – whom I assume you think was Patrick – find a group of scholars so terrifying?’ asked Bartholomew. ‘He was a scholar himself. He would not feel the need to flee from them.’
‘When I entered the church – in none too good a temper, I can tell you – they immediately started all that Latin muttering that they think passes for praying. And they quickly closed ranks, standing so that I would be unable to see past them.’
‘Is that it?’ asked Bartholomew, not sure why she considered that her tale would be of interest to him. ‘And how do you know this friar was Patrick anyway, and not someone else?’
‘Because I went and had a look at his body after he died,’ said Adela promptly. ‘He was laid out in St Mary’s Church, as though his colleagues at Ovyng Hostel grieved for him, although I am sure they do not.’
‘Why do you say that?’
‘Matilde has already told you that he had a reputation as a gossip. No one likes a tale-teller.’
‘But what induced you to go inspecting corpses in the first place?’
She sighed. ‘I wanted to make sure Ovyng’s murdered friar and the man who collided with me were one and the same before I passed along my intelligence to you.’
‘Well, thank you,’ said Bartholomew politely.
She gave him a vigorous slap on the shoulder that made him wince. ‘But I have not finished my story yet. I am saving the best part for last.’
‘Then what is it?’ asked Bartholomew, massaging his shoulder, and wondering how many more thumps and pinches he would have to endure before her tale was told.
‘These scholars all closed ranks at the rail, thinking that they would obscure my view of the altar. There were five of them, and they were all from that Devil’s den – Bene’t College.’
‘So, Bene’t scholars frightened Brother Patrick the day he died?’ asked Bartholomew.
‘Yes they did, but I still have not told you the best bit. You will keep interrupting, Matthew! They closed ranks, as I said, but I am a tall woman, and I was able to see over them. What I saw was a leg – the leg of a man who lay on the ground. Perhaps a dead man’s leg.’
Chapter 9
BARTHOLOMEW GAZED AT ADELA IN THE DARK church, and tried to match the story she had told him to the details he had already learned about the death of Brother Patrick. He wondered whether she was trying to side-track him, to distract his attention from the fact that she had claimed an intimacy with him that did not exist. If so, it was a desperate measure.
‘So, what did you do when you saw this leg – possibly that of a corpse – that the Bene’t Fellows were evidently trying to hide from you?’ he asked.