‘It has been a pleasure talking with you,’ said Adela, holding out a rough, calloused hand to him. ‘I hope we will be able to do business again some day.’
‘Right,’ said Bartholomew carefully, trying not to wince at what was one of the firmest grips he had ever encountered, and recalling that the last time he had shaken her hand, he had almost ended up accepting it in marriage, too.
The following day, life at Michaelhouse seemed almost back to normal. It was Sunday, so there were no workmen hammering and crashing, although a number of them had disobeyed the rule that no work was to be done on the Sabbath, and were surreptitiously performing small, unobtrusive tasks to ensure that they did not fall behind schedule.
On the way back from the church Bartholomew saw Mayor Horwoode, dressed in his finery as he walked to morning mass. The Mayor declined to acknowledge Bartholomew, although the youngest of his three step-daughters gave the physician a friendly wave. He hoped the chubby ten-year-old was not someone Edith had approached as a prospective wife.
In the High Street, a pedlar risked a heavy fine by selling his wares on the Sabbath. Bartholomew risked the same by purchasing a piece of green ribbon and arranging to have it delivered to Matilde’s home that morning.
Almost as soon as breakfast was over, he received a summons from the itinerants who lived in skin tents near the Castle, and was delighted to be presented with an opportunity to use his new birthing forceps. While the patient’s man looked on with a white face, Bartholomew successfully extracted a healthy baby before its mother laboured so long that she bled to death. Nevertheless, he spent the rest of the day in the chilly camp, to ensure that there were no complications. By the time he returned to Michaelhouse it was dark, and cooking fires were lit all over the town, so that the air was thick with a haze of smoke and smelled of burning wood and food. He coughed as the particles suspended in the night mist tickled the back of his throat, and wondered how the damp, foggy evenings affected those of his patients with lung diseases. He was certain the thick atmosphere at this time of night was not good for them.
He knocked at Michaelhouse’s gate, and waited for some moments before he remembered that Runham had dismissed the porters and that no one would answer his hammering. Assuming that someone would have locked the gate as dusk fell, he was wondering whether he might have to scale the walls, when it occurred to him to try the handle before attempting anything so energetic. He was surprised and not very impressed to discover that not only was the wicket gate unlocked, but that the great wooden door was not barred either. Cambridge was an uneasy town, and leaving the gates open after dark was tantamount to inviting an attack. Disgusted, he made a mental note to remind Kenyngham that students would have to act as guards until more porters could be hired.
He picked up one of the heavy bars and was manoeuvring it into place when he saw two scholars walking towards him, their hoods pulled over their heads to combat the evening chill. The hoods rendered them unrecognisable, and he assumed they were students intending to spend the night on the town. Well, they could give up that notion, he decided. While Runham might have been content to allow Michaelhouse students to frequent taverns – where they would inevitably fight with the townsfolk – by not employing porters to keep them in, Bartholomew was not prepared to risk it. As one of them reached out to open the wicket gate, Bartholomew grabbed his arm.
‘You can help me bar the gate, and then you will return to your rooms,’ he said curtly. ‘You know you are not supposed to leave the College at night.’
The pair exchanged a glance, and then one of them bent to pick up one end of the heavy wooden bar, indicating that Bartholomew should lift the other.
‘Who are you?’ asked Bartholomew, struggling with the timber. ‘I cannot see you in the dark. You had better not be Gray and Deynman.’
The bar went crashing to the ground so abruptly that Bartholomew lost his balance. Then the wicket gate was wrenched open, and the pair were away. With sudden clarity, the physician recalled another time when two scholars had emerged from Michaelhouse and disappeared into the darkness – when they had shoved him into the mud the night Runham became Master. Determined that they should not elude him a second time, he dived full length and managed to grab the cloak of the second of them. The scholar was jerked to a dead stop in his tracks as the garment tightened around his throat, and then began frantically tugging to try to free it.
Bartholomew yelled at the top of his voice, aiming to attract the attention of the other Michaelhouse Fellows. Distantly, he heard his colleagues, irritably demanding to know why someone was making such an ungodly row in the courtyard. Among them was Michael’s voice, although that stopped the instant the monk became aware that some kind of tussle was in progress, and Bartholomew could hear his footsteps thundering down the wooden stairs that led from his room.
Just when Bartholomew was confident he could maintain his precarious hold on the student’s cloak long enough to allow the others to reach him, there was a deep groan that seemed to shudder through the very ground on which he lay. The voices of his colleagues faltered and then fell silent. The scholar Bartholomew held hauled at his cloak with increasing desperation.
And then there was an almighty crash, louder than anything Bartholomew had ever heard before, and the ground shivered and shook. A great cloud of dust billowed over him the same instant that the cloaked scholar finally freed the hem of his cloak. The physician glimpsed the soles of his shoes as the student fled, and the wicket door slammed closed behind him as he made good his escape. Meanwhile, small pieces of timber and plaster began pattering down like rain, and Bartholomew instinctively covered his head with his arms.
He clambered to his feet, coughing and staggering in the swirling dust. For several moments he was completely disorientated, but then the dust began to clear and he could see that the entire mass of scaffolding which had been erected over the north wing had collapsed, tearing with it part of the roof and all the gutters.
Had it been chance that two mysterious strangers were in Michaelhouse just as the scaffolding had fallen? Were they the same pair that he had encountered the night that Runham had been elected Master? Bartholomew felt certain that they were.
‘Where is Michael?’ came Kenyngham’s worried voice from the crowd of scholars who milled about excitedly in the yard. ‘He was in his room when I last saw him.’
With growing horror, Bartholomew saw that the eastern end of the north wing – where Michael’s room was located – had been seriously damaged by the collapsing timber. And Bartholomew had quite clearly heard Michael’s distinctive footsteps on the stairs moments before the whole thing had fallen!
Bartholomew gazed aghast at the rubble of Michael’s room, his stomach churning as his disbelieving mind tried to make sense out of what had happened. Dust still swirled in hazy clouds, and somewhere there was a second crash as yet more staves and supports tumbled to the ground. Scholars raced from their chambers, the hall and the conclave and stood in the yard in shock. A few workmen, still illicitly working as the Sabbath light faded, joined them, and stood next to the scholars, white-faced at the damage and the delay it would cause.
‘What has happened?’ cried Clippesby, as he dashed into the College from the lane. ‘I heard that terrible noise all the way from the High Street! I have been visiting Master Raysoun at Bene’t.’
Suttone shot him an anxious glance. ‘Raysoun is dead,’ he said warily.
‘Yes,’ replied Clippesby, as if it were obvious. ‘But the dead like to be visited, and to be asked their opinions about this and that. It helps pass the time of Eternity for them, and I often stop at Raysoun’s tomb to hear what he has to say.’