‘Perhaps you should go and lie down,’ began Suttone nervously, evidently deciding that the College could do without a madman on the loose at that precise moment.
Clippesby waved a dismissive hand. ‘Later. What happened here? Has the whole north wing collapsed?’
‘Michael!’ whispered Bartholomew, who was still staring at the crushed shell that had been the monk’s chamber. ‘He was in the building. I heard him on the stairs.’
‘Then we need to fetch him out,’ shouted Langelee, darting forward and beginning to scramble through the wreckage.
The carpenter Robert de Blaston tried to haul him back. ‘No, not yet! It is not safe. Wait until it has settled.’
Langelee shook him off, and, oblivious to the danger to himself, continued to clamber across the dusty rubble to where the door to Michael’s staircase had been located. Finally recovering his wits, Bartholomew followed his example, grazing hands and knees in his desperation to reach the monk.
‘No!’ cried Blaston, advancing a few steps to snatch at Bartholomew’s tabard. ‘Your weight might bring more of it down. Wait until we are able to assess it properly.’
He watched helplessly as Bartholomew tugged himself free, and he and Langelee picked their way through broken spars, smashed tiles and endless tangles of rope.
‘I said you were working too fast,’ yelled Langelee furiously, casting an accusing glower over his shoulder at the carpenter. ‘And now look what has happened.’
Bartholomew stepped on a timber that was poorly balanced and it collapsed, sending him sliding down in another explosion of dust. Choking and gagging, Langelee proffered a meaty hand to haul him up.
He was not the only one coughing. From somewhere deep inside the wreckage, Bartholomew could hear Michael.
‘Brother? Where are you?’ he yelled.
‘Sitting on the stairs in the hallway,’ the monk shouted back. ‘Has the scaffolding fallen? It is pitch black in here and I cannot see a thing.’
‘Thank God!’ breathed Suttone, coming to join them. ‘For a moment, I feared the worst.’
‘Are you hurt?’ called Bartholomew.
‘No,’ said Michael. ‘I was just coming to help you with that pair of ruffians when there was a crash and everything went dark. The exit is blocked, so I will wait in my room for you to excavate it.’
‘You do not have a room, Brother,’ said Langelee. ‘The roof was smashed when the scaffolding fell. Stay where you are and wait for us to reach you.’
‘Well, just how long will that be?’ came Michael’s peeved tones. ‘I have better things to do than to sit around on dark staircases, you know.’
Bartholomew exchanged a grin of relief with Langelee and Suttone. There was nothing wrong with the monk if he was able to complain. The physician yielded to Blaston’s persistent tugs and moved away from the wreckage, allowing him and his workmate Adam de Newenham to decide the best way to untangle the mess and free Michael. While the two carpenters stood together arguing and planning in loud, important voices, Bartholomew sat on the steps to the hall and rested his arms on his knees. Across the courtyard, he could hear Kenyngham taking a roll-call, ensuring that no one but Michael was unfortunate enough to have been caught in the collapse.
He looked around the College, as if seeing it for the first time, gazing up at the black silhouettes against the sky, and at the faint golden gleams of candles and firelight that filtered through badly fitting window shutters. Langelee came to sit next to him, regarding the wreckage with a shake of his head.
‘I think your room and medical store survived, but anything you left on the windowsill will be destroyed, and there will be dust everywhere – although I see you left the shutters closed, which will help. Poor Michael’s chamber is a lost cause, though. Did he own anything valuable?’
‘Probably,’ said Bartholomew tiredly. ‘I do not know. We did not discuss that kind of thing.’
‘You sound like Father William,’ said Langelee disapprovingly. ‘There is nothing wrong with possessing a few worldly goods to render life a little more tolerable, you know.’
‘It was good of you to risk yourself to help Michael,’ said Bartholomew, recalling the philosopher’s wild scramble through the wreckage. He wondered whether Michael would have done the same for Langelee, and quickly concluded that the answer was definitely no.
‘Guilt,’ said Langelee.
Bartholomew stared at him uncomprehendingly.
Langelee sighed. ‘You were right: I should not have mentioned the Oxford business to prevent Michael from standing as Master. Unsavoury though it is to have dealings with that place, it was unfair of me to have used it against him.’
‘I studied at Oxford,’ said Bartholomew. ‘I do not understand why everyone has taken against it so. It is bigger than Cambridge, so there are more fights, but it has an undeniable atmosphere of learning and scholarship. Some of the best minds in Christendom are there.’
It was Langelee’s turn to gaze. ‘You are an Oxford man? Well, that explains a lot about you,’ he said rudely. ‘I thought you learned your leeching in Paris.’
‘That was later. You realise that Michael will not readily forgive you for destroying his chance of becoming Master? He cannot stand even now that Runham is dead, because your accusations still hang over him.’
‘But I just saved his life,’ Langelee pointed out. ‘We are even again.’
Bartholomew was certain Michael would not agree, and was equally certain that at some point in the future, Langelee would pay dearly for his error of judgement in thwarting Michael’s ambitions.
‘So, what were you yelling about just before this happened?’ asked Langelee, changing the subject. ‘Did you see the scaffolding about to fall? I heard you howling at the top of your voice when the whole lot crumbled.’
‘There were two men in the College whom I did not recognise,’ said Bartholomew, not sure what else he could say about the mysterious cloaked figures who had fled when he challenged them.
Langelee regarded him askance. ‘It is not a crime for people to visit us, Bartholomew. I had a couple of guests myself, as it happened. They left just before the scaffolding collapsed, so it was probably them you hollered at.’
‘Really?’ asked Bartholomew, his mind whirling. ‘Who were they?’
‘Simekyn Simeon from Bene’t and one of his College’s porters – a man called Osmun. Simeon and I have known each other for years; he is in the service of the Duke of Lancaster and I met him often when I worked for the Archbishop of York. It was he who invited me to Bene’t last week, so that I could meet the Duke.’
Bartholomew stared at him. Could it be possible that the two Bene’t men had done something to make the scaffolding collapse, perhaps to spite Michaelhouse for poaching its labourers? Was it Simeon and Osmun who Bartholomew had grabbed as they tried to leave? It could have been – as far as he could tell in the dark, they were about the right size and shape.
But surely it would have been somewhat brazen, not to mention risky, for the two Bene’t men to sabotage Michaelhouse while visiting Langelee? Bartholomew rubbed his head. There was Clippesby, too: he had entered the College just after the two intruders had left, claiming to be returning from Raysoun’s grave. Had he merely thrown off his cloaked disguise and re-entered the College as himself, pretending to be as shocked by the incident as everyone else?
Or was the collapse merely an accident? Langelee was not the first to observe that the scaffolding had been thrown up in too great a hurry, while the carpenters Blaston and Newenham did not seem surprised that the whole thing had come tumbling down around their ears. Embarrassed and annoyed, but not surprised.