She began to move majestically along the High Street, tossing a bundle of belongings to Walter, who was obliged to carry it for her.
‘If she is being reinstated, you can take me, too,’ Walter whined, oblivious to the fact that a porter who slept on duty was not in the same league as a laundress who ran the domestic side of the College with ruthless efficiency. ‘Please! That Osmun is a brute. He will kill me if I stay at Bene’t!’
‘Osmun is an animal,’ agreed Agatha, walking next to Bartholomew. ‘He and Simeon dreamed up such a vile story about poor de Walton. And Caumpes and Heltisle believed every word of it.’
‘What are you talking about?’ asked Michael. ‘De Walton has leprosy, and is currently on his way to a lazar hospital in Norwich.’
‘Well, maybe he does have leprosy,’ said Agatha. ‘I thought he looked a bit peaky. But he is no more travelling to Norwich than you are. That is a story fabricated by the Duke of Lancaster’s henchman, so that Heltisle and Caumpes will not be able to see him any more.’
‘So, where is de Walton?’ asked Michael, trying not to show his bewilderment at Agatha’s annoyingly piecemeal story. ‘And why should Simeon want to keep him from the others?’
‘Simeon wants de Walton away from the others, because Bene’t is full of bitterness and rivalry,’ said Agatha knowledgeably. ‘It is really no different from Michaelhouse. And he has the poor man imprisoned in one of the outbuildings down by the King’s Ditch. I saw Simeon taking him there yesterday, after de Walton was supposed to have gone to Norwich.’
‘Will you tell us how to find it?’ asked Michael.
‘Now?’ asked Agatha calmly, preparing to make her mighty bulk change direction.
‘We will go when it is dark,’ said Michael. ‘Tonight.’
It was only noon, and there was a long time to go before Michael’s midnight raid on the shed in Bene’t College’s grounds. Michael went to question his beadles yet again about their nightly intelligence-gathering in the taverns. Meanwhile, Bartholomew was anxious about the amount of time that had been squandered by the building work and Runham’s death, and was keen to remedy the matter by organising a debate for his undergraduates. But none of his students were anywhere to be found in Michaelhouse, and with no Cynric to round them up, Bartholomew was obliged to hunt them down himself. With ill grace, feeling that trawling the taverns for his truants was a waste of an afternoon, he set out.
His first port of call was the King’s Head, a busy establishment near the Ditch with a reputation for brawls. The deafening roar of drunken voices stopped the instant he entered, and he realised that he had forgotten to remove the tabard that marked him as a scholar. While scholars regularly patronised the King’s Head, they never did so wearing uniforms that proclaimed their academic calling. Eyes that glittered in the firelight regarded him with such hostile intent that he backed out quickly; to linger would mean an attack for certain.
As the door closed behind him, the bellow of conversation resumed, and he berated himself for being so careless. He took off his tabard, shoved it into the medicine bag he always wore looped over his shoulder, and began to walk towards the next inn on his list. He smiled to himself as he went: even the short spell he had spent inside the King’s Head told him that his students were not there, and that the reason they were not enjoying its dubious hospitality was probably because Ralph de Langelee was there. The burly philosopher had been sitting at a table at the far end of the tavern, drinking a jug of ale with a slim, neat man who looked as if he wished he were elsewhere.
Bartholomew turned from the High Street to Luthburne Lane, a dark, muddy street that ran along the back of Bene’t College, where a sign that dangled on a single hinge told that the run-down building to which it was attached was the Lilypot, an insalubrious inn with a reputation as a haunt for criminals and practising lawyers. Bartholomew was about to enter, when he saw a familiar figure drop lightly from the wall that ran along the rear of Bene’t, brush himself down and then walk jauntily in the direction of the King’s Ditch. It was Simekyn Simeon, and the Bene’t Fellow had not noticed Bartholomew standing in the gloomy portals of the Lilypot.
Curious as to what should induce the elegant courtier to jump over walls instead of using the front gate, like most law-abiding men, Bartholomew started to follow him, taking care to keep some distance between him and his quarry as Cynric had taught him to do. Simeon moved quickly and stealthily, casting quick, furtive glances behind him as he went. Bartholomew began to wonder whether any Fellow at Bene’t was able to walk around the town in a normal manner, given that he had personally observed Wymundham, Caumpes and now Simeon stealing about the streets.
Between Luthburne Lane and the King’s Ditch was a small area of pasture that the townsfolk used for grazing their cattle during the summer months. During the winter, it was a weed-infested wilderness lined with mature trees on one side, and the sturdy grey walls of the Hall of Valence Marie on the other. Simeon hurried to a small coppice of hawthorn trees, lifting his tabard so that it would not trail in the long grass. Bartholomew hoped the courtier had not worn his exquisite calfskin shoes, since generations of cows had browsed the area. An eloquent string of expletives and a slackening of pace as Simeon inspected his foot indicated that he had.
When he reached the prickly haven of the hawthorns, the Bene’t man glanced around him and, apparently satisfied that he had not been observed, lowered himself carefully on to a fallen tree-trunk and began to scrape at his shoe with a stick. Since Bartholomew was sure the fashionable Simeon had not forged his way through the foliage for some pleasurable exercise and that he was likely to be meeting someone, he skirted the thicket and climbed up the steep bank of the Ditch behind. Lying on his stomach, he found he could look down on Simeon but Simeon was unlikely to see Bartholomew unless he happened to glance up. He slipped his medicine bag off his shoulder, laid it on the grass next to him, and settled down to see what would happen.
Fortunately, he did not have long to wait, which was a blessing. Not only was it cold lying in wet grass under a dark sky that promised rain, but the noxious stench of the Ditch was making him feel sick. Another person was moving across the scrub, looking every bit as furtive as had Simeon. At first, Bartholomew assumed Simeon’s liaison was no more sinister than a clandestine meeting with a woman, for the figure that inched its way across the pasture was elfin, protected from the weather by a thick cloak that hid everything except some brown shoes. But then the newcomer reached up to push back the hood, and Bartholomew saw that it was no woman whom Simeon greeted in the manner of an old friend.
‘I was waylaid,’ the newcomer explained, perching on the tree trunk and pulling his cloak more tightly around him. ‘That dreadful Ralph de Langelee spotted me, and I was obliged to pass the time of day with him in a place called the King’s Head. Are Cambridge scholars allowed the freedom to carouse in the town’s inns? We certainly do not permit that sort of thing at Oxford.’
‘Langelee allowed himself to be seen in a tavern with an Oxford man?’ asked Simeon, amused. ‘He is a confident fellow! Rumour has it that he plans to be Master of Michaelhouse now that the old one is dead. He will not win the votes of that gaggle of old women and bigots by fraternising with William Heytesbury of Merton College in an establishment like the King’s Head!’
Heytesbury! thought Bartholomew, suddenly recognising from his own days at Oxford the delicate features of the famed nominalist. It was the discovery of Michael’s letters to him that had destroyed the monk’s ambitions to succeed Kenyngham as Master of Michaelhouse. And now it appeared that Michael was not the only one with Oxford connections: it seemed Langelee had his own association with the Merton man. Bartholomew had seen them himself in the King’s Head together only a few moments earlier.