‘Has he turned his attention to the town yet, or is he still only interested in what scholars own?’
‘The latter. Unfortunately, this has made him rather popular with the townsfolk: they applaud anyone who has the audacity to strike at us. It means that even if there are witnesses to his crimes, they are unlikely to come forward. And Gosse knows it. Indeed, it is probably why he picks on us.’
‘You do not think it is anything to do with the message he gave me – that we have something he believes belongs to him?’
Michael rubbed his chin. ‘Not really, Matt. He has cornered other scholars and made similar demands of them, too. But I believe it is a ruse to baffle the Senior Proctor. He is a clever man – unlike most criminals – and hopes to confound me with these curious claims.’
Bartholomew glanced to where Gosse was muttering in Idoma’s ear, having calmed her to the point where she no longer felt the need to shove him. She listened, nodding occasionally, but when she happened to glance towards the road her face became suffused with rage again. For one alarming moment, Bartholomew thought she was going to make a run at them, but she contented herself with a glare. Even so, the malice that blazed from her shark-fish eyes was disconcerting, and he felt a shiver run down his spine. Gosse turned to see what had attracted her attention, but the expression on his face was unreadable. Somehow, this was worse.
‘My beadles have laid traps in one or two other Colleges,’ said Michael, glancing in their direction, then contemptuously looking away, as if it was beneath him to acknowledge what he saw. ‘I doubt they will catch Gosse, but it will make life a little more difficult for him. And who knows? By the time we return, he may have decided that Cambridge is not worth his time.’
Bartholomew doubted it, and was not sure Michael was right to dismiss Gosse’s claim that the University had something that belonged to him. He regarded the pair unhappily, and wished Edith had not rejected his offer of Cynric’s protection. Or was he just unsettled by their unsavoury reputation? Gosse and Idoma certainly exuded a malevolent aura, but there were no reports of actual violence. James the Dominican was more likely to have been attacked by offended Franciscans, while Bartholomew’s own encounter had involved a lot of menace but no real attempt to do harm; even their threats had been ambiguous.
‘I do not want to go.’ Tesdale’s words dragged the physician’s attention away from his own concerns. ‘I am already tired, and we have a long way to travel yet. I was not built for hard riding.’
‘It will be fun,’ countered Valence, clearly relishing the prospect of an adventure. ‘And you cannot be tired. You slept almost all of yesterday.’
Tesdale ignored him and addressed Bartholomew. ‘Are you sure you need me, sir? Master Langelee said the purpose of the journey is to retrieve some College money, but I am not very good at demanding cash from people.’
‘That is why he wants you to go, stupid,’ said Risleye scornfully. ‘To learn how to demand payment from debtors. It is a vital lesson for any would-be physician.’
Michael glanced at Bartholomew. ‘Perhaps it was wise to bring these lads along. They may have a corrupting influence on the others, and I would not like to return home to find my students have become lazy, selfish and grasping. I do not know how you put up with them.’
The scholars rode through the Barnwell Gate, then turned right along the Hadstock Way, passing the Dominican Friary and the boggy expanse of the Barnwell Field. Houses became fewer and more scattered as they travelled farther from the town, and were soon reduced to the occasional squatters’ hut. Smoke issued through some roofs, but most were silent and still, their inhabitants either begging for bread on the streets of Cambridge or poaching wildfowl and fish in the marshes.
The road led as straight as the path of an arrow through the fertile meadows at the foot of the Gog Magog hills, then headed upwards, passing a series of banks and ditches at the summit, where legend had it that an ancient queen had once defied a Roman army. Behind them, Cambridge was a cluster of red tiles and yellow thatches set amid a sea of winter-brown fields. The towers of St Mary the Great, St Botolph and St Bene’t could just be made out, although they were mostly obscured by the pall of smoke created by hundreds of household fires.
It was not long before the drizzle turned into something more persistent. The horses stumbled constantly, and some of the deeper puddles in the rutted track were well past their knees. The little party passed no other travellers once it had crossed the Gog Magogs, indicating they were the only ones foolish enough to embark on a journey in such foul weather.
Gradually, the flat lands of Cambridge gave way to the more rolling country of the west. Copses became more frequent, swathes of mixed woodland in which could be heard the trill of birds and the occasional bark of deer. Trees hissed and waved above them, and wet leaves fell in sodden showers.
They stopped when Michael declared himself hungry, and ate Edith’s pies and honey cakes under an ancient oak. The tree did not afford much shelter, but water had seeped through Bartholomew’s cloak hours before, and he could not have been wetter had he jumped in the river. It was eerily quiet, and no one objected when the physician brought an early end to the meal and began the hazardous process of remounting his horse.
The farther they travelled, the worse the road became. Ruts were larger, filled to the brim with filthy water. Fallen trees and branches littered the track, and with each one, Bartholomew half expected robbers to emerge – that the blockages were a deliberate ploy to slow travellers down and allow them to be ambushed. The afternoon grew gradually darker and colder, and just when he was thinking they might have to spend the night under a hedge, the highway stopped altogether, as if its builders had run out of materials and had decided to abandon the project.
‘Where has it gone?’ demanded Michael. ‘Langelee said it went all the way to Colchester.’
‘My grandfather came this way once,’ said Valence helpfully. ‘And he told me it goes nowhere near Colchester, although he thinks it was originally meant to.’
‘So what are we supposed to do?’ snapped Michael. ‘Stay here until they decide to finish it?’
‘Actually, it does not stop – it splits into three separate tracks,’ said Cynric, dismounting to peer into the undergrowth. ‘Obviously, they are not wide and straight, like the highway itself, but they all look as if they go somewhere.’
Bartholomew saw the book-bearer was right. One path wound through a dense coppice towards a hill on the left; a much narrower one disappeared into some long grass directly ahead; and the last went downhill, off to the right.
‘I vote we go left,’ said Michael. ‘The track is in marginally better repair than the other two.’
‘But I suspect Haverhill lies straight ahead,’ countered Bartholomew. ‘The directions Langelee gave us did not include any left-hand turns.’
‘We should go right, because it is downhill,’ argued Cynric. ‘There is more chance of a settlement in a valley than on a rise.’
‘No, we should turn around and go back the way we have come,’ said Valence, casting an anxious glance at the darkening countryside. ‘There was a village several miles back, with an inn.’
‘Nonsense,’ declared Risleye. ‘We should make camp here, and decide in the morning. Only fools plunge into unknown territory when nightfall cannot be more than an hour away.’
‘Or we could make a big fire, so someone sees it and comes to rescue us,’ suggested Tesdale with a yawn. ‘You five can collect the wood, while I see about drying out my tinderbox.’