‘He is not a criminal,’ Bartholomew gasped, desperately trying to support the body. ‘Or, at least, he has not been lawfully executed. The hangmen would have taken his clothes had they been legally employed to kill him, and they have not.’
‘Perhaps the nature of his crime was too heinous,’ said Alcote with a shudder. ‘Come away from him, before someone sees what you are trying to do.’
‘Cynric!’ pleaded Bartholomew.
The Welshman glanced uneasily at Michael, but then stepped towards the gibbet. He climbed up it before anyone could stop him, and sawed quickly through the rope. Bartholomew staggered as the body was suddenly freed and its weight dropped on to him. He laid the man down in the grass and loosened the noose, peering into the face for any signs of life. With a raw, rasping sound, the man drew breath.
‘This is outrageous!’ exclaimed Alcote, watching Bartholomew work. ‘I am not staying here to be charged with helping a felon evade justice!’
He grabbed the reins of his horse and waved them, expecting the animal to know which way he wanted to turn. When nothing happened, he gave it a sharp slap on the hindquarters that made it trot down the right-hand track in agitation. Michael motioned for the students to go with him – it was not safe for a man to travel alone – and dismounted with a sigh.
‘You will be the death of me,’ he mumbled to Bartholomew under his breath. ‘I very much doubt whether the Bishop of Ely’s authority will carry much weight here. We are likely to be hanged for tampering with the King’s justice first, and questions asked after.’
William watched Alcote disappearing down the road with the students at his heels, and it seemed as if he would follow. Instead he raised one leg to let the exhausted donkey go free, and went to stand next to Michael, breathing heavily to signify his disapproval of what Bartholomew had done.
‘You have endangered us all by interfering with the course of justice,’ he said angrily to the physician. ‘This is not Cambridge, you know. There is no friendly Sheriff Tulyet here to look the other way while you break the law.’ He paused in his tirade. ‘Well? Will he live?’
Bartholomew shook his head. ‘I think his neck is broken.’
While William dropped to his knees and began intoning prayers for the dying in a voice loud enough to wake the dead, Bartholomew put his ear to the stricken man’s mouth, listening to the faint rustle of breath that whispered there. Whether he was conscious of what was happening to him, Bartholomew could not tell. His eyes were half open, but were dull and glazed. There were blood clots around his lips, and his face was a deep red, suggesting that his death was as much due to strangulation as to the damaged vertebrae.
‘Padfoot.’
Bartholomew looked sharply at him, but his breathing had faltered into nothing. He was left wondering whether he had imagined the man uttering a word with his dying breath, or whether the barely audible syllables were simply involuntary contractions of the tongue as the life went out of him. With William bellowing at his side, it had been difficult to hear much anyway. He sat back on his heels, puzzled.
‘Now what?’ asked William, finishing his prayers, and looking at the dead man in concern. ‘Do we put him back as we found him?’
‘I hardly think so!’ said Michael, raising his eyebrows in horror. ‘What if someone sees us?’
‘It cannot be any worse than someone seeing us now, having cut him down,’ retorted the friar. He sighed irritably, sketching the sign of the cross on the dead man’s forehead, mouth, chest and hands. ‘There, I have finished. Now we should follow Alcote’s example, and leave while we still can. I do not want to be granting absolution to anyone else today, particularly if it is one of us.’
‘This is all very odd,’ said Bartholomew, still kneeling in the grass next to the dead man. ‘His neck seems broken, yet his purple face suggests he died of strangulation.’
‘Your interest in this sort of thing is most unnatural,’ said Michael with a shudder. He reached out and plucked at Bartholomew’s tabard, urging him to stand up.
‘And whose fault is that?’ demanded Bartholomew, shaking him off. ‘Who is it who has dragged me into all sorts of unsavoury investigations for the University, and forced me to learn about murder and suicide?’
‘Murder?’ echoed Michael, gazing down at the dead man in dismay.
‘Suicide?’ asked William, equally shocked. ‘I sincerely hope you are wrong, Matthew! I have just granted this man absolution, which suicides are not entitled to have.’
‘This man has not been murdered,’ said Michael firmly, recovering quickly from his shock. ‘And he has not committed suicide, either. He has been executed perfectly lawfully for some crime.’
‘Then why have his executioners not remained here to ensure he died?’ demanded Bartholomew. ‘Why did they not take his belongings? Why did they not tie his hands and feet, as is common practice among hangmen? And look at the clothes he is wearing. This is no common thief, but a man of some wealth.’
‘Men of wealth are just as liable to be punished under secular law as are common thieves,’ said Michael pompously.
‘It looks to me as though someone strung him up and he started to choke,’ said Bartholomew, his attention still fixed on the corpse that lay in front of him. ‘Look at how his fingernails have been broken as he struggled to tear the noose away from his throat, and how the blood has clotted around his lips. Then, I imagine, his killer tugged on his feet to snap his neck.’
‘I have seen people doing that,’ said William, nodding. ‘When I was with the Inquisition in France, we had occasion to dispense with a number of heretics. If the drop did not kill them instantly – and it seldom did – their friends would jump on their legs to put them out of their misery.’
Bartholomew and Michael stared at him. ‘For a man of God, you have some nasty tales to tell, Father,’ said Bartholomew.
William regarded him coolly. ‘Hardly worse than you enthusing over whether a man has died from a broken neck or suffocation, Doctor. Now, I suggest we leave this poor sinner where he is, and head for Grundisburgh before Alcote tells anyone what we have been doing.’
‘You mean, just leave him here?’ asked Cynric, appalled. ‘We are not heathens to leave our dead for the carrion birds.’
‘Someone will be back for him,’ said William. He started to walk toward his donkey, which saw what was coming and began to back away. ‘It will just look as though the rope has snapped naturally, and deposited him on the ground.’
He captured his mount, and they began circling each other in a curious dance-like motion, showing that William was as determined to sit on the beast’s back as the donkey was to avoid it. Meanwhile, Michael took Bartholomew’s arm and pulled him to his feet with surprising strength for a man so fat and unhealthy. He brushed dead leaves from the physician’s black tabard, and slapped the reins of his horse into his hand, glancing nervously up and down the trackway as though he expected a vengeful throng from the local Sheriff to bear down on them at any moment.
‘Just lead the thing,’ he snapped to William, still embroiled in the war of wills with his donkey. ‘The poor animal is exhausted; you are far too large for it.’
Deciding it was less undignified to yield to the donkey’s wishes than to continue chasing it in ever-faster circles, William began to walk toward the path Alcote had taken.
‘Not that way,’ said Cynric, watching Bartholomew hop with one foot in the stirrup as he struggled to mount a horse that was every bit as mobile as William’s donkey. ‘The right-hand turn leads to Ipswich; we need to carry straight on.’
William gave a wolfish grin, revealing large, strong brown teeth. ‘It was kind of you to share that information with Alcote, Cynric. He has taken the wrong path.’