Reluctantly, Bartholomew conceded that Cynric was right. He was restless and his head ached from tension and lack of sleep, but he felt he had to do something. He certainly did not feel like going to bed.
‘I am going to see Matilde,’ he said, reaching for his cloak. ‘I want to make sure she arrived home safe from St Radegund’s.’
‘She did,’ said Cynric. ‘I saw her at sunset. But if you feel like visiting her anyway, old Cynric will escort you to make sure you do not disregard his advice and make a detour to places you have no right to be.’
Bartholomew smiled, touched by his book-bearer’s concern, and headed towards the front gate. He told the student on guard duty that he was going to visit a patient, grateful that it was dark and that the boy would not see from the sudden flush in his cheeks that he was lying, then he and Cynric strode briskly along the High Street to the area called the Jewry where Matilde lived. It was a silent night, although rain pattered on the cobbled streets and on to roofs that were so sodden that they looked as though they would not take much more miserable weather.
‘Have you noticed any change in Richard yet?’ asked Cynric conversationally, as they walked. ‘Because he gets drunk with Heytesbury most nights, neither of them is in any condition to return to Trumpington, so they sleep at Oswald Stanmore’s business premises. As you know, Rachel and I have a chamber there, so it allows me to apply the Franciscans’ charm.’
‘I thought the dish of burning feathers he mentioned was something to do with you,’ said Bartholomew, smiling.
Cynric nodded. ‘Clippesby has a way with animals, and I persuaded him to grab me a handful of tail from the College cockerel. We were supposed to use a pheasant, but you do not see many of those around.’
‘Richard fell off his horse today,’ said Bartholomew. ‘I hope this charm is not harming him.’
‘It would be worth it,’ said Cynric, unrelenting. ‘His foul manners are upsetting his mother, and I will not see that good lady distressed if I can prevent it. A few bad mornings might do him good.’
‘It cannot make him any worse,’ said Bartholomew. ‘He is an arrogant–’
Cynric grabbed Bartholomew’s arm suddenly, and tried to pull him into the shadows of a doorway to hide. But Bartholomew did not move quickly enough, and he heard Cynric’s tut of annoyance. It was too late, anyway. He had already been seen by the two people who reeled towards them, much the worse for drink. They were William Heytesbury and Yolande de Blaston. Bartholomew saw the philosopher’s jaw drop when his wine-befuddled mind registered that it was Brother Michael’s friend who was looming out of the darkness to catch him intoxicated and in the company of one of the town’s prostitutes.
‘Damn!’ Bartholomew heard him mutter. Rather too late, he covered his face with the hood of his cloak.
‘Good evening, Master Heytesbury,’ said Bartholomew wickedly. ‘What are you doing here at this time of the night?’
‘I was lost,’ said Heytesbury, feebly floundering for a plausible excuse. ‘This kind lady offered to escort me to Stanmore’s house.’
‘Are you going to visit Matilde, Doctor?’ asked Yolande, evidently understanding that Bartholomew had just won some kind of victory over Heytesbury and deciding to even the score by making it clear that Heytesbury was not the only scholar visiting women after the curfew.
Bartholomew smiled at her cleverness. ‘I hear you take in laundry these days,’ he said, seeing an opportunity to discover whether she really had been responsible for damaging Brother Timothy’s cloak.
Yolande nodded, her hand on the bulge beneath her dress where her tenth child was forming. ‘Agatha is teaching me. She said I should learn a different profession, because every time I work on the streets I produce another baby. Of course, I have been making exceptions for my regulars, like Mayor Horwoode and Prior Lincolne, and for high-paying customers like Master Heytesbury, here.’
Heytesbury sighed heavily at this blunt revelation of his intentions, wafting in Bartholomew’s face a powerful scent of something nutty that only thinly disguised the wine underneath. The physician supposed it was the gum mastic he used for removing incriminating smells, although even the new import from the Mediterranean was not up to the task of hiding the fact that Heytesbury had imbibed a good deal more than was good for him that evening.
‘Please do not tell Brother Michael that I was foolish enough to lose my way tonight,’ said Heytesbury in a reasonable tone of voice. ‘He was rather cool towards me earlier, and I am concerned that he is having second thoughts about our agreement.’
‘Very well,’ said Bartholomew, suspecting that Michael no longer felt obliged to charm Heytesbury now that he possessed knowledge that rendered Heytesbury’s signing a virtual certainty. As far as Michael was concerned, the deal had been concluded, and his clever mind had doubtless already forgotten the Oxford man and had moved on to more stimulating problems.
Heytesbury blew out his cheeks in another scented sigh. ‘Something must have happened to make him act so. Perhaps those two farms and the church have suddenly become profitable, and he no longer wishes to part with them.’
‘Possibly,’ said Bartholomew. ‘Or perhaps he learned that you lied to him about Faricius.’
Heytesbury regarded him uneasily. ‘What do you mean?’
‘When we first met you claimed the “other business” you had in Cambridge was seeing one of our scholars with a view to enticing him to Oxford. That scholar was Faricius.’
Heytesbury raised his eyebrows. ‘True. But I never lied about it. I said he was “unsuitable”, if I recall correctly. He was unsuitable: he was dead.’
‘But he was obviously not dead when you first met him.’
‘No,’ said Heytesbury. He rummaged in his scrip and tore a piece of gum mastic from his ever-ready packet; even in the darkness Bartholomew saw the pale stain it left on his fingers. ‘I had heard of his excellent mind, and I sought him out because it would have been an honour to teach him.’
‘Then why did you not tell us this straight away?’
‘Why should I?’ asked Heytesbury. ‘What would you have thought if I had revealed that the one person I had spoken to in Cambridge had been murdered within a couple of days? It might have put my arrangements with Michael at risk.’
‘You may have done that simply by keeping quiet about it,’ said Bartholomew maliciously, gratified to see the Oxford man blanch. Heytesbury seemed about to protest his innocence again, but Bartholomew turned his attention to Yolande. ‘Did you wash Brother Timothy’s cloak recently?’
Yolande nodded. ‘It was filthy with muck from walking along the High Street. Why do you ask?’
‘Did the dye come out?’ asked Bartholomew.
Yolande’s world-weary face became ugly with anger. ‘It certainly did not, and you can keep that sort of tale to yourself! I will not have the likes of you accusing me of damaging the clothes I wash.’
‘I was only asking,’ protested Bartholomew. ‘It may have been made of inferior cloth or coloured with cheap dye that did not stay.’
‘Well, it was not,’ said Yolande firmly. ‘That cloak was returned to Brother Timothy just as black as when he gave it to me, and a whole lot cleaner. Agatha taught me not to use hot water on black garments for exactly that reason.’
She grabbed the agitated Heytesbury and flounced off with him down the High Street, leaving Bartholomew frowning after her thoughtfully. So, Timothy had lied about the cloak. He wondered whether he should tell Michael immediately, so that they could act on the information that night. But Bartholomew suspected that the monk would be unwilling to listen to any more accusations regarding Timothy. Reluctantly, because he wanted the whole business done with as soon as possible, he conceded that it would still be best to follow Cynric’s advice, and launch a raid on Timothy’s room during the Easter vigil the following night.