Bartholomew swallowed hard. Two curved horns and a long pointed face stared up at him, dirty and stained from its weeks underground, but a goat's head nevertheless, atop a human body.
'Was Nicholas of York a devil?' breathed Jonstan.
'Was he not human, and reverted to his true form after death?' He raised his great round eyes to Cuthbert, who stared aghast down into the grave, his lips moving as he muttered his prayers.
"Men do not change into animals after they die/ said Michael, but his voice held no conviction, and Bartholomew saw Cuthbert and Jonstan exchange disbelieving glances.
'Perhaps he was not a man,'saidjonstan again, crossing himself.
'Nonsense,' said Bartholomew firmly, realising that if they did not get a grip on themselves soon, their imaginations would get the better of them. 'You knew Nicholas.
Surely you would have noticed demonic qualities had he possessed them in life.'
He inhaled a deep breath of fresh air, thick with the scent of wet grass, took the lantern from Cynric, and leaned with it inside the grave. Shadows flickered eerily, but there was light enough to illuminate the peeling paint and the wood underneath.
'It is a mask!' he said, relief flooding through him. 'It is a wooden mask!'
'A mask? Why should Nicholas be wearing such a thing?' asked Cuthbert, his voice hoarse with horror.
For a few moments, no one said anything, and all five stared into the gaping hole at the strange figure below.
Bartholomew pulled himself together, and slid back into the grave to complete his examination. Anxious to finish as quickly as possible, he reached for the right hand to look for a tiny cut that might suggest Nicholas had died from the poison on the lock. Puzzled, he peered closer.
The hand he held was small and dainty, with paint on the nails, but was too decomposed for him to be able to see whether there had been a cut there or not. He straddled the coffin precariously, grabbed the mask by its horns and pulled as hard as he could. The mask came off with an unpleasant sucking sound to reveal the face underneath.
'What is this?' cried Cuthbert. That is not Nicholas!'
'He was a devil!' whispered Jonstan, crossing himself vigorously. 'He did change his form after his death.'
'You have the wrong grave!' said Michael accusingly, looking at Cuthbert.
Cuthbert stared at him, his face white with shock. 'I do not!' he whispered. 'This is Nicholas's grave without question. I am absolutely certain.'
Michael and Bartholomew exchanged a look of bewilderment.
The body whose face had been hidden by the mask was that of a young woman. Her eyes were sunken deep into her face, and the lips had stretched back to reveal fine, even teeth. That explained the delicate hand and painted nails, Bartholomew thought. He suddenly felt a great wave of compassion for her. Not only had she been brutally murdered, attested by the stab wound in her throat, but her body had been desecrated with the mask. But what was she doing there anyway? And where was Nicholas of York? Bartholomew took a deep breath and quickly looked under the woman to make sure there was not another corpse in the grave.
He was angry at the callousness of it all, and his anger brought him out of the sense of shock that had been dulling his wits. He bent to look at the woman.
Assuming that the coffin had not been changed after Nicholas's funeral, she had been dead for a month. The state of decay confirmed this to Bartholomew, taking into account the fact that she had died during warm weather and that the earth had been baked dry for several weeks.
The grave was only flooded now because of the sudden downpour. He looked at her feet, but they were wet, and even if the rain-water had not washed her feet clean, he would not have been able to identify a circle painted in blood on her rotting skin. The lamp above him fluttered in the wind and went out. Cynric swore and cursed in Welsh as he tried to re-light it, but the rain was coming down harder than ever and the wick was sodden.
Bartholomew waited in the dark, the water lapping about his ankles. The smell was overpowering, and it was becoming more and more difficult to resist the urge to turn around and scramble out.
I cannot light it,' said Cynric from above him, his voice unsteady.
'What shall we do, Father?' asked Bartholomew. 'There is no point in examining this woman when she is not Nicholas. Shall we re bury her and leave her in peace?'
'We must bring the body out,' said Cuthbert. 'If not, the Chancellor will order that you bring her out another night so that she can be identified and the whole matter investigated.'
'She cannot be identified now,' said Bartholomew.
'She has been underground too long. And I can tell you now that she died because she was stabbed in the throat. It does not take a physician to see that.'
'Bring her out, Matt,' said Michael. 'Father Cuthbert is right in that the Chancellor will demand an investigation, and I for one do not want to go through all this again tomorrow.'
Cynric handed Bartholomew a chisel. 'Make a hole in the bottom of the coffin to let the water drain,' he said. 'Then it will be easier to lift.'
Michael fetched the rope, and Bartholomew fumbled about trying to tie the knots in the darkness while Jonstan attempted to light a second lamp under the shelter of the porch. Eventually, Bartholomew thought the knots were secure, and Michael and Cynric began to pull.
With a slurp of mud, the coffin came free, sending water everywhere. Bartholomew steadied it until the others were able to heave it up and onto the ground.
Bartholomew found that his arms were too tired to allow him to climb out again, and he had a moment's panic until Michael offered his hand and hauled so hard that Bartholomew shot from the grave like a cork from a bottle. Cynric had put the lid back over the coffin and was enlarging the hole in the bottom to allow any water still remaining to drain away. Jonstan watched.
'It was that mask,' he said with a shudder. 'If it had just been the woman, it would not have been so bad. But that thing looks like something from hell.' He crossed himself yet again and backed away.
'I will unlock the church and we can put the body in the crypt out of sight,' said Cuthbert, clearly the more practical of the two. 'The goat mask can go in the charnel house until the Chancellor has seen it. Who would do such a thing to a corpse?'
But more to the point, who was she? Bartholomew thought. And where was Nicholas? Was he alive or dead?
He wanted to rub his eyes, but glimpsed his filthy hands and thought better of it. He and Michael had gained nothing from this grisly business. They had answered no questions, but had raised many more.
The sky was brightening noticeably by the time they had removed the woman's body and filled in the grave. Michael, white-faced, went with Jonstan to give a complete report to the Chancellor, while Cuthbert remained in the church to say prayers for the dead woman. Bartholomew looked down at his wet and muddy clothes despondently. The rain was easing off with the onset of dawn, but the day seemed cold and gloomy.
He and Cynric walked home, where they hauled buckets of water from the well to wash, and Bartholomew threw the gloves and his old clothes onto the ever-smouldering fires behind the kitchen. Bartholomew was down to his last shirt, and he hoped he would have an uneventful day in order to give Agatha time to do the laundry. Shivering, they went to the kitchen, where Cynric warmed some potage left over from the day before. When the bell chimed for Prime, Bartholomew was fast asleep in Agatha's chair next to the fireplace, and she did not waken him.
Michael returned later, having spoken to de Wetherset, and said he planned to continue his reading of Nicholas's book. Bartholomew spent the rest of the morning teaching, and was pleased with the way some of his students were learning, although he was finding Brother Boniface difficult. The friar seemed to have been talking to the fanatic Father William, for he was obsessed with the notion of heresy. Boniface proclaimed that Bartholomew teaching them surgery was heretical, and sparked a bitter argument, with Bulbeck and Cray defending Bartholomew's position, and Boniface and his fellow Franciscans opposing it. It was not an argument based on logic and reason, but on ignorance and bigotry on both sides. Bartholomew did not take part, and listened with a growing sense of weariness.