An Unholy Alliance

Stanmore gazed about him. "I am astonished this is all so well organised,' he said. 'You say Buckley overheard that half the mercenaries were garrisoned here and half in Primrose Alley?'

'Primrose Alley?' said Tulyet sharply. 'Where Froissart lived?'

'Froissart and his family were among the few people who survived the plague in Primrose Alley,' said Bartholomew. 'Because there were so many empty houses, and because no one wanted to live there if they could be somewhere better, de Belem used it to garrison his mercenaries. Poor Froissart probably discovered something incriminating. He ran to the church for sanctuary not for killing his wife, but to escape de Belem. That night, Gilbert hid in the crypt, to which he has the only set of keys, while the church was locked. He emerged from his hiding place, garrotted Froissart, and waited for "Father Lucius" to come to help him hide the body where it would not be found. Father Lucius, was, of course, de Belem, and he was let into the church by Gilbert, and not by Froissart, as the guards believed.'

The guards saw de Belem, and described him as mean-looking with a big nose,' elaborated Michael.

'For de Belem, used to dealing with the trappings of witchcraft, it would not have been difficult to make himself unrecognisable to guards more interested in dice than in watching the church, especially a man wearing the hooded robe of a friar.'

'Gilbert is involved in all this?' asked Tulyet, amazed.

'The Chancellor's clerk? I will send a man for him before he realises something is amiss and escapes.'

'That is not necessary,' said Bartholomew. 'Have you noticed that you never see Janetta and Gilbert together?

That is because they are one and the same.'

'What?' exclaimed Michael, Tulyet, and Stanmore simultaneously. Michael continued, 'That is outrageous, Matt! Gilbert has a beard for a start, and Janetta is a woman! That fall you had at de Belem's has addled your wits!'

'Go and see,' said Bartholomew. 'You will find that splendid head of hair will come clean off if you give it a tug.'

'You do it,' said Michael primly. 'Monks do not pull women's hair!'

Bartholomew went to where Janetta was being guarded with de Belem in the back of a small cart, followed closely by the others. Janetta smiled falsely at Bartholomew, and he smiled back as he reached out a hand towards her hair. Her smile faded, and she tried to move away.

'No! What are you doing?'

Bartholomew grabbed some of the hair and Janetta screamed. It was held in place firmly, so he pulled harder. Then the wig was off, and Gilbert's thin, fair hair emerged, plastered to his head. De Belem watched impassively, while Gilbert, barely recognisable without his beard, spat and struggled.

'How did you know?' asked Tulyet in astonishment.

'Because the wig may have fooled us, but it did not fool the town prostitutes,' said Bartholomew. 'Matilde told me the hair was a wig. I looked closely when I met Janetta in St Mary's churchyard, and I saw that she was right. And I was puzzled that a woman, obviously concerned with her appearance, would not take pains to hide her scarred face with the thick powders she wore on her cheeks on occasions.'

'That would not be easy to do,' mused Tulyet thoughtfully. 'My wife has a mark on her neck that she does not like to be seen. When she cannot cover it with her clothing, she applies powders. The whole business is very time-consuming. If Janetta had needed to make a sudden appearance, there would not be time to start such a lengthy process. Better to be open about the scars from the start than try to hide them and have them exposed at a point that might be inconvenient.' "I also noticed that Janetta's hair partly hid her face when she spoke to me, but not when she spoke to the men. That was because I knew Gilbert, and he was taking precautions against being recognised. I was certain, however, when I grabbed him in the church earlier. It did not take a physician to know that the person I held was no woman!'

Michael continued. 'Cuthbert drew attention to the fact that the woman in Nicholas's grave had sparse hair. She died a month ago, at the precise time Janetta made her appearance with her luxurious black hair.'

'Nicholas's lover,' said Stanmore. 'Was she killed for her wigs, then?'

Bartholomew was stumped. It was a possibility he had not considered.

Michael answered instead. 'No, she was killed for something far more serious. The woman had thin, fair hair just like Gilbert's.'

He looked at Gilbert, who refused to look back.

Bartholomew gave an exclamation as Janetta's relationship with Gilbert suddenly became clear.

'She was his sister!' he said. 'She was small like him, too. Tiny, in fact.'

'Yes, his sister,' said Michael, still looking at Gilbert.

'Janetta of Lincoln was no fictitious character, was she?

She was your sister who was summoned from Lincoln to help with de Belem's plan. You knew Nicholas was working on a book, and that it might contain information dangerous or detrimental to you. Janetta came to insinuate herself into Nicholas's affections in order to discover exactly what he had learned. Cuthbert told us Nicholas was deeply in love, and that the woman seemed to reciprocate these feelings, so perhaps her affection turned her from her true purpose, and that was why she was murdered.'

'And why Gilbert stole her body away from the crypt,' said Bartholomew. "I hope she lies somewhere peaceful now, without the desecration of that foul mask.'

Gilbert gave a half-smile. 'You will never prove anything other than the fact that I occasionally assumed another identity,' he said.

Tulyet shrugged. 'It does not matter. There is evidence enough to hang you already. Anything we learn now will make no difference to the outcome. We can prove two cases of kidnapping and the practice of witchcraft.'

'We have never practised witchcraft,' said de Belem.

'Everything we did had a rational explanation, and was only harmless fun. A joke. It is not my fault that people were afraid. We have killed no one, and all my property came to me perfectly legally. My lawyer, Piers Hesselwell, will attest to that. You have no proof, just a series of unfounded suppositions. I have powerful friends in the town and in Court. You will not hang me.'

Bartholomew had a cold feeling in the pit of his stomach that de Belem might well be right. They had strong evidence — Tulyet's baby in de Belem's house, Buckley's kidnapping, and Stanmore's stolen cloth but it was so complex that he imagined a good lawyer could easily find alternative explanations that de Belem's powerful friends would choose to believe as the truth.

He walked away, finding de Belem's confident gloating unbearable. He ached all over from his hard ride, and his head was beginning to throb from the hours of tension.

A small stream trickled behind one of the rows of houses, and he crouched at the edge of it to scoop handfuls of water over his face. He heard a sound behind him and spun round, thinking it might be one of de Belem's men still lurking free, but relaxed when he saw it was only Michael.

'Father Lucius has some potage for us,' he said. 'Come.

We need something warm inside us if we are to face the rest of the day.'

Bartholomew followed him to the small priest's house next to the church. It was little more than a single room with a lean-to shack at the back for animals. But the rushes on the floor were clean and the crude wooden table in the middle of the room had been scrubbed almost white. Bartholomew sat on a bench with Michael next to him. Stanmore was already there, sipping broth from a blue-glazed bowl. Lucius set other bowls on the table, and Bartholomew closed his cold fingers around one, grateful for the warmth after the chill of the stream.