Bartholomew returned to the convent, to see if Michael was ready to go home, and was about to enter when he saw a man named William Eyton walking along the Causeway towards him. Eyton was the vicar of St Bene’t’s Church, an affable Franciscan who laughed a lot. He was friends with William, and had a reputation for preaching inordinately long sermons. Bartholomew had attended one once, and had come away with his head spinning from the leaps of logic and false assumptions. William had been with him, and had fallen asleep somewhere near the beginning, awaking much later to applaud loudly and claim it was one of the best discourses he had ever heard.
‘I have come to purchase honey,’ said Eyton cheerily, standing with Bartholomew while they waited for a lay-brother to open the gate. Knocking felt foolish, since the physician now knew he could walk unchallenged through the back door, or even scramble over a wall. ‘I love honey, although it makes my teeth ache if I consume more than one pot in a single sitting.’
‘You eat it by the pot?’ asked Bartholomew, stunned. The canons sold their wares in very large vessels. ‘Does it not make you sick?’
‘Well, yes, it does, but it is said to keep witches at bay, so I do not mind a little nausea in a good cause. You should try it: William tells me you are more familiar with some of them than is safe.’
Bartholomew sighed, and wished William would keep his opinions to himself.
It was an unhappy gathering that prepared to travel from Barnwell Priory to St Michael’s Church. Carton rested on a makeshift bier, and Norton provided two lay-brothers to help carry it. The men did not voice their objections aloud, but it was clear that they disliked being given such an assignment, and their surliness persisted even after the monk offered them money for their trouble. Bartholomew did not blame them. It was an unpleasant task to be doing at any time, but the heat made it worse. It was still intense, even though the sun was setting.
Eyton was one of a dozen men who watched Bartholomew cover his colleague with a blanket, his normally smiling face sombre. ‘Carton took a courageous stand against those who lead sinful lives, and I am sorry someone has murdered him because of it,’ he said.
‘You think that is why he was stabbed?’ asked Michael. He sounded weary, and Bartholomew suspected he had been regaled with a number of unfounded theories as to why the friar should have been killed. ‘Someone took exception to his views about what constitutes a decent lifestyle?’
Eyton nodded sadly. ‘I doubt the Sorcerer appreciated Carton telling folk that joining his cadre was a sure way to Hell. He or a minion must have decided to silence him. Poor Carton. His views were a little radical for my taste – and I fear he was a bad influence on my dear friend William, who tends to listen rather too readily to anyone who decries heresy – but he was a good man at heart.’
Michael indicated that the two lay-brothers were to take the back of the bier, while he and Bartholomew lifted the front. Normally, Cynric would have helped, but he had offered to stay and talk to the priory servants, who were more likely to confide in him than in the Senior Proctor.
‘William and Mildenale are sure to insist on a stately requiem for Carton,’ said Michael to the physician, as they set off towards home. ‘But it is an expense the College cannot afford at the moment. Our coffers are all but empty.’
‘Are they? I thought Margery Sewale’s benefaction meant we were financially secure.’
‘We will be, but only when her house has been exchanged for ready cash. Until then, we are worse off than ever, because we have had to pay certain taxes in advance. Why do you think there has been such a rush to sell the place? All the Fellows – except you, because you are hopeless at such matters – have been busy trying to drum up interest in the cottage among potential buyers.’
Bartholomew was not sure whether to be offended because his colleagues did not trust him, or relieved that he had not been asked to squander his time on such a matter. ‘That was why Carton came to Barnwell,’ he said. ‘He was going to ask Norton how much he was willing to pay.’
They walked in silence for a while. Ahead of them, the town was a silhouette of pinnacles, thatches and towers against the red-gold blaze of the evening sky. Each was lost in his own thoughts, Michael processing the mass of mostly useless information he had gleaned from interviewing the canons, and Bartholomew thinking about Carton’s unfathomable character.
‘This is a sorry business,’ said Michael eventually. He spoke softly, so the lay-brothers could not hear him. ‘And I fear it will prove difficult to solve. Why do you think Carton was killed?’
Bartholomew tried to organise his chaotic thoughts. ‘There seem to be several possible motives. First, there is the rumour that he was the Sorcerer. If that is true, the Church will see him as an enemy, and you can include virtually every priest in Cambridge on your list of suspects, as well as religious laymen who dislike what the Sorcerer is trying to do.’
Michael sighed unhappily. ‘And Barnwell’s twenty or so canons head that list, including their Prior. The only exception is Podiolo, who strikes me as the kind of man who might dabble in sorcery himself. He is definitely sinister.’
‘He is, a little,’ agreed Bartholomew. ‘The second motive for killing Carton was his belief that people brought their plague losses on themselves. Such a stance is bound to attract angry indignation.’
‘Such as from Spaldynge?’ asked Michael. ‘He has always blamed physicians for the calamity, and will not like being told it is his own fault that his family died.’
‘Carton said Spaldynge killed someone called James Kirbee. Do you know if it is true?’
Michael was thoughtful. ‘I had forgotten about that case. It was years ago, and was dropped for lack of evidence, although I recall thinking Spaldynge was probably guilty anyway. If Carton was going around reminding people about that, then it may well have led to murder.’
Bartholomew resumed his list of reasons why Carton might have been stabbed. ‘And finally, there is his association with a group of very vociferous Franciscans who hate Dominicans.’
‘And one of that group died last week,’ mused Michael. ‘Carton was not convinced that Thomas’s death was all it seemed, and asked you to run an experiment to assess whether he was poisoned. Perhaps he was right, and your sedative really did have nothing to do with Thomas’s demise.’
Bartholomew was not sure what to think. On the one hand, it would be good to be free of the burden of guilt, but on the other he did not like the notion that there was another suspicious death to explore. He said nothing, so Michael abandoned theories and began to think about evidence.
‘Tell me what you were able to deduce from Carton’s body,’ he ordered.
Bartholomew disliked the way the monk always assumed he could produce clues from corpses as a conjuror might pull ribbons from a hat. And with stabbings, the chances of learning anything useful were slim. Yet he always felt he was letting Michael – and the victim – down when he said there was nothing to help solve the case.
‘It is not easy to knife yourself in the back, so I think we can safely conclude that someone else was responsible,’ he began, trying his best anyway. ‘The dagger was cheap and unremarkable, so we stand no chance of identifying its owner. It does not sound as though Norton took long to fetch the wine, so the killer must have been fairly sprightly – to run to the chapel, stab Carton, and escape before Norton returned.’
‘That does not help,’ said Michael acidly. ‘Most killers are sprightly. If they were not, they would not be contemplating murder in the first place, lest their victim turn on them.’
Bartholomew ignored him. ‘The only blood was that which had pooled beneath Carton. So, I think he died quickly – he did not stagger around, and there is no evidence of a struggle. Perhaps he knew his killer, and did not feel the need to run away when he appeared.’