‘I already have,’ replied Michael. ‘Not that he needed to be told. He knows that to be appointed a Commissioner in this particular case is a dangerous business.’
On a day of rest, when labour was forbidden at Michaelhouse, Bartholomew found himself at a loose end later that morning. Usually he would have worked on his treatise on fevers, with the window shutters closed so that the rigorist William could not see what he was doing. But such covert activities were difficult now he no longer had a chamber to himself. Redmeadow would have turned a blind eye, but the same could not be said for Quenhyth. When the student caught his teacher breaking the College’s rules, his disapproving shuffles made concentration impossible, so Bartholomew was usually forced to abandon his writings.
Quenhyth and Redmeadow were at home that morning, and all Bartholomew’s attempts to send them on errands or out for walks failed. Quenhyth sat on a bench with a religious tract on his knees – the only kind of reading allowed – and chattered about his family, his home in Chepe, and the new cloak his father had promised to send him. Redmeadow dozed on Bartholomew’s bed.
‘He has been stealing my ink again,’ Quenhyth said to Bartholomew in a whisper, nodding his head at his roommate. ‘More than half of it had gone when I checked it this morning.’
‘I did not,’ said Redmeadow indignantly, showing he had not been asleep after all. ‘You left the lid off, and it evaporates.’
‘Not true!’ cried Quenhyth.
‘Are you calling me a liar?’ demanded Redmeadow, coming off the bed in a lunge, and advancing menacingly. Quenhyth scampered away from him.
‘Stop it,’ ordered Bartholomew sharply. He had forgotten about Redmeadow’s fiery temper. ‘Sit down, both of you.’
‘You need to do something about Rougham,’ said Quenhyth, when Redmeadow was safely back on the bed. ‘He is accusing you of killing Warde, when it is obvious that he is the culprit.’
‘No one killed Warde,’ said Bartholomew. ‘He died from coughing.’
‘But Warde should not have died,’ pressed Quenhyth. ‘You said so yourself. And Rougham was the man who prescribed the very last medicine Warde swallowed. You should investigate him.’
‘You should,’ agreed Redmeadow. ‘He is not a nice man.’
He and Quenhyth began a venomous discussion, listing Rougham’s various faults. Bartholomew tried to go back to his treatise, but it was no more possible to concentrate through their vicious character assassination than through Quenhyth’s disapproving sighs, and it was not long before he gave up and left. He met Michael in the yard. The monk had crumbs on his jowls, and his lips were oily from the lard-coated oatcakes he had been devouring with Agatha by the kitchen fire.
‘You have only just had breakfast,’ the physician said accusingly. He glanced down, and saw the monk had secured a handful of the greasy treats for later, too. ‘It is not good to eat all the time, Brother. You will create an imbalance of humours and give yourself stomach gripes, not to mention the fact that you are becoming corpulent. How will you chase errant students, when you cannot manage more than a waddle?’
‘I am not corpulent,’ said Michael, deeply offended. ‘I have large bones, as I have told you before. And I do not waddle.’
‘You have waddled since Christmas, and it is time to stop. You must adopt a more sensible dietary regime. Remember the seizure suffered by that fat monk in Ely last summer? Well, you will have one, too, if you continue as you are. I do not want you to die.’
‘I am glad to hear it,’ snapped Michael testily, grabbing one of Bartholomew’s hands and slapping the oatcakes into it with such force that they crumbled into pieces. Walter’s cockerel immediately darted forward, to take advantage of the unexpected feast showering to the ground. ‘But do not pick on me because your students have driven you from your illicit labours.’
‘I am sorry, Brother,’ said Bartholomew, relenting. He knew the monk was right. ‘These last few days have been difficult, what with Isnard, Mistress Lenne, Bottisham and now Warde.’
Michael accepted the apology with poor grace. ‘Perhaps we should take a walk to visit friends – Matilde, perhaps, or your brother-in-law. That may take my mind off my poor growling stomach.’
‘We will just walk,’ said Bartholomew, steering the monk towards the gate. It was customary to offer food and drink to visitors, and both Matilde and Stanmore kept well-stocked kitchens. The monk knew this perfectly well, just as he knew it would be discourteous to decline their hospitality.
They strolled slowly, stopping to exchange greetings with colleagues and acquaintances. Eventually, they reached the Mill Pool, where both mills stood silent, and where Isnard’s neighbours had carried him to a bench outside his house, so he could watch the ducks quarrelling.
‘These birds are like the Mortimers,’ said the bargeman, as Bartholomew and Michael approached, not lifting his eyes from the feathered fracas in front of him. ‘They only care about themselves. I heard the family arranged for poor Master Warde to die, too.’
‘I doubt that was them,’ said Michael, sitting next to him. ‘The Millers’ Society are the ones who will benefit from Warde’s death, not the Mortimers. The Mortimers have just lost a Commissioner who was prepared to argue their point of view. Have you recovered from your foray to St Mary the Great with your new leg last Thursday?’
‘No,’ replied Isnard shortly. ‘The Doctor says I damaged the wound so badly that I am forbidden to attach my new limb until at least the summer. I should never have allowed Thomas Mortimer inside my house. I thought he had come to make amends, but instead he used me for his own purposes. He did not even pay for the ale we drank together – he purchased it with the money the Doctor gave me.’
‘Then what did you use to buy food and fuel?’ asked Bartholomew.
‘Paxtone gave me a penny. And so did Clippesby, although he claimed he delivered it on behalf of Bird, who was unable to come himself because of a “pressing appointment to discuss creation theology with the Master of Trinity Hall”.’ Isnard shook his head. ‘Clippesby spins his tales with such an honest face that I do not know whether he is a lunatic or a saint.’
‘A lunatic,’ answered Michael. ‘The Master of Trinity Hall knows nothing of creation theology.’
Isnard regarded Bartholomew sombrely. ‘Are you sure about my leg? Only Mortimer said he saw it healed. If I went back to the Hand of Justice and asked it nicely, it might help me a second time …’
‘Mortimer was lying,’ said Bartholomew gently. ‘Severed limbs do not regrow. He knew it would take little to intoxicate you in your weakened condition, and he deliberately set out to deceive you. He wanted to stem the tide of ill feeling over what he did to you and Lenne.’
‘But Rougham said it was a miracle, too,’ said Isnard miserably.
‘Rougham is a fool,’ said Bartholomew, no longer caring whether he offended his rival physician. Rougham had done nothing but criticise him, upset his students and make silly diagnoses for days, and he was heartily sick of it.
‘Well, it made me happy for an hour,’ said Isnard with a sniff. He glanced up. ‘Here comes Master Lenne, old Lenne’s son. He arrived late last night from Thetford.’
The younger Lenne had left Cambridge to become barber to the Cluniac monks at Thetford Priory some years before. He was a wiry man in his early forties, with thin hair and a perfect set of white teeth that looked as though they belonged in someone else’s head.
‘I owe you my thanks,’ Lenne said to Bartholomew. ‘You physicked my mother, but have not pestered her with demands for fees.’ He regarded Bartholomew’s shorn hair with a professional eye. ‘Did my father do that? I heard he was losing his touch, but I did not know he had sunk that low.’