‘Of course,’ said Bartholomew. ‘That would mean the loss of the Hand, as well as a student.’
Stanmore had taken pity on his brother-in-law’s starving colleagues, and had asked Kenyngham, Clippesby and Langelee to dine with him that evening, as well as Michael and Bartholomew. Wynewyk, William and Suttone were pointedly excluded from the gathering, on the grounds that the merchant did not like William’s fanaticism, Suttone’s obsession with the Death, or Wynewyk’s habit of diving in and out of seedy alleys. Dame Pelagia was also present, although, judging by Stanmore’s stammering surprise when she was shown in, the merchant had evidently not expected her. The food was excellent, the fires burned warmly in the hearth, and plenty of wine flowed, but it was a gloomy party nonetheless.
The scholars were weighed down by their concerns regarding the possibility of a riot over whether Bottisham had killed Deschalers – except Clippesby, who was more worried that the continued cold weather might make life difficult for hibernating dormice – while the clothier fretted about the state of commerce in the Fen-edge town. He railed to the uninterested Fellows that Edward Mortimer had encouraged his uncle to raise fulling prices to a ridiculous level, and had already all but destroyed Deschalers’s empire. The repercussions were expected to be enormous, and the burgesses had suspended their payments for the repair of the Great Bridge until the matter was resolved. The last statement grabbed their attention, and all five scholars regarded him uneasily.
‘But the carpenters have dismantled parts of it,’ Bartholomew pointed out. ‘It cannot be left as it is. It is dangerous – and people are still using it.’
‘It will remain that way until we know where we are with our finances,’ replied Stanmore firmly. ‘But, hopefully, the King’s Commission will find against the Mortimers, and business will return to normal. Once we are comfortable with the situation again, the repairs can be restarted.’
‘But there are broken spars and bits of half-built scaffolding everywhere,’ objected Bartholomew. ‘Sergeant Orwelle bruised his ankle there yesterday, and one of Yolande de Blaston’s children suffered a badly cut hand on a carelessly placed nail. It cannot stay as it is.’
‘The cat from the Hospital of St John said the same,’ agreed Clippesby. ‘A duck was killed by falling masonry, and Robin of Grantchester’s pig had a splinter in her tail. She is very angry about it.’
‘A duck is dead?’ asked the gentle Kenyngham, reaching out to touch the Dominican’s hand in a gesture of sympathy. Clippesby’s eyes filled with tears, and he looked away.
Michael looked down at his platter uneasily. ‘Is this duck?’
‘Cockerel,’ replied Stanmore.
Clippesby jumped up in horror. ‘Not Bird!’
‘No,’ said Langelee. ‘We are having him tomorrow – if we have not been burned in our beds by angry townsmen by then. Dame Pelagia, do you think we should write to the King, and ask whether he will rescind the pardons granted to Thorpe and Edward? I am sure most of our problems would evaporate if they left our town.’
‘I would not try it, unless you intend to accompany the letter with a handsome sum of money,’ advised Dame Pelagia. ‘King’s Pardons tend to be the last word in such cases, and it costs a good deal to have them overturned.’
‘What about the compensation we are ordered to pay?’ asked Stanmore. ‘What if we offered these corrupt clerks that money, instead of giving it to Thorpe and Mortimer?’
‘It would not be nearly enough,’ replied Dame Pelagia. ‘Royal justice does not come cheap, you know. I am not surprised Constantine Mortimer wants Deschalers’s house to help defray the original costs of the pardons. If it were not for the additional money earned from his brother’s fulling mill, he could never have afforded to buy his son’s release.’
‘Damn them all!’ muttered Stanmore venomously. ‘I went to the Hand of Justice yesterday, and asked it to do something about the situation. Since I do not believe in the sanctity of the thing, and since I know perfectly well that it came from poor Peterkin Starre, you can see the depths to which I am prepared to sink to rid my town of these louts.’
‘I am not one of its followers, either,’ said Langelee. ‘But I must admit that William’s treatment of it is very clever. He has it in a splendid reliquary – which always impresses the poor – and he makes sure that pretty blue-green ring can always be seen when he gets it out.’
‘A tawdry bauble,’ said Dame Pelagia dismissively. ‘But unusual enough to catch the eye and draw the penitent’s attention away from the pins that hold the thing together. You should not have allowed this cult to gain such momentum, Michael. It is dangerous, and will certainly end in trouble.’
Michael flushed at the reprimand, and Bartholomew did not think he had ever seen the monk so discomfited.
‘Sheriff Tulyet still has not discovered the identity of that poor corpse,’ said Kenyngham in the silence that followed. ‘It is a shame, because I like a name when I pray for a soul.’
‘The duck’s name was Clement,’ said Clippesby in a small voice. ‘He hailed from Chesterton.’
‘Actually, I meant the man in the snow bank outside Bene’t,’ said Kenyngham. ‘I found him a few weeks ago if you recal.’
‘Oh, him,’ said Langelee, not very interested. ‘Bartholomew had a look at his body, but there were no wounds, and it was concluded that he had been standing under the roof when the snow sloughed off it. It was a case of a fellow being in the wrong place at the wrong time.’
‘But the Sheriff wants to find out who he was, nonetheless,’ said Kenyngham. ‘His clothes were decent, so he was not a beggar. He was not from the town or the nearby villages, and we think he was probably a messenger.’
‘A messenger?’ asked Dame Pelagia curiously. ‘What makes you draw that conclusion?’
‘Because he carried a letter from a London merchant to a Cambridge friar. The Sheriff said it was professionally written, and that this man’s boots were worn in a way that suggested he spent a lot of time travelling. Unfortunately, the friar to whom the missive was addressed – Godric of Ovyng Hostel’s predecessor – is dead, so we cannot ask him about it.’
Michael stared crossly at him. ‘And where is this message now?’
Kenyngham raised apologetic hands. ‘I lost it.’
Michael was unimpressed. ‘You should have given it to me. First, it might have helped us identify this messenger, and second, it may have contained information important to one of my investigations.’
‘It did not,’ replied Kenyngham. ‘I cannot recall exactly what it said, but it was only something about a visit by a man to his kin – a visit that probably did not happen, given that all the roads were blocked by snow back then. I meant to pass it to you but I forgot, and then I lost it. But it contained nothing important, I am sure of that.’
Bartholomew sat forward and stared into the wine in his cup. ‘There is someone in Cambridge who has been desperately hunting a man who went missing in the winter snows.’
‘Bess?’ asked Langelee. He looked thoughtful. ‘I suppose this corpse might have been her beau.’
Bartholomew tried not to be angry with Kenyngham. ‘You say the message he carried was from a London merchant? Bess told Quenhyth she was from London.’
Kenyngham smiled beatifically. ‘Then she will know his name. What was it?’
‘She has not told anyone,’ snapped Michael, still peeved at the elderly friar’s incompetence.
‘Poor Bess,’ said Bartholomew softly. ‘What shall we do? The only way to know for certain is to show her his body, but he has been in the ground too long now.’
‘Tulyet kept the hat he wore,’ said Kenyngham. ‘I shall ask him to take her that – first thing tomorrow morning. It would be unkind to leave it any longer.’