No wonder Emma was wary, Bartholomew thought. ‘How do you know this?’
Thelnetham shrugged. ‘He must have mentioned it when I went to their house with Langelee to seal our arrangement about the roof. I saved you some cakes, by the way. You were late, and I did not think it fair that you should be left with the boring ones.’
He passed Bartholomew a parcel wrapped in cloth and started to walk away. As he did so, Bartholomew heard an odd sound from the roof. He glanced up, then hurled himself backwards when something began to drop. A chaos of ropes and planks crashed to the ground, right where he had been standing. His heart thudded at the narrow escape.
‘The rain must have dislodged it,’ said Thelnetham, coming to peer at the mess. ‘It is a good thing you have fast reactions.’
Bartholomew could not see his face, because the night was too dark. He frowned, watching the Gilbertine stride away, then shook himself. He was tired and it had been a long day – his imagination was running riot. He located the cakes he had dropped, and entered his storeroom.
His mind was too active for sleep, so he lit a lamp and began to work on his treatise on fevers – intended to be a basic guide for students, but now an unwieldy collection of observations, notes and opinions – and ate a cake while he wrote. It was good, so he had a second, and then a third. He was reaching for the fourth when there was a sharp pain in his stomach. He gripped it for a moment, then dived for a bucket when he knew he was going to be sick.
Afterwards, he did not feel like working. He lay in his damp bed, feeling his innards churn, and listened to the rain dripping through the ceiling.
It was a miserable night. Bartholomew’s stomach pains subsided in the small hours, but the wind gusting through the shutterless windows made an awful racket among his bottles and jars, and no matter where he lay, the rain seemed to find him. At one point, he went to the hall in search of a dry berth, but the door had been locked in response to the missing gates. He returned to his own room, eventually falling asleep shortly before the bell rang to call everyone to morning prayers. He dozed through it, and was difficult to rouse when Michael noticed he was missing and came to find him.
‘Were you called out last night?’ asked the monk sympathetically, as Bartholomew crawled off the mattress and splashed water on his face from the bowl Cynric left for him each night – not that he needed a bowl, given the amount of rain that was available on the floor. ‘You look exhausted.’
‘I should have accepted Thelnetham’s offer of a dry bed,’ said Bartholomew ruefully. ‘I kept dreaming I was sailing down the river on a leaking boat. And about Jolye.’
Michael picked up one of the Lombard slices from the table; miraculously, they had remained dry. ‘The rumour is spreading that he was murdered by the hostels. Trinity Hall claims that was why they sent rats to Essex – in revenge for his unlawful death.’
‘If Jolye was killed, then the culprits are more likely to be at Chestre – it was their boats that were being tampered with when he drowned. Perhaps they caught him and pushed him in.’
‘Perhaps, but we will never prove it,’ said Michael bitterly. ‘There were no witnesses, and you found nothing on the body to allow me to make a case.’
They were silent for a while, Michael thinking about the youngster’s death while he stared at the Lombard slice he held, and Bartholomew hunting around for dry clothes.
‘I was out late last night,’ the monk said eventually. ‘Although I have nothing to show for it. After putting down the rat trouble, I interviewed camp-ball players in the King’s Head, but still cannot decide whether Poynton’s death was murder or accident. Then I was told that a yellow-headed stranger was drinking in the Griffin, so I went there.’
‘And what did you find?’
‘That he has a twisted foot – you would have caught him had he snatched Emma’s box and hared off up the High Street. He is not our man.’ Michael raised the cake to his mouth.
‘Do not eat that, Brother. They made me sick last night.’
‘Because you are unused to their richness,’ said Michael, taking a substantial bite. He gagged, and immediately spat it out. ‘Or more likely, because they were made with rancid butter. Nasty!’
‘Thelnetham gave them to me.’
‘He does not like you very much,’ said Michael, wiping his lips with a silken cloth. ‘I think he is jealous. He is a controversial thinker, which brings its share of fame and recognition. But you are our resident heretic, and you overshadow him.’
Bartholomew was still too befuddled with sleep to tell him his theory was nonsense. He finished dressing, then walked across the yard to where their colleagues were gathering for church. It was raining again, and William was complaining about a patch of mould growing on his ceiling.
‘At least you have one,’ said Michael caustically. ‘I do not, while Matt spent half the night floating about on his mattress.’
‘Yffi will make good on the roof today, or he will answer to me,’ growled Langelee.
He spun on his heel and led his scholars up the lane, leaving the slower of them to scramble to catch up with him. Bartholomew did not mind the Master’s rapid pace – it was cold and wet, and the brisk walk served to warm him a little. But even so, he shivered all through mass.
Teaching finished at noon on Saturdays, but, unimpressed by his students’ performance, Bartholomew ordered them to attend a lecture Rougham was giving on Philaretus’s De pulsibus. They objected vociferously at the loss of a free afternoon, and he was obliged to send Cynric with them, to make sure they did not abscond.
‘You are driving them too hard,’ remarked Michael, watching them leave, a sullen, resentful gaggle that dragged its heels and shot malicious glances at its teacher.
‘They will fail their disputations if they do not work. They are not learning as fast as they should.’
‘They are not learning as fast as you would like,’ corrected Michael. ‘But at least your tyranny is keeping them away from the hostel–College trouble. They are lively lads, far more so than students in the other disciplines, and would certainly have joined in, had they had time. Thank God you have seen that they do not. Will you come to Chestre with me?’
Bartholomew blinked at the abrupt question. ‘I thought you had decided not to tackle them until you had more evidence.’
Michael grimaced. ‘That was about the murders, the pilgrim badge thefts and our missing gates. But they are material witnesses to what happened to Poynton, so they cannot object to questions about him. And if the occasion arises, perhaps I shall see what a little subtle probing on other matters brings to light. Besides, I am low on clues, so it is time to rattle a few nerves.’
Bartholomew followed him over the road to Chestre Hostel. The rain had darkened its plaster to the point where it was almost black, and a strategically placed window shutter made the ‘face’ on the front of the building appear to be leering. Even Michael looked a little unsettled when he rapped on the door and it evinced an eerily booming echo that rumbled along the corridor within.
‘We have already told you all we know,’ said Kendale irritably, when the Senior Proctor and his Corpse Examiner were shown into the hall. ‘And I am busy.’
He was teaching, and from the complex explanations chalked on the wall, Bartholomew could see he was deep into the mean speed theorem. He was sorry Kendale was unfriendly, because he would have liked to listen. However, he could see by the bored, bemused faces that Chestre’s students did not feel the same way.
‘But not too busy to offer a little hospitality,’ said Neyll, exchanging a sly grin with Gib and lifting a jug. Bartholomew felt sick at the thought of it: it was far too early in the day for wine.