‘I had forgotten that,’ said Bartholomew. The threat that Oxforde would come for them if they misbehaved was one that had been used to keep the abbey schoolboys in check.
‘He would have been furious if he could have seen how the abbey has benefited from his death,’ Kirwell went on with a distinctly impious smirk. ‘Making money hand over fist from donations to his shrine. He hated the Church.’
‘Are any of his victims still alive?’ Trentham’s eyes were like saucers.
‘He usually killed witnesses to his crimes, which is why he remained free for so long. God alone knows how many lives he took. I have long been amazed that those who lived through his reign of terror should have forgotten his true character.’
‘You mean bedeswomen like Hagar, who tell pilgrims that he was holy?’ asked Trentham. ‘The bedesmen say he was wicked, though, and I have always wondered who was right.’
Kirwell waved a dismissive hand. ‘The men denounce Oxforde solely to annoy the women, and if his tomb was moved to St Leonard’s they would be delighted to exploit him there. But never mind this. I am so tired, Doctor. Surely there is something you can do for me? It is not right that a man should live for so long.’
‘It is beyond my control,’ replied Bartholomew. ‘And you are not in serious discomfort. Not like poor Lady Lullington.’
‘No,’ acknowledged Kirwell. ‘She used to visit me, and tell me stories about her clever sons. She was a good woman, and I was sorry when I heard she was ill. Pyk never did discover what was wrong with her. She was struck down very suddenly.’
‘Illnesses often do that.’
‘Not like this, according to Pyk.’
‘It is true.’ Trentham’s boyish enthusiasm for Kirwell’s tales had gone, replaced by sadness as he contemplated his dead friend. ‘She became ill shortly after Robert went missing, and I always wondered if her husband did something to her. I told Yvo, but he said nothing could be proved one way or the other.’
‘She is at peace now, poor soul,’ said Kirwell. ‘As I should be. Are you sure you–’
‘Yes,’ said Bartholomew firmly.
When Bartholomew returned to the hall he found Michael engaged in a futile effort to reduce the number of people who intended to watch a Corpse Examiner at work.
‘We bedesmen have a right to be here,’ Inges was declaring indignantly. ‘It is our chapel, and we should be allowed to watch what happens in it.’
‘Actually, it is the abbey’s chapel,’ countered Yvo. ‘And Welbyrn was our treasurer, so I should be here to ensure that justice is done for him.’
‘No, that honour should fall to me,’ argued Nonton. He had availed himself of the bedesmen’s wine, and was unsteady on his feet. ‘Welbyrn was my friend.’
‘We shall all watch,’ determined Ramseye. ‘Although Lullington claims he has an aversion to corpses, so perhaps he should wait outside.’
Lullington adopted a martyred expression. ‘It cannot be worse than seeing my poor wife. I shall stay. It is the least I can do to repay my debt of gratitude to the abbey for its care of me.’
‘So you are stuck with us all, Brother,’ said Ramseye with a victorious smile. ‘But we shall stand well back – for our own safety as much as the Corpse Examiner’s convenience.’
‘Too right,’ muttered Botilbrig. ‘This robe was clean on this morning.’
Bartholomew wondered what they were expecting him to do. ‘It will only–’
‘Do not try to explain, Matt,’ advised Michael in a low voice. ‘You will make matters worse, and it is easier just to let them observe. Unless you plan on doing something macabre, in which case I had better use the Bishop’s authority to oust them.’
‘Of course not,’ said Bartholomew irritably.
‘You cannot blame me for asking.’ Michael raised his hands defensively. ‘You have done some perfectly dreadful things to corpses in the past, things that have shocked me.’
Without further ado, Inges led the way to the well. No one spoke and the chapel was eerily silent, the only sounds being the lap of water and the scrape of feet on flagstones.
The treasurer lay face down, arms floating out to his sides. The angle of his head made it appear that he was looking for something he had lost on the bottom. Bartholomew set about fishing him out. Unfortunately, the stones at the pool’s edge were slick, and the listlessness that had afflicted him since dawn made him careless. He was on his knees, leaning forward to grab Welbyrn’s sleeve, when he lost his balance.
Michael reacted with commendable speed and caught him before more than his head had dipped below the surface. The water was shockingly cold, yet if it was unpleasant, it did dispel the sluggishness that still lingered from the soporific.
‘I could have told you it was slippery,’ said Ramseye, exchanging a smirk with Nonton, while Lullington brayed his mirth out loud, a jeering, mocking, inappropriate sound that echoed harshly around the chapel’s ancient stone arches.
‘So could Welbyrn,’ muttered Yvo.
Wordlessly, Botilbrig handed Bartholomew a frayed piece of sacking. As there was a pile of similar scraps on a nearby bench, the physician could only assume that such accidents occurred on a fairly regular basis. He wiped his face, then watched as Nonton helped Michael to retrieve Welbyrn and lay him by the side of the pool.
When they stepped away, he knelt and pressed on Welbyrn’s chest. Foam emerged from the nose and mouth, which meant that water had mixed with air in the lungs – in other words, the treasurer had been alive when he had gone into the water, and the cause of death was almost certainly drowning.
Ignoring the exclamations of disgust from his audience, he inspected Welbyrn’s body for other marks or abrasions. Ramseye was particularly vocal, although Bartholomew was only looking and feeling – nothing that should have horrified anyone. He hesitated before opening Welbyrn’s mouth, but then did it anyway, feeling it would be wrong to perform an incomplete examination just because the onlookers were squeamish.
At last, he sat back. ‘There is only one unusual mark,’ he said, pointing to a faint bruise on Welbyrn’s forehead. It was long and straight. ‘This suggests that he may have hit his head on the side of the well. I have just demonstrated how easy it is to fall, and he came at night, when it was dark.’
‘An accident,’ declared Yvo with satisfaction. ‘Just as I told you.’
Ramseye peered over Bartholomew’s shoulder. ‘Do you mean that tiny blemish? But it is almost invisible! I seriously doubt that had any bearing on his demise.’
‘On the contrary, it would have been enough to stun him,’ said Bartholomew shortly, disliking the almoner contradicting him on a matter that lay well outside the fellow’s area of expertise. ‘And remember, it does not take long to drown. However, he may also have been pushed.’
‘It is more likely to have been suicide,’ stated Botilbrig. ‘He tossed himself in the well deliberately, because he was alarmed by the fact that he was losing his intellectuals.’
‘Oh, I imagine he was pushed,’ said Inges. ‘No one liked him, and this is the kind of thing that happens to unpopular people.’
‘Lord!’ exclaimed Michael suddenly, recoiling in distaste. He was examining the dead man’s clothes, which Bartholomew had removed and passed to him, and he had just reached Welbyrn’s scrip.
What spilled out when he had upended it was a sticky bundle wrapped in cloth, to which adhered an assortment of coins, some illegible documents and the hospital key. Michael wiped his fingers fastidiously on a piece of linen, and indicated that Bartholomew was to separate the mess. The physician obliged only because refusing would have prolonged their stay – and he was oppressed by the shadowy chapel and was eager to leave. He poked at the goo with one of his surgical blades, uninterestedly at first, but with increasing urgency when he realised its significance. He looked up at Michael.