Michael grinned in a predatory manner. ‘This will provide a challenging diversion from my usual routines – Tynkell is so malleable that he is no fun to manipulate any longer, while my students virtually teach themselves – and it will be interesting to probe the affairs of our sister University.’
‘What about the challenge associated with teaching Clippesby’s musicians?’
Michael did not dignify the question with an answer. He was resentful that he had been saddled with the class; although he was proud of his achievements with the Michaelhouse choir, being able to sing was a long way from understanding the discipline’s theoretical framework, and he was hopelessly out of his depth. Clippesby’s astronomers had been inflicted on Bartholomew, because physicians were obliged to maintain a working knowledge of the celestial bodies in order to treat their patients, but at least the field was not a complete mystery to him, as academic music was to Michael.
The two scholars turned on to Bridge Street. The sun shed a golden glow across the fields behind St John’s Hospital, catching in the thin mist that rose from the river. The air was balmy and smelled of new crops, with only a slight odour from the marshes that lay to the north, and the sky was light blue with a delicate membrane of high-scattered clouds. Birds sang loud and shrill and, in the distance, sheep bleated in water meadows that were carpeted with buttercups.
Bridge Street was busy, as people made their way to and from their Sunday devotions. There were orderly processions of scholars led by the masters of the Colleges and halls, there were friars in black, white or grey habits and cloaks, and there were townsfolk in their best clothes. Bells rang in a jubilant jangle, with the bass of St Mary the Great providing a rumbling accompaniment to the clanking trebles of Holy Trinity and All-Saints-in-the-Jewry.
Bartholomew and Michael reached the Great Bridge and started to cross it. Bartholomew gripped the handrail uneasily; the bridge was notoriously unstable, and comprised a gravity-defying mess of teetering stone arches, rotting wooden spars and a good deal of scaffolding. Funds were desperately needed for its repair – or, better still, for its complete replacement – but moneys raised by the burgesses always seemed to be diverted to some more pressing cause at the last moment. Bartholomew supposed the situation was set to continue until the whole thing toppled into the river; he only hoped no one would be on it when it did.
When he was halfway across, he glanced up to see someone standing near a section that was particularly afflicted with broken planking and crumbling masonry. The river was deep and fast at that point, and anyone jumping into it might well drown if he were not a strong swimmer. The man looked like a scholar; he wore dark, sober clothes and a cloak with a fringe of grey fur, but Bartholomew did not recognise him. He supposed he was a member of one of the many hostels that were scattered around the town. The fellow’s face was pale and shiny, as though he had been crying, and the physician watched in horror as he took a deep breath, then stepped hard on to one of the most precarious parts of the bridge.
Bartholomew darted forward as the plank bowed under the man’s weight. The fellow stumbled to his hands and knees, but the wood held just long enough for Bartholomew to reach out and drag him away by his hood. The man put up a feeble struggle, as several lumps of rotten timber splashed into the river below, but his heart was not in a serious escape. After a few moments, he went limp in Bartholomew’s restraining arms, and stared at the water rushing past below.
‘This is too public a place for self-murder,’ said Michael gently. One or two people stared, but there were better things to do than watching three scholars murmur in voices too low to be heard, and they soon moved on. ‘What brought you to this? Your studies? Love of a woman?’
‘It was an accident,’ mumbled the man, looking away. ‘I was not going to kill myself.’
‘No?’ asked Michael. ‘Surely you can see this side of the bridge is not safe.’
‘I am a stranger,’ said the man miserably. ‘I do not know your town and its buildings.’
‘You do not need to be local to tell which bits of this structure to avoid,’ retorted Michael. ‘What is your name? Which hostel are you from?’
‘I would rather not say,’ replied the man in a whisper. ‘You will report me for trying to break the Church’s laws against suicide, and I was not . . .’
‘I will do no such thing,’ said Michael firmly. ‘And if you say it was a mistake, then I shall believe you, although I will not allow you to linger here. Do you have friends who-?’
The man suddenly pulled free of Bartholomew and raced away, heading for the centre of the town. The monk raised his eyebrows in surprise, then shook his head helplessly.
‘He is probably pining over a woman. It is a pity he dashed off without giving us his name – I could have warned his principal to watch over him. But there is nothing I can do if he will not confide in me. Come on, Matt. If we do not visit Merton Hall soon, they will think we are never coming.’
‘And whose fault is that?’ asked Bartholomew archly, brushing splinters from his clothes. ‘We should not have eaten breakfast first.’
They reached the crossroads near St Giles’s Church, and turned along the road known as Merton Lane. Merton Hall was to the left, set amid its own neat strip-fields. Bartholomew had been inside it only rarely, usually when it was rented to the University as a venue for debates or public lectures. Most of the time it was a private dwelling, owned by a distant landlord and leased to a tenant who farmed the land. He and Michael followed a narrow path that wound pleasantly through an orchard, and approached the house.
It was a massive affair, built entirely of yellow-grey stone. It was old, but looked as though it would stand for many centuries to come, because its walls were thick and strengthened by sturdy buttresses placed at regular intervals along all four sides. Its lower floor comprised vaulted chambers used as offices, cellars and pantries; the upper floor contained a hall, with a solar at right angles to it, so the building was L-shaped. Bartholomew supposed it had been raised during a time of civil unrest, as everything about it suggested defence. He was not surprised that Merton’s founder had considered it a suitable refuge for scholars driven out of Oxford by force.
Besides the house were stables, barns and a small granary. In the distance was an enclosure for pigs and a large, square structure that Bartholomew knew was a cistern for storing water. A flock of pigeons clustered and cooed around a dovecote, and the fields bristled with vigorous shocks of barley and rye. The manor exuded an air of prosperity, and he was sure Merton College was grateful for the handsome profits it would almost certainly yield.
Michael knocked on the door, which was opened by a small man with hair so fair it was almost white. The fellow looked Michael up and down with rank distrust.
‘What do you want?’ he demanded.
‘I was summoned to inspect the body of Roger de Chesterfelde. Who are you?’
‘John de Boltone,’ replied the man. ‘Bailiff of this estate. That means I oversee everything that happens here, and I present the accounts to Merton College – usually every twelve months, although I did not go this year, winter being so severe.’
‘I know what a bailiff does,’ said Michael, impatient with the man’s self-important rambling. ‘However, I am surprised to find one here. I thought Merton rented the manor to a tenant, rendering a bailiff unnecessary.’
‘The tenant is Eudo of Helpryngham,’ replied Boltone. ‘He pays an agreed sum each year and, in return, takes a share of the manor’s profits from crop-growing and the like. That is why I am employed: to make sure he does not keep more of the income than he should.’
‘I see,’ said Michael. ‘So, was it you who sent me the message about the dead man? I was under the impression the summons came from scholars.’