Michael gaped at her. ‘I have agreed to parley! In fact, I wasted a good part of the morning trying to discuss terms, but no one would listen to me. I am not the problem here.’
Stanmore scratched his neat beard. ‘Candelby told us burgesses that he is willing to compromise, but you refuse to raise the rents by a single penny. And his henchman Blankpayn backs him up.’
‘Lies!’ cried Michael, incensed.
‘Did you know Magister Arderne claims to have healed Blankpayn’s leprous sores, Matt?’ asked Edith, while the monk furiously regaled her husband with a catalogue of Candelby’s misdeeds and shortcomings. ‘You told me leprosy was incurable.’
‘Blankpayn did not have leprosy,’ said Bartholomew, startled. ‘I would have noticed.’
‘Arderne said he did – and added that no medicus worth his salt should have missed it. It was a dig at you, of course. I detest that man!’
‘Have you seen Blankpayn recently?’ Bartholomew was more interested in soliciting information than hearing about the healer’s mad claims. ‘He has disappeared, along with Falmeresham.’
‘I am so sorry.’ Edith touched his arm in a gesture of sympathy. ‘I know you were fond of Falmeresham, and he was close to graduating, too. It is a great pity.’
‘He is not dead,’ said Bartholomew sharply, not liking her use of the past tense.
She smiled sympathetically. ‘Of course not. I will light a candle for him this afternoon.’
‘You will need her prayers for yourselves soon,’ said Stanmore, speaking through Michael’s tirade. ‘I understand you have elected Honynge and Tyrington to your Fellowship. You must have been desperate, because neither are men I would choose for company at the dinner table. Tyrington would spit all over the food, and Honynge would rather talk to himself than the person sitting next to him.’
Edith was more willing to see the good in people. ‘Honynge is patient with his students, and Tyrington is amiable company.’
‘Lord!’ breathed Stanmore suddenly, beginning to pull his wife away. ‘Here comes Robin of Grantchester. I can smell him from here, so forgive us for not lingering to greet him.’
Robin was looking even more disreputable than usual, because he had been drinking. He held a wine flask in his hand, his eyes were bloodshot, and his hair was lank and unkempt. When he saw Bartholomew, he staggered forward and grabbed his hand. The physician struggled not to recoil from the warm, moist palm and the stink of old blood that hovered around the man.
‘Arderne will ruin us unless we make a stand,’ the surgeon slurred. ‘So you, Paxtone, Rougham and I must present a united front. Such tactics are working for Candelby – he has enticed other landlords to his side, and now the University is squealing like a stuck pig.’
Bartholomew freed his wrist. ‘Arderne is a fraud, so it is only a matter of time before he–’
‘You are wrong,’ snapped Robin. ‘He has already destroyed my practice, and it will not be long before he starts on yours. I am all but finished – and so will you be, if you do not resist him.’
Bartholomew was bemused. ‘How can you be finished? He has only been here a week.’
‘Seven weeks,’ corrected Robin. ‘He did nothing but sit in taverns at first, listening to gossip. Then he went into action. He cured two people I said would die, and that was just the beginning.’
‘You do tend to make overly gloomy prognoses.’ Bartholomew had ‘cured’ people Robin had said would not survive himself. ‘You should consider being a little more optimistic.’
‘But most of my patients do die,’ wailed Robin. ‘I only treat them as a last resort, when I might as well earn a bit of money from a lost cause. The latest disaster was over that Clare boy – Motelete. I saw him stabbed and went to help, but I failed. Publicly.’
‘Did you see who killed him?’ asked Michael eagerly.
Robin shook his head. ‘All I saw was Motelete drop to the ground with his hand to his neck, blood spurting everywhere. I am a surgeon, and spurting blood is my cue, so I rushed forward to see if I could stem the flow. As you know, clean wounds can often be mended, and I was hopeful of a fee.’
‘The good Samaritan,’ murmured Michael.
‘Motelete was gurgling and gasping, and I saw there was no hope. So I moved away, lest anyone think I had injured him because I was desperate for work. Well, I am desperate for work, but I–’
‘Motelete died almost instantly?’ asked Bartholomew.
Robin nodded unhappily. ‘He twitched a while, then lay still. But all of a sudden, Arderne was looming over me. He had taken Candelby home, and had come out to buy tallow grease – something to do with waxing his feather. He ordered me to heal Motelete.’
‘I thought you said Motelete was dead.’ Bartholomew was becoming confused.
‘He was dead,’ cried Robin. ‘But Arderne said he could have been saved if I had been any good at my job.’
There was a very real possibility that Arderne was correct. Robin was not skilled at his trade, and another surgeon might well have saved the boy’s life. But it was not the time to say so.
‘Buy a new coat, Robin,’ suggested Michael kindly. ‘People like a smart medicus, because he inspires confidence. Invest in some shiny new implements, and see what happens to your practice then.’
The surgeon looked ready to cry, but sensed he had been dismissed and slunk away. When Bartholomew looked back a few moments later, he saw two potters pick up some mud and lob it. Robin scuttled down the nearest alley like a frightened rat, and Bartholomew suspected they were kin to someone who had suffered the surgeon’s clumsy ministrations. If word was spreading that Robin was incompetent, then he could expect reprisals from a good many people. Perhaps he had been right when he predicted he was finished in Cambridge.
Ralph Kardington, Master of Clare, was a sallow-faced lawyer with a huge gap between his front teeth that made him lisp. It meant he was difficult to understand unless he spoke Latin, which he tended to annunciate more carefully than English or French. As a consequence, most scholars used Latin when they were with him, and because he seldom conversed with townsmen, he was left with the impression that every Englishman employed it all of the time. He often bemoaned the loss of the vernacular, and was invariably surprised when no one agreed with him.
‘Salve, Brother,’ he said, hurrying to greet his visitors. ‘I assume you are here about Motelete? His body lies in the Church of St John Zachary. You must find the villain who dispatched him. First Wenden, now Motelete. What is the world coming to?’
‘He refers to the Clare Fellow who died on Lady Day,’ explained Michael in a low voice to Bartholomew. ‘Wenden was killed by that drunken tinker, if you recall.’
‘It is a pity Wenden’s murderer fell in the river and drowned,’ Kardington went on. ‘It meant the affair was quickly forgotten, because no example was made of him. And now look what has happened – Clare has lost a second scholar to a townsman’s spiteful blade.’
‘I believe Motelete was killed by a pot-boy named Ocleye,’ said Michael hastily, alarmed by the way the Master was blaming the town. If his students felt the same – or they heard Kardington hold forth about it – there would be bloody reprisals for certain. ‘But Motelete made an end of his attacker before he breathed his last, so vengeance has already been had.’
‘I heard these rumours, too,’ replied Kardington, ‘but they cannot be true. Motelete was a gentle, timid lad, and would never have harmed anyone.’
‘He was killed during a brawl,’ Michael pointed out. ‘Gentle, timid lads tend to avoid those.’