Susanna GREGORY: The Mark of a Murderer

Bartholomew frowned. ‘And now there is a second death at Merton Hall. Are you sure you cannot pass this to the Sheriff, on the grounds that these scholars are aliens in our town? If Chesterfelde has been murdered, then any investigation is likely to be time consuming.’ He was uneasy with the notion that helping Michael solve an unlawful killing might impinge on his understanding with Matilde.

‘Dick Tulyet is busy at the moment, supervising arrangements for the prelatical Visitation.’

‘You are busy, too,’ Bartholomew pointed out.

Michael was one of the most powerful men in the University, and holding on to such authority entailed a good deal of work; it was generally known that the monk made the most important decisions and that Chancellor Tynkell just did what he was told. Michael also had students to teach and, like Bartholomew, had been obliged to undertake extra classes because of Clippesby’s indisposition. In addition, he was heavily involved with preparations for the Archbishop’s Visitation – it fell to him to ensure that England’s highest-ranking churchman would be impressed by what he saw of Cambridge’s studium generale . Since there were rumours claiming that Islip intended to found a new College at one of the two universities, impressing him was particularly important.

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.