Susanna GREGORY - The Mark of a Murderer

‘I will stay here, thank you,’ said Michael, leaning against the shelves with his hand still clapped to his bruised face. He had no intention of going where they could all be conveniently covered with one weapon. ‘A man with a broken nose is vulnerable to contagions.’

Boltone should have insisted on obedience, but instead he turned on Eudo, and Bartholomew saw they were incompetent criminals. ‘I told you this was a bad idea, but you insisted it would work. Now what are we going to do?’

‘We will kill them before we leave. It is not our fault: they brought it on themselves.’

‘No,’ said Boltone, alarmed. ‘Not murder – especially of a monk! It will not matter that we are innocent of theft, if we then commit an even more serious crime.’

‘Listen to him, Eudo,’ recommended Michael. ‘You say you have not killed anyone so far, so it would be foolish to begin now. Let Rougham go, and we can devise a solution–’

‘We cannot be merciful. We have too much to lose.’ Eudo took a step towards Weasenham and his handsome features creased into a scowl. ‘Write! Or I will chop off your hands.’

‘I am going as fast as I can,’ bleated Weasenham. ‘I have been scribing all night, and my fingers are so cramped I can barely move them.’

‘You are preparing proclamations,’ said Bartholomew, craning his neck to see what Weasenham was doing. There was already a substantial pile of sheets on the table, at least half in a different hand, and he supposed Boltone too had been writing before he had been obliged to abandon clerkly activities to point a crossbow at Michael.

‘I told you to keep the door locked,’ grumbled Boltone, rounding on Eudo a second time. ‘But you would insist on looking outside every few moments to see whether Islip had arrived, even though it is still far too early. It is your fault we are in this mess. I would have devised a way to explain away Chesterfelde’s blood when the Senior Proctor came prying, but oh, no! You have to start a fight and we end up accused of killing Hamecotes.’

‘Write!’ shouted Eudo at Weasenham, refusing to acknowledge his friend’s accusations.

Bartholomew thought fast, rearranging facts and conclusions in the light of what he had just heard. Rougham had been wrong to think either Eudo or Boltone was the wolf. They were exactly what they appeared: cornered petty felons. They knew something about Chesterfelde’s death, but nothing about the others, because the wolf was clever and this pair were not. They had mishandled the situation at the cistern, and now they had allowed themselves to become trapped in a position where they had four hostages to manage.

‘You can still escape,’ he said in a reasonable voice. ‘Abandon what you are doing and leave. You will find another property to run, given the number left vacant by the plague, and you can begin your lives again somewhere else.’

‘Why should we?’ demanded Eudo. ‘I will not be driven away by lies. This is my home .’

‘They are not lies,’ said Michael. ‘You have stolen – from people like Matilde, and from Merton – and you have been found out. Personally, I would rather see you hang, but my colleague is offering you a chance. Take it, before you end up with a rope around your necks.’

‘No!’ shouted Eudo. ‘None of it is true – except for the accounting, and that was Boltone. I have stolen nothing! I am the victim of a University plot, which blames me for its own crimes. But I have a plan. I will exonerate myself, and everything will return to normal.’

‘These will not exonerate you,’ said Michael, picking up one of the proclamations. ‘Lies can be written just as easily as they can be spoken, and putting pen to parchment does not produce a truth.’

‘You see?’ said Boltone. ‘I told you it would not work.’

‘People will believe what is written,’ insisted Eudo stubbornly. ‘Especially clerks. They will read what I dictated, and see that the real villains are scholars – Polmorva, Dodenho and men like them.’

‘Chesterfelde visited Cambridge regularly,’ said Bartholomew, turning over what he had deduced. ‘I think it was he who helped keep your deception from Merton for so long – for a price, I imagine. What was it? A third of the profits?’

‘How do you know that?’ demanded Boltone, aghast. ‘He said he never told anyone.’

Bartholomew did not want to admit that it had been a guess. ‘You two and Chesterfelde met last Saturday night, to discuss what to do about Duraunt’s inspection. You formulated a plan to evade exposure, and to demonstrate the depth of your commitment, you decided to sign it with blood.’

‘To mingle blood,’ corrected Boltone, glowering at Eudo. ‘As a sign of undying brotherhood. It was a stupid idea.’

‘A stupid idea devised by men in their cups,’ agreed Bartholomew. ‘Eudo had been drinking at the King’s Head, while Chesterfelde was drunk on wine provided by the merchants.’

‘The mixing of blood was symbolic of our loyalty,’ protested Eudo. ‘Knights do it all the time.’

‘But Chesterfelde cut himself too deeply – or you did it for him.’ Bartholomew considered. ‘No, he did it himself. The wound was on his left wrist, and I know he was right-handed because I saw writing calluses on his fingers: he used his right hand to slice his left arm. Blood pumped from him as he stood by the cistern, and none of you could stop it.’

‘We did not know how,’ said Eudo resentfully. ‘We tried holding the limb in the air, we hunted for leeches in the cistern, but nothing worked. Meanwhile, Tulyet’s brat was watching everything.’

‘Dickon,’ mused Michael. ‘So, it was Chesterfelde’s death he saw – the splashing he mentioned was you searching for leeches, not the sound of Hamecotes’s corpse being dropped down the well. He identified you as the killer, but was vague about the victim.’

‘He shot me later,’ said Eudo resentfully. ‘Evil little tyke. I will put an end to his violent antics when I am reinstated as tenant of Merton Hall. He will not spy on me again.’

‘ I was not drunk,’ said Boltone. ‘Well, not very, and the brat cannot have me blamed for what happened to Chesterfelde.’

‘And what was that?’ asked Michael. ‘Exactly.’

‘Eudo frightened Chesterfelde with his fury over Duraunt’s inspection. It made him cut himself over-vigorously – to demonstrate the extent of his kinship with us.’

‘He should not have used such a large dagger,’ said Eudo, sounding more indignant than sorry. ‘It was unwieldy and he was clumsy from wine. He should have used my little knife instead.’

‘And then you tried to make the accident look like murder, by dumping his body in the hall with the dagger in his back,’ surmised Michael. ‘His Oxford companions were all drunk, too, so they slept through the racket you must have made.’

‘Except Polmorva,’ said Eudo. ‘The others were all snoring but he saw what we were doing. He promised to say nothing, in return for certain favours.’

‘It was Eudo’s idea,’ said Boltone bitterly, before Michael could ask what favours the sly scholar had demanded. ‘He said if we left Chesterfelde’s body in their midst, the Oxford men would be blamed for his death, and we would not.’

‘Your only crimes are dishonesty and stupidity,’ said the monk, disgusted with them both. ‘You are innocent of murder, and it was just unfortunate coincidence that someone used your cistern as a grave for Hamecotes, not knowing it was where you kept your hoard.’

‘We have no hoard,’ insisted Eudo. ‘I keep telling you: we had nothing to do with that.’

‘You stole Matilde’s silver dog.’