Susanna GREGORY: A Masterly Murder

He finished drying his hands and walked outside to the courtyard. The College was looking decidedly shabbier than it had done a year before, and parts were in desperate need of maintenance. Michaelhouse’s founder had originally intended the yard to be cobbled, but somehow this had never transpired, and the rectangular patch of land enclosed by the hall, conclave and kitchens at one end, the porters’ lodge and a sturdy wall at the other, and flanked by two opposing ranges of rooms where the scholars lived, was little more than a square of churned-up mud, the treacherous slickness of which was legendary throughout the town.

The hall itself was a handsome building, and had once been the home of a wealthy merchant called Roger Buttetourte. Buttetourte had used only the best materials, and his mansion had been built to last. The same was not true of the accommodation ranges, however. Michael’s room, which was above Bartholomew’s, had such a large hole in the roof that his students complained the moon shone through it and kept them awake. Bartholomew’s own chamber had walls that ran dark with mildew, while the plaster fell away in rotten clumps, exposing the damp stones underneath.

Bartholomew picked his way across the quagmire of the yard, and climbed the steep spiral staircase that led to the hall. It had been a long time since breakfast, and, like Michael, the other scholars were hungry, so Bartholomew found he was the last to arrive. The high table, where the Fellows sat, was on a dais at the south end of the hall, while at right angles to it were two long trestle tables for the students and commoners. Every scholar was already at his place, standing behind the benches with his hands clasped in front of him as he waited for Master Kenyngham to say grace.

Beaming benignly, the Master waited until the physician reached his seat, while Michael sighed impatiently, his eyes fixed on the freshly baked bread. Bartholomew’s students nudged each other and grinned; their teacher’s absent-mindedness when he was engaged in medical matters often meant he was late for meals and it had become something of a joke with them.

As Bartholomew came to stand between Michael and Father William, he saw that two seats, which had been empty since a pair of Fellows had left to take up posts in Westminster Abbey, were occupied. He realised that the newcomers must be their successors, and studied them with interest.

One was the Dominican friar whom Master Kenyngham had mentioned the previous evening. He had a pale face and hair that stood up in a peculiar comb around the edge of his tonsure, and there was a fanatical gleam in his eyes. Bartholomew felt his heart sink. Here was no compliant cleric who would turn a deaf ear to the insults hurled at him and his Order by the belligerent Franciscan Father William, and the physician sensed that it would not be long before the two men found something to argue about.

The other newcomer wore the white robes of a Carmelite, and Bartholomew’s spirits sank even further. Even if the Dominican and the Franciscan managed a truce, one of them would be bound to initiate some kind of dispute with the Carmelite. There were several Orders of mendicant friars in Cambridge, each of which loathed the others, and Michaelhouse had now managed to appoint representatives from three of them. He supposed he should be grateful that Kenyngham, who was a Gilbertine, and Michael, who was a Benedictine monk, usually remained aloof from the unseemly rows in which the others engaged with such fervour.

But the Carmelite, unlike the Dominican, did not look like the kind of man who enjoyed dissent. He was short and round, with a cheery red face that was creased with laughter lines. He smiled at Bartholomew when he saw he was being assessed, and Bartholomew smiled back, liking the merry twinkle in the man’s eyes and the fact that he was not too overawed by Michaelhouse’s formality to acknowledge a new colleague with a gesture of friendliness.

While Kenyngham flicked lovingly through his psalter to select the reading of the day, Bartholomew leaned around Father William and tapped the lawyer, John Runham, on the arm.

‘I have some bad news,’ he whispered. ‘Your book-bearer is dead.’

‘Dead?’ asked Runham, startled. ‘I do not think so! Justus served my dinner last night.’

‘He died after that. Cynric found his body near Dame Nichol’s Hythe this morning.’

‘Damn!’ muttered Runham, gazing at him irritably. ‘What did he do? Jump in the river?’

‘He tied a wineskin over his head,’ said Bartholomew, feeling sorry for Justus in having a master who cared so little for him. Bartholomew would not have taken news of Cynric’s demise with such casual indifference. ‘He suffocated.’

Runham gave a mirthless smile. ‘That sounds like Justus. If he had to take his own life, wine would have been involved somehow. Curse the man! Now I will have to find a replacement and I am busy this week. What a wretched inconvenience!’

‘Especially for Justus,’ retorted Bartholomew before he could stop himself. How Runham received the news of his book-bearer’s death was none of his affair, and it was not for him to be judging his colleagues’ relationships with their servants.

‘Especially for me!’ hissed Runham vehemently. ‘You know how difficult it is to find reliable staff these days – we have the Death to thank for that, carrying off so many peasants. Justus could not have chosen a worse time to abandon me. I am willing to wager he did it deliberately.’

Shaking his head crossly, he turned to face the front, leaving the physician repelled by such brazen self-interest. He hoped Runham would remember that it was his responsibility to bury his dead servant, and that he would not leave the corpse to fester in the church for days until he decided he had sufficient time to undertake the necessary arrangements.

‘Are we ready?’ asked Kenyngham, cocking his head questioningly at Bartholomew, who realised that he had not assumed the attitude of prayerful contemplation usually required when the Master intoned the reading of the day. He bowed his head, and Kenyngham began to read, pausing at random moments to reflect on the sacred words in a way that had Michael sighing in hungry impatience. When Kenyngham had finally finished – or had paused sufficiently long to make his listeners suppose he had – there was a scraping of chairs and benches on the rush-strewn floor as the Fellows and students took their seats.

Kenyngham, however, remained standing, his psalter still open in his hands. For several confusing moments, no one spoke or moved. The servants were loath to begin bringing the food to the tables if their saintly Master were still in the throes of his prayers, while the scholars, who knew Kenyngham might continue to read until he had completed the entire book unless stopped, shot each other uneasy glances. Michael was the only one hungry enough – or irreligious enough – to remind the Master that he was not alone in an ecstasy of religious contemplation, but in his hall with the entire College waiting for its dinner.

‘The food is getting cold,’ he stated baldly.

Startled, Kenyngham glanced up from his psalter and regarded Michael in surprise, clearly having forgotten entirely where he was. He gazed around the hall at the watching scholars.

‘Ah, yes,’ he said, recollecting himself. ‘I have an announcement to make.’

Another long pause ensued as his eyes slid downward to the hallowed words of the psalter, which were apparently more demanding of his immediate attention than his six Fellows, eight commoners and forty or so students.

Blind Father Paul smiled indulgently. ‘That man is a saint,’ he whispered in admiration. ‘His whole existence is taken up with spiritual matters.’