A Bone of Contention (6 page)

'Was he drunk? Are there signs of a struggle?'

Bartholomew inspected the young man's hands, but his finger-nails were surprisingly well-kept, and there was no sign that he had clawed or attacked his assailant. His clothes, too, were intact, and Bartholomew saw only the mended tears he had noted the previous day.

'I would say he had no idea his attacker was behind him. Or that he knew someone was behind him, but felt no need to fear. As to drink, I can smell only this revolting Ditch on him. Perhaps he was drunk, but if so, the water has leached all signs of it away.'

He looked suddenly at Michael as if to speak, but then thought better of it and turned his attention back to the body.

'What is it?' asked Michael, catching his indecision.

Bartholomew frowned down at the body. 'Remember I told you that the skeleton we found also had an indentation on the back of its skull? Possibly hit on the head and dumped in the Ditch?'

'Of course,' said Michael. 'But you said there was not enough evidence to prove that the child was murdered, and you seem sure that Kenzie has been. What are the differences?'

Bartholomew rubbed his chin absently, leaving a black smudge there from the mud on his hand. 'The child lay dead in the Ditch for many years, providing ample time for damage to occur to the skull after death; Kenzie has been dead only a few hours. Also, Kenzie's wound bled copiously as you can see from his stained clothes. Wounds do not bleed so if inflicted after death, but we do not have such evidence for the skeleton. I did not say the child was not murdered, only that I cannot prove it.'

'But let us assume he was,' said Michael thoughtfully.

'It is surely something of a coincidence that the body of a murdered child is discovered one day, and the very next, a man is killed in the same manner. You think there might be a connection?'

Bartholomew grimaced. 'Yes, I do. But that is the essence of why I was reluctant to speak. If I am right about the length of time the skeleton has been in the Ditch, Kenzie would not even have been born when the child died.'

'But you could be wrong, and the skeleton is only a few years dead. That would mean that there might be some connection between the two victims.'

'Not even then, Brother,' said Bartholomew. 'Kenzie is a Scot and not local. He has only been here for twelve months at the very most. How could there be a connection?'

'Can you not tell more from this child's bones?' asked Michael.

Bartholomew looked at him for a moment, and then laughed. 'Despite the fanciful teachings of an Oxford astrologer who maintained in a lecture I once attended that the Scots are a "cruel, proud, excitable, bestial, false and underhand race who must therefore be ruled by Scorpio", it is not possible to tell one of them from an Englishman from bones alone, Scorpio or otherwise!'

'Oxford University supports that?' said Michael, astonished.

'No wonder their Scots are always rioting and looting its halls and colleges.'

'It is only the claim of a single scholar,' said Bartholomew.

'And doubtless Scottish astrologers have cast an equally unflattering national horoscope for the English. But we are digressing from our task.'

'So the child might have been born a Scot,' mused Michael, looking back at Kenzie's body, 'but there is no way to prise that information from his bones?'

Bartholomew nodded, and Michael gave a sigh of resignation.

'I have a feeling this might be more difficult to resolve than I first thought. If the link between these two bodies spans many years, we might never know the truth.'

'There are some things to which we will never know the answers,' said Bartholomew in an exaggerated imitation of Michael's pompous words to him in the orchard the night before. 'Perhaps this is one of them.'

Michael shot him an unpleasant look. 'If you value peaceful relations between town and gown, Matt, you had better hope not,' he said primly. 'The students might riot if they believe one of their number has been murdered especially if we cannot provide evidence that the culprit was not a townsman.'

Bartholomew shook his head impatiently. 'That would be an unreasonable assumption on their part. Kenzie's killer might just as easily be one of his four friends from David's Hostel.'

'And since when has reason ever prevented a riot?' demanded Michael in a superior tone. 'You know as well as I that the mood of scholars and townsfolk alike is ugly at the moment. It seems to me that Kenzie's death might provide the perfect excuse for them to begin fighting each other as they so clearly wish to do.'

Bartholomew regarded him soberly. The fat monk was right Over the last month or so, he had noticed a distinctly uneasy atmosphere in the town: it had been the subject of discussion at high table at Michaelhouse on several occasions. Optimistically — overly so in Bartholomew's opinion — the Master and Fellows hoped that the tension would ease once term began, and most students would be forced to concentrate on their studies.

Michael climbed to his feet clumsily, wincing at his stiff knees, and called down to Thorpe. 'Why did you take so long to discover the body, Master Thorpe? Doctor Bartholomew says this man might have died as early as yesterday evening.'

Thorpe shrugged elegantly. 'It is Sunday,' he replied.

'No one is dredging the Ditch today, and the body might well have remained undiscovered until tomorrow, but, by chance, our scullion, Henry, noticed the body when he came to dispose of some kitchen scraps.'

Bartholomew sighed. There was little point in dredging the Ditch if scullions were not prepared to dump their kitchen waste elsewhere. In a year or two, the town would be facing the same problems all over again.

'I heard that their other servant — that little fellow, Will — claims to have seen more bones in the Ditch on the other side of the High Street,' said Michael in an undertone to Bartholomew, drawing the physician's mind away from the litany of diseases he believed owed their origins to dirty water. 'Master Thorpe will doubtless move the workmen to look for martyr relics in more fertile ground tomorrow.'

'What are you two muttering about?' said Thorpe uneasily, taking a few steps up the bank towards them.

'We are wondering whether you know this man who died on your property last night,' Michael called back pleasantly. 'Will you come to see?'

Very reluctantly, Thorpe scrambled towards them, and looked down at Kenzie's body. He gave it the most superficial of glances, and then looked a second time for longer.

'It is not a student of Valence Marie,' he said, his voice halfway between surprise and relief. 'I do not believe I have met him before. He is a student, though. He is wearing an undergraduate's tabard.'

Thank you, Master Thorpe,' said Michael, regarding the scholar with a blank expression. 'I might have overlooked that, had you not pointed it out.'

Thorpe nodded, oblivious to the irony in Michael's voice, and turned to make his way back down the bank, swearing when he slipped and fell on one knee. Heppel hurried to help him, and Bartholomew heard him regaling the Master of Valence Marie with an infallible remedy for unsteadiness in the limbs that could be procured from powdered earthworms and raw sparrows' brains.

'If Thorpe is foolish enough to take that concoction, then he deserves all the stomach cramps he will get,' he muttered to Michael, watching Heppel warm to his subject.

'Thorpe might be a coward for not coming immediately to see if the corpse was a member of his own college, but he is no lunatic. Can you tell me any more about Kenzie's death before we move the body to the church?'

'Only one thing.' Bartholomew took one of Kenzie's hands and pointed at the little finger. There was a thin, but stark, white band on the brown skin, showing where, until recently, a ring had been worn.

'The motive for his murder was theft?' asked Michael, staring down at the young man's hand.

Bartholomew shrugged. 'Possibly. You should ask Kenzie's friends whether the ring was valuable and whether they know if he was wearing it when he died.

But, assuming he died during the night, the killer would need eyes like an owl to detect a ring on his victim's hand in the dark before he struck. There was no moon last night.'

'Perhaps he killed first and looked later,' said Michael.

'Although a young man who is so obviously a student in patched clothes is hardly likely to render rich pickings to justify so foul a crime.'

Bartholomew gave a brief smile without humour. 'We both know that people have been killed for far less than a ring in this town.'

The sun was casting long shadows across the High Street by the time they had ordered Kenzie's body to be taken to St Botolph's Church, and spoken to the servant, Henry the scullion, who had discovered the corpse. He could tell them nothing, other than to say that he had seen no one matching Kenzie's description hanging around the Ditch the day before.

'I must go to David's Hostel before someone else tells this young man's friends what has happened,' said Michael, squinting at the sun, a great orange ball in the cloudless sky. 'Come with me, Matt. I would be happier if there were two of us judging the reactions of Kenzie's compatriots when we give them the news of his death.'

Bartholomew started to object — he had planned to work on his treatise on fevers while there was still sufficient daylight in which to write — but Michael was right.

If there had been some kind of falling out between the five friends that had resulted in the death of one of them, it would be better if there were more than one observer for guilty reactions. Neither Michael nor Bartholomew put much faith in Guy Heppel's powers of observation.

'You look tired, Guy,' said Michael solicitously to the Junior Proctor who trailed along behind them. 'Tell the Chancellor what has happened and then go home to rest.'

'I do feel weary,' said Heppel, stretching out a white hand to the monk's arm to support himself, as if even admitting to his weakness had suddenly sapped the remaining strength from his limbs.

'Shall I order you a horse to take you there?' asked Michael, eyeing the hand on his arm with disapproval.

'After all, it might be almost a quarter of an hour's walk by the time you retrace your steps from the Chancellor's office to your room in the King's Hall.'

Heppel seriously considered the offer, while Bartholomew turned away to hide his smile. 'I think I can manage to walk,' Heppel said eventually.

Michael and Bartholomew watched him walk away, a slender figure whose overlarge scholar's tabard hung in dense, cumbersome folds.

'You are supposed to be compassionate to your fellow men, Brother,' said Bartholomew. 'Not add to his already impressive list of ailments by telling him he looks ill.'

'The man is a weasel,' said Michael, unrepentant.

'And I do not believe him to be as self-obsessed as he appears. He heard every word of what you told me about Kenzie's corpse, and will report it all faithfully to the Chancellor.'

Bartholomew was confused. 'You think Heppel is spying on you for de Wetherset?'

Michael gave a short bark of laughter. 'De Wetherset would not dare — especially with an agent of Heppel's mediocre talents. But de Wetherset had some reason for appointing him over Father William, and it would not surprise me to learn that Heppel is his nephew or some other relative.'

'If that is true, then you will never find out from de Wetherset,' said Bartholomew with conviction. 'He is not a man to allow himself to be caught indulging in an act of flagrant nepotism.'

'True,' said Michael. 'But at least Heppel will be out of our way when we visit David's Hostel. The last thing we want as we gauge reactions to the news of Kenzie's death is Heppel offering special potions to ease grief.'

They began to walk along the High Street to Shoemaker Row. The intense heat had faded with the setting of the sun, but the air was still close and thick with the smell of the river and the Ditch. Carts rattled past them, hurrying towards the Trumpington Gate and the villages beyond before darkness fell and the roads became the domain of robbers and outlaws. Although it was Sunday, and officially a day of rest, the apprentices were active, darting here and there as they ferried goods to and from their masters' storehouses along Milne Street and the wharves. Bartholomew ignored the noise and bustle, and thought back to his encounter with the David's students the day before.

'Two of the Scots — Ruthven and Davy Grahame seemed well-disposed to study,' he said. 'But the others gave the impression they would rather be anywhere other than making a pretence of scholarship in Cambridge.'

'Really?' asked Michael thoughtfully. 'What else would they rather be doing, do you think? Fighting? Rioting?

Whoring?'

'Very possibly,' said Bartholomew. 'The one you grabbed by the collar is called Fyvie. He has something of a temper, and is perhaps over-sensitive to insults to his nation, whether real or perceived. He is unwise to wear his emotions so openly: it is asking for someone to taunt him into starting a brawl.'

He jumped as the doors of St Mary's Church were flung open with a crash and troops of noisy, yelling scholars came out, jostling and shoving each other. One of them was leading a chorus in Latin, the words of which made Bartholomew exchange a look of half-shock and half-amusement with Michael. Bartholomew smothered a smile when he noticed how much over-long hair was bundled into hoods, and bright clothing was hastily covered with sober scholars' tabards, as the students recognised Michael, the Senior Proctor. He also noticed that one of his own students, Sam Gray, was singing the bawdy Latin chorus as loudly as he could, and saw that he had his tabard wrapped around a girl he had obviously smuggled into the church.

The University, partly because of the large numbers of friars and monks in its ranks, and partly to protect the local female population, forbade its students any dealings with women. In some ways, the rule was a wise one, for it went at least some way in preventing potentially dangerous incidents involving outraged husbands, fathers and brothers. Yet, with hundreds of hot-blooded young men barely under the control of their masters, the rule was often impossible to enforce. If a headstrong and disobedient student — like Sam Gray — decided to embark on a relationship with a woman, there was little that could be done about it. Gray could be 'sent down' from the University in disgrace, but the plague meant that student numbers were low, and the University wanted to increase, not decrease them. The students were only too aware that the University's colleges and hostels were sufficiently desperate for their fees that they were prepared to overlook a good deal to keep them.