A Masterly Murder (54 page)

He scrambled to his feet, his haste to help Michael making him more clumsy than
ever. Someone grabbed him and he struck out, trying to dislodge the grip on his tabard.

‘Bartholomew, stop!’ he heard someone yell. ‘It is me! Simekyn Simeon! Stop this flailing before one of us is hurt!’

Bartholomew could just make out the soft features of the Duke of Lancaster’s squire peering at him. The man Michael had seized
with such glee was Heltisle, who was gazing around him in confusion, not understanding why two Michaelhouse men should be
attacking him in his own gardens.

‘Damn! I thought you were Caumpes,’ panted Michael, releasing the Bene’t Master impatiently and scanning the surrounding trees.

‘Caumpes is over there!’ shouted Simeon, pointing to a shadow that was moving quickly and purposefully towards the opposite
end of the grounds. ‘And he is escaping!’

‘I thought it was
Caumpes
I saw skulking in the trees,’ snapped Michael, regarding him accusingly. ‘But it was you.’

‘We were not skulking,’ objected Heltisle indignantly. ‘This is my College. If anyone was skulking, it was you!’

‘We have no time for this,’ said Michael, leaning against a tree with a hand to his heaving chest. ‘Caumpes is getting away.
Chase him, Matt, or he will elude us.’

Wondering why Michael could not pursue his own villains, Bartholomew set off at a run across the grassy swath towards Luthburne
Lane, the narrow alley that ran along the back of Bene’t College. The shadow bobbed ahead of him, moving fast because he was
on familiar ground.

Aware of footsteps behind him, Bartholomew glanced round to see Simeon on his heels. He slowed, uneasy with the Duke’s henchman
at his back, and certainly not keen on the notion of a knife between his shoulder blades. Caumpes may have ferried Wymundham’s
body to Horwoode’s garden, but Bartholomew felt he had
no cause to trust any of the Bene’t men yet. The fact that it had been Simeon who had visited Langelee in Michaelhouse before
the scaffolding had collapsed and almost killed Michael made Bartholomew far from certain that Caumpes was the only Bene’t
man with murderous inclinations.

Simeon shoved him forward. ‘Do not stop! We can catch him. Quick, climb over the wall.’

He formed a stirrup of his hands, and Bartholomew found himself projected upward, so that he could grasp the top of the wall
that surrounded the College. It was not as high as the one that protected Michaelhouse, nor as thick. He straddled the top,
and leaned down to offer Simeon his hand. The courtier grasped it, and scaled the wall in a way that suggested he had not
spent all his time playing lutes and writing poetry for the Duchess’s ladies-in-waiting.

‘We have lost him,’ said Bartholomew, looking up and down a lane that was still and silent. ‘I cannot see him any more.’

‘There!’ yelled Simeon, grabbing Bartholomew’s arm so violently that the physician almost lost his balance. ‘He is heading
for the river. Come on!’

He leapt from the top of the wall and began to run. Reluctantly, Bartholomew followed.

‘He will not be able to pass through the town gate,’ he gasped, breathless from the chase. ‘The soldiers will stop him.’

‘He will use his boat,’ yelled Simeon. ‘We must prevent him from reaching it. Hurry!’

The foppish, effeminate scribe suddenly seemed a good deal more energetic than Bartholomew. He led the way along the path
that ran parallel to the King’s Ditch, towards where it passed one of the three main entrances to the town – the Trumpington
Gate. Ahead,
Bartholomew saw a shadowy figure climb the leveed bank of the Ditch and drop down the other side.

‘That is where we keep the boat,’ shouted Simeon, running faster. Bartholomew struggled to keep up with him, his heart pounding
and the blood roaring in his ears. He scrambled up the bank, feeling his leather-soled shoes slip and slide on the wet grass.
He reached the top and saw a dark shape moving into the middle of the canal. Caumpes had found his boat and was about to escape
by rowing past the gate to the river beyond.

‘I will alert the guards,’ said Bartholomew, tugging on Simeon’s sleeve. ‘They will stop him.’

‘They will not listen to you,’ said Simeon. ‘But they know I am the Duke’s man; I will go. You follow him along the canal
bank, and grab the boat if it comes close enough.’

Bartholomew gazed at him in the darkness. ‘I do not think that is very likely …’ he began.

Simeon gave him a shove that all but sent him into the murky, sluggish waters of the Ditch, then tore off towards the guardhouse,
yelling at the top of his lungs. Bartholomew regained his balance and began to trot along the top of the slippery bank, keeping
his eyes glued on the dark shape that was being propelled steadily away from him.

‘You cannot escape, Caumpes!’ he shouted, knowing that Caumpes was very likely to escape if he reached the river before Simeon
roused the guards.

‘Damn you, Bartholomew!’ yelled Caumpes, rowing furiously. ‘Everything was beginning to come right until you and that fat
monk interfered.’

‘Stop!’ yelled Bartholomew. ‘You are a killer and you will not go free.’

Caumpes’s bitter laughter verged on the hysterical. ‘I am not the man you seek. I have killed no one.’

‘But you tried,’ shouted Bartholomew, thinking that if he could engage Caumpes in conversation, the man would have less breath
for rowing. He could see Caumpes quite clearly in his boat, which was moving at a brisk walking pace along the still waters
of the Ditch. It was only a few feet away from him, and if Bartholomew had not known about the treacherous currents that seethed
in the seemingly sluggish waters and of the sucking mud and clinging weeds that lined its bottom, he might have considered
leaping in and grabbing the skiff to prevent Caumpes’s escape. ‘That fire almost killed three people.’

In the faint glow of the lamps from the gatehouse, Bartholomew could see Caumpes close his eyes in an agony of despair. ‘Stupid!’
he muttered. ‘It was a stupid thing to do.’

‘Where will you go?’ called Bartholomew, frantically searching for a topic that would slow Caumpes’s relentless advance towards
the freedom of the river. ‘Your whole life is at Bene’t.’

For a moment, Caumpes faltered, and the rhythmic pull of oars in the water was interrupted.

‘Everything I have done was for the good of Bene’t,’ he said, his voice so low as to be all but indiscernible. ‘Tampering
with the Michaelhouse scaffolding was for the good of Bene’t, so that the workmen would return to us and not waste their time
on Runham’s cheap courtyard. And I became embroiled in all this just so that I could raise the money for our own buildings
to be completed.’

‘Is that what all this is about?’ asked Bartholomew. ‘Money for buildings?’

‘Do not judge me, Bartholomew,’ cried Caumpes, agitated. ‘I love my College. I swore a vow of allegiance to it, and if that
entails using my skills as a buyer and a seller of goods to greedy town merchants, then so be it.’

‘How can killing your colleagues be good for Bene’t?’

‘You are wrong about that,’ said Caumpes. ‘You will have to look elsewhere
for your murderer.’

‘I do not believe you,’ said Bartholomew, but something in Caumpes’s quiet conviction disturbed him. He felt as though all
the answers he and Michael had reasoned out were slipping away from him, and that there was a darker, more ruthless plan than
Caumpes’s desperate attempts to protect a College whose petty rivalries and quarrels were tearing it apart.

They had almost reached the Trumpington Gate, and Bartholomew could hear Simeon’s exasperated yells as he argued with soldiers
loath to leave their warm guardhouse on some wild-goose chase thought up by scholars. Bartholomew saw that Caumpes was going
to slip past them, and that would be that. Once he was on the river, he would be free: he could head north to the mysterious,
impenetrable wilderness of the Fens, or he could travel south towards London. Or he could just disappear into the myriad ancient
ditches and waterways that surrounded the town and lie low for a day or two until the hue and cry had died down.

Bartholomew gazed at the little skiff with a feeling of helplessness. He glanced around quickly, to see if there were another
boat he could use to give chase. There was nothing except a length of rope that lay coiled on the bank. He snatched it up
and, keeping a grip on one end, hurled the other as hard as he could towards Caumpes. It landed squarely on the Bene’t man’s
head before slithering harmlessly to the bottom of the boat. Contemptuously, Caumpes shoved it away from him, and then began
rowing for all he was worth.

He was already past the guardhouse, and the infuriatingly slow figures that walked sedately towards the bridge would never
stop him. Bartholomew hurled the rope a
second time, feeling it catch on something. He heard Caumpes swear and scramble about to try to disentangle it. Bartholomew
hauled with all his might, then stumbled backward as Caumpes managed to free it. Bartholomew threw it a third time, putting
every last fibre of strength into hurling it as hard as he could, while the little boat bobbed farther and farther away from
him.

Caumpes was ready, and caught the rope as it snaked towards him. Then, while Bartholomew was still off balance from the force
of the throw, he jerked hard on his end, and the physician went tumbling down the bank and into the fetid waters of the Ditch
below.

Bartholomew heard the exploding splash and felt the agonising chill of the Ditch as it soaked through his clothes. He spat
the vile-tasting water from his mouth in disgust, kicking and struggling against the clinging mud and weeds that closed around
his feet and legs. In the distance, he saw Caumpes’s boat move a little faster as it neared the stronger current of the river,
and then it was gone.

‘Take my hand,’ instructed Simeon, slithering down the bank of the King’s Ditch to Bartholomew, who floundered and flapped
like a landed fish. ‘Do not struggle, or we will never get you out. I saw a sheep drown here only last week.’

Bartholomew stopped struggling and reached out to grab Simeon’s hand, trying not to snatch at it and pull the Duke’s man into
the water with him. The mincing courtier had surprising strength, and it was not long before Bartholomew was extricated from
the weeds and mud of the King’s Ditch to stand dripping on the bank. For the second time that day, Bartholomew stank like
a sewer.

‘When I said you should stop Caumpes, I did not mean
you to dive in after him,’ said Simeon dryly. ‘He is not that important.’

‘He is a killer,’ said Bartholomew, teeth chattering uncontrollably.

‘Yes, he probably is,’ agreed Simeon. ‘But even so, it was foolish of you to jump into the water to stop him. I will track
him down anyway.’

Bartholomew spat again, trying to clear his mouth of the revolting taste of sewage and refuse. He wondered whether he would
fall victim to the intestinal diseases that plagued those of his patients who drank from it. The sulphurous taste made him
think that people who preferred it to walking a short distance to one of the town’s wells were probably insane, and beyond
anything he could do for them.

‘We should go back to Bene’t before you take a chill,’ said Simeon, unfastening his cloak and draping it around Bartholomew’s
shoulders. ‘Come on. A brisk walk should warm you.’

He led the way at a cracking pace along the High Street to Bene’t College. Osmun answered his hammering, furious because the
new porter Walter was nowhere to be found.

‘I will wring his neck when I find him,’ Osmun vowed, his face a dark mask of fury. ‘He was paid a week in advance, and he
still owes us two nights. I will kill him!’

Bartholomew made a mental note to tell Walter to repay the outstanding sum unless he wanted Osmun to claim it back in blood
and broken bones. Simeon shot the enraged porter a cool glance of dislike before taking Bartholomew across the courtyard to
where Michael and Heltisle waited in the hall.

‘Caumpes escaped, then?’ said Michael, eyeing Bartholomew’s wet clothes. His evident disappointment was tempered by amusement
that the physician had once
again muddied himself in the King’s Ditch, although he could scarcely reveal to Simeon that it was Bartholomew who had overheard
his conversation with Heytesbury earlier that day.

‘It was the fault of those soldiers,’ muttered Simeon angrily. ‘It was like trying to rouse the dead. They were so agonisingly
sluggish – putting on their helmets and buckling their swords before they would leave the comfort of their little guardhouse
– that by the time they reached the bridge, all we could see was Caumpes rounding the corner on his way to freedom. I will
have words with the Sheriff about that band of worthless ne’er-do-wells.’

‘I do not believe this,’ said Heltisle miserably. ‘I have known Caumpes for years. He has never struck me as a murderer. And
now he has fled, and will continue to damage my poor College from afar.’

‘No,’ said Simeon. ‘Caumpes will not harm Bene’t because it was his devotion to it that led him into all this in the first
place. And anyway, we will catch him sooner or later.’

He placed a stool near the fire for Bartholomew, whose clothes began to steam, and handed him a cup of mulled wine. The physician
took a hearty mouthful, and then felt his stomach rebel at its powerful flavour, which even copious amounts of sugar and cloves
could not disguise. Thinking it impolite to spit it on Bene’t’s fine floor, or even in the fire, he forced himself to swallow,
flinching as the wine eased its fiery way down to his stomach. Simeon smiled at his reaction, as though it was a prank he
had played before. Bartholomew did not find it amusing, however, and glanced at Michael, wondering whether he, too, had recognised
the acidic, tarry taste of Widow’s Wine.

The monk nodded to his unspoken question. ‘It is the same foul brew that incapacitated most of Michaelhouse on the night that
Runham was elected Master.’

Simeon’s eyes grew round with wry astonishment. ‘You used Widow’s Wine to celebrate Runham’s election? After all your claims
about the fine cellars that Michaelhouse keeps? That, my dear Senior Proctor, is the most flagrant example of hypocrisy I
have ever encountered!’