Study of Murder, The (Five Star Mystery Series) (26 page)

“What’s that?” Phillip asked as we emerged into the daylight and the bustle of Northgate Street. “Did a goose walk over your grave?”

“I hope not.”

“You look done in, Muirteach. When did you last eat properly?”

“I can’t remember,” I answered.

Phillip made a disapproving sound. “You’ll never find your wife if you faint from hunger. Come on, man, let’s get you some food.”

We stopped at a tavern that sold good meals and, truth to tell, I did feel somewhat better after eating some savory roasted fowl and cabbages in pottage. Or perhaps the ale, which was well made and slid easily down my throat, helped. At any rate, after our meal I felt more in command of myself, stronger and less taken by fancies.

“What now?” asked Phillip as he sucked on the last wing bone.

“I’d best check on the lads at the widow’s. And then perhaps return to the area north of town, where you found Mariota’s ring yesterday, to search some more.”

“And Delacey?”

“I’ll seek him at the college hall in the evening. I’ve wasted too much of the day as it is.”

“Well enough,” Phillip agreed. “I’ll keep an eye out for him at Balliol this afternoon.”

“Phillip,” I asked him, “Do you recall any arguments between Clarkson and the other masters over heresy?”

“I don’t attend Wycliffe’s lectures,” Phillip said with a laugh, “although he did study at Balliol.”

“No, I am not speaking of the Lollards. Mistress Jakeson told me of an argument amongst the masters last summer, at The Green Man. She said Clarkson argued with the other masters, Delacey nearly pulled a knife, and it came near to being an ugly scene. Were you there?”

“I am often at The Green Man, although at that time I may have been attending more to Jonetta than to philosophical discussions. But I do recall one evening, in high summer. I’m thinking it was Eusebius who was ranting about something—he is a difficult man to follow at times. Something to do with the divine essence—I could not follow it, and neither could Clarkson, apparently. Everyone was in their cups that night, even Clarkson, which was not usual for him. But it was hot, and summer, the break between terms.”

“So what happened?”

“Eusebius was speaking of some tangent, and Delacey grew impatient. It was Eusebius he threatened, not Clarkson. Mistress Jakeson must have misinterpreted what she saw.”

“Was there talk of heresy?”

“Not that I recall. Or perhaps Clarkson laughingly said something. No one can quite follow Brother Eusebius’s ramblings, once he gets started.”

“Yet he is a master of the college.”

“Yes, and none so bad a teacher, when he sticks to the topic assigned him. But, by all the saints, please don’t get him started on natural philosophy. He idolizes that Friar Bacon, the one that was imprisoned for heresy a hundred years past. Perhaps that is what Clarkson meant.”

“And there was no bad blood between any of the masters after that evening?”

Phillip shook his head. “None whatsoever that I noted.”

I pushed the bench away from the trestle table and stood up. “I’m away, then.”

“And I too, Muirteach. No, don’t worry for it,” said Phillip as I reached for my purse. “This meal is my treat.”

“I thought you had no funds.”

“Not so many, but I can well afford this.”

I thanked him and he paid the tavern keeper. We left, walking up Catte Street and back into the suburbs through Smithgate.

After we crossed Smithgate I left Phillip and returned to the widow’s. I found Anthony still lying abed, while Crispin and Donald sat in my chamber playing the lute. This, apparently, had not overly disturbed Anthony, who slept, snoring gently. The kitten was nowhere in sight. No doubt it misliked the boys playing, as did I.

I dumped my scrip, full of parchments, on my bed.

“Here, I’ve something else for you lads to do,” I said, pulling out the parchments. “See if you can clean these off. Perhaps there’s some more mysterious writing under these.”

“Where did they come from?” asked Donald, putting aside his lute.

“The stationer’s, the same one Anthony visited yesterday. Adam Bookman’s wife said she found them put aside, but thought to sell them and get them out of the way.”

Crispin picked up one and looked at it through narrowed eyes. “They do look similar to the ones you had, Donald,” he said. “I’ll go fetch water to soak them.” Crispin left with alacrity.

Donald grinned at me. “He’s hoping for more naked women.”

“As are you, no doubt.”

“Aye, for
certes
.”

We heard Crispin’s somewhat heavy tread as he climbed the stairs to our chambers with a bucket of water. “Here it is. Where’s the basin?”

The boys started to soak the parchments and I peeked in the other chamber. Anthony had stopped snoring and had his eyes open.

“How are you feeling?” I asked him.

“Better. I think.”

“Widow Tanner’s poultice must have helped.” I looked at the back of Anthony’s head and fancied the swelling looked diminished, although the lump still had a deep purple hue.

“Anthony, where did you go yesterday, after you bought those old parchments?”

“I attended one lecture in the afternoon, then Crispin and I stopped at The Red Cockerel and drank some ale. But we did not stay too long there. And then we were back to our lodgings, long before the gates closed.

“Did anyone see you at the bookman’s?”

Anthony looked confused. “There are always folk about. It’s High Street. I could not say who might have seen me. Why?”

“I’m thinking you were assaulted because of the parchments. Remember, the ones we had here were stolen. Where are the ones you bought yesterday?”

“Back at our lodgings, I would suppose. I left them in my satchel underneath my mattress. They should still be there.”

“I’ll send Crispin to get them.”

Anthony nodded. “He’ll know where they are.”

Crispin appeared loath to stop washing the parchments we had, but agreed to return to their tenement and get the bag. “And Crispin,” I cautioned him as he left, “Show some stealth. Be cautious. Don’t let anyone see you with the parchments.”

Crispin hooted. “There are ten other boys that share our room.”

“You needn’t tell them what you’re getting, if you see anyone. Just say it is some things Anthony is needing.”

Crispin nodded impatiently.

“Be careful,” I added, but he was already out the door and down the stairs. I heard the main door slam shut as he left the house.

Anthony looked a little worried. “Will he be all right?”

“I think so. There are many folk about.” I fancied Anthony still looked anxious and I felt guilty over sending Crispin out. “Here, now, I will just go outside and watch for him to come back up the street. It should not take too long for him to fetch the sheets.”

Anthony looked relieved and lay back against the bolster on the bed. I returned to my own chamber and told Donald what I was about as I grabbed my
brat
and wrapped it around me. I passed Avice at the bottom of the stairs. She had a bowl of fragrant broth on a tray, beef I thought, and so it seemed that Anthony would be nourished in my absence.

Outside the afternoon sun was sinking in the sky. Canditch was crowded with folk about their errands, students and masters heading for their lodgings or to a last lecture. I saw some of the Austin Friars making their way back to their house around the corner as the shadows grew longer. A pie man had a stall across from the boys’ tenement and I bought a beef pastry for a farthing, munching on it while I waited. Eusebius waved vaguely as he headed down the street, taking his usual evening walk. The minutes dragged by and I was heartened to see Crispin finally emerge from his lodging and head back toward the Widow Tanner’s.

He scowled when he saw me. “What are you about, Muirteach? I’ve no need for a nursemaid.”

I had heard similar phrases from young lads before and tried not to show my own annoyance. “Your friend was anxious for your sake. Don’t act the churl over it. Did you find the satchel?”

Crispin nodded sullenly and I found myself wishing for an instant that he had been the lad knocked on the head, instead of Anthony. “Well, let us go, then,” I said, glad Crispin was no mind-reader. “Here, I’ll buy you a pie for your trouble.”

Crispin brightened up a bit at this and devoured his treat while we walked back to the widow’s. I saw Crispin safely to the door and then walked out on the road leading north, past the Benedictines’ College and Vintner Gibbes’s large house to the abandoned homes Phillip and I had searched the day before. I had intended to search this area, and although the day had come close to escaping me I could not abandon my quest.

I passed the houses by and entered into the woods we had searched with the lymers. I don’t know what I hoped to find, some trace of my wife that we had overlooked before. But I found nothing, just hazel twigs and the first fallen oak leaves lying on the ground among the grasses and the bracken. The sun disappeared behind the trees and it got too dark to see anything. Disconsolate, I found my way back to the road and started the walk back to our lodgings.

The fading twilight gave a faint light to the road. It had grown chill; I wrapped my mantle more closely about me and shivered. A movement caught my eye, and I hung back in the shadows to watch. Most likely it was the vintner’s pig, I thought, gotten loose again. I could barely make out the shape, blacker against the growing darkness. As I strained my eyes it seemed that the shape was too tall to be a pig or other animal. A human, then, but doing what in the darkness?

The figure reached the road. I saw it turn and survey the road behind, as if it did not want to be observed. I sank back into the shadow of a beech tree and watched as the person, apparently satisfied, turned again and started down the way toward the town. I considered whether to approach or not, and decided instead to follow and see where he led. It might, after all, be something entirely without consequence: the vintner looking for his pig, a lover parting from a sweetheart, or some such thing. But I would follow, in any case.

I stayed well back in the shadows but the figure, which I could now make out, wore a hood and cloak. He seemed satisfied he was alone and strode rapidly down the street, turning right when he reached Canditch. Here there were more folk about, and light spilled out from open doorways and unshuttered windows. The figure continued down the street and I strove to keep up while he passed the boys’ lodgings and the other tenements. As we reached the corner of St. Giles’s Street, the yowl of a cat broke the silence of the night. I turned to look, despite myself, and when I looked ahead again the mysterious figure had vanished.

I combed the street, walking up and down Canditch to North-gate and then back to the widow’s several times. Thinking the mysterious figure must have ducked into a tavern, I also poked my nose into the few taverns in this neighborhood, but none of the patrons looked remotely like the mysterious figure I had followed. Then I walked up St. Giles’s Street until I reached the open fields but saw no one. Finally, I abandoned the search, disgusted with my moment’s inattention and myself.

The person I’d seen could have been totally innocent, I told myself. A lover returning from a tryst. Or, I added, more cynically, a housebreaker. The figure probably had no import to my search for Mariota. Still, I wondered, and resolved to search that area again on the morrow as I made my discouraged way home through the darkness of a deserted street to the widow’s.

I could see a candle burning through the upper window of the chamber I had shared with Mariota and I judged that perhaps the lads were still working on the parchments. At least, thankfully, I heard no sounds of the lute. I opened the door onto the welcome light and warmth of the widow’s hall and shut the door on the blackness outside.

“Oh, there you be,” said Widow Tanner, looking up from some sewing she worked on by the firelight. “We’ve saved some pottage for you in the kitchens, thinking you’d be hungry once you returned. You must eat, sir, you are wasting away.”

“Aye,” I replied, “thank you for that.”

The widow sent Avice to the kitchen for the food and then put her sewing aside and busied herself pulling up a stool to the table. “You’re wearing yourself down as thin as an over-scraped parchment,” she observed.

“And what would you have me do?” I asked, sounding as churlish as Crispin. “I’m going upstairs to check on the lads. I shall be back in a moment.”

The widow’s comment was meant kindly, I told myself as I wearily climbed the stairs. But that did nothing to help my mood. I entered my chamber and saw Donald and Crispin bent over at the desk Mariota had used. Anthony had joined them and lay on my bed with the tabby kitten pouncing on his toes under the blanket. Several wet parchments also lay on the bed, drying out.

“And so are you having success?” I asked.

Donald and Crispin looked up. “Aye,” Donald replied, reverting to Gaelic in his eagerness to tell me. “All the parchments will be having some of that strange writing on them. And some are having the drawings on them as well.”

He showed me the faint image of a strange circular object with crenellations somewhat resembling battlements around the edge of it.

“There are no naked women,” Crispin interjected. “I’ve searched and searched and have not found a one.”

“Aye, I’m sure you have,” I said, wishing I could give the lad a clout. Instead, I turned to Anthony. “And you, sir, are you feeling better?”

“Yes, thank you, sir. Much better. I slept quite a time, and then was hungry. Avice brought pottage.”

“And the other two of you, did you eat as well?”

The boys nodded.

“And you thanked your hostess? Widow Tanner is going to some extra trouble to have you all here.”

“We are not knaves, Muirteach,” Donald retorted. “We thanked her properly.”

I nodded. “Good.”

“Muirteach,” asked Donald, “did you find anything?”

“Nothing,” I replied, and leaving the lads to their labors I made my way downstairs.

The table was set with a wooden bowl of hot soup and some fresh bread. Widow Tanner was nowhere in sight. Although I had thought I had no hunger in me, the soup smelled tasty and I ate all of it, and some of the loaf. Avice came in to take away the dishes. I noticed she looked plumper in the belly; the babe was beginning to show.