Bartholomew lifted the sheet that covered the fishmonger and pointed. ‘He has been washed and dressed in a shroud. We will
find nothing here.’
‘Look anyway,’ instructed Michael.
Hoping Philippa would not choose that moment to pay her respects to her husband, Bartholomew began a careful examination of
Turke. The corpse’s skin was icy to the touch, and in places it felt hard, where it was partially frozen. There were ancient
scars on the calves, although Bartholomew could not begin to imagine what had caused them – short of riding a horse through
knife-brandishing foot-soldiers. He found cuts on the hands and a mark on Turke’s face
that had probably occurred when he had fallen through the ice and attempted to claw his way clear. Bartholomew completed
his examination, replaced the sheet and shroud, and gave Michael a helpless shrug.
‘Damn!’ muttered Michael. ‘Turke’s corpse was my last hope. I thought that someone might have left something with it – a letter
or some message – that last night’s intruders wanted to collect, but I see I was mistaken.’
‘I suppose there is always Gosslinge’s body,’ suggested Bartholomew, unable to think of anything else. ‘I cannot see why anyone
would leave a message with him, but it may be worth looking. But then I am leaving this freezing church. There is nothing
here, and I think we should go elsewhere for clues – like trying to find out what Ailred was up to last night, or interviewing
Harysone again.’
Gosslinge was in the south aisle, tucked out of sight behind a pile of broken benches. Bartholomew noticed that candles had
been placed at his head and feet, although these had already burned away, leaving nothing but a saucer of cream-coloured wax
and a mess on the floor. A piece of cloth had been tucked around him, but he was still dressed in the mean clothes he had
worn when they had first discovered his body. Someone had pressed a flower into his hands. It was a Christmas rose – Edith’s
favourite – and Bartholomew suspected that the small kindnesses to his body were her work.
It was gloomy in the aisle, almost as dark as it had been when Bartholomew had first examined Gosslinge, so he opened the
south door to allow the daylight to flood in. It made a huge difference. He noticed for the first time that Gosslinge’s nose
and mouth had a blue tinge, and that his lips looked bruised. They were small things, but they made Bartholomew’s stomach
feel as though it had been punched. He rubbed a hand through his hair and closed his eyes.
‘Lord help us, Brother!’ he muttered. ‘I think I have made a terrible mistake.’
‘Why?’ demanded Michael. ‘What is wrong with you? You
look as though you have seen a ghost. Have you found what that pair were looking for?’
‘Something more important than that. Now I can see Gosslinge in good light, I think his death was not from natural causes,
as I told you days ago.’
‘You mean he was murdered?’ asked Michael in disbelief. ‘But you said that he had died of the cold.’
‘I said the cold had
probably
killed him. But now I see signs to suggest that was not the case.’
‘God’s teeth, Matt!’ exclaimed Michael, horrified. ‘We could have been looking for his killer days ago!’
‘I know,’ said Bartholomew miserably. ‘You do not need to tell me that.’
Michael sighed irritably. ‘You had better tell me what you think now, then. Is it his swollen lips that made you change your
mind? Or the fact that one of his fingernails is ripped?’
‘Is it?’ asked Bartholomew weakly. He lifted the stiff limb and saw that Michael was right. Gosslinge had possessed long,
yellowish nails, and one of these had ripped jaggedly near the top of one finger. It was only a broken nail, not an actual
injury, but no living person would have left it sticking at right angles to his finger; he would have pulled it off completely.
It indicated the damage had probably occurred at about the time of Gosslinge’s death, and that he had been involved in something
physical.
Bartholomew gazed at Gosslinge in disbelief. He knew he had not conducted a thorough examination of the body when they had
first discovered it; the church had been too dark and he had been tired from watching over Dunstan the two previous nights.
He had also been cold, and recalled that his numb fingers and feet had felt like lumps of wood. But these were no excuse.
He saw now that he should have moved the corpse out of the church and examined it in the cemetery, where he would have been
able to see. He also knew he should have pushed his physical discomfort to the back of his mind, and done his duty properly.
He felt sick with self-recrimination.
‘Are you going to examine him now?’ asked Michael, growing tired of waiting while the physician did nothing but stare. ‘Or
are you hoping he will sit up and tell you what happened?’
Bartholomew forced himself to move. He removed the poor clothes that covered Gosslinge, cutting them with his knife, since
there seemed to be no next of kin who would claim them. Then he assessed every part of the body, beginning with the feet and
working up. He palpated to test for broken bones, and looked at the corpse from every possible angle, to ensure he missed
no abrasions. Carefully, he ran his fingers through the hair, to see whether he could detect a blow to the head, and finally,
he spent a long time exploring Gosslinge’s neck.
‘Now you are going too far the other way,’ complained Michael, stamping his feet in an attempt to keep warm. ‘You missed evidence
last time, so you are compensating by being overly fussy now. What can you tell me? How did he die?’
‘I do not know,’ said Bartholomew, puzzled. ‘I doubt it was from natural causes – because of the swelling around his mouth
and that chipped tooth. And there is the fingernail. Everything points to some kind of suffocation – smothering, perhaps –
but I cannot pinpoint it.’
‘Suffocation will do,’ said Michael. ‘How do you know he did not do it himself?’
‘It is not easy to suffocate yourself. You lose consciousness before you die, and whatever you are pressing against your face
falls away. And I cannot see him choking himself while wrapped in the albs, anyway. I think the lack of air would have driven
him away from them.’
‘Not if he intended to die, and he hid so his body would not be discovered before he was dead. You said yourself that you
had no idea how long he had been there.’
‘We know he disappeared shortly after arriving in Cambridge,’ said Bartholomew. ‘Turke told us at the Christmas Day feast
that he had been missing for five days.’
‘That means he disappeared on the twentieth of December,’ said Michael. ‘A Tuesday, and – coincidentally – the
day Norbert went missing. I wonder whether that is significant. But what was Gosslinge doing to warrant ending up smothered
in St Michael’s mouldy robes? Does this mean his corpse stood hidden in here for two whole days before we happened to come
across him?’
‘It looks that way, Brother.’
‘You do not think these marks – I hesitate to call them injuries, since they are so minor – were caused by Gosslinge himself
in his death throes?’
‘There is no way to tell, but I would imagine not. I think it more likely someone harmed him – but I could be wrong.’
‘Perhaps he was lonely,’ suggested Michael, reluctant to abandon the suicide theory. ‘Perhaps he did not want to go to Walsingham.
Perhaps Turke drove him to take his own life. Gosslinge knew no one else here, so if anyone drove him to suicide, it must
have been his master.’
‘Or Giles or Philippa,’ said Bartholomew. ‘But do not forget he knew the Waits. Quenhyth saw them with Gosslinge, and so did
Harysone. And the Waits said Gosslinge ate a meal with Harysone – something Harysone admitted, too.’
‘I do not see why the Waits should drive him to take his own life – unless they threatened to inflict their juggling on him.
But Harysone is another matter. I knew he was up to something when we saw him trying to get into the church, just a short
time before we discovered Gosslinge’s corpse.’ Michael’s eyes gleamed with triumph, and Bartholomew saw the monk thought he
had a workable theory.
‘No one in the Turke household mentioned any malaise or unhappiness on Gosslinge’s part,’ the physician said, still trying
to think of reasons why Gosslinge might have killed himself. Some instinct told him that Gosslinge had not intended to die
and, because of his earlier negligence, he felt obliged to give the matter his best attention now. He sighed despondently
as he considered the scant evidence. ‘Suicide makes no sense. If Gosslinge took his own life, why was he not wearing his livery?
And how did he end up among the albs?’
Although he was too embarrassed to admit it to Michael, Bartholomew was painfully aware that he had not taken the time to
assess the nature of the folds that had held Gosslinge in the rotten robes. He knew now that he should have unravelled them
slowly, so that he could have seen whether Gosslinge had tied them himself or whether someone else had done it for him. He
had been careless and irresponsible, and that knowledge would haunt him for a very long time.
Michael sighed. ‘It would help, of course, if we knew for certain whether this was a suicide or murder. Are you sure there
is nothing lodged in his mouth that may tell us one way or the other?’
Bartholomew was sure, but his confidence had suffered a serious blow, so he looked again. There was nothing. He tipped Gosslinge’s
head back, and peered down the corpse’s throat for so long that Michael began to mutter in exasperation. Eventually, he rummaged
in his medical bag and produced a knife, which he placed against Gosslinge’s wind-pipe.
‘What are you doing?’ cried Michael in alarm. He glanced around in agitation. ‘Put that thing away, man! You cannot start
carving up Christian men as though they were slabs of meat on a butcher’s stall! I know you enjoy indulging in surgery now
and again, but you cannot do it here, and you cannot do it on him. Someone will be sure to notice.’
‘But I want to see whether there is anything stuck in his throat,’ objected Bartholomew.
‘Then use tweezers, and go to his throat via his mouth. Do not start hacking him about in places where it will show. God’s
teeth, Matt! You should not need me to tell you this.’
Reluctantly, Bartholomew complied, declining to point out that if Michael wanted answers to his questions, then he should
not be squeamish about the ways in which those answers were provided. He found a fairly long pair of forceps and inserted
them into Gosslinge’s mouth, pushing them as far to the back of the throat as he could.
‘There
is
something here,’ he exclaimed, leaning to one side to gain a better purchase on the object that was lodged just beyond his
reach. He pressed harder, hoping Michael did not hear the snap as Gosslinge lost another of his front teeth.
‘I sincerely hope you did not submit my husband to this kind of treatment,’ came a cold voice from behind them.
B
ARTHOLOMEW JUMPED SO MUCH WHEN PHILIPPA SPOKE IN
the silence of the church that he dropped his tweezers, which clattered across the floor with a sound that was shockingly
loud. Stanmore was with her, looking from the dead servant to his brother-in-law with an expression of horror. To hide his
consternation, Bartholomew bent down and took his time in retrieving the dropped implement, irrationally hoping that both
Philippa and Stanmore would be gone by the time he straightened up. Philippa, meanwhile, waited for a response.
‘Matt made you a promise,’ replied Michael suavely, when he saw Bartholomew did not know how to answer her. ‘It is Gosslinge
he is examining, not your husband.’
‘Did you ram metal objects down Walter’s throat, too?’ asked Philippa icily, addressing Bartholomew. She was too intelligent
not to see that Michael had deftly side-stepped the issue.
‘I did not,’ replied Bartholomew, standing and thrusting the forceps into his bag.
Philippa made a grimace of disgust. ‘I thought you kept your clean bandages in there. If you throw things that have been inside
corpses on top of them, then it is not surprising your patients sicken and die. I heard about the deaths of the two old men
who live by the river; Edith told me.’
‘One,’ said Bartholomew defensively. ‘Dunstan is still alive.’
‘He was dead this morning,’ said Stanmore, still regarding Bartholomew askance. He started to edge towards the door, deciding
that if his brother-in-law had a good explanation for his ghoulish activities then he did not want to hear it.
He saw Bartholomew’s distress at the news about Dunstan and stopped. His voice was gentle when he spoke again. ‘Matilde came
to tell Edith, Matt. She said she left him asleep but alive shortly after you went home, but he was dead when she returned
at dawn.’
Bartholomew turned away, embarrassed by the sudden pricking of tears at the back of his eyes. He was fond of the two old rivermen,
and would miss their cheerful gossip on summer evenings, when he had sat with them outside their hovel. He had known it would
not be long before Dunstan followed his brother, but he had not anticipated it would be quite so soon. He wondered what more
he could have done to help, and felt grief threaten to overwhelm him.
‘I will say his requiem mass,’ said Michael in a voice that was hoarse with emotion. ‘He sang in my choir, and I have known
him for many years.’
Philippa looked from one to the other in sudden consternation. ‘I am sorry,’ she said, sounding contrite. ‘I see they were
dear to you. I did not know, and you must forgive me. I would not have broken the news so baldly had I known.’
Her sympathy was more than Bartholomew could bear. He walked away, saying he was going to wash his hands in water from the
jug at the back of the nave. Memories of the old men’s chatter in the summer sunlight returned to him, and it was some time
before he was sufficiently in control of himself to rejoin to the others. Michael’s reaction had been much the same. He was
in the Stanton Chapel, standing over Athelbald with sad eyes and a downturned mouth.
Philippa and Stanmore waited together in the nave, standing stiffly side by side, as though neither was comfortable with the
other’s company. With a distant part of his mind, Bartholomew wondered whether Philippa knew Stanmore suspected her and Giles
of foul play in the deaths of Turke and Gosslinge and resented him for it. Stanmore,
meanwhile, was edgy and restless, and looked as though he could not wait to escape from her presence. Eventually, Michael
muttered a benediction, then took a deep breath before turning to Bartholomew.
‘Obviously there is no more you can do for Dunstan, but I need to make arrangements for him to be buried with his brother.’
‘Will you wait a moment while Philippa lights some candles?’ asked Stanmore, abandoning the widow with relief as he headed
for the door. ‘I escorted her here, but I have a guild meeting to attend and cannot see her home again. It is on your way
– more or less.’
He had opened the door and left before they had had the chance to reply, transparently grateful to be about his own business.
He slammed the door behind him, sending a hollow crash around the building. Bartholomew wished that Stanmore had made as much
noise entering the church; then he would not have been caught with a pair of forceps in the throat of a corpse.
‘Cambridge is reasonably safe during the day,’ he said, thinking Philippa was being overly sensitive by not wanting to walk
alone. ‘You are unlikely to come to harm, and it is not far from here to Milne Street.’
‘Actually, Cambridge is a very odd little town,’ she countered. ‘And do not try to convince me otherwise, because I remember
it from when I was here during the plague – bodies hidden in attics, Masters burned alive in their rooms, men murdered and
their deaths made to appear natural. But my insistence on an escort is not because I am afraid, but because it is not seemly
for a recent widow to wander the streets on her own.’
‘London manners,’ remarked Michael. ‘No one would condemn unescorted widows here.’
‘Perhaps so, but I do not want to abandon my principles just because I am travelling. What are you doing here anyway? Do you
not have better things to do than thrusting pincers down dead men’s gullets?’ She turned and flounced
into the Stanton Chapel without waiting for a response.
‘It is a good thing I did not allow you to slice Gosslinge open,’ muttered Michael, watching her leave. ‘Otherwise she and
Oswald would have rushed screaming from the church and we both would have been burned as warlocks in the Market Square. Next
time you want to do something so excessively unpleasant, we shall have to remember to lock the door.’
‘I am done with bodies, Brother,’ said Bartholomew, covering Gosslinge with the sheet. ‘First I conducted an examination so
superficial that I missed important evidence, then I held one so thorough I shocked and dismayed a widow. I do not enjoy it
anyway, and you will do better to find someone else.’
‘You made a mistake,’ acknowledged Michael. ‘But few of us are perfect, and you will do until someone better comes along.
Did you retrieve whatever it was you located in that poor man’s throat? Or do we have to return at midnight with satanic regalia
and do it all over again?’
‘It is in my bag. It fell on the ground when Philippa made me jump, and I did not want her to see it – that is why I put the
tweezers on top of all my clean bandages, not from any habit of poor hygiene. I wanted to keep the thing a secret.’
‘Intriguing,’ mused Michael, regarding his friend with interest. ‘Your responses to Philippa are difficult to fathom, Matt.
I cannot decide whether she still means something to you, or whether you are just relieved she is not Mistress Bartholomew.
And although you balked at examining Turke because she asked you not to, you are suspicious of her contradictory statements
about the Waits and her odd reaction to her husband’s death. So, what is she to you: innocent widow or sly trickster?’
‘Neither,’ said Bartholomew, sensing that Michael’s assessment was correct: his feelings towards Philippa were definitely
ambivalent. His memories of her were pleasant and she represented a happy phase in his life, yet there were
things about her now that he did not understand and that he did not want to probe.
‘So, you are not still half in love with the woman, then?’ asked Michael nosily.
‘No,’ said Bartholomew, certain that any spark of passion that he might have harboured was now well and truly extinguished.
It was not romantic love that was at the heart of the complex gamut of emotions he felt for her.
‘Good. I confess I held hopes that she might be just what you needed when I first heard she was here, but she has changed
and I have revised my opinion. You are better off with Matilde.’
‘I shall bear it in mind,’ said Bartholomew dryly. ‘
Be sure you do. Philippa may come after you now she is free, and I do not think you should succumb. Remember that she is no
longer the woman you loved. So, tell me why you hid the object you found in Gosslinge’s throat. Do you suspect her of foul
play, like Oswald does?’
‘No,’ replied Bartholomew. ‘Yes.’ He sighed. ‘I do not know, Michael. I
am
confused by the fact that she denied knowing the Waits, and Giles has been acting very oddly since he arrived. I think something
is going on, but I have no idea what it might be. It could be wholly innocent. I do not know why I felt the need to hide the
thing I found in Gosslinge. I acted on instinct.’
‘What was it?’
‘I do not know that, either. It was too covered in—’
‘Tell me later, interrupted Michael hastily. ‘Or even
better, do not tell me at all. Just present it nicely cleansed of all signs that it has been residing in a corpse for the
last few days. Here is Philippa. Shall we go?’
Philippa refused Bartholomew’s arm as they left the church, and took Michael’s instead. They started to walk towards Milne
Street, their progress slow because of the ice and filth that covered the roads. The deep snow meant the dung carts had been
unable to collect, and the festering piles along the edges of the street added a sulphurous stench
to the choking palls of smoke from wood and peat fires. Dogs foraged enthusiastically in the sticky brown heaps, gorging
themselves on objects that even starving beggars had passed over.
‘Did you ignore my wishes and examine my husband’s body anyway?’ asked Philippa, looking briefly at Bartholomew before returning
her attention to the demanding task of watching where she placed her prettily clad feet.
‘Yes,’ said Bartholomew bluntly. He imagined she would find out, since the shroud had probably not been replaced exactly as
he had found it, and he disliked lying. ‘But I only looked at him. I did not touch him with instruments.’
‘Well, that is something, I suppose,’ she said coolly. ‘And did this examination tell you anything you did not already know?’
‘No,’ admitted Bartholomew. ‘It told me he had died of the cold, after falling in the river. There were some old scars on
his legs, though. Do you know how he came by them?’
‘He never told me. They derived from something that happened long before we met. He disliked anyone seeing them – which was
why I was careful how I removed his hose when we were stripping off his wet clothes. I did not want him to wake up and find
them bared for all to see, because it would have distressed him. What did your gruesome treatment of Gosslinge tell you?’
‘Nothing,’ said Michael, before Bartholomew could reply. ‘But you should not take our investigation amiss. The Sheriff or
the proctors examine anyone who dies unexpectedly or suddenly. We would be remiss if we did not ensure there was nothing odd
about a death.’
‘But there was not – for either of them,’ said Philippa. ‘You just said so.’
‘We had to be certain,’ said Michael. ‘It would not do to bury a man, then have his grieving kin arrive months later clamouring
there was evidence of murder.’
‘Murder?’ asked Philippa in alarm. ‘Who said anything about murder?’
‘No one,’ said Michael, startled by her outburst. ‘I was only explaining why these examinations are necessary. Matt did not
want to do it, but I insisted.’
‘Well, it is done now, and it is a pity to argue,’ said Philippa, giving Bartholomew a reluctant smile. ‘Let us be friends
again.’
‘Good,’ said Michael, patting her arm. ‘But here comes your brother. Perhaps he can escort you home, so we can go and see
what can be done for poor Dunstan. That is where our duty lies this morning.’
Abigny smiled as he approached, but would have walked past if Michael had not stopped him. The clerk did not want to return
the way he had come, and said his feet hurt too much for all but the most essential journeys. Curtly, Philippa informed him
that escorting her was essential, since she was a recent widow and in need of such attentions. Abigny offered her his arm
in a way that suggested he wanted her delivered home as soon as possible, so he could go about his own errands.
‘Since you are both here, perhaps you can answer a few questions while Giles rests his feet,’ said Michael artfully. He drew
the picture of the knife from his scrip and held it out to them. ‘Do either of you recognise this?’
‘No,’ said Philippa, glancing at it without much interest. ‘Why? Have you lost it?’
‘It is not mine,’ said Michael. ‘I believe it is the weapon that killed Norbert.’
‘Norbert?’ asked Philippa. ‘Who is he?’
‘The student who was killed outside Ovyng,’ replied Michael. ‘Dick Tulyet’s cousin.’
Philippa nodded understanding, then looked at the parchment again. ‘No,’ she said after a moment. ‘It is not familiar. I wondered
whether it might have been Gosslinge’s, but it is not.’
‘It is only a picture, not the real thing,’ pressed Michael eagerly. ‘So there are bound to be errors. Are you sure it did
not belong to Gosslinge?’
‘It is not the same,’ said Abigny, taking the parchment and turning it this way and that as he assessed it. ‘Gosslinge’s had
three glass beads in the hilt, and this only has two.’
‘You seem very well acquainted with your servant’s knife,’ remarked Michael curiously.
Bartholomew agreed, and thought Gosslinge’s dagger and the one in the river sounded remarkably similar. It also occurred to
him that while there were only two glass beads when he had seen the weapon, one might well have fallen out after it had been
abandoned. He recalled a previous discussion he had had with Abigny about Gosslinge’s knife: when Turke had identified his
servant’s body Abigny mentioned that Gosslinge had indeed possessed a knife, and had said it was too large a weapon for him.
Michael was right: Abigny did seem well acquainted with the dead man’s personal arsenal.
Abigny gave a pained smile. ‘I forgot to bring my own dagger on this journey, and I have been obliged to borrow Gosslinge’s
– for the dinner table and suchlike. It is embarrassing to be in debt to a servant, especially for something as essential
as a knife. Turke was scathing in his criticism, of course.’