A Summer of Discontent (46 page)

‘Not out here, thank you very much,’ said Michael stiffly, snatching the linen ungraciously. ‘For all I know, that murderer
is still close by, watching our every move. I will not sit down and present my throat to him like a lamb for the slaughter.’

‘He has long gone,’ said Bartholomew. ‘He knew he was nearly caught, and will not be lurking around to see what will happen
next. I suppose it was the killer, was it?’

‘Of course it was!’ exploded Michael furiously. ‘How can you even ask such a thing, when you lay there with his knee on your
head and felt the steel of his blade against your neck? My God, Matt! It is a sight that will haunt my dreams for years to
come. I feel sick just thinking about it, and it makes the blood drum in my ears.’

Bartholomew took his arm and led him inside the Bone House. The smoke was dissipating, and the stink of burning was losing
its battle against the more powerful odour of rotting bone. He indicated that Michael should perch on
the overturned barrel for a few moments, to recover himself. The monk sat heavily, forcing Bartholomew to make a grab for
it when it threatened to roll. On the shelf under the window was a small dish and a candle stub, apparently used by workmen
when they brought their finds for storage. The physician struck a tinder, and filled the room with an unsteady, flickering
light. Michael glanced up at him, and then gasped in horror.

‘What is wrong?’ demanded Bartholomew, looking around him in alarm.

‘Blood!’ muttered Michael, rubbing a shaking hand across his eyes. ‘Lots of it.’

‘Where?’ asked Bartholomew, snatching up the candle. Then he saw what Michael meant. The floor was stained dark with congealing
blood, much of it scuffed and spread by their feet during the skirmish that had taken place. ‘Oh.’

‘Not on the floor,’ whispered Michael, raising fearful eyes to Bartholomew. ‘On you. He must have stabbed you after all. I
am having a conversation with a ghost!’

Bartholomew twisted, and saw that the shoulder and arm of his shirt were stained a bright red. Horrified, he felt the back
of his neck, but there was no wound that he could find, and certainly no tenderness. He knew very well that some men were
stabbed or shot and did not know pain until later, but he was certain he would be able to feel something. And then he remembered
the drops of moisture that had dripped as he waited for the killer to descend the ladder. It was not his own blood that stained
his shirt. His instincts told him to rush up the ladder immediately, to see if he could help, but the rational part of his
mind informed him that there would be little he could do for anyone relieved of as much blood as lay pooled on the floor of
the Bone House. His first duty was to the living, to Michael, who gazed at him with eyes that were wide with shock.

‘Drink this,’ he said, reaching into his bag and producing a phial. It was stronger than the brew he usually used for shocks,
but Henry still had his other one. ‘And then we will
go upstairs and see what has happened.’

‘What is it?’ asked Michael, regarding the phial suspiciously. ‘I do not like drinking medicine handed to me in the dark.
You may make a mistake and hand me a purge.’

‘Just strong wine.’

‘Wine,’ said Michael, taking it from him eagerly. ‘That is more like it. I had forgotten you have taken to carrying a little
something around with you these days.’

‘It is not for me, and not for casual drinking,’ said Bartholomew. ‘It is for emergencies.’

‘This
is
an emergency,’ said Michael, putting his lips to the neck of the flask and all but emptying it in a single swallow. He took
a deep breath and closed his eyes. ‘That is better. Wine is indeed a good remedy for unsteady nerves.’

‘Are you feeling better, then?’ asked Bartholomew, holding the candle closer to Michael’s face. He was relieved to see that
some of the colour was creeping back into the monk’s cheeks, and his eyes were losing their haunted expression.

‘I do not know which was worse: having a killer land on me, or seeing him prepared to make an end of you. I thought my lunge
with the spade was too late.’

‘You hit him?’

‘As hard as I could. However, it was not as hard as I would have liked – this is a small room, and there was no opportunity
to swing the thing properly. I imagine it brought tears to his eyes, though.’

‘Where did you hit him?’

‘I was afraid he might duck if I aimed for his head, and then I would be off balance and he might succeed in stabbing us both.
I aimed for his shoulders, but actually caught him on the back. Why do you ask?’

‘Damn!’ muttered Bartholomew. ‘If you had injured his face, we might have been able to identify him tomorrow. But it will
be difficult to see whether anyone has a bruised back.’

‘I should have thought of that,’ said Michael caustically. ‘I seem to be slipping tonight. First, I let a killer go because
I was more interested in trying to save your life, and then I hit him in a place where you will not be able to see the wound.’

‘I did not mean to sound ungracious,’ said Bartholomew apologetically. ‘I am just frustrated that we had the damned man in
our clutches, but he still managed to escape.’

‘It is too late to worry about that now. We did our best. It is not our fault we are not experts at wrestling in the dark
with murderers, although we have done it often enough. Our performance tonight was not our finest hour. I am not a man for
superstition, as you know, but I cannot help but think there was something diabolical about his strength.’

‘There was not. We stumbled around like old ladies, and he merely took advantage of our ineptitude. He was not as diabolical
as our performance.’

Michael smiled wanly.

‘We should look upstairs,’ said Bartholomew unenthusiastically. ‘Something horrible is up there, and I think we should probably
see what it is.’

‘You go,’ suggested Michael. ‘I have seen enough vile things for one night. And anyway, I still feel unsteady around the legs.’

‘Do you?’ asked Bartholomew, concerned. ‘Perhaps I should escort you back to your room, so that you can lie down and rest
a while. I can always come back later.’

‘We should get it over with,’ said Michael, climbing stiffly to his feet. He drained the last of the wine, and handed the
empty flask back to Bartholomew. ‘That is a decent brew, Matt. I shall have to remember where you keep it.’

Bartholomew walked to the ladder and raised the candle to illuminate the darkness. He could see nothing, except that the rungs
of the ladder were stained with red. Some had aged to a dark brown, but the most recent coat was a bright crimson.

‘I do not recall seeing these marks when we examined Glovere,’ he said. ‘Do you?’

‘No,’ said Michael. ‘But I did not look. This is not a
pleasant place, and I remember wanting to finish and be out as soon as possible.’

‘The ladder may have been discoloured before, but blood was not dripping through the ceiling. I would have noticed that.’
Bartholomew raised the candle again, and inspected the floor.

‘Are you going up, or shall we just stand here and stare at this mess all night?’ demanded Michael peevishly.

‘All right,’ said Bartholomew irritably. ‘I am going. Do not rush me.’ He placed the candle holder between his teeth and prepared
to climb.

With the candle wavering in front of his eyes, he climbed slowly up the ladder, trying to ignore the unpleasant stickiness
under his fingers. He wondered who the killer had dispatched in the chill gloom of the Bone House. Was it Mackerell or William?
Or was it Mackerell or William with whom they had wrestled downstairs? It had been impossible to tell much in the dark. Or
was the killer someone totally different – one of the gypsies, perhaps, or de Lisle, or a monk or one of the townsfolk?

He swallowed hard as he reached the top of the steps, to fortify himself for the unpleasant sight he was sure he would see.
With his head and shoulders poking into the upper floor, he took the candle-holder from between his teeth and looked around.

‘What can you see?’ whispered Michael urgently. ‘Is it William or Mackerell’s exsanguinated corpse up there?’

‘Neither,’ Bartholomew whispered back. ‘No one is here.’

‘What?’ asked Michael, startled. ‘That blood belongs to someone.’

‘Obviously. But its owner is not here.’

‘Are you sure?’ asked Michael, unconvinced. Bartholomew felt the ladder bend under his feet as the monk began to climb. ‘Let
me see.’

Bartholomew clambered into the attic room, and waited for Michael to heave his bulk up the ladder. Then both men looked around
them.

The attic was essentially bare, with a few shelves nailed to one wall, as if the original builders had anticipated that they
would recover more skulls than the ones stored downstairs. Bartholomew suspected that the Bone House was not a popular place
to visit, and that the workmen tended to dump their finds in the lower room, then leave as quickly as possible. None were
keen to take the additional few steps to carry their finds to the upper floor, and so while the downstairs was crammed to
the gills, the upper room was empty. And now, because the foundations for the parish church and the Lady Chapel were completed,
and the finds were becoming infrequent, it was unlikely that the upper floor would receive any bony remains at all.

However, someone had found a use for it. A crate had been carried up the steps and placed upside down, so that it could be
used as a seat, while two of the shelves had been pulled from the wall and balanced between the windowsill and a roof post,
forming a kind of workbench. On it were pots and bottles, and a large vat of a red substance that Bartholomew knew was blood.
He gazed down at the floor, revolted to see that it was deeply impregnated with the stuff, and that it felt sticky under his
feet. It stank, too, the earthy sweetness of fresh blood overlying the bad odour of something rotten.

‘What is that awful smell?’ asked Michael, repelled. ‘And what was the fellow doing here?’

‘I have no idea,’ said Bartholomew. He began to pick up bottles at random, sniffing at their contents and tipping them this
way and that so that he could examine them in the candlelight.

‘It looks like a workshop,’ said Michael, peering into the farthest corners. ‘Perhaps that is why you saw so little bleeding
on the victims: perhaps he drained their blood when they died to use here.’

‘It would not be easy to exsanguinate someone from a small puncture wound in the back of the neck. If you wanted to kill for
blood, you would have to slit a major vessel, and
keep the person alive as long as possible, so that it all drains out.’

‘Like butchers with pigs,’ said Michael distastefully. ‘I have never liked blood pudding for exactly that reason. But is that
what happened here – the killer wanted his victims’ blood?’

‘I cannot begin to imagine what he was doing, but there are pots of what appear to be different kinds of soil: here is peat,
and this looks like the clay we have near Cambridge, while this small one seems to be powdered gold.’

Michael went to prod about under the eaves. He was silent for a moment, then gave a shrill shriek before leaping backward.

‘What is the matter?’ asked Bartholomew unsteadily, afraid the monk had finally found something truly repellent.

‘There,’ whispered Michael, pointing.

Bartholomew peered into the darkness and saw what had so alarmed the monk. In a piece of sacking, untidily wrapped, protruded
the bloody end of a recently chopped bone.

‘It is all right,’ said Bartholomew, speaking in a voice that betrayed his relief as he studied the grisly object. ‘It is
only part of a pig.’

‘A pig?’ echoed Michael, his face pale in the candlelight. ‘Are you sure?’

‘You can tell by the shape. It is fairly fresh, and leads me to believe that the bucket of blood on the bench may belong to
the same animal. There is nothing here to suggest it is human.’

‘There is not a great deal to suggest it is not,’ countered Michael, gazing around him with a shudder. ‘I do not like being
here, Matt. We have assumed the killer has gone, but he is not like other criminals we have encountered, and he does not do
what we expect.’

Bartholomew followed him down the ladder, and then
into the comparative warmth of the night air outside, grateful to be away from the Bone House and its sinister contents.
He walked with the monk towards the Black Hostry, taking deep breaths of air to clear the cloying odour of death from his
lungs. He felt a certain unsteadiness in his own knees, and wished he had not allowed the monk to drink all his wine; a sip
or two would be just the thing to calm his battered nerves.

‘There is the call for lauds,’ said Michael, as a small bell began to chime. ‘It is almost morning, and we have been chasing
shadows all night.’

‘But we have learned little of interest,’ said Bartholomew gloomily. ‘We know that the killer collects phials of soil and
pig blood, but we have no idea why. And we know he is an able fighter who bested us with ease.’

‘Tysilia told us nothing of use, and we are still missing William and Mackerell. It would not surprise me at all to learn
that they are both dead.’

‘We will rest for an hour or two, and then walk up the river, to see what we can find. And while we are out, we can visit
Mackerell’s house. Perhaps he is in it, hiding.’

‘We can try, I suppose,’ said Michael without enthusiasm. ‘But I have searched it twice already and found nothing to help
us. Do you think
he
is the man who likes making blood pies in the Bone House?’

‘Symon did say he thought he saw him in the priory grounds the other day,’ said Bartholomew thoughtfully. ‘But William is
more my idea of a killer than Mackerell.’

‘Mackerell is foul tempered, abusive and dishonest. And William is cunning and sly. Both possess qualities that may make them
murderers.’

‘Perhaps we will learn which one is our culprit tomorrow,’ said Bartholomew tiredly.

‘I do not believe that traipsing all over the countryside will achieve anything. Still, it is better than sitting here and
dwelling on our failure. We will sleep until the breakfast bell rings, eat a little something, and then do as you suggest
and wander upriver. If we leave early, it will not be too hot.’