An Order for Death (4 page)

Meadowman, a solid, dependable man in his forties, had been recruited by Michael as a University law officer following the
dissolution of the hostel in which he had been a steward. He undertook the varied and frequently unpleasant duties of a beadle
as stoically and unquestioningly as he had the orders of his previous master, a man
whose intentions were far from scholarly. Meadowman was a good beadle, and Michael was well satisfied with him.

‘That is true,’ agreed Bartholomew. ‘The early snows and the frosts that followed killed a lot of people. It was especially
hard on the older ones, like poor Dunstan the riverman. I did not think he would see another Easter, but he refuses to die.’

‘But our students are not elderly men who need blazing hearths to warm their ancient bones,’ said Michael. ‘I was really beginning
to feel that the worst of our troubles were over, and that the town and the University had finally learned to tolerate each
other’s presence – and that the religious Orders had learned to keep their quarrels for the debating halls.’

‘You sound like Walcote,’ said Bartholomew, smiling at him. ‘He always seems horrified when the students fight, even though,
as Junior Proctor, he is used to it because he spends most of his life trying to stop them.’

Michael frowned worriedly. ‘Will Walcote is a good fellow, but he is too gentle to be a proctor. I was uncertain of the wisdom
of the choice when he was appointed a year ago, but I thought he would learn in time.’

‘And he has not?’

Michael shook his head. ‘He tries, but he just does not have the right attitude. He is too willing to see the good in people.
He should follow my lead, and assume everyone is corrupt, violent or innately wicked until proven otherwise.’

Bartholomew laughed. ‘No wonder your cells are always full.’

‘Do not tell Father William any of this,’ said Michael seriously, referring to their colleague at Michaelhouse, who was determined
to be a proctor himself. ‘He will petition the Chancellor to have Walcote removed so that he can apply for the post himself.
Although I may complain about Walcote’s ineffectuality, William’s ruthlessness would be far worse.’

‘Do you think Walcote will resign when he realises he is not suited to the task?’ asked Bartholomew.

Michael sighed. ‘I doubt it, Matt. He has not taken any notice of my heavy hints so far.’ He gave his friend a nudge with
his elbow and nodded across the High Street to where two Benedictines walked side by side. ‘But if he did, one of those two
would be my choice as his successor.’

Bartholomew regarded him askance. ‘Because they are Benedictines, like you?’

Michael tutted impatiently. ‘Of course not. It is because they are exactly the kind of men we need to represent law and order
in the University. Have you met them? Allow me to introduce you.’

Before Bartholomew could point out that it was hardly an appropriate occasion for socialising, with the body of Faricius barely
inside the church and a murder to investigate, Michael had hailed his Benedictine colleagues. Bartholomew studied them as
they walked towards him.

The taller of the two had light hair, a handsome face and large grey eyes. There was a small scar on his upper lip, and when
he spoke he had a habit of frowning very slightly. The second had dark hair that fitted his head like a cap and blue eyes
that crinkled at the corners. They seemed pleasant and affable enough, although Bartholomew immediately detected in them the
smug, confident attitude of men who believed their vocation set them above other people.

‘This is Brother Janius,’ said Michael, indicating the dark-haired monk, before turning to the fairer one. ‘And Brother Timothy
here comes from Peterborough.’

‘We have met before,’ said Timothy, returning Bartholomew’s bow of greeting. ‘A few days ago, you came to Ely Hall, where
the Cambridge Benedictines live, and tended Brother Adam.’

‘He has a weakness of the lungs,’ said Bartholomew, remembering Adam’s anxious colleagues clustering around the bedside as
he tended the patient, making it difficult for him to work. He vaguely recalled that Timothy and Janius had been among them,
and that Janius had insisted on a lot of very loud praying, so that Bartholomew could barely
hear Adam’s answers to his questions. ‘How is he?’

‘He has been better since you recommended that lungwort and mullein infused in wine,’ replied Timothy, smiling.

Janius gave his colleague an admonishing glance. ‘He has been better since we began saying regular masses for him, Timothy.
It is God who effected the change in Adam’s health, not human cures.’

‘Of course, Brother,’ said Timothy piously. ‘But it is my contention that God is working through Doctor Bartholomew to help
Adam.’

Janius inclined his head in acknowledgement. ‘God shows His hand in many ways, even by using an agent like a physician. But
what has happened here?’ he asked, glancing down at the ominous trail of red that soiled the stones in St Botolph’s porch.
‘I hope no one was hurt when the Dominicans marched on the Carmelites earlier.’

‘Unfortunately, one of them was stabbed,’ replied Michael. ‘His name was Faricius.’

Timothy raised his eyebrows in surprise. ‘Faricius? But he was no fighting man.’

‘You know him?’ asked Michael. ‘How?’

‘Faricius was a good scholar,’ said Janius. ‘Brilliant, even. He was one of the few Carmelites who came here because of a
love of learning, rather than merely to further his own career in the Church by making useful connections.’

‘We were near St Mary’s Church when the Carmelites nailed their proclamation to the door,’ said Timothy, still shocked by
the outcome of the riot. ‘I saw the Dominicans were furious, and it was clear that a fight was imminent, but I did not anticipate
it would end quite so violently.’

‘But do not blame only the Dominicans,’ said Janius reasonably. ‘I heard the Carmelites taunting them and daring them to attack.
One side was every bit as responsible as the other.’

‘As always,’ agreed Timothy. ‘These silly quarrels are invariably the result of two wrongs.’ He leaned forward, rather furtively,
and spoke to Michael in a soft voice. ‘Is
there any more news about your negotiations with Oxford, Brother? Forgive me for mentioning this in such a public place,
but you told me Doctor Bartholomew knows your business, anyway.’

‘He does,’ replied Michael. ‘But I am not expecting any progress on the Oxford matter until Ascension Day at the earliest
– a good six weeks from now.’ He turned to Bartholomew and lowered his voice conspiratorially. ‘We are talking about my plans
to surrender a couple of farms and a church to Merton College at Oxford University in exchange for a few snippets of information.’

‘Right,’ said Bartholomew carefully. He knew Michael had been engaged in a series of delicate negotiations with an Oxford
scholar for several months, and that the monk tended to tell different people different stories about his motives and objectives.
The arrangements were supposed to be secret, but a Michaelhouse scholar named Ralph de Langelee had made them public the previous
year in an attempt to discredit Michael and prevent him from becoming the College’s new Master. It had worked: Langelee had
been elected instead.

‘What happens on Ascension Day?’ asked Janius curiously. He crossed himself and gave a serene smile. ‘Other than the spirit
of our Lord rising to heaven, that is.’

‘Other than that, William Heytesbury is due to come to Cambridge to finalise our agreement,’ said Michael. ‘He is keen to
secure the property for Merton, but he still does not trust me to deal with him honestly.’

‘And does he have cause for such distrust?’ asked Timothy bluntly.

Michael’s expression was innocence itself. ‘Why should he? I have two farms and a church that are nearer Oxford than Cambridge,
and I propose to transfer them in exchange for a little information and a document or two. It is a generous offer. Those Oxford
men are so used to dealing with each other, that they do not recognise a truthful man when they see one.’

Bartholomew, however, was sure Heytesbury had good cause to be suspicious of Michael’s ‘generous offer’. Whatever it entailed,
the monk would make certain it was Cambridge that emerged with the better half of the bargain. He was surprised that Timothy,
who seemed to know Michael well, should need to ask.

‘Here comes Prior Lincolne,’ said Timothy, looking down the street to where the leader of the Carmelite Order in Cambridge
was hurrying towards them. ‘We will leave you to your sorry business, Brother. Come to see us soon: you are always welcome
in Ely Hall.’

‘Thank you; I imagine I shall need a dose of sanity and calm after dealing with this murder,’ said Michael, as the Benedictines
walked away. He rearranged his face into a sympathetic smile as the Carmelite Prior reached him. ‘Accept my sincere condolences
for this dreadful incident, Father.’

Lincolne did not reply. His eyes lit on the spots of blood that splattered the ground, and he pushed past Michael to enter
the church. Lincolne was a man of immense proportions. Bartholomew was tall, but Lincolne topped him by at least a head, a
height further accentuated by a curious triangular turret of grey hair that sprouted from his scalp in front of his tonsure.
The first time Bartholomew had seen it, when Lincolne had arrived in Cambridge to become Prior after the plague had claimed
his predecessor, he thought a stray ball of sheep wool had somehow become attached to the man’s head. But closer inspection
had revealed that it was human hair, and that it was carefully combed upward in a deliberate attempt to grant its owner a
hand’s length more height. Lincolne was broad, too, especially around the middle, and his ill-fitting habit revealed a pair
of thin white ankles that looked too fragile to support the weight above them.

He knelt next to Faricius and began to recite the last rites in a loud, indignant voice that was probably audible back at
his friary. He produced a flask of holy water from his scrip
and began to splash it around liberally, so that some of it fell on the floor.

‘Do you have any idea what happened?’ asked Michael, watching the proceedings with sombre green eyes.

‘What happened is that the Dominicans murdered Faricius,’ Lincolne replied, glaring up at Michael. Holy water dribbled from
the flask on to Faricius’s habit. ‘Faricius was one of my best scholars and hated violence and fighting. I will have vengeance,
Brother. I will not stand by while you allow the Black Friars to get away with this.’

‘I would never do such a thing,’ objected Michael, offended. ‘I am the University’s Senior Proctor, appointed by the Bishop
of Ely himself to ensure that justice is done in cases like this.’

‘I have been at the Carmelite Friary in Cambridge since I was a child,’ Lincolne went on, as if Michael had not spoken. ‘Yet,
in all that time, I have never witnessed such an act of evil as this.’

‘An act of evil?’ asked Bartholomew, thinking it an odd phrase to use to describe a murder.

‘Heresy,’ hissed Lincolne, spraying holy water liberally over himself as well as over the dead student. ‘Nominalism.’

‘I beg your pardon?’ asked Michael, startled. ‘What does nominalism have to do with anything?’

Lincolne pursed his lips in rank disapproval. ‘It is a doctrine that came from the Devil’s own lips. It denies the very existence
of God.’

‘I do not think so,’ said Bartholomew, surprised by the Carmelite’s assertion. ‘Nominalism is a philosophical doctrine that
…’

He trailed off as Lincolne fixed him with the gaze of the fanatic. ‘Nominalist thinking will destroy all that is good and
holy in the world and allow the Devil to rule. It was because people were nominalists that God sent the Great Pestilence five
years ago.’

‘I see,’ said Bartholomew, who had heard many reasons for why the devastating sickness had ravaged the world,
taking one in three people, but never one that claimed a philosophical theory was responsible. ‘So, you are saying that the
plague took only nominalists as its victims? Not realists?’

‘I think God sent the Death to warn us all against sinful thoughts – like nominalism,’ declared Lincolne in the tone of voice
that suggested disagreement was futile. ‘And that wicked man, William of Occam, who was the leading proponent of nominalism
in Oxford, was one of the first to die.’

‘But so were a number of scholars who follow realism,’ Bartholomew pointed out. ‘The plague took scholars from both sides
of the debate. That suggests a certain even-handedness to me.’

‘Gentlemen, please,’ said Michael impatiently. ‘This is neither the time nor the place to be discussing philosophy. We have
a dead student here. Our duty is to discover who murdered him, not to assess the relative virtues of realism and nominalism.’

‘Then tell the Dominicans that,’ snapped Lincolne. ‘They are nominalists – every last one of them – and now a Carmelite lies
dead.’ He rammed the stopper into the flask’s neck and heaved himself to his feet. He towered over Michael, and Bartholomew
could not help but notice how the curious topknot quivered as if reflecting the rage of its owner.

‘It was the proclamation you wrote and pinned to the door of St Mary’s Church that precipitated this sorry incident,’ said
Michael sharply. ‘And Faricius paid the price.’

‘That is grossly unfair—’ began Lincolne indignantly.

Michael cut through his objections. ‘I sincerely doubt whether the student-friars – Dominican or Carmelite – genuinely feel
strongly enough about a philosophical debate to kill each other: your notice was merely the excuse they needed to fight. And
I will have no more of it. The next person who nails a proclamation to any door in the town will spend the night in the proctors’
cells.’

‘The Carmelites are a powerful force in Cambridge,
Brother,’ said Lincolne hotly. ‘We have forty friars studying here; the Dominicans only have thirty-three. You should think
very carefully before you decide to take the side of the nominalists.’

‘I am not taking any side,’ said Michael firmly. ‘Personally, I am not much interested in philosophy. And numbers mean nothing
anyway. At least half a dozen of your forty are old men, who will be no use at all if you intend to take on the Dominicans
in a pitched battle. They will, however, be valiant in the debating halls, which is where I recommend you resolve this disagreement.’