And he took the knife and drew it in a quick slashing motion across his neck.
Bartholomew dived towards Suttone as the friar collapsed slowly on the floor next to Wilson’s altar, tugging the knife from the inert fingers and flinging it away in disgust. He rammed the sleeve of the man’s tabard against the pumping wound in his neck, but he knew it would do no good. Even pressing as hard as he could, the blood dripped and spurted beneath his hands, and the rosiness gradually faded from Suttone’s face to be replaced by the waxy whiteness of death. Just as the feeble pulse began to flutter into stillness, Suttone turned his head and gazed at the sheeted form of Runham’s corpse, regarding it with a weary resignation, as though he considered that neither of them had won.
Michael had dropped to his knees to begin intoning prayers for the dead. The white-haired Carmelite, who had entered the church with Cynric, Stanmore and William, hesitated, but then joined him. William did nothing but turn his bewildered gaze from the blood that flowed in a shiny red puddle across the chancel tiles to the damaged remains of Wilson’s altar.
‘What has Suttone done?’ he whispered hoarsely. ‘It is a dreadful sin to take the life God granted him in God’s own house, but to desecrate His altars, too? He is hell-bound for certain!’
‘Just pray,’ snapped Michael, taking a handful of William’s unsavoury habit and jerking the friar down to kneel next to him. ‘Suttone was a man who allowed friendship and loyalty to those he loved to cloud his judgement. He deserves our pity, not our condemnation.’
‘He is bound for the fierce fires and boiling brimstones of the Devil’s domain …’ began William, who relished voicing his extraordinarily vivid predictions of the nature of Hell.
‘Pray, Father, or I will see you join him there,’ hissed Michael venomously.
Unused to such naked hostility from the equable monk, William quickly bent his head and began reciting the offices for the dead, taking a small phial of holy oil from his scrip to anoint Suttone.
Bartholomew stepped away from the clerics, and walked outside, breathing deeply of the cool morning air with its scent of wet grass and the richer aroma of river. He was wiping his bloodstained hands on some moss when Stanmore came to join him, Cynric at his heels.
‘How did you know where we were?’ Bartholomew asked, recalling their timely entry.
‘We thought you were in dreadful danger, Matt,’ said Stanmore unsteadily. ‘Cynric and I were riding into town after making a delivery of cloth to Barnwell Priory, when that Carmelite asked us the way to Michaelhouse. We fell to talking as we went and he told us that he had been delayed in taking up a new appointment in your College by an accident.’
Bartholomew looked up at him in dull resignation. ‘And I suppose his name is Thomas Suttone? The Carmelite friar who was due to be admitted as a Fellow of Michaelhouse at the same time as Clippesby?’
Cynric nodded. ‘He was attacked as he journeyed south from Lincoln, and his arm was injured. He was obliged to wait for it to heal.’
‘Lincoln,’ said Bartholomew flatly. ‘Justus came from Lincoln.’
‘What of it?’ asked Stanmore. ‘So do a number of people, I should imagine.’
‘But not the man who has just slit his own throat,’ said Bartholomew. ‘He had probably never been to Lincoln, which is why Justus had to die. He could not risk Justus asking him awkward questions, and Justus might even know the real Suttone. Lincoln is not a very big place.’
‘Justus was murdered?’ asked Cynric. ‘I thought he had killed himself with his wine and his morose reminiscences.’
‘That is what we were supposed to think,’ said Bartholomew, looking down at the reddened moss at his feet, where he had wiped Suttone’s blood from his hands. ‘So who was Suttone? The false Suttone, I mean, not the real one.’
‘A man prepared to injure an innocent friar in order to take on his identity and conduct nasty business in Michaelhouse,’ said Stanmore angrily. ‘We saw the false Suttone – and he saw us – as we rushed into the College to tell you about him. By the time we had found William and he suggested you might be in the church, we realised that was probably where this impostor had headed, too, knowing his game was over.’
‘I thought we might be too late, boy,’ said Cynric unsteadily. ‘And you did not have me watching out for you in the shadows as usual.’
‘Suttone never intended to harm us,’ said Bartholomew wearily. ‘Michael sensed that – it was why he would not let me try to wrest the knife from him. I saw only a murderer, but Michael saw a tortured soul.’
‘He was a tortured soul who made an end to Master Runham, by the sound of it,’ said Stanmore unsympathetically. ‘Well, at least it is all over now. I heard this morning that you identified Caumpes as the man who killed the Bene’t scholars, and now you have the culprit for the Michaelhouse murders. It is over, Matt. Finished.’
‘I do not think so,’ said Bartholomew with a sigh. ‘We have Suttone’s confession that he smothered Justus, Wymundham and then Runham; and it seems that Raysoun’s fall from the scaffolding was exactly that – an accident. But Suttone claims he did not kill Brother Patrick or de Walton, and Caumpes says he did not either.’
‘As I have told you before,’ said Michael, emerging from the church and coming to stand with them, ‘murderers do not make for reliable witnesses, Matt. Suttone and Caumpes were lying.’
‘Suttone smothered his victims,’ said Bartholomew, leaning against one of the church’s buttresses. ‘But both Patrick and de Walton were stabbed.’
‘Then stabbing was probably what Caumpes did well,’ said Michael in exasperation. ‘Caumpes was certainly in the vegetable garden when de Walton died – and he almost turned you and me into human torches while he was at it.’
‘What about this wronged relative of Suttone’s?’ asked Bartholomew. ‘Perhaps he stabbed Patrick and de Walton.’
‘Listening to Suttone’s confession has unsettled you, Matt,’ said Michael. ‘Let it go.’
‘Why were you so sure Suttone would not kill us?’ asked Bartholomew of the monk. ‘You would not even let me try to disarm him.’
‘I wish I had now,’ said Michael. ‘I did not think he would kill himself, either. I sensed he had come to confess, but I did not anticipate it would be a dying declaration.’
‘There are still some things I do not understand,’ said Bartholomew. ‘For example …’
Michael tapped him on the shoulder. ‘Leave it, Matt. What we need to do now is to try to think where Runham might have hidden the rest of his treasure. If we can find it and show it to those workmen today, we might yet save Michaelhouse from harm.’
‘I think it is too late for that, boy,’ said Cynric nervously. ‘A mob has been massing in the Market Square since dawn. And it means to tear down Michaelhouse stone by stone.’
While Stanmore hurried back to his business premises to make certain the rioters did not shift their attentions to the wealthy merchants’ properties on Milne Street, Bartholomew, Michael and Cynric, with William and the new Carmelite trailing behind, ran back to Michaelhouse with the cart full of soap.
The atmosphere of the town had changed since Bartholomew and Michael had hurried through the darkened streets to the church earlier that morning. Then, the city had slept, silent and peaceful. Now, distant voices could be heard on the wind, angry and demanding. Sensing that Cambridge was about to degenerate into one of its frequent spells of anarchy, people had closed the shutters on their windows, and their doors were locked and barred against attack. The High Street, which usually thronged with traders and travellers, was virtually deserted: its residents were either barricaded inside their homes to wait out the chaos that was to come, or had joined the crowd in the Market Square.