‘Of course,’ said Tysilia. ‘There is a killer on the loose. Who in his right mind would not be nervous or uneasy? That is why I am nervous and uneasy. I am in my right mind, you see.’
‘Thank you,’ said Michael. ‘You have been very helpful.’
‘I know,’ said Tysilia confidently. ‘Everything I say is interesting and useful. But you owe me something for all my time. What do you say to a little–’
‘Matt will see you safely home,’ said Michael briskly, stepping away from her exploring hands once again. ‘I am too tired for anything you have in mind.’
‘But that is not fair!’ cried Tysilia in abject disappointment. Her voice was loud, and Bartholomew heard a lull in the chatter from the Outer Hostry above. ‘I have helped you, and now you must give me what I want.’
‘It is not fair,’ muttered Bartholomew to Michael. ‘I do not want to wander the town in the dark, either. I want to go to bed.’
‘But I do not want you in my bed,’ pouted Tysilia, mistaking his words for an offer. ‘I want Brother Michael.’
‘I am not available,’ proclaimed Michael grandly. ‘Go home, Tysilia, and take a cold bath.’
‘That was a waste of time,’ grumbled Michael when Bartholomew returned from seeing Tysilia safely back through the Bishop’s window a little later. The monk was waiting by the Steeple Gate so that some officious doorkeeper would not lock the physician out. He need not have worried: the lay-brother who guarded the door was sleeping soundly in his small chamber, and Michael was surprised his snores could not be heard by the Prior in his quarters. He recalled that Welles claimed to have slipped past him around the time that Thomas was murdered. ‘We should not have bothered to disturb our rest for that.’
‘No,’ agreed Bartholomew. ‘So why did you tell her she had been helpful? She was not.’
‘Tactics,’ replied Michael, vaguely. ‘If she is the accomplice of an evil killer, then he will be worried by my claim that she has assisted us. It may make him sufficiently anxious to do something rash, and may serve to flush him out.’
‘Or it may tell the killer that we know more than we do and put our lives in danger. I am not sure that was a wise thing to do.’
‘We shall see,’ said Michael carelessly, as he closed the gate. ‘But it is irrelevant anyway: she knows nothing of interest and my cleverness was wasted.’
‘Do you think William is the killer?’ asked Bartholomew. ‘And that he is watching the city from a safe distance before selecting his next victim?’
‘I have no idea what William is or what his motives were in leaving. How Tysilia could believe that he is her brother is wholly beyond my understanding.’
‘She believes what she wishes were true,’ said Bartholomew. ‘Poor Blanche. It sounds as if she tried hard to communicate with Tysilia, but Tysilia was too stupid to understand what she was being told.’
‘Well, we will find out more tomorrow,’ said Michael. ‘We shall go upriver and see whether we can find this spot where the townsmen were murdered. Perhaps we will learn something new then.’
‘I hope so, Brother,’ said Bartholomew soberly. ‘Because if not, we have reached a dead end, and I do not know which way to turn next.’
Michael sighed. ‘The annoying thing is that I do not feel like sleeping any more. That Tysilia has unnerved me. I am wide awake, and my mind is teeming with questions.’
‘You will fall asleep once you lie down,’ said Bartholomew, who was suffering from no such complaint and was extremely drowsy.
‘I will not,’ declared Michael with grim determination. ‘I shall lie awake for hours. Then I shall disturb Northburgh and Stretton, who share my bedchamber. I feel like walking, to tire myself.’
‘What, now?’ asked Bartholomew, looking around unenthusiastically at the darkened buildings. ‘It is pitch black, and you said yourself that the killer could well be at large in the priory grounds. Walking alone in the dark is not a sensible thing to do.’
‘I was not thinking of going alone,’ said Michael. ‘I thought you would come with me. Besides, it is a hot and sticky night. You need to cool down before you head for your own bed.’
Bartholomew groaned. ‘You are mad, Brother. But very well. Where do you want to go? Shall we risk breaking our necks on the graves in the cemetery, or shall we settle for a stumble among the roots of the vineyard?’
‘We can keep to the paths,’ said Michael testily. He gazed up at the sky. The clouds had parted, revealing a huge patch of sugar-spangled velvet. The stars seemed more bright than usual in the moonless sky, gleaming and flickering in their thousands. A white smear showed the presence of a belt of stars too small to be seen with the naked eye, although the ancient philosophers assured their readers that they were there.
Since they had met Tysilia, a light breeze had sprung up, rendering the night far more pleasant, despite Michael’s grumbles regarding the heat. It fanned their faces, blowing cool air from the east. In it was the faint tang of salt, reminding Bartholomew that a vast boggy sea lay only a few miles away. The breeze carried other scents, too, which were less pleasant: the sulphurous odour of the rotting vegetation and stagnant water that were the cause of so many summer fevers, and the stench of the city itself. Bartholomew fell into step with Michael, allowing the monk to lead them in a wide circle around the north wall of the cathedral and then towards the almonry.
Bartholomew thought about Robert, who had died while looking for William. The almoner now lay next to Thomas in the cathedral’s Lady Chapel, a great white whale of a corpse next to one that was darker and more swarthy in death than it had been in life. Both were due to be buried the following day, and the pomp and ceremony that was planned reflected the priory’s indignation that two of their number had been mercilessly slain, rather than genuine grief. Only Henry had shown any emotion other than outrage.
The almonry was a two-storeyed building that overlooked Steeple Row, and that had contained Robert’s lodgings as well as a dispensary for alms. Next to it was the sacristy, where the sacristan lived, along with all the sacred vessels and vestments that belonged to the cathedral and the monastery. Then there was a stretch of wall, and then the Bone House, where they had examined Glovere.
Bartholomew gazed at the Bone House with unease, thinking it a sinister place. He had encountered charnel houses aplenty, but these tended to be repositories for bones that were so ancient that they were all but unrecognisable. The Bone House contained rows of grinning skulls, many of them still boasting fragments of hair and patches of dried skin. One had even worn a hat – slipped at a crazy angle across one eye, but a cap, nevertheless.
‘There is a light in the Bone House,’ he said, startled out of his grim reverie. ‘Did you see it?’
‘No,’ said Michael, peering through the darkness. ‘You must have imagined it. No one is likely to be in the Bone House in the middle of the night.’
‘There it is again!’ exclaimed Bartholomew. There was a flicker, just under the shutter of the upper window. ‘You must have seen it!’
Michael frowned. ‘No one should be in there. Only a madman would want to be in the company of all those dead folk in the dark.’
‘Perhaps a madman, like our killer,’ said Bartholomew, gripping Michael’s arm, as a way to solve the murders suddenly opened up to him. ‘We should investigate this.’
‘We should find Cynric and Meadowman,’ said Michael, holding back. ‘This killer is a dangerous man.’
‘You are not afraid, are you?’ asked Bartholomew, surprised by the monk’s reluctance to investigate. ‘He is only one man, Brother; we can tackle him between us.’
‘How do you know he is only one man? We have always assumed it is a single person, but there is nothing to confirm that we are right. It could be a group of men, all armed to the teeth, and with a good deal more experience of fulfilling their murderous intentions than either of us.’