‘Get away from my sister!’ Guido snapped. ‘She does not want anything to do with you.’
‘That is for her to decide,’ said Bartholomew.
‘It is for me to decide,’ snapped Guido. ‘Our king died on Friday night, and I have been elected in his place. And I say you should stay away from my sister.’
‘Go away, Guido,’ said Eulalia, casting her brother a withering look. ‘You may intimidate Rosel, but you do not frighten me. Go back to your work, and earn an honest penny for a change.’
‘For a change?’ asked Bartholomew. ‘Are the ones he usually earns dishonest?’
‘Becoming king has gone to his head,’ she said scornfully. ‘He thinks it puts him beyond a hard day’s labour, and he has been plotting with men in the city who mean us no good.’
‘Like Leycestre,’ said Bartholomew.
Both gypsies stared at him in surprise. ‘How did you know that?’ asked Eulalia.
‘I saw them together at Chettisham yesterday.’
‘You did what?’ exploded Eulalia, rounding on Guido. ‘I thought we decided that we would have nothing to do with Leycestre’s proposition.’
‘That was before I was king,’ snarled Guido dangerously. ‘Now I make the decisions, and I say Leycestre’s offer is too good to turn down.’
‘What offer is this?’ asked Bartholomew.
‘Nothing we will share with you,’ shouted Guido, turning to the physician and adding emphasis to his point by jabbing a forefinger into his chest. It was like being stabbed with a piece of iron, and Bartholomew flinched backwards.
‘Keep your hands to yourself,’ flashed Eulalia. The humour that had danced in her eyes was replaced by a dangerous fury. ‘It is because of your quick fists that we are in this predicament.’
‘What predicament?’ asked Bartholomew.
Guido took a menacing step towards the physician, but confined himself to waving a furious finger when Eulalia also moved forward. ‘It is none of your affair. Mind your own business!’
Eulalia glowered at Guido, then turned to Bartholomew to explain. ‘Leycestre offered to pay us if we would leave Ely tomorrow.’
Bartholomew stared at her, his mind whirling. ‘How much did he offer you?’
‘More than we would earn if we stayed here for another two weeks, and it means we can earn money elsewhere, too.’
‘But the offer only stands if we leave tonight,’ said Guido, sulky that Eulalia had told Bartholomew what he wanted to know. ‘If we dither, he says he will give us nothing, and that is why I have decided we will go.’
‘And it is why I have decided that there is something peculiar about this arrangement,’ countered Eulalia. ‘I do not trust Leycestre. Why does he want us gone, all of a sudden? And what will that mean for our return here next year?’
‘It would mean that you would hang for theft and possibly murder,’ said Bartholomew, knowing exactly why Leycestre was so keen for the gypsies to leave. ‘Of course, that is assuming that there is a city here at all, and that his rebellion has not destroyed everything and plunged the country into a civil war.’
‘What are you talking about?’ demanded Guido. ‘Leycestre is a man full of silly dreams. He does not have the authority to create that sort of havoc.’
‘He is not alone,’ said Bartholomew. ‘There are pockets of unrest all over the country, and men like him are working to join them up. I am sure that he has been committing the burglaries around the town in order to raise funds for his cause. That is why he is able to pay you, despite the fact that he is little more than a labourer himself.’
Eulalia took a sharp breath. ‘Is that why he has been so vocal against us this summer? He has always been friendly before, but this year he has accused us of all manner of crimes. We are to be the scapegoat for the crimes he has committed?’
‘That is why he wants you to leave tonight: so that he can claim you burgled half the merchants in the city and then fled with your ill-gotten gains.’
‘But why the urgency?’ asked Eulalia. ‘He told Guido the arrangement is only good until midnight.’
Bartholomew frowned. ‘Perhaps it is because he intends to commit a particularly spectacular burglary tonight, and he knows it will result in a huge hue and cry. Unlike the offences committed against the merchants, this will be committed against someone more powerful and influential, who will have the resources to investigate the crime properly.’
‘And their prime suspects will have gone,’ said Eulalia, nodding. ‘That is clever thinking on his part. The search will concentrate on us, and will allow him to dispose of whatever he has taken at his leisure and without suspicion.’
‘This is all rubbish,’ growled Guido. ‘You are forgetting that the most powerful man in this area is de Lisle, and he has already been burgled.’
‘He is also deep in debt and has little for a thief to take,’ said Bartholomew. ‘But there is someone a lot richer, and with a lot more resources at his fingertips, than the Bishop.’
‘The cathedral-priory,’ said Eulalia in a low, awed voice. ‘He intends to burgle the priory and have us blamed for it. And he intends to do it tonight.’
Guido was not convinced by the interpretation of facts deduced by Bartholomew and Eulalia, and was becoming belligerent. The physician saw that his sister was having trouble controlling him and, since he did not want to make the situation awkward, he decided it would be better if he left. The gypsy hurled insults and threats after him as he walked away, causing more than one passer-by to stare.
Bartholomew went to find Michael, to tell him about Leycestre’s offer to Guido, but the monk had gone in search of the elusive Symon, determined to interrogate him about his backache. Bartholomew scoured the priory for them with no success, then wandered through the town again. Finally, hot and tired, he retired to the cathedral, intending to sit alone for a while in its cool, stone interior.
As soon as he had entered the great building, he realised he should have sought sanctuary in it sooner. It was calm and silent, and a far cry from the hectic bustle of the town and the atmosphere of unease and distrust that pervaded the priory. Father John was conducting a short mass at his altar, but because there were no monks with whom to compete, he did little more than whisper his prayers. Bartholomew found a pillar at the rear of the church, and sat with his back to it, relishing the chill from the stone that seeped through his clothes.
John finished his mass, and Bartholomew was surprised to see Leycestre emerge from the shadows of the aisle and approach the priest. Agnes Fitzpayne was there, too, and Bartholomew grew more certain that his suppositions had been right and that the ‘burglary’ of her house had been fictitious, expressly designed to deflect suspicion from Leycestre and his nephews. The trio spoke in low, urgent voices for a few moments, before leaving to go their separate ways. Bartholomew had the feeling that Leycestre was spending most of his time organising his rebellion, because he certainly had not been in the fields much that day, nor the previous one.
John stumbled over Bartholomew’s legs when he hurried past, then cast a furtive glance up the nave, presumably to assess whether Bartholomew could have observed his meeting with Leycestre.
‘What are you doing here?’ the priest demanded, staring down at the physician who sat comfortably at the base of his column. ‘It is not nice to lurk in dark corners and startle honest men.’
‘Not so honest,’ said Bartholomew. ‘I saw you with Leycestre and Agnes Fitzpayne, plotting how you will overthrow the landlords. You told me you would wait to see which side won before pinning your colours to a mast, but you seem to be very close to Leycestre.’