He was right, thought Bartholomew. Some of the villagers William had browbeaten had claimed to have seen a man in a short cloak, not a long one: they had seen Stoate, the real killer of Unwin.
‘But why were you wearing a cloak at all?’ he asked, still puzzled. ‘It was hot that day.’
‘When one wears yellow hose, one does not sit on grass,’ said Stoate impatiently. ‘I took my cloak with me to spread on the ground, so that the village boys would not jeer at a green-stained seat. Little did I know how useful it would be: it also allowed me to carry Unwin back to the church without traces of blood seeping on to my best clothes.’
Michael shook his head unhappily. ‘How do we know we can believe you? You have lied about everything else.’
‘I have lied about nothing, except the length of the cloak,’ said Stoate, most of his attention on the slowly brightening sky again. ‘You never asked me whether I killed Unwin, and you have never questioned me about Mistress Freeman.’
‘What about your medical qualifications, then?’ demanded Michael. ‘They are false.’
‘They are not. My father took me to Paris when I was fifteen, where I sat in a library and read Galen’s Tegni. Two years later we went to Bologna, where I found another library and read it again. So, you see, I have not lied to you about that either. I told you I studied medicine in Paris and Bologna, and I have.’
‘But that claim is grossly misleading,’ objected Bartholomew. ‘You know perfectly well that people will assume you mean you have studied properly, not just read a book that you could not have understood without also reading all the commentaries that go with it.’
‘I do extremely well as a physician,’ said Stoate smugly.
‘By giving foxglove to treat Tuddenham’s stomach disease?’ demanded Bartholomew. ‘By dispensing a foul ointment of cat grease and crushed snails for burns? By prescribing a potion containing betony and pennyroyal to the pregnant Janelle without cautioning her how to use it?’
Stoate wiped a bead of sweat from his face with his forefinger. He slapped his hand back on to the weapon again as Bartholomew tensed, weighing up the chances of reaching Stoate before he could fire. Michael gave him an agonised look, sensing that Stoate’s nervousness might well lead him into shooting if Bartholomew gave the impression he was about to attack at any moment.
‘I lose very few patients,’ said Stoate coldly. ‘Which is more than can be said of you, from what you have told me about your practice in Cambridge.’
‘You will miss having a rich patient like Tuddenham,’ said Michael, worried that Bartholomew might start an argument that would goad the nervous physician into shooting at them.
‘I will not have him for much longer anyway,’ said Stoate. ‘Now is a good time to leave.’ He peered at the ground, trying to ascertain whether the dawn was sufficiently advanced for riding.
‘What do you mean?’ asked Michael, realising they were running out of time. Stoate would not spend a moment longer than necessary before he made his escape, and Michael sensed that Stoate intended to shoot him anyway, just so that he would not be followed. ‘Or have you left him a purge that will expel his soul from his body as well as his evil humours?’
Stoate pulled an unpleasant face at him, and declined to answer. He finished checking the ground and then squinted up at the sky, abruptly turning his attention to Michael when the monk raised a hand to scratch his head.
‘So what happened in Mistress Freeman’s house?’ asked Michael, sweat breaking out on his forehead as he tried to think of something to say to delay what he knew was inevitable. ‘You presented her with mussels. Then what?’
‘I thought she could cook them for us to eat together, while I worked to convince her that it was Norys who killed Unwin – just as you believed.’
‘And when you arrived you found that she had shared her mussels with Norys instead,’ said Bartholomew. ‘You were lucky. You would have died, too, had you eaten them.’
Stoate shook his head, his eyes distant. ‘I had no idea what had happened – I will have a few strong words with that fishmonger when I next see him. There was no answer from her door, so I looked through the window, and there they were – Mistress Freeman and Norys, dead in each other’s arms. I was afraid I would be blamed, since people know I call on her from time to time, so I slashed her throat. I knew you would assume Norys did it.’
Seeing him distracted by his memories, Bartholomew slipped his hand in his medicine bag, groping for one of his surgical knives. He eased it up his sleeve, and quickly withdrew his hand.
‘But there was no blood, was there?’ he said. ‘Corpses do not bleed.’
‘I had forgotten that. I knew that someone like you would be suspicious of a slit throat with no blood, so I fetched some from the slaughterhouse. Everyone knew a pig had been killed there for Hamon, so I guessed there would be blood in the vat.’
‘But you used far too much of it,’ said Bartholomew.
‘I had to make it look convincing,’ said Stoate. ‘Then I took some old clothes, dipped them in the blood, wrapped them in a long cloak that I found in my attic – along with Unwin’s purse – and flung the whole lot on Norys’s roof, where I knew someone would see them.’
‘But you kept the relic,’ said Michael, removing it from his scrip and waving it at Stoate. ‘That was what told us who had really killed Unwin. It fell out of your bag when you tripped up the chancel steps in the dark, rushing to help Tuddenham when he was ill.’
In a lightning-quick movement, Stoate darted across the room and snatched it from Michael’s hand. He had the crossbow pointed at the monk again before Bartholomew could do more than let the knife slip from his sleeve into the palm of his hand.
‘I will sell this when I reach somewhere it will not be recognised,’ said Stoate, pleased. ‘What is it exactly? A lock of the Virgin’s hair?’
‘It is St Botolph’s beard,’ said Michael, shocked. ‘What kind of hair did you think our Blessed Virgin had, man?’
Stoate looked quickly at the sky, then glanced along the road. Bartholomew’s fingers tightened on the knife, trying not to think about what might happen if he missed, and if Stoate were startled or angered into firing the crossbow. Stoate, however, was no fool.
‘Sit still,’ he ordered sharply. ‘And put your hands in front of you, where I can see them.’
While Michael sighed and puffed at the indignity, Bartholomew shoved the knife under his leg, and rested his empty hands in his lap, cursing himself for hesitating when he should have hurled the weapon.
‘And what did you do with Norys’s body?’ asked Michael. ‘Pay three louts to bury it in Unwin’s grave for you?’
‘No,’ said Stoate, still watching Bartholomew for hints of trickery. ‘That had nothing to do with me. I left his body in the woods near Barchester, and I have no idea how he managed to arrive in Unwin’s tomb. I do not desecrate graves.’
‘Just the corpses that lie in them,’ said Bartholomew, seeing Stoate glance up at the sky once more. It was now quite pale, and Bartholomew could make out individual leaves on the trees. A good horseman would be able to make reasonable time, if he were careful. Stoate took a deep breath and tightened his finger on the trigger, while Bartholomew let one of his hands drop to the floor, easing it toward the knife that pressed into his leg.
‘But I killed no one,’ insisted Stoate. ‘Unwin, Mistress Freeman and Norys were accidents – as it seems to me you had already reasoned anyway.’
‘But what about the man hanging at Bond’s Corner?’ asked Michael, desperately playing for time. ‘Did you kill him? And what about Alcote, or was that an accident too?’