‘He will be hiding up a tree or in an attic somewhere. He will turn up when he is hungry.’
Bartholomew was watching Horneby, who fidgeted and shuffled under his penetrating gaze. ‘What do you think, Master Horneby?’ he asked, making the young man squirm even more. ‘Will Lynne appear at dinnertime?’
Horneby nodded quickly, casting quick, agitated glances at his friends. Bartholomew was about to pursue the matter when everyone jumped at a loud, startled exclamation from Timothy.
‘What is this?’ demanded the monk, straightening from where he had emptied the contents of Faricius’s spare scrip on to his bed. Everyone craned forward to see what he had found. Between thumb and forefinger, Timothy held a large ring with a heavy stone that looked as if it were a ruby. Lincolne seemed astonished; Horneby, however, lost some of his ruddy colour.
Bartholomew thought back to when Faricius had died: the student-friar had been almost desperate to locate his scrip. Was it because he thought it contained the ruby ring – that he had forgotten he had left it in his chest at home? The strings that attached the scrip to Faricius’s belt had been cut, and Bartholomew had assumed the scrip had been stolen by whoever had killed him. However, although the cut marks appeared recent, there was nothing to say that they had been made at the time of his death. Perhaps it had happened the previous day, or even earlier.
Or was there a simpler, more sinister explanation: that whoever killed Faricius and stole his purse had replaced the scrip, complete with ring, among the dead friar’s personal possessions? Bartholomew supposed it was not impossible that some colleague, overwhelmed by guilt at what he had done, had sought to make amends by putting back what he had stolen. But that meant Faricius’s murderer was a Carmelite, the only ones to have free and unlimited access to the cells in the dormitory.
While the others clustered around to look at the ring, Bartholomew picked up the purse. Its strings were old and worn. There was nothing to suggest they had been cut, and nothing to suggest that the killer had been clever and had replaced the newly cut thongs with old and dirty ones. The leather ties were of an identical colour to the purse, and had frayed in such a way that Bartholomew was fairly certain they were the originals.
He rubbed a hand through his hair. What did this mean? That someone had stolen Faricius’s other purse, and that his personal possessions ran to more than one valuable ring? That Faricius was delirious when he had urged Bartholomew to locate his scrip, and that he had forgotten the one that held the ring was safe in his friary?
‘It is a ring,’ said Lincolne, stating the obvious as he took it from Timothy. ‘We do not encourage our friars to keep this sort of thing for themselves. I imagine he was given it, and that he intended to pass it to the friary’s coffer, but his murder meant that he could not do so.’ He slipped the ring into his own scrip.
‘Do you now?’ said Michael, raising his eyebrows to indicate that he was not so sure. He turned to the students. ‘And who gave this pretty bauble to Faricius for the Carmelite coffer?’
‘We have never seen it before,’ said Horneby immediately. ‘We do not know where it came from.’
‘What about the rest of you?’ asked Michael, glancing around at the assembled students. ‘Does anyone know who might have given Faricius this ring? It looks valuable, and I cannot see that he would have mentioned it to no one.’
The chorus of denials was accompanied by shaken heads. Bartholomew studied the students carefully. Some appeared to be surprised by the find, while others were more difficult to read. Horneby licked nervous lips, and his eyes could only be called shifty. While Bartholomew could not be sure that he was actually lying, it was obvious that there was something about Faricius’s death that was making him anxious and even a little frightened.
‘How remarkable,’ said Michael mildly. ‘Faricius was presented with a valuable gift for the friary, and yet he shared news of his good fortune with none of you. Was he always so secretive?’
‘Perhaps the Dominicans put it there,’ suggested Horneby. ‘They want you to question Faricius’s good character, so that you will not blame them for his murder.’
‘And how do you imagine they got in?’ demanded Timothy, who clearly thought Horneby’s suggestion ludicrous. ‘Surely, in a busy place like this dormitory, it would be extremely difficult for a stranger to enter and start tampering with people’s private possessions?’
Lincolne intervened. ‘Horneby’s suggestion was meant to be helpful, but we can all see it is implausible. But perhaps the ring had some sentimental value for Faricius, and he decided to keep it, rather than forfeiting it when he was ordained.’
‘He would never have broken the rules of our Order in that way,’ said Horneby hotly. ‘He was a good and saintly man.’
‘Keeping a ring from a loved relative does not make him wicked,’ said Lincolne gently, to calm him. He turned to Michael. ‘But it does not give a Dominican the right to murder him, either.’
‘No,’ said Michael. ‘It does not.’
Bartholomew, Michael and Timothy left the friary none the wiser regarding Faricius’s death, Lynne’s mysterious behaviour or what Horneby was so clearly hiding, and began to walk back along Milne Street. Bartholomew told them what he had reasoned about the purse, and the two Benedictines seemed dispirited that there were more questions than answers. Dusk came early, because of the rain, and Michael announced that he was tired and that it was time to go home. Timothy returned to Ely Hall, while Bartholomew walked with the monk along Milne Street towards Michaelhouse.
‘There is Matilde,’ said Michael, pointing out a slender, elegant woman who was picking her way carefully among the piles of refuse that lined the sides of the road. ‘I wonder if she knows that the nuns of St Radegund’s are plying their trade in her line of business. Matilde! Hey!’
His stentorian roar drew several startled glances from onlookers, and more than one of them smiled at the sight of the fat monk hailing a prostitute so brazenly on one of the town’s main thoroughfares. Matilde was also surprised to be addressed at such a volume, but her face lit with pleasure when she saw that Bartholomew was with Michael.
‘Matthew,’ she said warmly, as she waited for them to catch up. She looked at his wet cloak and the clay that clung to the bottom of his boots. ‘Where have you been? Visiting the lepers?’
‘Not today,’ replied Bartholomew. ‘I examined them about a month ago, and found them as hale and hearty as can be expected. Unfortunately, there is little else I can do for them.’
‘You ease their discomfort,’ said Matilde. ‘That is more than they expect. But the sisters tell me that you have more murders to investigate – including poor Will Walcote’s.’
‘The sisters,’ mused Michael, using the term Matilde always employed when discussing the town’s prostitutes. ‘It is odd you should mention sisters, Matilde. Matt and I went to St Radegund’s Convent this afternoon.’
Matilde’s pretty face hardened. ‘Why were you there? It is no place for decent-minded men.’
Coming from a courtesan, this was damning indeed. Bartholomew stared at her. In his eyes, she was the most attractive woman in Cambridge, and possessed a sharp mind that he greatly admired. So far, their relationship had remained frustratingly chaste, and was confined to occasional evenings spent in her house with some of her ‘sisters’ for company, or the odd stroll in the water meadows near the river. The more Bartholomew came to know her, the more he liked her, and he was under the impression that she no longer practised her trade. No one ever claimed to secure her favours, and he suspected that her position as unofficial spokeswoman for the town’s whores left her little time for physical liaisons with customers.