‘Cambrug installed all that to prevent the fans from collapsing while they were being assembled,’ he explained. ‘Now they are finished, except for the paintwork, the supports are no longer needed. But we shall leave them where they are for now.’
‘Because no one will see them up here anyway,’ surmised Langelee. ‘And you can dismantle them at your leisure, once the Queen and her retinue have gone.’
‘Precisely! It is cheating, I suppose, but needs must. Yet the supports have a beauty of their own, and I shall be sorry to see them go. In some ways, they demonstrate Cambrug’s genius more than the fan vaulting, as there are not many who could have devised so clever a system of braces.’
‘They are clever,’ acknowledged Bartholomew, surveying them with the eye of a man who understood loads and angles. He pointed. ‘I assume those two central posts took most of the weight until the vaults were self-supporting?’
‘Exactly! And what is even more amazing is that we can see everything quite clearly, even though none of us has a lantern. Cambrug left ingenious little gaps, so that the light can filter up from below. Do you know why? So that no one will ever be obliged to come up here with a lamp, thus reducing the risk of fire. He thought of everything.’
‘Is that one of his “ingenious little gaps”?’ asked Bartholomew, pointing again. ‘Only it looks like a crack to me. A rather large one.’
‘Oh, that is a crack,’ acknowledged Nicholas. ‘It happened early on, but Cambrug said it was just the stone settling into its final position, which is quite normal. We shall fill it with glue once the ceremony is over.’
‘Anne said she has been here for a year and a half, and building began some eight weeks after she arrived. That means you have done all this in sixteen months. It is a remarkable achievement.’
‘Yes, it is,’ agreed Nicholas, pleased by the praise. Then he grimaced. ‘Of course, our success is no thanks to Roger the mason, who was a dreadful grumbler. I cannot imagine why Cambrug appointed him as his deputy. I am sorry he is dead, of course, but he was such a malcontent.’
‘He did not die in suspicious circumstances, did he?’ asked Bartholomew warily. ‘Like the others you told us about last night?’
‘There are some who will tell you so, but the truth is that he was struck by falling scaffolding – an accident. Do you want to see his tomb? It was only finished last week. Go down the stairs and wait at the bottom. I shall join you there as soon as I have locked up here.’
‘Why do you need to keep the roof secure?’ asked Langelee, beginning to do as he was told.
‘Lest the castle folk come up here for mischief. I would not have invited you, given that you are strangers, but … well, if I cannot rely on two old soldiers to behave, then who can I trust?’
Bartholomew winced. When he had been in France, searching for Matilde, bad timing had put him near the little town of Poitiers, where a small English force had defeated a much larger French one. He disliked remembering the carnage, but Langelee had run out of stories about his own military achievements the previous night, so had started to invent ones about the physician’s instead, determined to repay the vicar’s hospitality with plenty of gory tales. Now Nicholas laboured under the misapprehension that Bartholomew was a seasoned warrior.
When the vicar joined them at the bottom of the stairs, he led the way to the tomb that the Swinescroft men had used as a seat the previous day. It comprised a plain chest with a marble top, and its location and height meant it was not only a convenient resting place for elderly legs, but also a handy workbench – the artists were currently using it to mix paint.
‘Was Roger unpopular?’ asked Bartholomew, wondering if there was a reason why Cambrug’s second-in-command had been buried below such a functional piece of furniture.
‘Very,’ replied Nicholas. ‘He thought the roof should have taken years to build, and refused to admit that he was wrong, right up until the day he died. And he hated the fan vaulting – he considered it too modern.’
‘Why did Cambrug choose such a person as his deputy?’
‘Because he was local, I suppose,’ shrugged Nicholas. ‘The diplomatic option. Yet I wish Roger was alive. It would have been a delight to watch his resentful face as I officiate at the ceremony that will mark the work’s completion.’
Nicholas went to speak to Anne at that point, leaving Bartholomew to recall what Michael had said the night before: that Clare had even more suspicious deaths than Cambridge. Then the monk himself arrived, grumbling about the disgraceful spat during Mass.
‘If they cannot control themselves, they should not have come,’ he said, tight-lipped with righteous indignation. ‘And if they do it during the ceremony next Tuesday they will be sorry – the royals levy fines for that sort of behaviour.’
‘There is Grym,’ said Bartholomew, nodding to where the enormous barber-surgeon was standing with the Mayor, both of them gazing up at the ceiling. ‘I want to ask him about using hemlock for amputations.’
‘Not in an accusing way, I hope,’ said Langelee pointedly. ‘He is one of Clare’s richest residents, and thus on my list of potential benefactors.’
‘In a medical way,’ Bartholomew assured him. ‘I am always keen to learn new things.’
‘Well, just watch your tongue,’ warned Langelee. ‘And remember, even if you do find out that he made an end of the folk who Nicholas claimed were poisoned – Wisbech and Skynere, was it? – we do not have the authority to do anything about it.’
Bartholomew did not bother to say that he had no intention of delving into the unsavoury business of murder, and went to the rood screen, where Mayor Godeston and Grym peered up at a part of the ceiling that was relatively free of scaffolding. Michael and Langelee followed, although all three held back politely until the two townsmen had finished their discussion.
‘It is not a crack,’ Grym was saying. He wore a dark green tunic with frills that, combined with his rotund shape, made him look like a cabbage with legs. ‘It is just a smear of paint.’
‘Then someone must go up there and scrub it off,’ declared Godeston irritably, ‘because it spoils the effect. I would do it myself, but I do not think my couch will fit up the steps.’
He was in his litter as he spoke, lying back to squint upwards. He was again clad entirely in purple, although this time it was gold embroidery, rather than silver, that adorned his sleeves. His bearers wore the same clothes as they had the previous day, including their hats, which they had neglected to remove. Bartholomew suspected it was because their hands were full of their employer’s litter, but they were still the subject of scowls from three castle knights, who evidently considered it disrespectful.
‘I do not think I would fit up them either,’ Grym was saying unhappily. ‘So perhaps one of your lads would go instead.’
‘And what happens to me while he messes about up there?’ demanded Godeston testily. ‘Am I to sit on the floor until he comes back?’
‘Am I to sit on the floor until he comes back?’ mimicked Langelee, in a disconcertingly accurate imitation of the Mayor’s high-pitched and rather prissy voice that made Bartholomew and Michael regard him askance. He shrugged. ‘I do not like him. He was rude to me yesterday when I mentioned that Michaelhouse is looking for new benefactors.’
‘Then we must work to win his good opinion,’ determined Michael, ‘because we cannot have him speaking against us to his wealthy cronies. However, we will not succeed if you make fun of him, so you might want to control your parodying urges.’
‘Although you did do it rather well,’ said Bartholomew, winning himself a conspiratorial grin.