‘Thelnetham told you that?’ demanded Poynton, while Bartholomew wondered two things: why Fen should change the subject so abruptly, and why Thelnetham should have been discussing him with strangers. ‘But he is a Gilbertine, and you should not fraternise with them – we are to play them at camp-ball this afternoon, so they are the enemy.’
‘Poynton has been invited to join the Carmelites’ team,’ explained Fen, when the merchant had stamped furiously away. ‘Apparently, he is good at it, although I do not believe it is a pastime worthy of a pilgrim. But now you must excuse me, too, because I have not finished my prayers.’
Bartholomew wanted to pursue the matter of Drax but Fen either did not hear or chose to ignore the question he began to ask. Thwarted, the physician walked towards Michael, who was engaged in a head-to-head confrontation with Prior Etone and Yffi.
‘–cannot rip the roof off my home,’ the monk was shouting, ‘then disappear on another job.’
‘But this is far more important than your roof, Brother,’ snapped Etone. ‘Yffi is to build us a proper shrine. The incident yesterday told us that we need something more secure, and we were delighted when he said he could begin work immediately.’
‘I am sure you were!’ yelled Michael. ‘But that is not the point. He has been engaged to repair Michaelhouse, and he cannot leave us with no windows and no roof while he makes you a temple.’
Yffi sighed heavily. ‘All right. I will go to Michaelhouse, and my apprentices will stay here. Then everyone will be happy. And do not say that is unacceptable, Brother, because the work on your roof has reached the point where only a master mason can make headway anyway. My lads would have been standing around doing nothing, regardless.’
Michael was clearly unconvinced, but Yffi grabbed a sack of tools and stalked towards the gate, indicating with a wave of his hand that his apprentices were to begin measuring out the new site. Etone immediately went to pester them with unwanted advice and directions.
‘Yffi has left his apprentices unattended, Brother,’ remarked Bartholomew, to stall the impending diatribe. ‘It is an opportunity to speak to them without a master prompting their replies.’
A determined gleam came into Michael’s eyes. ‘So it is! And we need not worry about objections from Etone that we are distracting them, because Poynton and Fen have just dragged him off somewhere – probably to complain about impertinent questions from you. You did ask some, I hope?’
‘None that elicited helpful answers.’
‘It was as Yffi told you,’ said Peterkin, when the monk ordered them to repeat their story. ‘We could not see the yard. It was dangerous upon that roof, and we were concentrating on our work.’
‘You were discussing Yolande de Blaston,’ countered Michael. ‘That was not concentrating.’
The lad flushed. ‘We can talk about her and do our jobs at the same time. But how could we see anything down in the yard when we were lounging around the back of the…’ He faltered.
‘Lounging?’ pounced Michael.
Peterkin tried to retract his words, but it was too late. The slip allowed Michael to launch into one of his aggressive interrogations, and he soon learned that Yffi and his lads had been idling out of sight when Drax’s body had been hidden.
‘The first we knew about it was when Agatha started fooling around with that dog,’ said Peterkin, speaking reluctantly and sulkily. ‘We all looked down at the yard then.’
‘Who initiated that discussion about Yolande?’ demanded Michael. ‘Yffi?’
A sly grin stole across Peterkin’s face. ‘Yes, because it amused him when all you scholars started listening to us. We could not see the yard, but we could see into your hall, and we saw we had your undivided attention. And half of you are priests, too! You should know better.’
‘Yes,’ said Michael bitterly. ‘We should, because it was your lewd banter that let a killer deposit a corpse in our College. You are not innocent in this affair, and I intend to see you pay for it.’
He turned on his heel and strode away, leaving the grin fading from Peterkin’s face, and his cronies exchanging anxious glances.
Langelee invited Bartholomew to dine with him when the physician returned to Michaelhouse, plying him with fresh bread, roasted meat, sweetmeats and a very small goblet of wine.
‘If you are still thirsty, you can have some small ale,’ said Langelee, snatching the cup away before Bartholomew had taken more than a token sip. ‘You cannot be drunk for this afternoon.’
‘I will not be drunk,’ said Bartholomew testily, indicating that the Master should return it to him. It was good wine. ‘Not on a thimbleful of claret. Are you nervous?’
‘A little,’ admitted Langelee. ‘It is the biggest camp-ball game of the season.’
‘Well, just be careful,’ said Bartholomew, finishing the wine and standing to leave. ‘We do not want anything to happen to you.’
‘Nothing will happen to me,’ declared Langelee, following him across the yard. ‘But the opposition had better watch themselves. The Carmelites have recruited two of the louts from Chestre Hostel, and if they try anything sly, they will be sorry.’
‘There is no evidence that it was Chestre who stole the gates,’ warned Bartholomew, afraid Langelee might decide to punish the outrage on the field. ‘It may have been someone else.’
‘Of course it was them,’ said Langelee bitterly. ‘They have always hated us.’
Bartholomew looked uncomfortably at the yawning gap in the College’s defences as they passed through it. It was disconcerting, and he felt acutely vulnerable, despite the student-guards on patrol.
‘Do you know how the two Orders came to challenge each other to an annual camp-ball game in the first place?’ he asked, as they walked up St Michael’s Lane.
‘After the plague, life was bleak, so the Gilbertines decided to cheer everyone up. They settled on sponsoring a bout of camp-ball because it is popular with townsfolk, as well as scholars. The Carmelites thought it a wonderful idea, and offered to fund the opposing team.’
‘And it always takes place on the day after the Feast of St Gilbert of Sempringham?’
‘Yes,’ said Langelee. ‘Because he founded the Gilbertine Order, and the canons are always in the mood for a bit of celebration around this time of year.’
When they arrived, Langelee led the way to the large expanse of land behind the priory buildings, where the event was due to take place. Some games used the whole town as a playing field, but the canons were aware that this could prove dangerous to innocent bystanders, so, in the interests of safety, they had opted to confine the action to a limited area.
The players had assembled in two knots, about thirty men in each. One group wore white sashes, to indicate they were fighting for the Carmelites, while the other had donned black for the Gilbertines. Langelee abandoned Bartholomew and raced towards the latter, tying a strip of dark material around his waist as he did so.
Spectators were also gathering, forming a thick rim around the edge of the field. Although he had certainly been aware of the game being played in recent years, something had always happened to prevent him from attending them – emergencies with patients, or duties in Michaelhouse – so it was the first time he had ever been to one, and he was astonished by the number of people who had abandoned work to enjoy themselves there. He estimated there were at least a thousand of them. Many were townsmen, and he was surprised when he saw his sister and her husband standing to one side, waving small white flags. He had not known they favoured the Carmelites over the Gilbertines, and wondered why.
Unfortunately, the game had also attracted the kind of students who were enjoying the hostel–College dispute. The feisty lads from Essex Hostel were there, and Michael and his beadles were struggling to keep them apart from the boys of Gonville Hall. Meanwhile, noisy contingents from Maud’s, Batayl and York hostels were standing provocatively close to equally belligerent representatives from Peterhouse and the Hall of Valence Marie.