‘You could never believe anything Clippesby says,’ said Tulyet, regarding Bartholomew as though he was insane himself. ‘He told me he was a monkey last month.’
‘Did he?’ asked Bartholomew, troubled.
‘He claims the similarity between men and apes means God used the same mould when He created them. Have you ever heard such nonsense? But I have questioned Dickon again and again about Eudo, and I still have no clear idea of what the boy saw. I suppose it is not surprising: he is very young and has no proper concept of time.’
‘Then what did your dredging reveal?’ asked Michael. ‘Who is this man with the cut throat?’
‘No one,’ said Tulyet. ‘We emptied the pit to the bottom, and nothing was in it except mud. Either you were mistaken, Matt, or someone was there before us and retrieved the body first. There is no corpse in the well, and no indication that there ever has been.’
CHAPTER 8
‘I do not know whether to be relieved or alarmed,’ said Michael, as he and Bartholomew took their leave of the disgruntled Sheriff. ‘Without a body, we have no evidence of a crime, so I am not obliged to cram another investigation into my already busy schedule. However, assuming you did not imagine the entire incident and the corpse really does exist, then we have yet another mystery to look into: why did someone steal it?’
‘I hoisted it up easily enough,’ said Bartholomew. ‘So, anyone else could have done the same once word was out that Dick planned to drain the cistern. Eudo and Boltone could have reclaimed it before making their escape a second time.’
‘That assumes they put it there in the first place,’ Michael pointed out.
‘They must have done. Why fight us otherwise? It would not have been worth the trouble – or the risk. Boltone has a good job as Merton’s bailiff, while Eudo is a local man with friends who say he likes living here. Neither would willingly turn outlaw without good reason.’
‘Boltone is the subject of an enquiry. His life as a bailiff will never be the same, even if Duraunt deems him innocent, so perhaps he thought he had nothing to lose.’
‘Perhaps,’ acknowledged Bartholomew. ‘It is a pity we do not know the dead man’s identity. He was youngish, because his teeth were white, but that is all I could tell you about him.’
Michael was thoughtful. ‘You should not be too convinced that Eudo and Boltone are responsible for this mysterious corpse. As far as I am concerned, he is Clippesby’s victim. I imagine he will be pleased to learn that the body could not be found.’
Bartholomew gave a triumphant smile. ‘And that is something to consider, Brother! If Clippesby killed this man and threw him in the cistern, then who pulled him out? The only person to benefit would be Clippesby, and he could not have done it, because he has been locked up at Stourbridge.’
‘Then what about all the times he escaped? He could easily have gone out, retrieved the body and been back before dawn, with no one any the wiser.’
‘How could he have known that Tulyet planned to drain the well?’
Michael sighed. ‘I imagine a robin or a weasel warned him. But I refuse to discuss this further until we have more information.’
‘And how do we get that?’
Michael tapped his temple. ‘By using our minds, as we have done on other occasions. We shall return to Michaelhouse, write down all we know, and analyse every eventuality until we see a pattern emerge. Are you prepared to spend a morning scribing for me? I do not trust anyone else.’
Bartholomew nodded. ‘And we will prove Clippesby is innocent.’
‘I see you intend to conduct the exercise with a suitably impartial mind.’
Since both had run out of parchment, they were obliged to visit the stationer’s premises, to buy more. The shop, strategically sited on the High Street, was a grand affair with a tiled roof and several spacious rooms. Weasenham, Alyce and their servants lived on the upper floor, while the lower chambers were where they manufactured their writing materials, scribed their exemplar pecia, and made their sales. Bartholomew liked the shop with its sharp, metallic aroma of ink, and the warm, rich scent of new parchment, although he was less keen on its gossiping owner. When he followed Michael inside, he saw business was good: the place was crammed full of scholars and clerks, some trying to read the exemplars without actually buying them, some passing the time of day with acquaintances, and others waiting to be served.
Weasenham himself stood at a table, where he showed two customers an array of pens made from swan feathers, demonstrating how much easier they were to sharpen than those made from the more traditional goose. Alyce was near the back of the shop, engrossed in a deep discussion with Langelee. She was laughing, and their conversation was clearly about more than the glue Langelee was pretending to inspect. When he saw his Fellows approach, Langelee left abruptly and somewhat furtively. Moments later Alyce followed, and Bartholomew glimpsed them both darting down the small lane that led to the rear of the house.
‘Weasenham will wonder where she has gone,’ he said, thinking the Master overly bold in his courting. By contrast, his own meetings with Matilde were the picture of discretion – he had certainly not frolicked with a married woman in broad daylight, and in her husband’s own back yard.
‘He is run off his feet with customers,’ said Michael, amused. ‘He will not know whether she is here or not, so it is an excellent time for Langelee to seduce his wife. Do not look so disapproving, Matt, given what you have been doing of late.’
‘You know what I have been doing,’ said Bartholomew, offended. ‘And it is not–’
Michael nodded towards the stationer. ‘Weasenham’s current customers are Dodenho and Wormynghalle. Dodenho is fussy and pompous, and will keep him busy for hours with his exacting demands, while Wormynghalle probably takes his pens as seriously as he does the rest of his studies. Langelee is a genius to choose now to seduce Alyce.’
Bartholomew craned his neck to peer through the freestanding shelves, and saw the stationer was indeed serving the two scholars from King’s Hall. He could hear Dodenho’s braying voice as he demanded the best quality equipment, anxious that everyone should know him to be a man of means and good taste. Wormynghalle gave her full, quiet attention to the task in hand, and her face was intense as she considered the writing implements Weasenham displayed. Bartholomew saw that the incident in Paxtone’s room had unnerved her, because she had been to even more trouble to render herself masculine. She had dirtied her clothes to emulate her more slovenly colleagues, and there was grime under fingernails that had previously been clean. She also had a brazenly feminine silk glove tucked into her belt, proclaiming to all who saw it that she kept a female lover. Michael saw it, too, and Bartholomew was certain it would result in a fine.
A group of Bartholomew’s students were on the premises, too, under the loose supervision of Deynman and Falmeresham. They were assessing the cost of vellum, to use for the short treatises they were obliged to produce by the end of the term. Deynman had already purchased the most expensive kind, no doubt hoping that its superior quality would detract from the poor standard of what was written on it. The atmosphere was jovial, with light-hearted banter that resulted in a lot of laughter.
After a moment, the door rattled open and several Gonville Hall scholars bustled in. Bartholomew recognised their leader as William of Lee, Rougham’s most senior student, who took his master’s classes when he was away. Lee looked more like a wrestler than a physician, and would have done better as a surgeon, where brute force was useful for setting bones and sawing off damaged limbs. When he saw the Michaelhouse lads, he swaggered towards them.