Amasia sat with her back against the cracked, plastered wall. It cooled her sweaty skin. She looked round the garret Matthias called a chamber. Not much dignity here, she thought, with its crumbling walls and rush-covered floor. On a table in the far corner stood a cracked bowl and jug, beneath it a large, dirty piss-pot. Amasia closed her eyes. She wondered if Matthias, when he became a Master, would take her out of here. He’d sometimes hinted at it. But where to? She knew so little about him. She often teased him about the mystery yet she’d learnt very little. He had been a scholar in the abbey schools at Tewkesbury and Gloucester before his patron, Baron Sanguis, had paid for him to come to the Halls of Oxford. More importantly, Matthias didn’t know what he was going to do. Sometimes he talked of being a clerk, even a priest. Then he became tight-lipped, narrow-eyed: his jaw would stick out as if he had made a decision but stubbornly refused to tell anyone about it. Amasia sighed and opened her eyes. If only he would talk more. .
‘Will they miss you in the taproom below?’
Amasia jumped and looked down. Matthias was staring up at her.
‘How long have you been awake?’ she snapped and, leaning over, pinched his nose.
The student laughed and pushed away her hand. He sat up beside her.
‘Do you want to go?’ she asked archly.
‘I have to,’ he replied. ‘There is still enough daylight left.’
He pointed to the narrow window at the far end of the room.
‘Ah!’ Amasia threw the sheets back. She swung her long legs off the bed, stood up and stretched, looking coyly at Matthias. She knew men liked that: her body turning, her breasts thrust out. She smiled as Matthias moved and teasingly took a step backwards.
‘I have to go,’ she simpered. ‘I really must. Agatha isn’t-’
‘Oh yes,’ Matthias interrupted, ‘Agatha Merryfeet.’
‘That’s not her real name,’ Amasia snapped.
‘Oh, I think it is,’ Matthias replied, keeping his face straight as he caught the note of jealousy in her voice. ‘Whatever she is, Agatha can dance.’
‘Aye!’ she snapped. ‘On the tables, flaunting herself.’ Angrily Amasia picked her shift up and pulled it over her head. ‘Well, she’ll dance no more. She’s dead! Dead as a worm,’ she continued. ‘Her corpse has been taken to the death house at the Crutched Friars. Found in Christ Church Meadow she was,’ Amasia trilled on. ‘Pinch marks on her neck. Like two holes, the bailiff told us, as if someone had taken a nail-’
She was spun round. Matthias clutched her shoulders, his fingers biting deeply into her flesh. Amasia struggled but she forgot the pain: it was Matthias’ face which frightened her. No longer the soft, calm student. His face was pallid, skin drawn tight, eyes fixed and staring. He opened his mouth but then swallowed hard.
‘Matthias!’ She slapped at his wrist.
The student’s grip still held firm.
‘Matthias, you are hurting me!’
He let go of her and slumped down on the bed. Amasia stepped away and watched him carefully. She had heard stories about men like that. Quiet ones but, when they were in a chamber alone with a woman, they became violent, taking their pleasure out of pain. But was Matthias one of these? She noticed a trickle of sweat running down the side of his face, his chest heaving as if he had been running. He was staring at the floor. Now and again his mouth would twist into a grimace or he would shake his head as if he were carrying on a conversation with someone she could not see. She picked up a bowl of wine he had brought and, sitting beside him, raised it to his lips. He drank like a babe, then he coughed, retched and, with his hand covering his mouth, ran across the room to the piss bowl where he vomited. He crouched there like a dog, cleaning his mouth with his fingers.
‘Matthias, are you sickening?’
Amasia became frightened. Last summer the sweating sickness had swept through Oxford. They said it had been brought by Henry Tudor’s soldiers when they had marched through the city after their victory over Richard III at Market Bosworth. Amasia knew all about that battle: two of the pot boys had fought on the Yorkist side and had never returned. Amasia got to her feet. Perhaps she should go downstairs to Goodman the taverner.
‘I’m all right,’ Matthias muttered. ‘Don’t be afeared.’
He got to his feet, poured some water over his fingers and cleaned his mouth. He came back to the bed.
‘You look pale, Matthias!’
‘No, no.’ He shook his head and, taking her by the arm, forced her to sit next to him. ‘Tell me again,’ he said. ‘Tell me what happened to Agatha.’
Amasia did so.
‘You are always lost in your books, Matthias,’ she concluded. ‘Haven’t you heard about the other deaths? People like Agatha and myself, slatterns, maids. No one misses us. No one makes a fuss. No one except you,’ she added. ‘Why, did Agatha dance for you?’
Matthias got to his feet and began to dress.
‘And where did you say the body had been taken? Ah, yes, the Crutched Friars.’
Amasia, with the sheet up about her, watched as the student put on his hose, linen shirt, his tabard, which bore the arms of his college, Exeter in Turl Street. He pulled the hood over his head, tied the leather belt around him, his fingers going to the hilt of the dagger in its embroidered scabbard.
‘Don’t forget your boots!’ she teased.
Matthias was not listening. He picked these up, pulled them on, then walked out of the room without a by-your-leave or a backward glance.
‘Time for your studies?’ Goodman the taverner, filling a tankard from a tun near the door, hailed the student as Matthias crossed the taproom. Goodman would have loved to have drawn this young man into conversation. One day, when the time was ripe, Goodman hoped to have his own tryst with Amasia. He wished to savour the pleasures yet to come.
‘How long was Agatha missing?’ Matthias asked harshly.
‘Three days.’ The taverner got to his feet. ‘We’ll all miss her dancing. I mean in. .’ The filthy remark he was going to make died on his lips. The student’s pale face and hard, watchful eyes frightened him. ‘I’m busy.’ The taverner turned away. ‘And I’m glad the slut Amasia can return to her other duties!’
Matthias went out into the alleyway, along Northgate and Oxford High Street. He walked purposefully, hood pulled over his head. He did not acknowledge the cries and shouts of those who knew him. Matthias was blind to anything but the direction he was taking. A sow, flanks quivering, careered across his path. Chickens pecking at the dust scattered before him. A dog, which came yapping out of a runnel, hoping to draw the student’s attention to his master, a one-footed beggar, slunk away. Nor did the stall-holders, journeymen or tinkers catch his glance. Matthias shouldered his way through, not caring whom he elbowed out of his way: the well-dressed burgesses, lean-faced scholars in their shabby tabards, even the Masters and lecturers, the lords of the schools, whom every scholar had to treat with reverence, at least to their faces.
Matthias kept staring ahead. He felt like screaming, running, hiding in some dark hole, trying to make sense of what Amasia had told him. Images floated through his mind; Edith, daughter of Fulcher the blacksmith, in her coffin before the high altar of his father’s church; those ghosts shifting along the path of Sutton Courteny; the hermit singing as he died; Christina screaming at him; Rahere, ever present, ever watchful; his father’s last sad words; that dreadful sleep in the parish church. Matthias paused, closing his eyes. He breathed in deeply. Maybe he should go back to his hall? Seek out Santerre? Matthias rubbed the side of his head. He felt as if his mind were about to explode. That trap door he had closed so firmly on the nightmares of the past was forcing itself open.