Matthias knocked away Golden Locks’ knife and drove his fist straight into the man’s face, battering his nose so violently, the blood squirted out. Golden Locks staggered away, hands to his face, crying and screaming. Matthias tried to draw his dagger but the others were upon him, kicking and beating him. They laughed cruelly at their companion’s discomfiture and, leaving him to hold his face, dragged Matthias back up the alleyway. One of them found a piece of old rope and another took off Matthias’ belt.
‘Let’s tie them together like lovers!’ one of them shouted. ‘Remember Villon’s poem? About being bound to the corpse of a friend, lips to lips, nose to nose?’
The others agreed but Matthias, desperate with fear, struggled, lashing out with his feet. Golden Locks joined them, smashing his fists in the side of Matthias’ head. Slowly they dragged him towards the scaffold. The students leapt about like imps, determined on carrying out their punishment. Above them a window opened: a woman’s voice shouted that she’d call the watch. The students picked up clods of dirt from the midden-heap and flung them at her, and the window promptly closed.
Matthias could now smell the rottenness of the corpse. He could not bear the thought but he knew it was impossible to beg. Even in the dusk, he could make out the dead man’s features. He closed his eyes, tightening his lips, not conscious of the pain which racked him.
‘That will be enough of that!’
Matthias sighed and let his body sag. The students turned, staring at the dark figure, cloak thrown back, sword and dagger drawn.
‘Go to hell!’ Golden Locks shouted.
The figure darted forward: the tip of Santerre’s sword bit into the fleshy part of Golden Locks’ shoulder. The Frenchman danced back, sword and dagger swishing the air. The students recognised a street-fighter, a born swordsman. They let go of Matthias.
‘Go on!’ Santerre lunged forward, his sword snaking out. ‘Leave my friend and go!’
The students dropped Matthias and took to their heels.
Matthias felt his friend’s arm lifting him up, then he sank into a faint.
11
Matthias woke early the next morning. He felt sore and stiff; the side of his face hurt. He struggled up, pushing back the bolsters. He groaned and carefully made his way down the ladder from his small bed. Santerre was fast asleep on his palliasse under the window, red hair splayed out, mouth half open. The Frenchman had not even bothered to take his boots off but lay sprawled over the blankets, his sword belt on the floor beside him. Matthias staggered over to the lavarium. A piece of polished metal above it served as a mirror. Matthias was pleased to see his face was not too bruised. He washed and shaved, wincing as the razor scraped his tender skin. He dried himself, glancing round the chamber to make sure that he was no longer dreaming, that the chamber was his. The crumbling masonry hearth; the wall above blackened with soot; the small windows covered by a pig’s bladder; a low ceiling of rough beams, sparse furniture, a table, wooden-peg stools, chests, coffers and hooks on the walls with various garments hanging from them. Beneath the loft was a cupboard to hold provisions, pots, jugs, cups and a tankard Santerre had stolen from a tavern. Matthias went across but the bread and cheese he had left there were gone. He sat down, recalling the horrors of the previous day.
‘I really should go to the schools,’ he whispered. ‘Perhaps that is best.’
‘There’ll be no lectures for you today, mon ami.’ Matthias looked over his shoulder. Santerre was sitting on the edge of the mattress; his long, white face was heavy with sleep but his sharp green eyes watched Matthias intently.
‘Thank you for last night.’ Matthias staggered across to him.
Santerre clasped his hand and grinned.
‘I’ve been busy on your behalf.’ The Frenchman’s English was good, only slightly tinged with an accent.
‘If you hadn’t been busy,’ Matthias retorted, ‘I’d have spent the night strapped to a corpse.’
‘And now?’
‘I feel tired, a little bruised but very hungry.’
‘Then come.’
Santerre sprang to his feet. He slapped some water over his face, carelessly drying himself with a rag, which he then flung into a corner. He led Matthias out of the chamber and down the narrow, spiral staircase. Matthias still felt confused. Everything was happening so fast but Santerre was going ahead of him, shaking his head, as if he knew Matthias wanted to question him.
‘Remember what Bonaventure said,’ he called out over his shoulder. ‘ “If speech is a gift from God, silence is a virtue.” ’
They stood aside as a group of scholars, bachelors in their shabby brown gowns, bustled up the stairs. Each carried a small bundle; on their belts were strapped ink horns and a sheaf of quills in a small pouch. They nodded at Santerre and Matthias but, as usual, left these two alone. Usually this never bothered Matthias but now he realised that his life in Oxford was really no different from that at Tewkesbury. He was a stranger in a foreign land, like a boy who stands in the middle of a ring and watches other children play around him.
‘Stop dreaming!’ Santerre called from the foot of the stairs.
Matthias hurried on. The lane outside smelt sweet after the dank fetidness of the hall. The sun was strong, the air clear and crisp. Dung-collectors had taken the refuse from the day before and the streets and alleyways were still empty. Only the occasional, heavy-eyed apprentice, laying up the stalls or taking down the fronts of the shops, was to be seen as Matthias and Santerre hurried across Broad Street and into a side door of the Silver Wyvern. The taverner came out, Santerre whispered to him, the man nodded and handed over a key.
‘The third chamber on the first gallery,’ he declared. ‘I’ll send food up immediately.’
Santerre took Matthias up. The chamber was clean — lime-washed walls, fresh rushes on the floor. The tables and stools looked as if they had been scrubbed with hot water and the lattice window was open, allowing in the clear, flower-scented air from the garden below. A tapster brought up cups of watered wine and two trenchers with strips of roast beef in garlic pepper sauce, small bread loaves and pots of honey and butter.
‘Why this?’ Matthias asked.
‘Why not?’ Santerre replied, sitting Matthias at the other side of the table. ‘I arranged it last night. You and I need to have words.’
Matthias took his horn spoon from his wallet and polished it absent-mindedly on his sleeve.
‘About what?’
The Frenchman’s eyes held his. ‘You know full well, Matthias! Master Ambrose Rokesby, lecturer in Philosophy and self-styled authority in Theology. He has been making complaints about you.’
Matthias groaned. ‘Rokesby is a lecher and a lecturer,’ he mocked back. ‘I have challenged him in the schools.’
‘Yes, I know, about his theory on Lucifer and the fallen angels.’
Santerre grinned. Matthias noticed how white and even his teeth were. He liked the Frenchman’s cleanliness. Matthias could never understand why so many scholars believed dirt and foul odours were the leading characteristics of learning. Rokesby was one of these, with his fat, unshaven face, slobbery mouth and eyes, which always betrayed a heavy night’s drinking. Rokesby had clawed his greasy hair in rage when Matthias had dared to draw him into disputation over his commentary on Aquinas’ dissertation on the fall of Lucifer.
‘You shouldn’t have said it!’ Santerre reminded him.
‘All I said,’ Matthias replied, biting into a piece of meat, ‘was that Hell was not a place but a state of mind and that Lucifer probably thought he was in Heaven even when he was in Hell.’
‘Rokesby says that’s heresy,’ Santerre teased back. His face became grave. ‘More importantly, that fat little turd-ball has been making deliberate enquiries with the archivist in Duke Humphrey’s library. In the Blue Boar yesterday evening, Rokesby was maliciously speculating on your unnatural interest in the Devil and all his works.’