‘Please, Dick,’ said Michael quietly. ‘I seriously doubt these people can move quickly enough to escape the bigots mustering outside, so they will be caught and murdered. I do not want that on my conscience and nor do you.’
Tulyet sighed in resignation. ‘Very well – you have until dawn the day after tomorrow to organise an escape. But the agreement is conditional on the peregrini staying out of sight. If one is so much as glimpsed through a window or a gate, the deal is off. Do you understand?’
‘Thank you, Sheriff,’ said Julien with quiet dignity. ‘We accept your terms. But what about Delacroix and his friends?’
‘You had better hope they are well away,’ said Tulyet sourly, ‘because if they are lurking here, they are dead already.’
‘Do you think Goda tried to stop them from leaving?’ asked Bartholomew. ‘And they stabbed her for it?’
Julien and Madame Vipond exchanged a glance that suggested it would not surprise them. Amphelisa was the only one who protested their innocence, although not for long.
Outside, Leger listened in mounting anger to what had been agreed. His face darkened and his fists clenched at his side.
‘You place the comfort of foreigners above the safety of your town,’ he snarled. ‘How long do you think it will take before the truth seeps out? After that, anyone trying to defend this place will die, and for what? To protect Frenchmen?’ He spat the last word.
‘We four are the only ones outside the Spital who know the secret,’ said Tulyet curtly. ‘Michael, Matt and I will say nothing, so unless you cannot keep quiet …’
‘I can,’ said Leger sullenly. ‘Although this is a stupid decision, and I will tell the King so when he demands to know why good men died for nothing.’
‘No one will die, because you will prevent it,’ said Tulyet briskly. ‘I am assigning you the task of ensuring the Spital comes to no harm.’
‘I refuse,’ said Leger immediately. ‘You cannot make me act against my principles.’
‘Your principles preclude you from defending a charitable foundation?’ asked Tulyet archly. ‘Because that is all I require you to do – to keep the building safe.’
‘A building with Frenchmen inside it,’ retorted Leger. ‘The enemy.’
‘Oh, come, man,’ snapped Tulyet. ‘We are talking about a gaggle of women, old men and terrified children. Do you really think such folk represent a danger to you? However, if the challenge of defending this place from a ragtag mob is beyond your abilities, I can easily pick someone else to do it.’
‘Then do,’ flashed Leger. ‘Because I am not–’
‘Although if the Spital is damaged because you refuse to do your duty, you will answer to the King,’ Tulyet went on. ‘He has taken a personal interest in this place, and wants it to thrive. I seriously doubt you will keep his favour once he learns that you let it burn down because a few displaced villagers from Rouen were within.’
‘Very well,’ snarled Leger, throwing up his hands in defeat. ‘But I want my objections noted, and I shall be making my own report to His Majesty.’
He stamped away without another word, his expression murderous. Tulyet watched him begin his preparations, then started to walk back to the town with Bartholomew and Michael.
‘Are you sure he can be trusted?’ asked Bartholomew uneasily. ‘Because if not, it will cost the lives of everyone inside – peregrini and staff.’
‘I am sure,’ replied Tulyet. ‘A massacre will reflect badly on his military abilities, and he will not want that on his record. Besides, now that Orwel and Norbert are dead, he is the only man with the skills and experience to mount a workable defence – other than my knights, and I cannot spare them. However, it is not Leger who concerns me, but the Jacques.’
‘Why?’ asked Bartholomew. ‘They will be miles away by now. They would have gone after the Girards were killed, but Julien stopped them. They never wanted to linger here.’
‘There is a rage in them that I have seen before,’ explained Tulyet soberly. ‘Their time in the Jacquerie and then in Winchelsea has turned them angry, bitter, violent and unforgiving. They will not overlook the Girard murders, no matter how much they and the victims might have quarrelled. They will want vengeance.’
‘Unless they are the ones who killed them,’ Bartholomew pointed out. ‘They are on our list of suspects.’
‘Regardless, I fear they have not disappeared into the Fens to escape the tedious business of protecting Julien’s flock, but are here, in Cambridge, biding their time until they can avenge themselves on the country that took them in and then turned against them.’
‘Perhaps,’ said Michael. ‘Yet I cannot believe that one of them stabbed Bruges at the butts. It would have been a shocking risk, and none of them are fools.’
‘But it would be a good solution to the murders, would it not?’ asked Tulyet. ‘The culprit being neither a townsman nor a scholar?’
‘Yes,’ acknowledged Michael. ‘But only if it is true.’
As the mood of the town felt more dangerous than ever, Tulyet decided it would be safer for Bartholomew and Michael to remain with him while they hunted killers. Michael objected, on the grounds that no one would dare assault the Senior Proctor, but Bartholomew was glad of Tulyet’s protection. They went to the castle first, where Tulyet organised a hunt for the Jacques, promising a shilling to the soldiers who brought them back.
‘Alive,’ cautioned Bartholomew, visions of corpses galore delivered to the Sheriff’s doorstep, the triumphant bearers safe in the knowledge that the dead could not say there had been a terrible mistake.
When the patrols had gone, Tulyet, Bartholomew and Michael went to the Griffin, to question its patrons about Wyse’s killer, after which they interviewed rioters about the person who had yelled the order to shoot. They spent an age in King’s Hall asking about its murdered scholars, and then went to St Radegund’s, where Sister Alice informed them that all the evidence against her was fabricated. Finally, they spoke to the staff at the Brazen George, to see if they had noticed anything untoward around the time when Orwel had died.
But they learned nothing to take them forward. Afternoon faded to evening, and then night approached, dark and full of whispering shadows. Tulyet scrubbed vigorously at his face to wake himself up as the church bells rang to announce the evening services.
‘We have done all we can with the murders today,’ he said. ‘Now I must go and keep the peace on our streets.’
‘I have already briefed my beadles,’ said Michael, ‘although I told Meadowman not to trust Heltisle’s Horde. I shall offer them to Leger soon – a gift of two dozen “prime fighting men” for the King’s army.’
He and Bartholomew trudged back to Michaelhouse, where they sat on a bench in the yard and ate a quick meal of bread and cheese before Michael went to join his beadles. The yard used to be dark once the sun went down, but he had ordered it lit with lanterns after he had taken an embarrassing tumble. In the hope that logical analysis would present the answers that had eluded them all day, Bartholomew began to list his remaining suspects.
‘The Jacques or Theophilis,’ he said. ‘I would like to include Heltisle, too, as he keeps trying to drag your attention away from the investigations by playing petty power games, but the truth is that I cannot see him stabbing anyone.’
‘The Jacques are on my list, too,’ said Michael, ‘but with Aynton above them, rather than Theophilis. You are right about Heltisle – he is objectionable, but no killer. We can exclude de Wetherset for the same reason.’