Bartholomew entered Margery’s home with the same fear that always assailed him when he stepped across her threshold – that he would find her having a cosy chat with her good friend Lucifer. Or worse, brewing some concoction that contained human body parts. Instead, it was to discover Cynric there, the two of them sitting companionably at the hearth, drinking cups of her dangerously strong ale.
‘I am here for Dusty,’ explained the book-bearer, not at all sheepish at being caught in such a place. ‘He has a sore hoof, and Margery makes an excellent onion poultice for those.’
‘She probably got the recipe from Satan,’ muttered Bartholomew to himself, ‘who uses it on his cloven feet.’
‘No, it is my own formula,’ said Margery pleasantly, startling him with her unusually acute hearing. ‘So what brings you here, Doctor? And openly, too! The last time you came, you skulked outside with your ear to my window shutter.’
Bartholomew felt himself blush. ‘I was following Sister Alice. She was walking along so furtively that I thought I should see what she was up to.’
‘She wanted a cursing spell,’ recalled Margery. ‘But I did not give her one. I decided she was unworthy, so I fobbed her off with a pot of coloured water.’
‘Oh,’ said Bartholomew, wondering how ‘unworthy’ one had to be not to pass muster with one of the Devil’s disciples. ‘Did she say what she intended to do with it?’
‘Wreak revenge on her enemies, who seem to include everyone she meets. I did not take to her at all, which is why I do not mind disclosing her secrets. I am more discreet with folk I like, such as yourself.’
‘How about Abbess Isabel?’ asked Bartholomew, speaking quickly to mask his discomfiture. ‘Do you like her?’
Margery nodded. ‘She is a little over-passionate about Christianity, but that happens when you spend all your life in a convent, and she cannot help it, poor soul. However, my fondness for her means I will not break her confidence.’
‘No?’ asked Bartholomew, wondering how to convince her that it was important she did. Fortunately, he did not have to ponder for long.
‘Unless you make it worth my while,’ Margery went on. ‘Do I detect the scent of cedarwood oil about you? Amphelisa’s perhaps? That is excellent stuff – always useful.’
Bartholomew fished it from his bag and handed it over, marvelling that her sense of smell should be as sensitive as her hearing. ‘She said it kills fleas.’
‘I imagine it does, but it is also good for dissolving unwanted flesh.’
Bartholomew regarded her uneasily. ‘Unwanted by whom?’ But then he decided he did not want to know the answer, so changed the subject. ‘Tell me about the Abbess.’
‘She came to me on Saturday evening, shortly after you and Brother Michael went to the Brazen George – I saw you slip through its back door while I was walking home.’
‘How did she seem to you?’
‘You mean did she race out afterwards and brain Orwel?’ asked Margery shrewdly. ‘If she did, it had nothing to do with her discussion with me – which was all about a nun she aims to defrock. She is too tactful to mention names, but I knew she meant Alice.’
‘How?’
‘By her description of a discontented lady with a penchant for stinking candles. She wanted a list of all those Alice intends to hurt, so she could warn them to be on their guard. I obliged her, and in return she gave me a lock of her hair, which she says will be worth a lot of money after she is canonised.’
Bartholomew decided not to tell Margery that it took years for such matters to be decided, and that those arrogant enough to believe they were in the running would probably be rejected on principle.
‘Is Isabel herself on Alice’s list?’ he asked.
‘Oh, yes, along with the Bishop and a hundred others. I told her to watch herself, because while I am the best wise-woman in Cambridge, I am not the only one, and others are not as scrupulous as me. When Alice realises my coloured water is not having the desired effect, she will take her custom elsewhere.’
‘Did Isabel heed the warning?’
‘She promised she would. However, she said one thing that bemused me. She said that finding Paris the Plagiarist’s body still haunts her dreams. But why would it? He cannot have been her first corpse, and I am told that his stabbing was not particularly bloody.’
‘No more than any other,’ said Bartholomew. ‘And less than some.’
‘There is more to her distress about him than she lets on,’ finished Margery. ‘It puzzles me, and if you aim to solve his murder, it should puzzle you, too.’
To reach St Radegund’s, Bartholomew and Michael had to cross the market square, where there was no sign of the people who had been quarrelling there earlier. There were others, though, using the stalls as an excuse to loiter. The traders were becoming irked by all the looking but no buying, and it would not be long before it caused a spat.
Scholars prowled in packs, armed to the teeth. Some clustered around the baker’s stall, a business owned by generations of Mortimers. Bartholomew was not sure which Mortimer ran it now, as they all looked alike, but the present incumbent’s face was red with fury.
‘They have no right,’ he bellowed. ‘It is illegal and immoral!’
His angry voice attracted an audience. It included Isnard the bargeman and Verious the ditcher, the latter excused sentry duty at the town gates on the grounds that he was not very good at it.
‘What is illegal and immoral?’ asked Michael.
‘Cutting the price of bread,’ snarled Mortimer, so enraged that Bartholomew was afraid he would give himself a seizure. ‘We had a deal, and the University cannot suddenly decide only to pay half of it. That will barely cover the cost of the ingredients!’
Michael was bemused. ‘Our contract fixes the price of bread until next year. Neither of us can change anything until then.’
‘So you say, but Heltisle has declared all the agreements you negotiated null and void. He has a new list of prices – ones that favour scholars at our expense.’
‘Refuse to sell him anything, then,’ shrugged Isnard. ‘He and his cronies will starve without bread, and he will soon come back with his tail between his legs.’
‘No – he will buy it in Ely and I will be ruined,’ said Mortimer bitterly. ‘The bastard! He has me over a barrel.’
‘You should not trade with scholars anyway,’ put in Verious. ‘Not when they hid French spies in the Spital – spies who then crept out and murdered Sauvage.’
‘Murdered Sauvage?’ echoed Bartholomew uneasily. ‘He is dead?’
‘Did you not hear?’ asked Isnard. ‘We found him this morning, not ten paces from here. He was stabbed, and his killer left the dagger sticking out of his back – a challenge for us to identify it and catch him.’
‘What?’ cried Michael, shocked. ‘Why did no one tell me?’
‘Because it is none of your business,’ spat Mortimer. ‘Sauvage was a townsman and he was murdered by the French. His death has nothing to do with the University, so you can keep your long noses out of it.’
‘Poor Sauvage,’ sighed Isnard. ‘He should have told them his name – then they might have thought he was one of them and left him alone.’
‘He would not have wanted that,’ averred Verious. ‘He would rather be dead than be thought of as French.’
‘Where is his body?’ demanded Michael. ‘Holy Trinity?’
‘Yes,’ replied Isnard. ‘Although we kept the dagger. Show him, Verious. Brother Michael is good at catching criminals – maybe he will win justice for poor Sauvage.’