A Bone Of Contention Part 3

'Does that physic I gave you help your cough?'

Bartholomew asked, concerned by Heppel's pallor.

'This is no time for a medical consultation,' said Michael briskly, pulling on his friend's arm. 'You can do that when no more bodies claim your attention.'

'I am a physician, not an undertaker,' said Bartholomew, pulling his arm away irritably. 'My first duties are to my patients.'

'Nonsense, Matt,' said Michael. 'Your first duties are to your University and to me as Senior Proctor. Your second duties are to your patients - one of whom may well be waiting for you to unravel the mystery of his death.'

Bartholomew stopped dead in his tracks and gazed at Michael. 'I can a.s.sure you, Brother, that the University, with all its treachery and plotting, is not more important than my patients. If I thought that were ever the case, I would resign my Fellowship and abandon teaching completely.'

'No, you would not,' said Michael with total a.s.surance.

'You like teaching, and you believe you play a vital role in training new physicians to replace those that died during the plague. You will never leave the University - unless you decide to marry, of course. Then you will have no choice. We cannot have married masters in the University. Although, I suspect there is no danger of that: you have been betrothed to Philippa for more than three years now, and you have done virtually nothing about it. Of course, there is always that wh.o.r.e of yours.'

'What?' asked Bartholomew, bewildered by the sudden turn in the conversation. 'What are you talking about?'

Michael poked him playfully in the ribs with his elbow.

'Do not play the innocent with me, Matt! I have seen the way you look at that Matilde, the prost.i.tute. You should watch yourself. If Father William sees you ogling like a moonstruck calf, you will not need to worry about where your loyalties lie, because you will be dismissed from your Fellowship faster than you can lance a boil.'

'But I have not... he cannot Michael laughed. 'If being tongue-tied is not a sign of your guilt, I do not know what is! Come on, Guy.

We cannot be standing around all day listening to Dr Bartholomew describe his secret l.u.s.t for the town's most attractive harlot.'

Bartholomew grabbed Heppel's sleeve as he made to follow Michael. 'Ignore him,' he ordered, scowling after the monk's retreating back. 'Did you take that physic I gave you?'

Heppel nodded vehemently, coughing into a strip of linen. 'Every drop. I was going to ask you for more because it was beginning to have an effect. Of course, when the pains in my chest had eased, the ones in my stomach and head started.'

'In your stomach and head,' echoed Bartholomew thoughtfully, wondering which of the herbs in his medicine had adversely affected his patient.

'And then there are my legs,' continued Heppel, lifting his gown to reveal a skinny limb swathed in thick black hose. 'They burn and ache and give me no rest.' He rubbed his hands vigorously down the side of his gown in a peculiar nervous habit Bartholomew had noticed before. 'And my ears ached last night. I think Saturn must have been ascendant. And I have an ulcer on my tongue, and my little finger is swollen.'

'Anything else?' asked Bartholomew dryly, now certain his medicine could not be to blame for Heppel's impressive list of maladies.

Heppel gave the matter some serious thought. 'No, I think that is all.'

'Right,' said Bartholomew, thinking that patients like Heppel were exactly the reason why he had no desire to treat the wealthy. The cure, he was sure, would be for Michael to allocate the Junior Proctor extra duties, so that he would not have time to dwell on every twinge in his body and imagine it to be something serious.

Perhaps exercise and fresh air might help, too, although Bartholomew's attempts to suggest that bizarre remedy to patients in the past had met with a gamut of reactions ranging from patent disbelief to accusations that he was in league with the Devil.

'As I said, I think Saturn was ascendant last night,' said Heppel helpfully. 'I was born when Jupiter was dominant, you see, and there was a full moon.'

'Good,' said Bartholomew, unimpressed. 'I shall tell Jonas the Poisoner... I mean the Apothecary, to make you an infusion of angelica mixed with some wine and heartsease. I think when your cough eases, these other symptoms will disappear, too.'

'But angelica is a herb of the sun,' protested Heppel.

'I need a herb of the moon to match the time when I was born. And I must have something to counteract the evil effects of Saturn.'

Like most physicians, Bartholomew did not particularly like patients who claimed a knowledge greater than his own - especially when that knowledge was flawed. He bit back his impatience, recalling his Arab master's insistence on listening to every patient with sympathy and tolerance, regardless of how much nonsense they spoke.

'Angelica is gathered in the hour of Jupiter,' he said reluctantly, not particularly wanting to engage in what might be a lengthy discussion of herb-lore with Heppel when Michael was waiting. 'You say you were born when Jupiter was dominant, and angelica is very effective against the diseases of Saturn. Heartsease, of course, is a saturnine herb.'

Considering the conversation over, he made to walk on. Heppel scurried after him, and tugged at his tabard to make him stop.

'I think I shall require a complete astrological consultation,' said the Junior Proctor. 'Herbs of Saturn and Jupiter will not help my ears.'

Bartholomew sighed. In his experience, the planet that governed a particular herb made little difference to whether it healed a patient or not, and, over the years, he had gradually abandoned astrological consultations as a tool to determine the causes of a person's malaise.

It was a decision that made him unpopular with his fellow physicians, and often resulted in accusations of heresy.

But there was no denying that he lost fewer patients than his colleagues, a remarkable achievement given that most of his clients were less well-nourished and more p.r.o.ne to infections than the wealthier citizens the other physicians doctored.

'Just take the medicine,' he said to Heppel impatiently.

'And Saturn most certainly does control diseases of the ears, so the heartsease will work.' He did not add that if, as he believed, Heppel's ears ached only in his imagination, then Saturn could quite happily explode with no ill-effects to the organs under discussion.

'All right, then,' said Heppel dubiously. 'But I will have my astrological consultation next week if your concoction does not work.'

Not from me, thought Bartholomew. Complete astrological consultations were time-consuming affairs, and while Bartholomew conducted the occasional one to ensure he still remembered how, he was certainly not prepared to do one at the beginning of term with corpses appearing in the King's Ditch every few hours. Thoughts of the King's Ditch made him look away from Heppel for Michael. The fat monk was puffing towards him.

'What happened to you?' Michael demanded. 'There I was, regaling you with a list of the prost.i.tute Matilde's physical virtues, when I saw Father William staring at me. Then I saw that you were nowhere to be seen, and I had been strolling up the High Street talking loudly to myself about a wh.o.r.e! Really, Matt! You might have more regard for my vocation. I am a monk, chaste and celibate!'

'You might have more regard for it yourself,' said Bartholomew, smiling at the image of Michael being caught in the act of airing some of his less monkish thoughts by the austere Father William. 'You should not be filling your chaste and celibate mind with thoughts of prost.i.tutes - especially on a Sunday.'

'I was trying to help you,' retorted Michael pompously, eyeing him with his baggy green eyes. He smoothed down the lank brown hair that grew around his perfectly circular tonsure. 'Now, Matthew, if you can spare a few moments away from your unseemly, l.u.s.tful imaginings, a dead man awaits us at Valence Marie - a.s.suming the poor fellow has not turned into the dust from whence he came in the interim.'

He turned abruptly, and stalked away, glancing around to ensure that Bartholomew and Heppel followed him.

The dark grey stone of St Botolph's Church came into view, and Valence Marie stood a few steps away, on the far side of the King's Ditch. They walked quickly along the small path that ran between the College and the Ditch to where Robert Thorpe stood, wringing thin hands.

This way, gentlemen,' he said, clearly relieved at their eventual arrival. Without further ado, he ushered them over to the patch of scrubby gra.s.s near where the small skeleton had been retrieved the day before.

'More bones?' asked Bartholomew, curious at the man's obvious agitation.

Thorpe flung him a desperate glance and gestured that he should look over the raised rim of the Ditch and into the water that trickled along the bottom. Puzzled, Bartholomew scrambled up the bank, while Michael followed more warily. Heppel declined to climb, and went to stand in the shade of one of the old oak trees, scrubbing his hands against his tabard. Bartholomew watched him, intrigued. The garment was shiny where the material had been rubbed so often, and Bartholomew wondered whether Heppel might have some itchy skin complaint that caused him to move them so.

Turning his attention back to the Ditch, he was greeted by the sight of a body floating face down in the shallow water, its arms raised above its head, almost as if it were swimming. Blood from a wound in its head stained the water in a pink halo around it.

Bartholomew turned questioningly to Thorpe, who had remained where he was, and obviously had no intention of scaling the bank.

'He was found about an hour ago by one of the servants,' Thorpe called. 'I immediately sent word to the Chancellor, and he, presumably, sent the Junior Proctor to fetch you.'

Bartholomew slipped and skidded down the inside of the muddy bank and tried to haul the body over on to its back. It was so stiff that the task proved difficult, and Michael was obliged to clamber down into the smelly water to help. Their eyes met as Bartholomew wiped away some of the thick, black mud to reveal the face.

'Which one is it?' asked Michael, holding his sleeve over his nose against the smell rising from the Ditch.

'James Kenzie, I think,' replied Bartholomew, wracking his brains to try to recall the names of the five young Scots from David's Hostel he had encountered the day before.

'I saw the Princ.i.p.al of David's yesterday, and he agreed to be responsible for the good behaviour of those five unruly undergraduates for the rest of the term,' said Michael, shaking his head as he looked down at the student. 'It looks as though he did not keep them out of trouble for long.'

He helped Bartholomew to pull the corpse out of the water and up on to the rim of the Ditch, away from the clinging mud that sucked at their feet and stained the hems on their gowns with an oily blackness. Bartholomew began a preliminary investigation.

'He has been dead a good while,' he said, pulling at one of Kenzie's arms. 'See how stiff he is? Of course, the heat will accelerate such stiffness; it would not be so if it were winter now.'

'I am not one of your students, Matt,' said Michael tartly. Just tell me what I need to know and keep the lectures for the ghouls that enjoy them.'

Bartholomew grinned at him, but completed his examination in silence. Eventually, he sat back on his heels and looked thoughtfully at the body.

'I think it likely that he died last night,' he said, 'nearer dusk than dawn. He was killed by the wound to the top of his head, which has stoved in his skull. You can see that splinters of the skull have penetrated the brain. He must have been put in the water after his death because his mouth is empty. Had he drowned, he probably would have inhaled mud and water from the Ditch as he tried to breathe air. I will make a more thorough examination later, if you wish.'

'I do,' said Michael. 'So, are you saying he was murdered? He did not just die from a fall?'

Bartholomew just managed to stop himself from running his mud-coated hand through his hair as he surveyed the Ditch and its surroundings.

On one side of the Ditch were the high walls of Valence Marie, meeting the narrow stretch of poorly tended pasture on which Thorpe and Heppel now waited. Although this strip of land belonged to Valence Marie, it was not fenced off, and access to it was possible from the High Street at one end, and Luthburne Lane at the other. On the opposite side of the Ditch was an untidy line of houses, most wattle and daub, and all frail, dilapidated and mainly abandoned. The plague had struck hard at those people who had lived in cramped, crowded conditions, and Bartholomew knew that only a handful from these hovels had survived.

'Yes, he was murdered,' he said, having considered the possibilities. 'I would say it was not possible to sustain a wound like this, on the top of his head, from a fall. I suspect Kenzie was. .h.i.t with a heavy instrument, and his body was brought here or left where it fell - the current in the Ditch is not strong enough to move something as heavy as a corpse at the moment. Either way, I am certain he was dead when he entered the water.'

'Was he drunk? Are there signs of a struggle?'

Bartholomew inspected the young man's hands, but his finger-nails were surprisingly well-kept, and there was no sign that he had clawed or attacked his a.s.sailant. His clothes, too, were intact, and Bartholomew saw only the mended tears he had noted the previous day.

'I would say he had no idea his attacker was behind him. Or that he knew someone was behind him, but felt no need to fear. As to drink, I can smell only this revolting Ditch on him. Perhaps he was drunk, but if so, the water has leached all signs of it away.'

He looked suddenly at Michael as if to speak, but then thought better of it and turned his attention back to the body.

'What is it?' asked Michael, catching his indecision.

Bartholomew frowned down at the body. 'Remember I told you that the skeleton we found also had an indentation on the back of its skull? Possibly hit on the head and dumped in the Ditch?'

'Of course,' said Michael. 'But you said there was not enough evidence to prove that the child was murdered, and you seem sure that Kenzie has been. What are the differences?'

Bartholomew rubbed his chin absently, leaving a black smudge there from the mud on his hand. 'The child lay dead in the Ditch for many years, providing ample time for damage to occur to the skull after death; Kenzie has been dead only a few hours. Also, Kenzie's wound bled copiously as you can see from his stained clothes. Wounds do not bleed so if inflicted after death, but we do not have such evidence for the skeleton. I did not say the child was not murdered, only that I cannot prove it.'

'But let us a.s.sume he was,' said Michael thoughtfully.

'It is surely something of a coincidence that the body of a murdered child is discovered one day, and the very next, a man is killed in the same manner. You think there might be a connection?'

Bartholomew grimaced. 'Yes, I do. But that is the essence of why I was reluctant to speak. If I am right about the length of time the skeleton has been in the Ditch, Kenzie would not even have been born when the child died.'

'But you could be wrong, and the skeleton is only a few years dead. That would mean that there might be some connection between the two victims.'

'Not even then, Brother,' said Bartholomew. 'Kenzie is a Scot and not local. He has only been here for twelve months at the very most. How could there be a connection?'

'Can you not tell more from this child's bones?' asked Michael.

Bartholomew looked at him for a moment, and then laughed. 'Despite the fanciful teachings of an Oxford astrologer who maintained in a lecture I once attended that the Scots are a "cruel, proud, excitable, b.e.s.t.i.a.l, false and underhand race who must therefore be ruled by Scorpio", it is not possible to tell one of them from an Englishman from bones alone, Scorpio or otherwise!'

'Oxford University supports that?' said Michael, astonished.

'No wonder their Scots are always rioting and looting its halls and colleges.'

'It is only the claim of a single scholar,' said Bartholomew.

'And doubtless Scottish astrologers have cast an equally unflattering national horoscope for the English. But we are digressing from our task.'

'So the child might have been born a Scot,' mused Michael, looking back at Kenzie's body, 'but there is no way to prise that information from his bones?'

Bartholomew nodded, and Michael gave a sigh of resignation.

'I have a feeling this might be more difficult to resolve than I first thought. If the link between these two bodies spans many years, we might never know the truth.'

'There are some things to which we will never know the answers,' said Bartholomew in an exaggerated imitation of Michael's pompous words to him in the orchard the night before. 'Perhaps this is one of them.'

Michael shot him an unpleasant look. 'If you value peaceful relations between town and gown, Matt, you had better hope not,' he said primly. 'The students might riot if they believe one of their number has been murdered especially if we cannot provide evidence that the culprit was not a townsman.'

Bartholomew shook his head impatiently. 'That would be an unreasonable a.s.sumption on their part. Kenzie's killer might just as easily be one of his four friends from David's Hostel.'

'And since when has reason ever prevented a riot?' demanded Michael in a superior tone. 'You know as well as I that the mood of scholars and townsfolk alike is ugly at the moment. It seems to me that Kenzie's death might provide the perfect excuse for them to begin fighting each other as they so clearly wish to do.'

Bartholomew regarded him soberly. The fat monk was right Over the last month or so, he had noticed a distinctly uneasy atmosphere in the town: it had been the subject of discussion at high table at Michaelhouse on several occasions. Optimistically - overly so in Bartholomew's opinion - the Master and Fellows hoped that the tension would ease once term began, and most students would be forced to concentrate on their studies.

Michael climbed to his feet clumsily, wincing at his stiff knees, and called down to Thorpe. 'Why did you take so long to discover the body, Master Thorpe? Doctor Bartholomew says this man might have died as early as yesterday evening.'

Thorpe shrugged elegantly. 'It is Sunday,' he replied.

'No one is dredging the Ditch today, and the body might well have remained undiscovered until tomorrow, but, by chance, our scullion, Henry, noticed the body when he came to dispose of some kitchen sc.r.a.ps.'

Bartholomew sighed. There was little point in dredging the Ditch if scullions were not prepared to dump their kitchen waste elsewhere. In a year or two, the town would be facing the same problems all over again.

'I heard that their other servant - that little fellow, Will - claims to have seen more bones in the Ditch on the other side of the High Street,' said Michael in an undertone to Bartholomew, drawing the physician's mind away from the litany of diseases he believed owed their origins to dirty water. 'Master Thorpe will doubtless move the workmen to look for martyr relics in more fertile ground tomorrow.'

'What are you two muttering about?' said Thorpe uneasily, taking a few steps up the bank towards them.

'We are wondering whether you know this man who died on your property last night,' Michael called back pleasantly. 'Will you come to see?'

Very reluctantly, Thorpe scrambled towards them, and looked down at Kenzie's body. He gave it the most superficial of glances, and then looked a second time for longer.

'It is not a student of Valence Marie,' he said, his voice halfway between surprise and relief. 'I do not believe I have met him before. He is a student, though. He is wearing an undergraduate's tabard.'

Thank you, Master Thorpe,' said Michael, regarding the scholar with a blank expression. 'I might have overlooked that, had you not pointed it out.'

Thorpe nodded, oblivious to the irony in Michael's voice, and turned to make his way back down the bank, swearing when he slipped and fell on one knee. Heppel hurried to help him, and Bartholomew heard him regaling the Master of Valence Marie with an infallible remedy for unsteadiness in the limbs that could be procured from powdered earthworms and raw sparrows' brains.

'If Thorpe is foolish enough to take that concoction, then he deserves all the stomach cramps he will get,' he muttered to Michael, watching Heppel warm to his subject.

'Thorpe might be a coward for not coming immediately to see if the corpse was a member of his own college, but he is no lunatic. Can you tell me any more about Kenzie's death before we move the body to the church?'