A Killer in Winter

Once memories of the slender lady he had known were expunged from his mind, Bartholomew began to see some of the old Philippa in the woman who sat gorging herself at his side. Her voice had not changed and her facial expressions were familiar, and he found himself recalling things about her that he had forgotten. He remembered walking in the water meadows by the river, and eating hot chestnuts on another Christmas Day, laughing when they scalded their fingers and burned their tongues.

‘You have changed,’ he said. ‘I barely recognised you.’ He stopped short of total honesty by confessing that he had not recognised her at all.

‘I was slimmer,’ she said, leaning back to allow Cynric to fill a bowl with rich beef stew. ‘But I was unhappy then, locked away in that convent.’

‘Were you?’ asked Bartholomew, surprised. He had always believed their courtship had been a whirlwind of delight for both of them.

‘Not with you,’ she added hastily, sensing that she might have offended him. ‘But under the eagle eyes of that abbess. Then there was the Death hanging over us. We knew it was coming, but all we could do was wait to see who would live and who would die. It was not pleasant.’

‘I suppose not,’ said Bartholomew, thinking his first years at Michaelhouse – until the plague arrived and Philippa left – had been among the happiest of his life. He had just completed his medical training, and was finally free to put all he had learned into practice. It had been an exhilarating and fascinating time, and his dalliance with Philippa had only added to the pleasure.

‘I hope you are not angry with me,’ she said, digging into the stew with a large horn spoon that she produced from the pouch she carried at her side. ‘I know it must have been a shock, to learn I had decided to bestow my affections on another man.’

‘It was,’ said Bartholomew vaguely, thinking it would be rude to say otherwise. In truth, he barely recalled what he had felt when her terse missive informing him of her marriage had arrived. By that time, she had been gone for more than a year, and he had been busy with his teaching and patients. He remembered thinking he had not missed her as much as he should have done, and that he should have visited her in London. He had been upset when the letter came, but could not recollect whether it was because he had lost a woman he had loved or because it was rather insulting to be treated in so cavalier a manner. He decided to change the subject.

‘Do you have children?’

‘Walter has three sons from a previous marriage – his first wife, Isabella, died during the Death. Our physician has been calculating horoscopes to tell us when to try for babies, but I think his arithmetic is lacking.’ She gave him a sidelong glance. ‘I do not suppose …?’

‘Do you live near the fish markets?’ asked Bartholomew, hastily seizing on another topic before she demanded that he spend the rest of the day deciding when Walter should avoid apples or eat fiery spices to turn him into a rampant and potent lover. He disliked producing horoscopes, and there was something about their randomness that made him certain they were worthless anyway.

‘Friday Street,’ she said, reaching for a dish of lemon butter. ‘It is a very pleasant road, and our house is the best one. It is old – dating back to the Conqueror – but I like it. It was the house that made me choose Walter over John Fiscurtune, who owned a smaller home nearby. Fiscurtune had also asked me to marry him.’

‘Old houses are often better than new ones,’ said Bartholomew diplomatically, watching her eat the flavoured fat with her spoon. ‘Since the plague, craftsmen have been in such high demand that many do not care whether their work is good or bad.’

‘Pass the butter,’ came Michael’s aggrieved voice from further along the table, indicating that he was unimpressed by the fact that Philippa had not seen fit to share it.

‘I see you have not changed, Brother,’ retorted Philippa icily, relinquishing the bowl. She turned to Bartholomew. ‘He is still a fat, greedy man.’

Bartholomew decided that the subject of appetites and weight was one he would be wise to avoid with both Philippa and Michael. ‘You were telling me about your house,’ he prompted.

‘Walter made some additions to it, which means we can say it is new,’ she replied. ‘It has pretty columns around the main door and large arched windows, like those of the Temple Church on the River Thames. There are two sleeping chambers on the upper floor, a separate kitchen block, and it has a latrine with a roof.’

Bartholomew was genuinely impressed. Most latrines were open to the elements, which allowed for the dispersal of poisonous miasmas, but made for chilly and unpleasant experiences in inclement weather. ‘How deep is the pit?’ he asked curiously, wondering whether Turke had gone with the recent fashion for a shallower trench that could be emptied regularly, or had opted for a deep one that would be used until full and then sealed.