A Killer in Winter

Harysone twisted around to regard him in astonishment. ‘Stabbed? I have not been stabbed, man! I damaged my back while twirling with a pretty tavern wench.’

‘There is a knife tip here. If you lie still, I will remove it.’

Harysone howled in agony while the metal was extracted, although the operation did not take more than a moment. Bartholomew moved quickly when potentially painful procedures were required; he had learned that fear and anticipation only served to make things worse. When he had the small metal triangle in the palm of his hand, he showed it to Harysone.

‘That was in me?’ the man asked, taking Bartholomew’s hand so that he could inspect the object without touching the pool of gore in which it lay. ‘How did it come to be there?’

‘I have no idea,’ said Bartholomew. ‘But it seems extraordinary that you do not.’

Harysone’s mouth hardened into a thin line. ‘It was those students,’ he said. ‘Friars from Michaelhouse. They were behind me when I was dancing. They stabbed me.’

‘The attack on Harysone has provided me with just the excuse I need to investigate him,’ said Michael, rubbing his hands together gleefully when Bartholomew told him about the incident later that morning. ‘I am delighted he summoned you, Matt. If he had asked for Robin of Grantchester or Master Lynton of Peterhouse, I might never have learned of it.’

‘Neither might Harysone,’ said Bartholomew dryly, not impressed by the skills of the other two men who practised medicine in Cambridge. ‘Lynton prefers writing horoscopes to examining patients, while Robin would not know a stab wound if he had watched one inflicted.’

‘And the wound was definitely caused by a knife?’ asked Michael.

Bartholomew passed Michael the triangle of metal he had prised from Harysone. ‘You can see from its shape that this is the tip of a blade. According to Ulfrid – the novice who saw him in action at the King’s Head – Harysone’s dancing is sinuous, so the weapon may have been aimed elsewhere, but missed its target in all the movement.’

‘You make him sound like a bumble-bee,’ said Michael disparagingly. ‘Yet he claims the pain occurred during an estampie. An estampie is a slow dance compared to many.’

‘Ulfrid said the man dances like a Turkish whore, whatever that means. I suspect Harysone’s attacker not only missed what he was aiming for, but damaged his blade into the bargain.’

‘We shall have to buy him a new one, then,’ said Michael nastily, ‘and see whether he is more successful a second time.’

‘I doubt Michaelhouse students did it, though. I imagine they just happened to be there at the time.’

‘I agree. But he has made an accusation against members of the University – against members of my own College – so it is the Senior Proctor’s duty to investigate. But first I shall retrieve Clippesby’s tench, and then we shall see what Harysone has to say when we present it to him.’

Michael’s timing was fortunate. Agatha had located the smelly object in the depths of the cellar, and was turning it this way and that as she considered whether some of it might still be good enough to add to a stew. Bartholomew was appalled, suspecting that it was sufficiently rotten to poison anyone who ate it, although Agatha claimed that putrefaction was nothing a few herbs and plenty of onions could not overcome.

‘It went bad because someone skimped on the salt,’ she declared, examining it with expert eyes. ‘It would have been perfectly serviceable if the preserving had been done right.’

‘An apprentice must have practised on it,’ said Michael, not particularly interested. He wrinkled his nose. ‘But Norbert must have been drunk indeed to imagine he did well by winning this from Harysone. I have seldom smelled anything so rank.’

He wrapped it in a cloth and left, heading for the King’s Head with Bartholomew in tow. They had just turned into the High Street when their attention was caught by a sudden rumble near St John’s Hospital. Opposite was a line of decrepit houses, which the Sheriff and the town burgesses had recently declared unfit for human habitation. However, these homes had occupants, who were not about to move just because some wealthy businessmen decided their homes were an eyesore and wanted the land they were built on. The hovels remained, becoming shabbier and more derelict with each passing season, and one of them had met its end that morning. It had a thatched roof, and the weight of water from a wet autumn, combined with recent snowfalls, had been too much for the ageing structure. With a groan, it had collapsed inward, taking the walls with it and leaving nothing but a heap of snow-impregnated rubble.

‘Robert de Blaston the carpenter lives there,’ whispered Bartholomew, aghast. ‘With his wife Yolande and their ten children.’ He joined the throng running towards the house, some wanting to help and others just to watch the unfolding of a tragedy.