Yolande pushed open Matilde’s door to reveal a chamber that was empty, with the exception of two benches that had evidently been too large to carry. When he stepped inside, his footsteps echoed hollowly. There was a note on the windowsill, which he picked up with shaking fingers. It said nothing other than that Yolande was to have the remaining furniture, and that the enclosed coins were to pay any outstanding debts.
‘She wanted to marry you, but you would never ask her,’ said Yolande accusingly. ‘It is your fault she has left us.’
He sank down on one of the benches, dazed and numb. ‘I came to propose yesterday.’
‘But it was too late,’ said Yolande harshly. ‘She told me she would not wait for ever.’
Bartholomew stood, resolute. ‘I will find her. Where would she go?’
‘She has a sister in Carcassonne and a cousin in Poitiers, so she may have gone to them. And there was a man who once asked her to wed him – he was rich, not a near-pauper, like you. His name was William de Spayne and he was a merchant, but I cannot remember where she said he lived.’
‘Well, try,’ ordered Bartholomew curtly. ‘It is important.’
‘She is more likely to go to her sister first,’ said Yolande, sniffing. ‘But she once said that if she ever left Cambridge, then no one would ever find her.’
‘I will,’ vowed Bartholomew with quiet determination. ‘I shall leave within the hour.’
The sun was setting as the travellers approached the outskirts of the city. Red-gold beams struck the mighty cathedral perched atop its hill, turning its pale stone to a glowing bronze that darkened as night approached. Already, stars were beginning to appear in a cloudless sky, and shadows slanted across the frozen track. Matthew Bartholomew, Master of Medicine at the University in Cambridge and Fellow of the College of Michaelhouse, shifted uncomfortably in his saddle, and was glad the journey was almost at an end. It was unusually cold for the time of year, and early snows dusted the surrounding countryside.
‘A magnificent sight,’ breathed Thomas de Suttone, gazing at the minster in awe. He was a large man who wore the habit of a Carmelite friar, albeit a very elegant one. One of Michaelhouse’s theologians, Suttone preferred to tell others how to practise moderation and poverty than to do it himself. ‘A fitting tribute to the glory of God.’
‘It is on a hill,’ complained Brother Michael, the third of Michaelhouse’s travel-weary scholars, regarding it balefully. He was a Benedictine, and his dark cloak and habit were splattered with pale mud. His palfrey stumbled in an ice-filled rut, and a lesser horseman might have been thrown, but the monk had been taught to ride before he could walk, and he did no more than shift in his saddle and adjust the reins. ‘We shall have to ascend it on foot, because my poor beast is spent.’
‘It is spent because you are so fat,’ explained Suttone brutally. ‘My animal is not nearly as exhausted, and neither is Matt’s. Yours has a far greater load to carry.’
‘I am slimmer than I was this time last year,’ countered Michael indignantly. He was proud of the fact that the habits he had filled to bursting point eighteen months earlier were now slightly loose, although even the most sycophantic of his friends could not deny that he still possessed a very full figure. Bartholomew encouraged him in his new regime of moderation, because, as a physician, he believed that obese men were susceptible to dangerous imbalances of the humours.
‘When the Death returns – which it will – it will carry off gluttons,’ stated Suttone matter-of-factly. He was fond of predicting what would happen if the country were ever ravaged by the plague again. Bartholomew stifled a sigh. He was weary of Suttone’s gloomy prophecies, and did not like to be reminded of the time when all his medical skills and experience had proved to be useless.
‘We are more than a week late,’ he said, seeing Michael open his mouth to make a tart response that would almost certainly initiate a quarrel. He was too tired and cold to be caught in the middle of another of their rows. ‘Do you think you are still expected?’
‘Of course we are!’ cried Suttone, offended by the suggestion that the city of Lincoln might not be waiting on tenterhooks for his arrival. ‘The Feast of St Thomas the Apostle – when the ceremony installing Michael and me as cathedral canons will take place – is not for another two Sundays yet. It is Wednesday today, which leaves us plenty of time to prepare ourselves.’
‘I shall want to look my best,’ said Michael, grimacing at his dirt-splattered clothes. ‘We will need to commission special vestments, and I might even purchase some new shoes.’
