The Lost Abbot by Susanna Gregory Read Free Book Online

been brained, and Oxforde is not responsible, then St Thomas must have done it.’
    ‘That is blasphemy!’ shouted William, incensed. ‘And while I saw Joan toss you out, I was not watching you the whole time afterwards. You could easily have slipped back inside again without me noticing.’
    Botilbrig turned white. ‘I did not kill Joan! I admit that I did not like her, but I do not want her dead.’
    ‘Yes, you do,’ wept Marion. ‘You have hated her ever since she refused to marry you years ago. You are a spiteful, wicked villain who—’
    Bartholomew did not wait to hear more. He strode inside the chapel, Michael, Clippesby and William at his heels. Joan was lying near the altar, the remaining bedeswomen in a sobbing cluster around her, and it did not take him a moment to see that someone had indeed battered out her brains with the broken fragment of stone from the altar.
    ‘Is she really dead?’ whispered William, crossing himself.
    Bartholomew nodded.
    ‘Then we had better pray for her soul,’ said Michael softly.

CHAPTER 2
    Everyone was eager to see the body of a woman who had been killed by one of St Thomas’s relics, and pilgrims, bedesmen and passers-by had flowed into the chapel on the scholars’ heels. There was a collective sigh of disappointment when Bartholomew covered Joan with his cloak, followed by much resentful muttering. Michael sent the fittest-looking bedesman to fetch someone in authority from the abbey, but the fellow kept stopping to share the news with people he knew, and it was clear that it would be some time before help arrived.
    ‘What happened to her, Matt?’ Michael asked in a low voice. ‘Was she murdered?’
    As well as being a physician and teacher of medicine, Bartholomew was the University’s Corpse Examiner, the man who gave an official cause of death for any scholar who died. As violence was distressingly frequent in a community that included a lot of feisty young men, he had gained considerable experience in identifying murder victims. However, while Cambridge was used to his grisly work, Peterborough was not, and conducting the necessary examination on Joan was unlikely to be well received. He said so.
    ‘There is nothing to see here,’ Michael announced, hoping to get rid of the crowd so the physician could work unobserved. ‘You can all go home.’
    ‘You have no authority to make us leave,’ declared a burly fellow in fine clothes and expensive jewellery. There were several well-armed henchmen at his back. ‘I am Ralph Aurifabro, goldsmith of this town, and
I
decide where I go and when.’
    ‘I also determine my own movements,’ added a man with broken teeth and a straggly beard whose clothes were of good quality but food-stained and rumpled. There was an unhealthy redness in his face that made Bartholomew suspect his humours were awry. ‘I am Reginald the cutler, and it is not every day that St Thomas kills sinners with his relics, so I demand to see his handiwork.’
    Reginald had tried to imitate the goldsmith’s haughty arrogance, but his slovenly mien worked against him, along with the fact that he did not possess the required gravitas. Bartholomew had heard the cutler mentioned before, but it took a moment to remember where: Botilbrig had described him as the ‘foul villain’ who had a shop under the chapel.
    ‘You will not
demand
anything, Reginald.’ A powerful voice made everyone look around. It was another bedeswoman, smaller than Joan, but her bristly chin and fierce eyes indicated that she would be just as redoubtable. ‘None of you will. So go away.’
    ‘That is Hagar Balfowre,’ murmured Botilbrig to the scholars. ‘Joan’s henchwoman. Not that Joan needed one very often, being an old dragon in her own right.’
    ‘I most certainly shall not,’ Reginald was declaring angrily. ‘Not until I—’
    ‘Do as you are told,’ snapped Hagar. She turned to the goldsmith. ‘Put your louts to some use, Aurifabro, and get rid of these