An Order for Death by Susanna Gregory

surprised you say he is dead – I did not know he was so seriously wounded.’
    ‘Someone had driven a knife into his stomach,’ said Bartholomew. ‘He died from loss of blood about an hour later.’
    ‘Well, it was nothing to do with us,’ said Bulmer firmly. ‘I admit that the sight of a white habit lying in front of us was
     a tempting target, but you drove us off with those horrible birthing forceps before we could even touch him.’
    ‘If we had known he was badly hurt, we would have summoned help,’ claimed the fair-haired student. ‘But we only saw a White
     Friar lying in the doorway with blood on him. For all we knew, the blood might not even have been his.’
    ‘Do not lie!’ exclaimed Bartholomew in disbelief. ‘The poor man was trying to hold his innards in. It was patently obvious
     the blood was his. And you can say what you like, but you were going to finish him off. You said as much when you tried to
     prevent me from carrying him away.’
    ‘Those were words spoken in the heat of the moment,’ said Bulmer defensively. ‘We let you go, did we not? There were six of
     us, and had we really meant trouble, then you would not have left with him.’
    Bartholomew wondered if that were true. He was not one of Cambridge’s most skilled fighters, birthing forceps or no, and suspected
     that the six Dominicans had carried weapons that would have been much more efficient than a heavy lump of metal.
    ‘It seems you must look elsewhere for your killer, Brother,’ said Morden smugly. ‘You heard these students: Faricius was already
     wounded when they found him. Perhaps they did mean to harm him when they saw his white habit, but they still allowed Bartholomew
     to carry him away. The Dominicans are not responsible for this crime.’
    ‘Lord!’ muttered Michael as he looked from the gloating features of the diminutive Prior to the calm gazes of the six student-friars
     who were protesting their innocence. ‘What a mess! I do not know whom to believe.’
    ‘Well, I do not believe any of them,’ said Bartholomew firmly. ‘I know what I saw.’
    ‘You are right,’ agreed Michael. ‘So we will arrest the whole lot of them and talk about this in the proctors’ cells – that
     should make them reconsider their stories and their lies and the threats they made to you.’
    ‘You should take a horse, Matt,’ said Michael, watching critically as Bartholomew prepared to visit his sister in her husband’s
     country manor the following evening.
    Bartholomew grabbed his warmest winter cloak and swung it around his shoulders. The pale spring sun that had cheered the town
     at dawn had long since slipped behind a bank of dense clouds, and a bitter wind had picked up. Now, as evening fell, it promised
     to be a miserable night, with wind and rain in the offing. Bartholomew did not feel like going out, but he had promised his
     sister he would be there. He would have gone earlier, but had been obliged to spend most of the afternoon tending the Dominican
     Precentor, Kyrkeby, whose frail heart and imminent lecture were making him breathless and feverish. Normally, Kyrkeby was
     a compliant and grateful patient, but that day he was agitated and moody, oscillating between angry defiance of the Carmelites
     and frightened tearfulness when he talked about the lecture that loomed on his horizon.
    ‘I am pleased you plan to sleep at Trumpington tonight and not return here,’ Michael continued, when the physician did not
     reply. ‘But you should not walk there alone at this time of the day. You would be wise to take someone with you.’
    ‘Cynric has promised to escort his wife to the vigil in St Mary’s Church tonight,’ said Bartholomew, referring to his faithful
     book-bearer. ‘I cannot ask him to come with me.’
    ‘Ask me, then,’ offered Michael generously. ‘Years of wrestling with recalcitrant undergraduates have honed my fighting skills,
     so that I am more than a match for most would-be robbers.