Falconer and the Death of Kings Read Online Free Page B

appointment. But still he exercised a note of caution.
    ‘Will there be a stipend from the chancellor?’
    ‘A small one. Perhaps enough to allow a little goose dripping to be spread on your stale bread.’
    Symon asked Falconer when they might begin their journey, and whether the bad weather might hamper them. Falconer, looking around the gloomy hall and noting the absence of a fire to take the chill off the air, suggested they had best start soon.
    ‘Before you freeze to death trying to break the ice on the top of your ale. I had forgotten how an impecunious master begins his tenure at the university.’
    Symon nodded gravely.
    ‘I will not have much in my saddlebags besides a few texts, and pen and parchment. All the clothes I have you see on my back.’ He paused, and with an innocent look asked another question of Falconer. ‘Shall I also pack my knives?’
    Falconer thought of the cruelly sharp instruments that the young man used to dissect bodies. He had inherited them from Richard Bonham when the quiet little master had died of typhus after being careless with one of his dissections. He had also inherited the man’s obsession with studying how the human body worked. Falconer nodded briefly.
    ‘There is, after all, a medical school in Paris. You may learn a lot while we are there.’
    Symon did not say that he had suggested he take the knives because murder and the need to examine bodies seemed to follow William Falconer around. He saw no reason why the University of Paris should be any different. Falconer continued developing their plans.
    ‘We will spend a day or two settling our affairs here, and then begin. Monday will be a good day.’
    Symon ruefully thought that his affairs would take less than a day or two to arrange. His absence would be hardly noted. But he agreed to Monday as a start for their journey to Paris. It would give him time to hone his knives.
    The Feast Day of St Adrian of Canterbury, the Ninth Day of January 1273
    It was the day to begin their journey, and Falconer had arranged for the horses to be readied by the innkeeper Halegod at the Golden Ball Inn. He was relieved to see that the dirty, close-packed snow in the streets of Oxford was beginning to melt. Their journey would be long and arduous enough without having to plough through snowdrifts. But as he hurried back towards Aristotle’s to collect his saddlebags, the skies turned grey, and a new sprinkling of snow began to fall. He made haste to avoid being caught in another blizzard.
    Pushing through the door, he was surprised to find a heavily built figure hunched over the fire in the communal hall. Falconer might have been worrying about travelling through snow, but the large man, whose back was now turned to Falconer, had clearly made his way through it easily enough. A scattering of flakes was thawing off the thick fur collar of his cloak, and his boots were caked with melting snow. Peter Mithian and Tom Youlden, two of his clerks who would now be under the tutelage of John Pecham, stood on the other side of the fire, clearly overawed by the visitor. The bulky figure, enveloped in his cloak and fur hat, which also had its share of the latest snowfall stuck to it, turned to face Falconer. From the furry depths a drawn and ageing face peered out. Falconer was surprised.
    ‘Sir Humphrey Segrim! What brings you here?’
    Falconer thought it unusual that Segrim had made this effort to call on him. After all, the man who now stood before him had long believed that Falconer’s relationship with his late wife had been more than a friendly one. And Ann’s refusal to dispel his doubts, claiming her husband’s suspicion was too base to refute, had not improved matters. When Falconer had then been accused of her murder, Segrim must have assumed the worst about their relationship. Even to have a man other than Falconer found guilty of the deed had not cleared his doubts away.
    Falconer had not seen Sir Humphrey since the day of Ann’s