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difficulty.
    ‘You will choke one day if you do not eat more slowly,’
    said Bartholomew, not for the first time during their friendship.
    ‘You will be able to save me,’ said Michael complacently, reaching for more meat.
    Bartholomew chewed some of the hard College bread slowly. The ale, he noticed, was off again, and the salted beef should be thrown away before it poisoned everyone.
    The thought of poison brought his mind back to the business with the University chest. He had heard of such devices that were designed to kill unwanted meddlers, but never thought he would see one in action. He wondered who had put it there. A thought suddenly struck him and he almost choked on the bread in his eagerness to tell Michael.
    Michael pounded on his back, and Bartholomew was reminded that the monk might look fat and unhealthy, but he was a physical force with which to be reckoned.
    “It looks as if I will be the one to save you,’ Michael said with malicious glee. ‘Do not gobble your food, Doctor.
    You will choke.’
    ‘Buckley,’ gasped Bartholomew. ‘His hands!’
    Michael looked at him blankly. ‘What about his
    hands?’
    Bartholomew took a gulp of the bad ale, and resisted the urge to spit it out again. “I treated Buckley for a skin complaint. He has weeping sores on his hands.’
    ‘Please!’ Michael looked disapproving at such matters mentioned at the table.
    ‘He wears gloves, Michael! Not because the disease is infectious, but because the sores are unpleasant to see and he is embarrassed about them. Can you not see?’ he cried, drawing the unwanted attention of the Franciscans. He lowered his voice. ‘He probably wears his gloves when he unlocks the chest!’
    Michael stared at him for a few moments, thinking.’ So,’
    he said slowly, ‘we cannot be certain when this poisonous lock was placed on the chest, since de Wetherset says Buckley is the one who usually opened it, and he has been protected by his gloves. It may have been there for weeks or even months before it did its gruesome work.
    Buckley may even have put it there himself knowing that he would be safe from it if he wore gloves.’
    Bartholomew thought for a moment. ‘Possibly,’ he said, ‘although I do not think so. First, that was a very small cut on the friar’s hand. He may not even have noticed it, which suggests a very concentrated form of poison. It would be a brave man who would risk touching such a lock, even wearing gloves. Second, perhaps the poison was meant for Buckley, if it were known that he was the one who regularly opened the chest, and not the Chancellor.’
    Michael rubbed his clean-shaven chin thoughtfully.
    ‘But that would mean that someone so wants Buckley dead that he has been to some trouble to plant that poisonous lock on the chest. I have never bought one of those things, but I warrant they are not cheap.’
    ‘So perhaps Buckley has fled, not because he planted the lock and was responsible for the death of the friar, but because he was in fear of his life. Although,’ Bartholomew added practically, ‘most men fleeing in fear of their lives do not take tables and chairs with them.’
    The conversation was cut short as the Master rose to say grace at the end of the meal, and the Fellows filed in silence from the hall. As soon as they were out, Michael winked at Bartholomew and headed off towards the kitchens to scavenge left-overs. The students clattered noisily down the stairs into the yard, followed by the commoners. There had been ten commoners at Michaelhouse before the plague, but the numbers were now down to four, all old men who had devoted their lives to teaching for the College and were rewarded with board and lodging for the remainder of their lives. Bartholomew went to pay his customary call on one of them, a Cistercian in his seventies called Brother Alban. Alban grinned toothlessly at Bartholomew as the physician rubbed warmed oil into his arthritic elbow, and began to talk in graphic terms