Mistress of the Art of Death

three awaiting her now were likely to be as terrible as any she had seen. Not only that, but she must examine them in secrecy, without the equipment provided by the school, without Mansur to assist her, and, most of all, without her foster father’s encouragement: “Adelia, you must not quail. You are confounding inhumanity.”

He never told her she was confounding evil-at least, not Evil with a capital E, for Gershom bin Aguilar believed that Man provided his own evil and his own good, neither the devil nor God having anything to do with it. Only in the medical school of Salerno could he preach that doctrine, and even there not very loudly.

The concession to allow her to carry out this particular investigation, in a backward English town where she could be stoned for doing it, was a marvel in itself and one that Simon of Naples had fought hard to gain. The prior had been reluctant to give his permission, appalled that a woman was prepared to carry out such work and fearing what would happen if it were known that a foreigner had peered at and prodded the poor corpses: “ Cambridge would regard it as desecration; I’m not sure it isn’t.”

Simon had said, “My lord, let us find out how the children died, for it is certain that incarcerated Jews could have had no hand in it; we are modern men, we know wings do not sprout from human shoulders. Somewhere, a murderer walks free. Allow those sad little bodies to tell us who he is. The dead speak to Dr. Trotula. It is her work. They will talk to her.”

As far as Prior Geoffrey was concerned, talking dead were in the same category as winged humans: “It is against the teaching of Holy Mother Church to invade the sanctity of the body.”

He gave way at last only on Simon’s promise that there would be no dissection, only examination.

Simon suspected that the prior’s compliance also arose less from belief that the corpses would speak than from the fear that, if she were refused, Adelia would return to the place from which she’d come, leaving him to face the next onslaught of his bladder without her.

So now, here, in a country she hadn’t wanted to come to in the first place, she must confront the worst of all inhumanities alone.

But that, Vesuvia Adelia Rachel Ortese Aguilar, is your purpose, she told herself. In times of uncertainty, she liked to recount the names that had been lavished on her, along with education and their own extraordinary ideas, by the couple that had picked her up from her lava-strewn cradle on Vesuvius and taken her home. Only you are fitted to do it, so do it.

In her hand was one of the three objects that had been found on the bodies of the dead children. One had been already delivered to the sheriff, one torn to pieces by a rampaging father. The third had been saved by the prior, who had quietly passed it to her.

Carefully, so as not to attract attention, she held it up to catch a shaft of light. It was made of rushes, beautifully and with great intricacy woven into a quincunx. If it was meant to be a Star of David, the weaver had left out one of the points. A message? An attempt to incriminate the Jews by someone poorly acquainted with Judaism? A signature?

In Salerno, she thought, it would have been possible to locate the limited number of people with skill enough to make it, but in Cambridge, where rushes grew inexhaustibly by the rivers and streams, weaving them was a household activity; merely passing along the road to this great priory, she had seen women sitting in doorways, their hands engaged in making mats and baskets that were works of art, men thatching rush roofs into ornate sculptures.

No, there was nothing the star could tell her at this stage.

Prior Geoffrey came bustling back in. “The coroner has looked at the bodies and ordered a public inquest-”

“What did he have to say?”

“He pronounced them dead.” At Adelia’s blink, he said, “Yes, yes, but it is his duty-coroners are not chosen for their medical knowledge. Now then, I’ve lodged the remains in Saint Werbertha’s anchorage. It is quiet there, and cold, a little dark for your purposes, but I have provided lamps. A vigil will be kept, of course, but it shall be delayed until you have made your examination. Officially, you are there to do the laying out.”

Again, a blink.

“Yes, yes, it will be regarded as strange, but I am the prior of this foundation and my law is second only to Almighty God’s.” He bustled her to the side door of the church and gave her directions. A novice weeding the cloister garden looked up in curiosity, but a click of his superior’s fingers sent him back to work. “I would come with you, but I must go to the castle and discuss eventualities with the sheriff. Between us, we have to prevent another riot.”

Watching the small, brown-clad figure trudge off carrying its goatskin bag, the prior prayed that in this case, his law and Almighty God’s coincided.

He turned round in order to snatch a minute in prayer at the altar, but a large shadow detached itself from one of the nave’s pillars, startling him and making him angry. It had a roll of vellum in its hand.

“What do you here, Sir Rowley?”

“I was about to plead for a private view of the bodies, my lord,” the tax collector said, “but it seems I have been preempted.”

“That is the job of the coroner, and he’s done it. There will be an official inquest in a day or two.”

Sir Rowley nodded toward the side door. “Yet I heard you instructing that lady to examine them further. Do you hope for her to tell you more?”

Prior Geoffrey looked around for help and found none.

The tax collector asked with apparent genuine interest, “How might she do that? Conjurement? Invocation? Is she a necromancer? A witch?”

He’d gone too far. The prior said quietly, “Those children are sacred to me, my son, as is this church. You may leave.”

“I apologize, my lord.” The tax collector didn’t look sorry. “But I too have a concern in this matter, and I have here the king’s warrant whereby to pursue it.” He waved a roll so that the royal seal swung. “What is that woman?”

A king’s warrant trumped the authority of a canonry prior, even one whose word was next to God’s. Sullenly, Prior Geoffrey said, “She is a doctor versed in the morbid sciences.”

“Of course. Salerno . I should have known.” The tax collector whistled with satisfaction. “A woman doctor from the only place in Christendom where that is not a contradiction in terms.”

“You know it?”

“Stopped there once.”

“Sir Rowley.” The prior raised his hand in admonition. “For the safety of that young woman, for the peace of this community and town, what I have told you must remain within these walls.”

“Vir sapit qui pauca loquitur, my lord. First thing they teach a tax collector.”

Not so much wise as cunning, the prior decided, but probably able to keep silent. What was the man’s purpose? At a sudden thought, he held out his hand. “Let me see that warrant.” He examined it, then handed it back. “This is merely the usual tax collector’s warrant. Is the king taxing the dead now?”

“Indeed not, my lord.” Sir Rowley seemed affronted by the idea. “Or not more than usual. But if the lady is to conduct an unofficial inquest, it might subject both town and priory to punitive taxes-I don’t say it will, but the regular amercements, confiscation of goods, et cetera, might apply.” The plump cheeks bunched in an engaging smile. “Unless, of course, I am present to see that all is correct.”

The prior was beaten. So far Henry II had withheld his hand, but it was fairly certain that at the next assize, Cambridge would be fined, and fined heavily, for the death of one of the king’s most profitable Jews.

Any infringement of his laws gave the king an opportunity to fill his coffers at the expense of the infringers. Henry listened to his tax collectors, the most dreaded of royal underlings; if this one should report to him an irregularity connected with the children’s deaths, then the teeth of that rapacious Plantagenet leopard might tear the heart out of the town.

“What do you want of us, Sir Rowley?” Prior Geoffrey asked wearily.

“I want to see those bodies.” The words were spoken quietly, but they flicked at the prior like a lash.

APART FROM THE FACT that its three-foot-thick walls kept it cool, and its situation in a glade at the far end of Barnwell’s deer park was isolated, the cell in which the Saxon anchoress Saint Werbertha had passed her adult life-until, that is, it had been ended somewhat abruptly by invading Danes-was unsuitable for Adelia’s purposes. For one thing, it was small. For another, despite the two lamps the prior had provided, it was dark. A slit of a window was shut by a wooden slide. Cow parsley frothed waist-high around a tiny door set in an arch.

Damn all this secrecy. She would have to keep the door open in order to have enough light-and the place was already beset by flies trying to get in. How did they expect her to work in these conditions?

Adelia put her goatskin bag on the grass outside, opened it to check its contents, checked them again-and knew she was putting off the moment when she would have to open the door.

This was ridiculous; she was not an amateur. Quickly, she knelt and asked the dead beyond the door to forgive her for handling their remains. She asked to be reminded not to forget the respect owed to them. “Permit your flesh and bone to tell me what your voices cannot.”

She always did this; whether the dead heard her she was unsure, but she was not the complete atheist her foster father was, though she suspected that what lay ahead of her this afternoon might convert her into one.

She rose, took her oilcloth apron from the bag, put it on, removed her cap, tied the gauze helmet with its glazed eyepiece over her head, and opened the cell door…

SIR ROWLEY PICOT enjoyed the walk, pleased with himself. It was going to be easier than he’d thought. A mad female, a mad foreign female, was always going to be forced to succumb to his authority, but it was unexpected bounty that someone of Prior Geoffrey’s standing should also be under his thumb through association with the same female.

Nearing the anchorage, he paused. It looked like an overgrown beehive-Lord, how the old hermits loved discomfort. And there she was, a figure bending over something on a table just inside its open door.

To test her, he called out, “Doctor.”

“Yes?”

Ah, hah, Sir Rowley thought. How easy. Like snatching a moth.

As she straightened and turned toward him, he began, “You remember me, madam? I am Sir Rowley Picot, whom the prior-”

“I don’t care who you are,” the moth snapped. “Come in here and keep the flies off.” She emerged, and he was presented with an aproned human figure with the head of an insect. It tore a clump of cow parsley from the ground and, at his approach, shoved the umbellifers at him.

It wasn’t what Sir Rowley had in mind, but he followed her, squeezing through the door to the beehive with some difficulty.

And squeezing out again. “Oh my God.”

“What’s the matter?” She was cross, nervy.

He leaned against the arch of the doorway, breathing deeply. “Sweet Jesus, have mercy on us all.” The stench was appalling. Even worse was what lay exposed on the table.

She tutted with irritation. “Stand in the doorway then. Can you write?”

With his eyes closed, Rowley nodded. “First thing they teach a tax collector.”

She handed him a slate and chalk. “Put down what I tell you. In between times, keep fanning the flies away.”

The anger went out of her voice, and she began speaking in monotone. “The remains of a young female. Some fair hair still attached to the skull. Therefore she is”-she broke off to consult a list she’d inked onto the back of her hand-“Mary. The wildfowler’s daughter. Six years old. Disappeared Saint Ambrose, that is, what, a year ago? Are you writing?”

“Yes, ma’am.” The chalk squeaked over the slate, but Sir Rowley kept his face to the open air.

“The bones are unclothed. Flesh almost entirely decomposed; what there is has been in contact with chalk. There is a dusting of what appears to be dried silt on the spine, also some lodged in the rear of the pelvis. Is there silt near here?”