Mistress of the Art of Death

He seized the old man and took him to the table, pointing to one of the squares. “That’s Cambridgeshire.” He let Aaron go. “Using your considerable financial acumen, Aaron, how many counters do you reckon are on it?”

“Not enough, my lord?”

“Indeed,” Henry said. “A profitable county, Cambridge -usually. Somewhat flat, but it produces a considerable amount of grain and cattle and fish, and pays the Treasury well-usually. Its sizable Jewish population also pays the Treasury well-usually. Would you say the number of counters on it at the moment do not present a true representation of its wealth?”

Again, the old man did not reply.

“And why is that?” Henry asked.

Aaron said wearily, “I imagine it’s because of the children, my lord. The death of children is always to be lamented…”

“Indeed it is.” Henry hoisted himself up on the edge of the table, letting his legs dangle. “And when it becomes a matter of economics, it’s disastrous. The peasants of Cambridge are in revolt and the Jews are…where are they?”

“Sheltering in its castle, my lord.”

“What’s left of it,” Henry agreed. “They are indeed. My castle. Eating my food on my charity and shitting it out immediately because they’re too scared to leave. All of which means they’re not earning me any money, Aaron.”

“No, my lord.”

“And the revolting peasants have burned down its east tower, which contains all records of debts owed to the Jews, and therefore to me-to say nothing of the tax accounts-because they believe the Jews are torturing and killing their children.”

For the first time, a whistle of hope sounded among the execution drums in the old man’s head. “But you do not, my lord?”

“Do not what?”

“You do not believe Jews are killing these children?”

“I don’t know, Aaron,” the king said pleasantly. Without taking his eyes off the old man, he raised his hand. A clerk ran forward to put a piece of parchment in it. “This is an account by a certain Roger of Acton saying that such is your regular practice. According to the good Roger, Jews usually torture at least one Christian child to death at Easter by putting it in a hinged barrel inwardly pierced by nails. They always have, they always will.”

He consulted the parchment. “‘They do place the child into the barrel, then close the barrel so that the pins do enter his flesh. These fiends do then catch the blood as it seeps into their vessels to mix with their ritual pastries.’”

Henry II looked up: “Not pleasant, Aaron.” He returned to the parchment. “Oh, and you laugh a lot while you’re doing it.”

“You know it is not true, my lord.”

For all the notice the king took, the old man’s interjection might have been another click on an abacus.

“But this Easter, Aaron, this Easter, you’ve started crucifying them. Certainly, our good Roger of Acton claims that the infant who’s been found was crucified-what was the child’s name?”

“Peter of Trumpington, my lord,” supplied the attendant clerk.

“That Peter of Trumpington was crucified, and therefore the same fate may well overcome the other two children who are missing. Crucifixion, Aaron.” The king spoke the mighty and terrible word softly, but it traveled along the cold gallery, accreting power as it went. “There’s already agitation to make Little Peter a saint, as if we didn’t have enough of them already. Two children missing and one bloodless mangled little body found in my fenland so far, Aaron. That’s a lot of pastries.”

Henry got down from the table and walked up the gallery, the old man following, leaving the field of crickets behind. The king dragged a stool from under a window and kicked another in Aaron’s direction. “Sit down.”

It was quieter at this end; damp, bitter air coming through the unglazed windows made the old man shake. Of the two, Aaron was the more richly clothed. Henry II dressed like a huntsman with careless habits; his queen’s courtiers oiled their hair with unguents and were scented with attars, but Henry smelled of horses and sweat. His hands were leathery; his red hair was cropped close to a head as round as a cannonball. Yet nobody, Aaron thought, ever mistook him for other than what he was-the ruler of an empire stretching from the borders of Scotland to the Pyrenees.

Aaron could have loved him, almost did love him, if the man had not been so horrifyingly unpredictable. When this king was in a temper, he bit carpets and people died.

“God hates you Jews, Aaron,” Henry said. “You killed His Son.”

Aaron closed his eyes, waiting.

“And God hates me.”

Aaron opened his eyes.

The king’s voice rose in a wail that filled the gallery like a despairing trumpet. “Sweet God, forgive this unhappy and remorseful king. Thou knowest how Thomas a Becket did oppose me in all things so that in my rage I called for his death. Peccavi, peccavi, for certain knights did mistake my anger and ride to kill him, thinking to please me, for which abomination You in Your righteousness have turned Your face from me. I am a worm, mea culpa, mea culpa, mea culpa. I crawl beneath Your anger while Archbishop Thomas is received into Your Glory and sitteth on the right hand of Your Gracious Son, Jesus Christ.”

Faces turned. Quills were poised in mid-account, abaci stilled.

Henry stopped beating his breast. He said conversationally, “And if I am not mistaken, the Lord will find him as big a pain in the arse as I did.” He leaned over, put a finger gently beneath Aaron of Lincoln’s lower jaw, and raised it. “The moment that those bastards chopped Becket down, I became vulnerable. The Church seeks revenge, it wants my liver, hot and smoking, it wants recompense and must get it, and one of the things it wants, has always wanted, is the expulsion of you Jews from Christendom.”

The clerks had returned to their work.

The king waved the document in his hand under the Jew’s nose. “This is a petition, Aaron, demanding that all Jews be sent away from my realm. At this moment, a copy also penned by Master Acton, and may the hounds of hell chew his bollocks, is on its way to the Pope. The murdered child in Cambridge and the ones missing are to be the pretext for demanding your people’s expulsion, and, with Becket dead, I shall be unable to refuse, because if I do, His Holiness will be persuaded to excommunicate me and put my whole kingdom under interdict. Does your mind encompass interdict? It is to be cast into darkness; babies to be refused baptisms, no ordained marriage, the dead to remain unburied without the blessing of the Church. And any upstart with shit on his trousers can challenge my right to rule.”

Henry got up and paced, pausing to straighten the corner of an arras that the wind had disarranged. Over his shoulder, he said, “Am I not a good king, Aaron?”

“You are, my lord.” The right answer. Also the truth.

“Am I not good to my Jews, Aaron?”

“You are, my lord. Indeed, you are.” Again, the truth. Henry taxed his Jews like a farmer milked his cows, yet no other monarch in the world was fairer to them or kept such order in his tight little kingdom that Jews were safer in it than in almost any other country of the known world. From France, from Spain, from the crusade countries, from Russia, they came to enjoy the privileges and security to be found in this Plantagenet’s England.

Where could we go? Aaron thought. Lord, Lord, send us not back into the wilderness. If we can no longer have our Promised Land, let us live at least under this pharaoh, who keeps us safe.

Henry nodded. “Usury is a sin, Aaron. The Church disapproves of it, doesn’t let Christians sully their souls with it. Leaves it to you Jews, who haven’t got any souls. It does not stop the Church borrowing from you, of course. How many of its cathedrals have been built on your personal loans?”

“Lincoln, my lord.” Aaron began counting on his shaking, arthritic fingers. “ Peterborough, Saint Albans, then there have been no less than nine Cistercian abbeys, then there’s-”

“Yes, yes. The real point is that one seventh of my annual revenue comes from taxing you Jews. And the Church wants me to get rid of you.” The king was on his feet, and once again harsh Angevin syllables blasted the gallery. “Do I not maintain peace in this kingdom such as it has never known? God’s balls, how do they think I do it?”

Nervous clerks dropped their quills to nod. Yes, my lord. You do, my lord.

“You do, my lord,” Aaron said.

“Not by prayer and fasting, I tell you that.” Henry had calmed himself again. “I need money to equip my army, pay my judges, put down rebellion abroad, and keep my wife in her hellish expensive habits. Peace is money, Aaron, and money is peace.” He grabbed the old man by the front of his cloak and dragged him close. “Who is killing those children?”

“Not us, my lord. My lord, we don’t know.”

For one intimate moment, appalling blue eyes with their stubby, almost invisible eyelashes peered into Aaron’s soul.

“We don’t, do we?” the king said. The old man was released, steadied, his cloak patted back into shape, though the king’s face was still close, his voice a tender whisper. “But I think we’d better find out, eh? Quickly.”

As the sergeant accompanied Aaron of Lincoln toward the staircase, Henry II called, “I’d miss you Jews, Aaron.”

The old man turned round. The king was smiling, or, at least, his spaced, strong little teeth were bared in something like a smile. “But not near as much as you Jews would miss me,” he said.

IN SOUTHERN ITALY several weeks later…

Gordinus the African blinked kindly at his visitor and wagged a finger. He knew the name; it had been announced with pomp: “From Palermo, representing our most gracious king, his lordship Mordecai fil Berachyah.” He even knew the face, but Gordinus remembered people only by their diseases.

“Hemorrhoids,” he said, triumphantly, at last, “you had piles. How are they?”

Mordecai fil Berachyah was not easily disconcerted; as personal secretary to the King of Sicily and keeper of the royal secrets, he couldn’t afford to be. He was offended, of course-a man’s hemorrhoids should not be bandied about in public-but his big face remained impassive, his voice cool. “I came to see whether Simon of Naples got off all right.”

“Got off what?” Gordinus asked interestedly.

Genius, thought Mordecai, was always difficult to deal with and when, as here, it was beginning to decay, it was near impossible. He decided to use the weight of the royal “we.”

“Got off to England, Gordinus. Simon Menahem of Naples. We were sending Simon of Naples to England to deal with a trouble the Jews are having there.”

Gordinus’s secretary came to their aid, walking to a wall covered by cubbyholes from which rolls of parchment stuck out like pipe ends. He spoke encouragingly, as to a child. “You remember, my lord, we had a royal letter…oh, gods, he’s moved it.”

This was going to take time. Lord Mordecai lumbered across the mosaic floor that depicted fishing cupids-Roman, at least a thousand years old. One of Hadrian’s villas, this had been.

They did themselves well, these doctors. Mordecai ignored the fact that his own palazzo in Palermo was floored with marble and gold.

He sat himself down on the stone bench that ran round an open balustrade overlooking the town below and, beyond it, the turquoise Tyrrhenian Sea.

Gordinus, ever alert as a doctor if nothing else, said, “His lordship will require a cushion, Gaius.”

A cushion was fetched. So were dates. And wine. Gaius asked nervously, “This is acceptable, my lord?” The king’s entourage, like the kingdom of Sicily and southern Italy itself, consisted of so many faiths and races-Arabs, Lombards, Greeks, Normans, and, as in Mordecai’s case, Jews-that an offer of refreshment could be an offense against some religious dietary law or another.