Mistress of the Art of Death

“Talking to bones again?” the tax inspector asked with interest. “What will these say? Baa?”

Adelia became aware that her skirt had ridden up to show a considerable amount of bare leg, and she was in no position to pull it down.

Sir Rowley leaned down to put his hands under her armpits and raise her like a doll. “A lady Lazarus from the tomb,” he said, “complete with gravedust.” He began patting at her person, releasing clouds of sour-smelling chalk.

She pushed his hand away, no longer frightened but angry, very angry. “What do you do here?”

“Walking for my health, Doctor. You should approve.”

He gleamed with health and good humor; he was the most defined thing in the gray landscape, ruddy cheeks and cloak; he looked like an oversized robin. He swept off his cap to bow to her and in the same movement picked up her slate. With apparent clumsiness, he knocked it open, exposing the drawings for him to look at.

Geniality went. He bent down to peer at the skeleton. Slowly, he straightened. “When was this done?”

“Six or seven years ago,” she said.

She thought, Was it you? Is there madness behind those jaunty blue eyes?

“So he began with sheep,” he said.

“Yes.” A swift intelligence? Or the cunning to assume it, knowing what she had surmised already?

His jaw had tightened. It was a different, much less good-natured man, who stood in front of her now. He seemed to have gotten thinner.

The rain was increasing. No sign of Simon or Mansur.

Suddenly he had her by the arm and was pulling her along. Safeguard, having given no warning of the man’s approach, scampered happily behind them. Adelia knew she should be afraid, but all she felt was outrage.

They stopped under a sheltering beech tree, where Picot shook her. “Why are you ahead of me each time? Who are you, woman?”

She was Vesuvia Adelia Rachel Ortese Aguilar, and she was being manhandled. “I am a doctor of Salerno. You will show me respect.”

He looked at his big hands that were clutching her arms and released her. “I beg your pardon, Doctor.” He tried smiling. “This won’t do, will it?” He took off his cloak, laid it carefully at the foot of the tree, and invited her to sit on it. She was glad to do so; her legs were still shaking.

He sat down beside her, talking reasonably. “But do you see, I have a particular interest in discovering this killer, yet each time I follow a thread that might take me into the depth of his labyrinth, I find not the Minotaur but Ariadne.”

And Ariadne finds you, she thought. She said, “May I ask what thread it was led you here today?”

Safeguard lifted a leg against the tree trunk, then settled itself on an unoccupied corner of the cloak.

“Oh, that,” Sir Rowley said. “Easily explained. You were good enough to employ me in writing down the story those poor bones told you in the hermit’s hut, their removal from chalk to silt. A moment’s reflection even suggested when that removal took place.” He looked at her. “I assume your menfolk are searching the hill?”

She nodded.

“They won’t find anything. I know damn well they won’t, because I’ve been prowling it myself for the last two evenings and believe me, lady, it is no place to be when night comes down.”

He slammed his fist down on the stretch of cloak between them, making Adelia jump and Safeguard look up. “But it’s there, goddammit. The clue to the Minotaur leads there. Those poor youngsters told us it did.” He looked at his hand as if he hadn’t seen it before, uncurling it. “So I made my excuses to the lord sheriff and rode over to have yet another look. And what do I find? Madam Doctor listening to more bones. There, now you know all about it.”

He’d become cheery again.

Rain had been pattering while he talked; now the sun came out. He’s like the weather, Adelia thought. And I don’t know all about it.

She said, “Do you like jujubes?”

“Love ’em, ma’am. Why? Are you offering me one?”

“No.”

“Oh.” He squinted at her as at someone whose mind shouldn’t be disturbed further, then spoke slowly and kindly. “Perhaps you would tell me who sent you and your companions on this investigation?”

“The King of Sicily,” she said.

He nodded cautiously. “The King of Sicily.”

She began to laugh. It might have been the Queen of Sheba or the Grand Inquisitor; he couldn’t recognize the truth because he didn’t use it. He thinks I am mad.

As she laughed the sun sent its light through the young beech leaves to fall on her like a shower of newly minted copper pennies.

His face changed so that she sobered and looked away from him.

“Go home,” he said. “Go back to Salerno.”

Now she could see Ulf leading Simon and Mansur toward them from the direction of the sheep pit.

The tax collector was all reasonableness again. Good day, good day, my masters. Having attended the good doctor while she was performing the postmortem on the poor children…he, like them, had suspected the hill as being the site of…had searched the ground yet found nothing…Should they not, all four, exchange what knowledge they possessed to bring this fiend to justice?

Adelia moved away to join Ulf, who was slapping his cap against his leg to shake off raindrops. He waved it in the direction of the tax collector. “Don’t like that un.”

“I don’t either,” Adelia said, “but the Safeguard seems to.”

Absentmindedly-and she thought he would be sorry for it later-Sir Rowley was caressing the dog’s head where it leaned against his knee.

Ulf growled in disgust. Then he said, “You reckon them sheep were done for by him as did for Harold and the others?”

“Yes,” she said. “It was a similar weapon.”

Ulf mused on it. “Wonder where he’s been killing betwixt times?”

It was an intelligent question; Adelia had asked it of herself immediately. It was also the question the tax collector should have asked. And hadn’t.

Because he knows, she thought.

DRIVING BACK TO TOWN in the cart, like a good medicine vendor after a day picking herbs, Simon of Naples expressed gratification at having joined forces with Sir Rowley Picot. “A quick brain, for all his size, none quicker. He was most interested in the significance we place on the appearance of Little Saint Peter’s body on Chaim’s lawn and, since he has access to the county’s accounts, he has promised to assist me in discovering which men owed Chaim money. Also, he and Mansur are going to investigate the Arab trade ships and see which of them carries jujubes.”

“God’s rib,” Adelia said. “Did you tell him everything?”

“Most everything.” He smiled at her exasperation. “My dear Doctor, if he is the killer, he knows everything already.”

“If he’s the killer, he knows we’re closing him round. He knows enough to wish us away. He told me to go back to Salerno.”

“Yes, indeed. He is concerned for you. ‘This is no matter to involve a woman,’ he told me. ‘Do you want her murdered in her bed?’”

Simon winked at her; he was in a good mood. “Why is it that we are always murdered in our beds, I wonder. We are never murdered at breakfast time. Or in our bath.”

“Oh, stop it. I don’t trust the man.”

“I do, and I have considerable experience of men.”

“He disturbs me.”

Simon winked at Mansur. “Considerable experience of women, too. I believe she likes him.”

Furiously, Adelia said, “Did he tell you he was a crusader?”

“No.” He turned to look at her, grave now. “No, he did not tell me that.”

“He was.”

Nine

It was the custom of those in Cambridge who had been on pilgrimage to hold a feast after their return. Alliances had been made on the journey, business conducted, marriages arranged, holiness and exaltation experienced; the world in general had been widened; and it was pleasurable for those who had shared these things to be brought together once more to discuss them and give thanks for a safe return.

This pilgrimtide it was the turn of the Prioress of Saint Radegund’s to host the feast. Since, however, Saint Radegund was yet a poor, small convent-a situation soon to be altered if Prioress Joan and Little Saint Peter had anything to do with it-the honor of holding it on her behalf had been awarded to her knight and tenant, Sir Joscelin of Grantchester, whose hall and lands were considerably larger and richer than hers, a not unusual anomaly in the case of those who held part in fee of the lesser religious houses.

A famous feast-giver, Sir Joscelin. It was said that when he’d entertained the Abbot of Ramsay last year, thirty beeves, sixty pigs, a hundred and fifty capon, three hundred larks (for their tongues), and two knights had died in the cause, the latter in a melee laid on for the abbot’s entertainment that had gotten gloriously out of hand.

Invitations were therefore valued; those who had not been on the pilgrimage but were closely associated with it, stay-at-home wives, daughters, sons, the good and the great of the shire, canons, and nuns, thought themselves ill-used not to be included. Since most of them were, the caterers t0 Cambridge ’s finery had been kept busy with barely a spare breath to bless the names of Saint Radegund’s prioress and her loyal knight, Sir Joscelin.

It was not until the morning of the day itself that a Grantchester servant arrived with an invitation for the three foreigners in Jesus Lane. Dressed for the occasion, complete with a horn to blow, he was put out when Gyltha took him in at the back door.

“No use going by the front way, Matt, Doctor’s physicking.”

“Let’s just blow a call, Gylth. Master sends his invites with a call.”

He was taken into the kitchen for a cup of home brew; Gyltha liked to know what was going on.

Adelia was in the hall, wrangling with Dr. Mansur’s last patient of the day; she always kept Wulf to the end.

“Wulf, there is nothing wrong with you. Not the strangles, not ague, not the cough, not distemper, not diper bite, whatever that is, and you are certainly not lactating.”

“Do the doctor say that?”

Adelia turned wearily to Mansur. “Say something, Doctor.”

“Give the idle dog a kick up his arse.”

“The doctor prescribes steady work in fresh air,” Adelia said.