Mistress of the Art of Death

Three

Dawn lighted on the pilgrims by the side of the road and found them damp and irritable. The prioress railed at her knight in discontent when he came to ask how she had passed the night: “Where were you, Sir Joscelin?”

“Guarding the prior, madam. He was in the hands of foreigners and might have needed assistance.”

The prioress didn’t care. “Such was his choice. I could have proceeded last night if you had been with us for protection. It is only four miles more to Cambridge. Little Saint Peter is waiting for this reliquary in which to lodge his bones and has waited long enough.”

“You should have brought the bones with you, madam.”

The prioress’s trip to Canterbury had been a pilgrimage not only of devotion but also to collect the reliquary that had been on order from Saint Thomas a Becket’s goldsmiths for a twelvemonth. Once the skeleton of her convent’s new saint, which was lying in an inferior box in Cambridge, was interred in it, she expected great things from it.

“I carried his holy knuckle,” she snapped, “and if Prior Geoffrey possessed the faith he should, it would have been enough to mend him.”

“Even so, Mother, we could not have left the poor prior to strangers in his predicament, could we?” the little nun asked gently.

The prioress certainly could have. She had no more liking for Prior Geoffrey than he had for her. “He has his own knight, does he not?”

“It takes two to stand guard all night, madam,” Sir Gervase said. “One to watch while the other sleeps.” He was short-tempered. Indeed, both knights were red-eyed, as if neither had rested.

“What sleep did I have? Such a disturbance there was with people coming and going all around. And why does he demand a double guard?”

Much of the ill feeling between Saint Radegund’s convent and Saint Augustine ’s canonry of Barnwell was because Prioress Joan suspected jealousy on the prior’s part for the miracles already wrought by Little Saint Peter’s bones at the nunnery. Now, properly encased, their fame would spread, petitioners to them would swell her convent’s income, and the miracles would increase. And so, without doubt, would Prior Geoffrey’s envy. “Let us be on our way before he recovers.” She looked around. “Where’s that Hugh with my hounds? Oh, the devil, he’s surely never taken them onto the hill.”

Sir Joscelin was off after the recalcitrant huntsman on the instant. Sir Gervase, who had his own dogs among Hugh’s pack, followed him.

THE PRIOR WAS REGAINING strength after a good night’s sleep. He sat on a log, eating eggs from a pan over the Salernitans’ fire, not knowing which question to ask first. “I am amazed, Master Simon,” he said.

The little man opposite him nodded sympathetically. “I can understand, my lord. ‘Certum est, quia impossibile.’”

That a shabby peddler should quote Tertullian amazed the prior further. Who were these people? Nevertheless, the fellow had it exactly; the situation must be so because it was impossible. Well, first things first. “Where is she gone?”

“She likes to walk the hills, my lord, studying nature, gathering herbs.”

“She should take care on this one; the local people give it a wide berth, leaving it to the sheep; they say Wandlebury Ring is the haunt of the Wild Hunt and witches.”

“Mansur is always with her.”

“The Saracen?” Prior Geoffrey regarded himself as a broad-minded man, also grateful, but he was disappointed. “Is she a witch, then?”

Simon winced. “My lord, I beg you… If you could avoid mentioning the word in her presence… She is a doctor, fully trained.”

He paused, then added, “Of a sort.” Again, he stuck to the literal truth. “The Medical School of Salerno allows women to practice.”

“I had heard that it did,” the prior said. “ Salerno, eh? I did not believe it any more than I credited cows with the ability to fly. It appears that I must now look out for cows overhead.”

“Always best, my lord.”

The prior spooned some more eggs into his mouth and looked around him, appreciating the greenery of spring and the twitter of birdsong as he had not for some time. He was reassessing matters. While undoubtedly disreputable, this little company was also learned, in which case it was not at all what it seemed. “She saved me, Master Simon. Did she learn that particular operation in Salerno?”

“From the best Egyptian doctors, I believe.”

“Extraordinary. Tell me her fee.”

“She will accept no payment.”

“Really?” This was becoming more extraordinary by the minute; neither this man nor the woman appeared to have a shilling to bless themselves with. “She swore at me, Master Simon.”

“My lord, I apologize. I fear her skills do not include the bedside manner.”

“No, they do not.” Nor any womanly wiles, as far as the prior could see. “Forgive an old man’s impertinence but, so that I may address her correctly, to which of you is she…attached?”

“Neither of us, my lord.” The peddler was more amused than offended. “Mansur is her manservant, a eunuch-a misfortune that befell him. I myself am devoted to my wife and children in Naples. There is no attachment in that sense; we are merely allies through circumstance.”

And the prior, though not a gullible man, believed him, which also increased his curiosity. What the devil were the three doing here?

“Nevertheless,” he said out loud and sternly, “I must tell you that, whatever your purpose in Cambridge, it will be compromised by the peculiarity of your menage. Mistress Doctor should have a female companion.”

This time it was Simon who was surprised, and Prior Geoffrey saw that the man did indeed see the woman as merely a colleague. “I suppose she should,” Simon said. “There was one in attendance when we started out on this mission, her childhood nurse, but the old woman died on the way.”

“I advise you to find another.” The prior paused, then asked, “You make mention of a mission. May I inquire what it is?”

Simon appeared to hesitate.

Prior Geoffrey said, “Master Simon, I presume that you have not traveled all the way from Salerno merely to sell nostrums. If your mission is delicate, you may tell me with impunity.” When the man still hesitated, the prior clicked his tongue at having to point out the obvious. “Metaphorically, Master Simon, you have me by the balls. Can I betray your confidence when you are in a position to counter such betrayal merely by informing the town crier that I, a canon of Saint Augustine, a person of some consequence in Cambridge, and, I flatter myself, in the wider realm also, did not only place my most private member in the hands of a woman but had a plant shoved up it? How, to paraphrase the immortal Horace, would that play in Corinth?”

“Ah,” Simon said.

“Indeed. Speak freely, Master Simon. Sate an old man’s curiosity.”

So Simon told him. They had come to discover who was murdering and abducting Cambridge ’s children, he said. It must not be thought, he said, that their mission was intended as a usurpation of local officials, “only that investigation by authority sometimes tends to close more mouths than it opens, whereas we, incognito and disregarded…” Being Simon, he stressed this at length. It was not interference. However, since discovery of the murderer was protracted-obviously a particularly cunning and devious killer-special measures might fit the case…

“Our masters, those who sent us, appear to think that Mistress Doctor and I have the appropriate skills for such a matter…”

Listening to the tale of the mission, Prior Geoffrey learned that Simon of Naples was a Jew. He felt an immediate surge of panic. As master of a great monastic foundation, he was responsible for the state of the world when it must be handed over to God on the Day of Judgment, which might be anytime soon. How to answer an Almighty who had commanded that the one true faith be established in it? How to explain at the throne of God the existence of an unconverted infection in what should be a whole and perfect body? About which he had done nothing?

Humanism fought the training of the seminary-and won. It was an old battle. What could he do? He was not one of those who countenanced extermination; he would not see souls, if Jews had souls, severed and sent into the pit. Not only did he countenance the Jews of Cambridge, he protected them, though he railed mightily against other churchmen for encouraging the sin of usury in borrowing from them.

Now he, too, was in debt to one such-for his life. And, indeed, if this man, Jew or not, could solve the mystery that was causing Cambridge ’s agony, then Prior Geoffrey was his to command. Why, though, had he brought a doctor, a female doctor, with him?

So Prior Geoffrey listened to Simon’s story, and where he had been amazed before, he was now floundered, not least by the man’s openness, a characteristic he had not come across in the race until now. Instead of canniness, even cunning, he was hearing the truth.

He thought, Poor booby, he takes little persuasion to unload his secrets. He is too artless; he has no guile. Who has sent him, poor booby?

There was silence when Simon had finished, except for a blackbird’s song from a wild cherry tree.

“You have been sent by Jews to rescue the Jews?”

“Not at all, my lord. Really, no. The prime mover in this matter appears to be the King of Sicily-a Norman, as you know. I wondered at it myself; I cannot but feel that there are other influences at work; certainly our passports were not questioned at Dover, leaving me to opine that English officialdom is not unaware of what we are about. Be assured that, should the Jews of Cambridge prove guilty of this most dreadful crime, I shall willingly lay my hands to the rope that hangs them.”

Good. The prior accepted that. “But why was it necessary for the enterprise to include this woman doctor, may I ask? Surely, such a rara avis, if she is discovered, will attract most unwelcome attention.”

“I, too, had my doubts at first,” Simon said.

Doubts? He’d been appalled. The sex of the doctor who was to accompany him had not been revealed to him until she and her entourage boarded the boat to take them all to England, by which time it was too late to protest, though he had protested-Gordinus the African, greatest of doctors and most naive of men, taking his gesticulations as waves of farewell and fondly waving back as the gap between taffrail and quay took them away from each other.

“I had my doubts,” he said again, “yet she has proved modest, capable, and a proficient speaker of English. Moreover”-Simon beamed, his creased face crinkling further in pleasure, taking the prior’s attention away from a sensitive area; there would be time to reveal Adelia’s particular skill, and it was not yet-“as my wife would say, the Lord has His own purposes. Why else should she have been on hand in your hour of greatest need?”

Prior Geoffrey nodded slowly. That was undoubted; he’d already been on his knees in thanks to Almighty God for putting her in his way.

“It would be helpful, before we arrive in the town,” pursued Simon of Naples, gently, “to learn what we can of the killing of the murdered child and how it came about that two others are missing.” He let the sentence hang in the air.

“The children,” Prior Geoffrey said at last, heavily. “I have to tell you, Master Simon, that by the time we set off for Canterbury, the number of those missing was not two, as you have been told, but three. Indeed, had I not vowed to make this pilgrimage, I would not have left Canterbury for dread the number might rise again. God have mercy on their souls; we all fear the little ones have met the same fate as the first child, Peter. Crucified.”

“Not at the hands of Jews, my lord. We do not crucify children.”

You crucified the Son of God, the prior thought. Poor booby. Admit to being a Jew where you are going and they will tear you to pieces. And your doctor with you.

Damn it, he thought, I shall have to take a hand in the business.