Ariana Franklin - Mistress of the Art of Death

Adelia was aware that Cambridge piped to her, but she would not dance. To her, the double reflection of everything was symptomatic of a deeper duplicity, two-faced, a Janus town, where a creature that killed children walked on two legs like any other man. Until it was discovered, all of Cambridge wore a mask that she could not look on without wondering if a wolf’s muzzle lay beneath.

Inevitably, she lost her way.

“Can you direct me to Old Benjamin’s house, if you please?”

“What you want with that, then, maid?”

This was the third person she’d stopped with a request for direction and the third to inquire why she wanted it. “I’m considering opening a bawdy house” was an answer that came to mind, but she’d already learned that Cambridge inquisitiveness needed no tweaking; she merely said, “I should like to know where it is.”

“Up the road a ways, turn left onto Jesus Lane, corner facing the river.”

Turning to the river, she found a small crowd had gathered in order to watch Mansur unpack the last contents of the cart, ready to carry them up a flight of steps to the front door.

Prior Geoffrey had considered it only just, since the three were here on the Jews’ behalf, that the Salernitans should occupy one of Jewry’s abandoned houses during their stay.

He’d considered that to move them into Chaim’s rich mansion a little farther along the river would be ill-advised.

“But Old Benjamin has inspired less animosity in the town, for all he’s a pawnbroker, than did poor Chaim with his riches,” he’d said, “and he has a good view of the river.”

That there was an area called Jewry, of which this place stood on the edge, brought home to Adelia how the Jews of Cambridge had been excluded from or had excluded themselves from the life of the town-as they had been from nearly all the English towns she’d passed through on the way.

However privileged, this was a ghetto, now deserted. Old Benjamin’s house spoke of an incipient fear. It stood gable end on the alley to present as little of itself as possible to outside attack. It was built of stone rather than wattle and daub, with a door capable of withstanding a battering ram. The niche on one of the doorposts was empty, showing that the case holding the mezuzah had been torn out.

A woman had appeared at the top of the steps to help Mansur with their luggage. As Adelia approached, an onlooker called, “You doing for they now, then, Gyltha?”

“My bloody business,” the woman on the steps called back. “You mind yours.”

The crowd tittered but did not move away, discussing the situation in uninhibited East Anglian English. Already, something of what had happened to the prior on the road had become common currency.

“Not Jews, then. Our Gyltha wouldn’t hold with doing for the ungodly.”

“Saracens, so I heard.”

“That with the towel over his head, ’tis said he’s the doctor.”

“More devil than doctor from the look of he.”

“Cured Prior, so they say, Saracen or not.”

“How much do he charge, I wonder?”

“That their fancy piece?” This was addressed over Adelia’s head with a nod toward her.

“No, it is not,” she said.

The questioner, a man, was taken aback. “Talk English then, maid?”

“Yes. Do you?” Their accent-a chant of oy’s, strange inflections, and rising sentence endings-was different from the West Country English she’d learned at Margaret’s knee, but she could just understand it.

She appeared to have amused rather than offended. “Sparky little moggy, in’t she?” the man said to the assembly. Then, to her: “That blackie. Mix a good physic, can he?”

“As good as any you’ll find round here,” she told him. Probably true, she thought. The infirmarian at the priory would be a mere herbalist who, though he rendered it freely, gained his knowledge from books-most of them wildly inaccurate, in Adelia’s opinion. Those he couldn’t treat and who were beyond treating themselves would be at the mercy of the town’s quacks, to be sold elaborate, useless, costly, and probably disgusting potions, more intended to impress than cure.

Her new acquaintance took it as a recommendation. “Reckon as I’ll pay that a visit, then. Brother Theo up at the priory, he’s given up on I.”

A grinning woman nudged her neighbor. “Tell her what’s wrong with thee, Wulf.”

“He do reckon as I’ve a bad case of malingering,” Wulf said obediently, “an he be at a loss how to treat it.”

Adelia noticed there were no questions as to why she and Simon and Mansur had come. To Cambridge men and women, it was natural that foreigners should settle in their town. Didn’t they come from all parts to do business? Where better? Abroad was dragon country.

She tried to push her way through to get to the gate, but a woman holding up a small child blocked her way. “That ear’s hurting him bad. He do need doctoring.” Not everybody in the crowd was here out of curiosity.

“He’s busy,” Adelia said. But the child was whimpering with pain. “Oh, I’ll look at it.”

Someone in the crowd obligingly held up a lantern while she examined the ear, tutted, opened her bag for her tweezers-“Hold him still, now”-and extracted a small bead.

She might as well have breached a dam. “A wise woman, by lumme,” somebody said, and within seconds she was being jostled for her attention. In the absence of a doctor, a wise woman would do.

Rescue came in the form of the one who’d been addressed as Gyltha. She came down the steps and made a path to Adelia by jabbing obstructing bodies with her elbows. “Clear off,” she told them. “Ain’t even moved in yet. Come back a’morrow.” She pushed Adelia through the gate. “Quick, girl.” Then she used her bulk to shut the gate and hissed, “You done it now.”

Adelia ignored her. “That old man there,” she said, pointing. “He has an ague.” It looked like malaria and was unexpected; she’d thought the disease to be confined to the Roman marshes.

“That’s for the doctor to say,” Gyltha said loudly for the benefit of her listeners, then, for Adelia’s, “Get in, girl. He’ll still have it a’morrow.”

There was probably little to be done, anyway. As Gyltha pulled her up the steps, Adelia shouted, “Put him to bed,” at a woman supporting the shaking old man. “Try and cool the fever,” managing to add, “Wet cloths,” before the housekeeper hauled her inside and shut the door.

Gyltha shook her head at her. So did Simon, who’d been watching.

Of course. Mansur was the doctor now; she must remember it.

“But it is interesting if it is malaria,” she said to Simon. “ Cambridge and Rome. The common feature is marshland, I suppose.” In Rome, the disease was attributed by some to bad air, hence its name, by others to drinking stagnant water. Adelia, for whom neither supposition had been proved, kept an open mind.

“Wonderful lot of ague in the fens,” Gyltha told her. “Us do treat that with opium. Stops the shakes.”

“ Opium? You grow the poppy round here?” God’s rib, with access to opium, she could alleviate a lot of suffering. Her mind reverting to malaria, she muttered to Simon, “I wonder if I might have the chance to look at the old man’s spleen when he dies.”

“We could ask,” Simon said, rolling his eyes. “Ague, child murder: What’s the difference? Let’s declare ourselves.”

“I had not forgotten the killer,” Adelia said, sharply. “I have been examining his work.”

He touched her hand. “Bad?”

“Bad.”

The worn face before her became distressed; here was a man with children, imagining the worst that could happen to them. He has a rare sympathy, Simon, she thought, it’s what makes him a fine investigator. But it takes its toll.