Ariana Franklin - Mistress of the Art of Death

“We discount nobody,” Simon had said.

In order to narrow suspicion through what evidence they had before starting to ask questions of and about forty-seven people, Simon had taken for himself the task of locating the source of the scraps of wool, Adelia the lozenge.

Which was proving unidentifiable.

“Yet we must suppose that its rarity will strengthen its connection with the killer once we find him,” Adelia said now.

Gyltha cocked her head. “You reckon he tempted Mary with it?”

“I do.”

“Poor little cosset Mary was, frit of her father-always fetching her and her mother a blow, he was-frit of everything. Never ventured far.” Gyltha viewed the lozenge: “Did you tempt her away, you beggar?”

The two women shared a moment’s reflection…a beckoning hand, the other holding out an exotic sweetmeat, the child attracted closer, closer, a bird drawn by a gyrating stoat…

Gyltha hurried off down the stairs to lecture Ulf on the danger of men who offered goodies.

Six years old, Adelia thought. Frightened of everything, six years of a brutal father and then a dreadful death. What can I do? What shall I do?

She went downstairs. “May I borrow Ulf? There may be some purpose in seeing the place from which each child disappeared. Also, I should like to examine Little Saint Peter’s bones.”

“They can’t tell you much, girl. The nuns boiled him.”

“I know.” It was the usual practice with the body of a putative saint. “But bones can speak.”

Peter was the primus inter pares of the murdered children, the first to disappear and the first to die. As far as could be deduced, his was the only one whose death did not accord with the others’, since, presumably, it had occurred in Cambridge.

Also, his was the only death to be accredited to crucifixion and, unless that could be disproved, she and Simon would have failed in their mission to exonerate the Jews, no matter how many killers they produced from the chalk hills.

She found herself explaining this to Gyltha. “Perhaps the boy’s parents can be persuaded to talk to me. They would have seen his body before it was boiled.”

“Walter and his missus? They saw nails in them little hands and the crown of thorns on that poor little head and they won’t say no different, not without losing themselves a mort of cash.”

“They’re making money from their son?”

Gyltha pointed upriver. “Get you to Trumpington and their cottage, the which you can’t see for folk clamoring to go inside it so’s to breathe air as Little Saint Peter breathed and touch Little Saint Peter’s shirt, the which they can’t acause he was wearing his only one, and Walter and Ethy sitting at their door charging a penny a time.”

“How shameful.”

Gyltha hung a kettle over the fire and then turned. “Seems you’ve never wanted for much, mistress.” The “mistress” was ominous; such rapport as had been achieved that morning had waned.

Adelia admitted she had not.

“Then s’pose you wait til you got six childer to feed apart from the one that’s dead and obliged for the roof over your head to do four days a week plowing and reaping of the nunnery’s fields as well as your own, to say nought of Agnes being bonded to do its bloody cleaning. Maybe you don’t care for their way, but that’s not shameful, that’s surviving.”

Adelia was silenced. After a while, she said, “Then I shall go to Saint Radegund’s and ask to see the bones in its reliquary.”

“Huh.”

“I shall look around me, at least,” Adelia said, piqued. “Shall Ulf guide me or not?”

Ulf would, though not willingly. So would the dog, though it seemed to scowl as horribly as the boy.

Well, perhaps with such companions-but such companions-she would blend into the Cambridge scenery.

“Blend into the scenery ,” she said to Mansur with emphasis when he readied himself to accompany her. “You can’t come. I’d as easy blend in with a troop of acrobats.”

He protested, but she pointed out that it was daylight, there were plenty of people about, and she had her dagger and a dog whose smell could fell an assailant at twenty paces. In the end, she thought, he was not reluctant to stay behind with Gyltha in the kitchen.

She set off.

Beyond an orchard, a raised balk ran along the edge of a common field leading down to the river, angled with cultivated strips. Men and women were hoeing the spring planting. One or two touched their forehead to her. Farther along, the breeze bellied washing that was pinned to tenterhooks.

The Cam, Adelia saw, was a boundary. Across the river was a countryside of gently rising uplands, some forested, some parkland, a mansion like a toy in the distance. Behind her, the town with its noisy quays crowded the right bank as if enjoying the uninterrupted view.

“Where’s Trumpington?” she asked Ulf.

“Trumpington,” the boy grumbled to the dog. They went left. The angle of the afternoon sun showed that they had turned south. Punts went past them, women as well as men poling themselves about their business, the river their thoroughfare. Some waved to Ulf, the boy nodding back and naming each one to the dog. “Sawney on his way for to collect the rents, the old grub…Gammer White with the washing for Chenies…Sister Fatty for to supply the hermits, look a her puff…Old Moggy finished early at the market…”

They were on a causeway that kept Adelia’s boots, the boy’s bare feet, and Safeguard’s paws from sinking into meadows where cows grazed on deep grass and buttercups among willow and alder, their hooves causing a sucking sound as they moved to a fresh patch.

She’d never seen so much greenness in so great a variety. Or so many birds. Or such fat cattle. Pasture in Salerno was burned thin and good only for goats.

The boy stopped and pointed to a cluster of thatch and a church tower in the distance. “Trumpington,” he informed the dog.

Adelia nodded. “Now, where is Saint Radegund’s tree?”

The boy rolled his eyes, intoned “Saint Raddy’s,” and set off back the way they had come.

With Safeguard plodding dispiritedly behind them, they crossed the river by a footbridge so that this time they were following the Cam ’s left bank northward, the boy complaining to the dog at every step. From what Adelia could understand, he resented Gyltha’s change of occupation. As errand boy to his grandmother’s eel business, he occasionally received pourboires from the customers, a source of money now cut off.

Adelia ignored him.

A hunting horn sounded musically in the hills to the west. Safeguard and Ulf raised their disreputable heads and paused. “Wolf,” Ulf told the dog. The echo died and they went on.

Now Adelia was able to look across the water to Cambridge town. Set without competition against pure sky, its jumbled roofs that were spiked with church towers gained significance, even beauty.

In the distance loomed Great Bridge, a massive, workmanlike arch crammed with traffic. Beyond it, where the river formed a deep pool below the castle on its hill-almost a mountain in this terrain-shipping so crowded the quays it seemed impossible, from this view, that it should disentangle itself. Wooden cranes dipped and rose like bowing herons. Shouts and instructions were being issued in different languages. The crafts were as varied as the tongues; wherries, horse-drawn barges, poled barges, rafts, vessels like arks-even, to Adelia’s astonishment, a dhow. She could see men with blond plaits, hung about with animal skins so that they looked like bears, performing a leaping dance back and forth between barges for the amusement of working dockers.

Carried on the breeze, the noise and industry accentuated the quietness of the bank where she walked with the boy and the dog. She heard Ulf informing the dog that they were approaching Saint Radegund’s tree.