Ariana Franklin - Mistress of the Art of Death

“We should. We should also damn well tell the sheriff about her magic axes when a gentleman deigns to notice her.” More jovial now, but still threatening, Gervase was out to regain the supremacy he’d lost to Adelia in their encounter. “Eh? What about that, witch? Where’s your Saracen lover now?” Each question came louder. “What about ducking you back in the water? Eh? Eh? Is that his brat? It looks dirty enough.”

She wasn’t frightened this time. You ignorant clod, she thought. You dare talk to me.

At the same time she was fascinated; she didn’t take her eyes off him. More hatred here, enough to eclipse Roger of Acton’s. He’d have raped her on that hill merely to show that he could-and would now if his friend were not by. Power over the powerless.

Was it you ?

The boy beside her was as still as death. The dog had crept behind her legs where the wolfhounds couldn’t see him.

“Gervase,” Sir Joscelin said sharply. Then, to her: “Pay my friend no mind, mistress. He’s waxy because his spear missed old Lupus here”-he patted the wolf’s head-“and mine didn’t.” He smiled at his companion before turning to look down again on Adelia. “I hear the good prior has found you better accommodation than a cart.”

“Thank you,” she said, “he has.”

“And your doctor friend? Is he setting up here?”

“He is.”

“Saracen Quack and Whore, that’ll look good on the shingle.” Sir Gervase was getting restive and more outrageous.

This is what it’s like to be among the weak, Adelia thought. The strong insult you with impunity. Well, we’ll see.

Sir Joscelin was ignoring the man. “I suppose your doctor can do nothing for poor Gelhert here, can he? The wolf sliced his leg.” He jerked his head toward one of the hounds. It had a paw raised.

And that, too, is an insult, Adelia thought, though you may not mean it to be. She said, “He is better with humans. You should advise your friend to consult him as soon as possible.”

“Eh? What’s the bitch say?”

“Do you think him ill then?” Joscelin asked.

“There are signs.”

“What signs?” Gervase was suddenly anxious. “What signs, woman?”

“I am not in a position to say,” she told Joscelin. Which was true, since there were none. “But it would be as well for him to consult a doctor-and quickly.”

Anxiety was turning to alarm. “Oh my God, I sneezed a full seven times this morning.”

“Sneezing,” Adelia said, reflectively. “There it is, then.”

“Oh my God.” He wrenched the reins and wheeled his horse, spiking its side with his spurs, leaving Adelia spattered with mud but content.

Smiling, Joscelin raised his cap. “Good day, mistress.”

The huntsman bowed to her, gathered the hounds, and followed them.

It could be either of them, Adelia told herself, watching them go. Because Gervase is a brute and the other is not means nothing.

Sir Joscelin, for all his pleasant manner, was as likely a candidate as his objectionable companion, of whom he was obviously fond. He’d been on the hill that morning.

But then, who had not? Hugh, the huntsman with a face as bland as milk that might well harbor as much viciousness as Roger of Acton without showing it. The fat-cheeked merchant from Cherry Hinton. The minstrel, too. The monks-the one they called Brother Gilbert was a hater if ever she’d met one. All had access to Wandlebury Ring that night. As for the inquisitive tax inspector, everything about him was subject to suspicion.

And why do I consider only the men? There’s the prioress, nun, merchant’s wife, servants.

But, no, she absolved all females; this was not a woman’s crime. Not that women were incapable of cruelty to children-she had examined many results of torture and neglect-but the only cases that even approached this one’s savage, sexual assault had involved men, always men.

“They talked to you.” Ulf’s stillness, unlike her own, had been the grip of awe. “Crusaders, they are. Both on ’em. Been to the Holy Land.”

“Have they indeed,” she said flatly.

They had, and had come back rich, having won their spurs. Sir Gervase held Coton manor by knight’s fee of the priory. Sir Joscelin held Grantchester manor of Saint Radegund’s. Great hunters they were and borrowed Hugh and his wolfhounds from Prior Geoffrey when they had to run down a devil like the one across Sir Joscelin’s horse-been taking lambs over Trumpington way, it had-acause Hugh was the best wolf hunter in Cambridgeshire…

Men, she thought, listening to him run on in his admiration. Even when they are small boys…

But this one was looking up at her now, worldly wise again. “And you stood to ’em,” he said.

She, too, had won her spurs.

Companionably, they walked back to Old Benjamin’s together, the disgraced Safeguard trailing behind them.

IT WAS DARK by the time Simon returned to the house, hungry for the eel stew with dumplings and fish pie awaiting him-the day was Friday and Gyltha strictly observed it-complaining of the great number of wool merchants plying their trade in and around Cambridge.

“Amiable beings to a man, each one amiably explaining to me that my ties came from an old batch of wool…something about its nap, apparently…but, oh, dear me, yes, not impossible to trace the bale it came from were I prepared to pursue its history.”

For all the insignificance of his looks and dress, Simon of Naples came of a wealthy family and had never considered before the journey that wool made from the sheep to the clothyard. It amazed him.

He instructed Mansur and Adelia as he ate.

“They use urine to clean the fleeces, did you know? Wash it in vats of piss to which whole families contribute.” Carding, fulling, weaving, dyeing, mordants. “Can you conceive of the difficulty in achieving of the color black? Experto crede . It must be based on deep blue, woad or a combination of tannin and iron. I tell you, yellow is simpler. I have met dyers today who would that we all dressed in yellow, like ladies of the night…”

Adelia’s fingers began to tap; Simon’s glee suggested that his quest had been successful, but she also had news.

He noticed. “Oh, very well. The ties are deemed to be worsted from their solid, compact surface, but, even so, we could not have traced it if this strip…” Simon ran it lovingly through his hand and Adelia saw that in the thrill of investigation he had all but forgotten the use to which it had been put. “If this strip had not included part of a selvedge, a warp-turned selvedge for strengthening edges, distinctive to the weaver…”

He caught her eye and gave in. “It is part of a batch sent to the Abbot of Ely three years ago. The abbot holds the concession to supply all religious houses in Cambridgeshire with the cloth in which to dress their monastics.”

Mansur was the first to respond. “A habit? It is from a monk’s habit?”

“Yes.”

There was one of the reflective silences to which their suppers were becoming subject.

Adelia said, “The only monastic we can absolve is the prior, who was with us all night.”

Simon nodded. “His monks wear black beneath the rochet.”

Mamsur said, “So do the holy women.”

“That is true”-Simon smiled at him-“but in this case irrelevant, for in the course of my investigations I came across the merchant from Cherry Hinton again who, as luck would have it, deals in wool. He assures me that the nuns and his wife and the female servants spent the night under canvas, ringed outside and guarded by the males of the company. If one of those ladies is our murderer, she could not have gone unnoticed to tramp the hills carrying bodies.”