Ariana Franklin: Mistress of the Art of Death

The clerks had returned to their work.

The king waved the document in his hand under the Jew’s nose. “This is a petition, Aaron, demanding that all Jews be sent away from my realm. At this moment, a copy also penned by Master Acton, and may the hounds of hell chew his bollocks, is on its way to the Pope. The murdered child in Cambridge and the ones missing are to be the pretext for demanding your people’s expulsion, and, with Becket dead, I shall be unable to refuse, because if I do, His Holiness will be persuaded to excommunicate me and put my whole kingdom under interdict. Does your mind encompass interdict? It is to be cast into darkness; babies to be refused baptisms, no ordained marriage, the dead to remain unburied without the blessing of the Church. And any upstart with shit on his trousers can challenge my right to rule.”

Henry got up and paced, pausing to straighten the corner of an arras that the wind had disarranged. Over his shoulder, he said, “Am I not a good king, Aaron?”

“You are, my lord.” The right answer. Also the truth.

“Am I not good to my Jews, Aaron?”

“You are, my lord. Indeed, you are.” Again, the truth. Henry taxed his Jews like a farmer milked his cows, yet no other monarch in the world was fairer to them or kept such order in his tight little kingdom that Jews were safer in it than in almost any other country of the known world. From France, from Spain, from the crusade countries, from Russia, they came to enjoy the privileges and security to be found in this Plantagenet’s England.

Where could we go? Aaron thought. Lord, Lord, send us not back into the wilderness. If we can no longer have our Promised Land, let us live at least under this pharaoh, who keeps us safe.

Henry nodded. “Usury is a sin, Aaron. The Church disapproves of it, doesn’t let Christians sully their souls with it. Leaves it to you Jews, who haven’t got any souls. It does not stop the Church borrowing from you, of course. How many of its cathedrals have been built on your personal loans?”

“Lincoln, my lord.” Aaron began counting on his shaking, arthritic fingers. “ Peterborough, Saint Albans, then there have been no less than nine Cistercian abbeys, then there’s-”

“Yes, yes. The real point is that one seventh of my annual revenue comes from taxing you Jews. And the Church wants me to get rid of you.” The king was on his feet, and once again harsh Angevin syllables blasted the gallery. “Do I not maintain peace in this kingdom such as it has never known? God’s balls, how do they think I do it ?”

Nervous clerks dropped their quills to nod. Yes, my lord. You do, my lord.

“You do, my lord,” Aaron said.

“Not by prayer and fasting, I tell you that.” Henry had calmed himself again. “I need money to equip my army, pay my judges, put down rebellion abroad, and keep my wife in her hellish expensive habits. Peace is money, Aaron, and money is peace.” He grabbed the old man by the front of his cloak and dragged him close. “Who is killing those children ?”

“Not us, my lord. My lord, we don’t know. ”

For one intimate moment, appalling blue eyes with their stubby, almost invisible eyelashes peered into Aaron’s soul.

“We don’t, do we?” the king said. The old man was released, steadied, his cloak patted back into shape, though the king’s face was still close, his voice a tender whisper. “But I think we’d better find out, eh? Quickly. ”

As the sergeant accompanied Aaron of Lincoln toward the staircase, Henry II called, “I’d miss you Jews, Aaron.”

The old man turned round. The king was smiling, or, at least, his spaced, strong little teeth were bared in something like a smile. “But not near as much as you Jews would miss me,” he said.

IN SOUTHERN ITALY several weeks later…

Gordinus the African blinked kindly at his visitor and wagged a finger. He knew the name; it had been announced with pomp: “From Palermo, representing our most gracious king, his lordship Mordecai fil Berachyah.” He even knew the face, but Gordinus remembered people only by their diseases.

“Hemorrhoids,” he said, triumphantly, at last, “you had piles. How are they?”

Mordecai fil Berachyah was not easily disconcerted; as personal secretary to the King of Sicily and keeper of the royal secrets, he couldn’t afford to be. He was offended, of course-a man’s hemorrhoids should not be bandied about in public-but his big face remained impassive, his voice cool. “I came to see whether Simon of Naples got off all right.”

“Got off what?” Gordinus asked interestedly.

Genius, thought Mordecai, was always difficult to deal with and when, as here, it was beginning to decay, it was near impossible. He decided to use the weight of the royal “we.”

“Got off to England, Gordinus. Simon Menahem of Naples. We were sending Simon of Naples to England to deal with a trouble the Jews are having there.”

Gordinus’s secretary came to their aid, walking to a wall covered by cubbyholes from which rolls of parchment stuck out like pipe ends. He spoke encouragingly, as to a child. “You remember, my lord, we had a royal letter…oh, gods, he’s moved it.”

This was going to take time. Lord Mordecai lumbered across the mosaic floor that depicted fishing cupids-Roman, at least a thousand years old. One of Hadrian’s villas, this had been.

They did themselves well, these doctors. Mordecai ignored the fact that his own palazzo in Palermo was floored with marble and gold.

He sat himself down on the stone bench that ran round an open balustrade overlooking the town below and, beyond it, the turquoise Tyrrhenian Sea.

Gordinus, ever alert as a doctor if nothing else, said, “His lordship will require a cushion, Gaius.”

A cushion was fetched. So were dates. And wine. Gaius asked nervously, “This is acceptable, my lord?” The king’s entourage, like the kingdom of Sicily and southern Italy itself, consisted of so many faiths and races-Arabs, Lombards, Greeks, Normans, and, as in Mordecai’s case, Jews-that an offer of refreshment could be an offense against some religious dietary law or another.

His lordship nodded; he felt better. The cushion was a comfort to his backside, the breeze from the sea cooled him, and the wine was good. He shouldn’t be offended by an old man’s directness; in fact, when his business was over, he would indeed bring up the subject of his piles; Gordinus had cured them last time. This was, after all, the town of healing, and if anyone could be described as the doyen of its great medical school, it was Gordinus the African.

He watched the old man forget that he had a guest and return to the manuscript he’d been reading, the drooping, brown skin of his arm stretching as his hand dipped a quill in ink to make an alteration. What was he? Tunisian? Moor?

On arrival at the villa, Mordecai had asked the majordomo if he should remove his shoes before entering, adding, “I have forgotten what your master’s religion is.”

“So has he, my lord.”

Only in Salerno, Mordecai thought now, do men forget their manners and their god in the greater worship of the sick.

He wasn’t sure he approved; very wonderful, no doubt, but eternal laws were broken, dead bodies dissected, women relieved of threatening fetuses, females allowed to practice, the flesh invaded by surgery.

They came in the hundreds: people who’d heard the name of Salerno and yet journeyed to it, sometimes on their own account, sometimes carrying their sick, blundering across deserts, steppes, marshes, and mountains, to be healed.

Looking down on a maze of roofs, spires, and cupolas, sipping his wine, Mordecai marveled, not for the first time, that this town of all towns-and not Rome, not Paris, not Constantinople, not Jerusalem -had developed a school of medicine that made it the world’s doctor.