Ariana Franklin - Mistress of the Art of Death

The older sentry cuffed him round the ear. “Shut up.” He turned back to Simon. “And that?”

“Milady’s dog.”

Ulf had, with difficulty, been left behind, but Gyltha had insisted that the Safeguard must go with Adelia everywhere. “He is no protection,” Adelia had protested. “When I was facing those damned crusaders, he skulked behind me. He’s a skulker.”

“Protection ain’t his job,” Gyltha had said. “He’s a safeguard.”

“Reckon as they can go in, eh, Rob?” The sentry winked at the woman in the entrance to her withy hut. “All right by you, Agnes?”

Even so, the guard captain was fetched, and was satisfied that the three were not concealing weapons before they were allowed through the wicket. Acton had to be restrained from going in with them. “Kill the Jews,” he was shouting, “kill the crucifiers.”

The reason for precaution became apparent as they were ushered into the bailey; fifty or so Jews were taking exercise in it, enjoying the sun. The men were mainly walking and talking; women were gossiping in one corner or playing games with their children. As with all Jews in a Christian country, they were dressed like anyone else, though one or two of the men wore the conelike Judenhut on their heads.

But what distinguished this particular group as the Jews was their shabbiness. Adelia was startled by it. In Salerno there were poor Jews, just as there were poor Sicilians, Greeks, Moslems, but their poverty was disguised by the alms flowing from their richer brethren. In fact, it was held, somewhat sniffily, by the Christians of Salerno that “the Jews have no beggars.” Charity was a precept of all the great religions; in Judaism, “Give unto Him of what is His, seeing that thou and what thou hast are

His” was law. Grace was bestowed on the giver rather than the receiver.

Adelia remembered one old man who’d driven her foster mother’s sister to distraction by his refusal to say thank you for the meals he’d taken in her kitchen. “Do I eat what is yours?” he used to ask. “I eat what is God’s.”

The sheriff’s charity to his unwanted guests, it appeared, was not so munificent. They were thin. The castle kitchen, Adelia thought, was unlikely to accord with the dietary laws, and therefore its meals would in many cases remain uneaten. The clothes in which these people had to hurry from their homes the year before were beginning to tatter.

Some of the women looked up expectantly as she and the others crossed the bailey. Their men were too deep in discussion to notice.

With the younger soldier from the gate leading the way, the three passed over the moat bridge, under the portcullis, and across another court.

The hall was cool, vast, and busy. Trestle tables stretched down its length, covered with documents, rolls, and tallies. Clerks poring over them occasionally broke off to run to the dais, where a large man sat in a large chair at another table on which other documents, rolls, and tallies were growing at a rate threatening to topple them.

Adelia was unacquainted with the role of sheriff, but Simon had said that as far as each shire was concerned, this was the man of greatest importance next to the king, the royal agent of the county who, with the diocesan bishop, wielded most of its justice and alone was responsible for the collection of its taxes, the keeping of its peace, pursuing its villains, ensuring there was no Sunday trading, seeing to it that everybody paid church tithes and the Church paid its dues to the Crown, arranging executions, appropriating the hanged one’s chattels for the king, as well as that of waifs, fugitives, outlaws, ensuring that treasure trove went into the royal coffers-and twice a year delivering the resultant money and its accounting to the king’s Exchequer at Winchester, where, Simon said, a penny’s discrepancy could lose him his place.

“With all that, why does anyone want the job in the first place?” Adelia inquired.

“He takes a percentage,” Simon said.

To judge from the quality of the clothes the Sheriff of Hertfordshire was wearing and the amount of gold and jewels adorning his fingers, the percentage was a big one, but at the moment, it was doubtful whether Sheriff Baldwin thought it enough. “Harassed” hardly described him; “distracted” did.

He stared with manic vacancy at the soldier who announced his visitors. “Can’t they see I’m busy? Don’t they know the justices in eyre are coming?”

A tall and bulky man, who’d been bending over some papers at the sheriff’s side, straightened up. “I think, my lord, these people may be helpful in the matter of the Jews,” Sir Rowley said.

He winked at Adelia. She looked back at him without favor. Another as ubiquitous as Roger of Acton. And perhaps more sinister.

Yesterday a note had arrived for Simon from Prior Geoffrey, warning him against the king’s tax collector: “The man was in the town on two occasions at least when a child disappeared. May the good Lord forgive me if I cast doubt where none is deserved, but it behooves us to be circumspect until we are sure of our ground.”

Simon accepted that the prior had cause for suspicion, “but no more than for anyone else.” He’d liked what he had seen of the tax collector, he said. Adelia, made privy to what lay beyond the amiable exterior when Sir Rowley had forced his presence on her examination of the dead children, did not. She found him disturbing.

It appeared he had the castle in thrall. The sheriff was staring up at him for help, incapable of dealing with any but his own immediate troubles. “Don’t they know there’s an eyre coming?”

Rowley turned to Simon. “My lord wishes to know your business here.”

Simon said, “With the lord’s permission, we would speak to Yehuda Gabirol.”

“No harm in that, eh, my lord? Shall I show them the way?” He was already moving.

The sheriff grabbed at him. “Don’t leave me, Picot.”

“Not for long, my lord, I promise.”

He ushered the trio down the hall, talking all the way. “The sheriff’s just been informed that the justices in eyre are intending to hold an assize in Cambridge. Coming on top of the presentment he must make to the Exchequer, that means considerable extra work, and he finds himself somewhat, shall we say, overwhelmed. So do I, of course.”

He smiled chubbily down at them; a less overwhelmed man would have been difficult to find. “One is trying to discover what debts are owed to the Jews and, therefore, to the king. Chaim was the chief moneylender in this county, and all his tallies went up in the tower fire. The difficulty of recovering what is not there to speak for itself is considerable. However…”

He gave an odd little sideways bow to Adelia. “I hear Madam Doctor has been dabbling in the Cam. Not a doctorly thing to do, one would have thought, considering what pours into it. Perhaps you had your reasons, ma’am?”

Adelia said, “What is an assize?”

They had gone through an arch and were following Sir Rowley up the winding staircase of a tower, the Safeguard pattering behind them.

Over his shoulder, the tax collector said, “Ah, an assize. A judgment really, by the king’s traveling justices. A Day of Judgment-and nearly as terrible as God’s for those in its scales. Judgment of ale and punishment for the watering down of. Judgment of bread, ditto for the underweight of. Gaol delivery, guilt or innocence of prisoners therein. Presentments of land, ownership of, presentment of quarrels, justification for…the list goes on. Juries to be provided. Doesn’t happen every year, but when it does…Mother of God help us, these steps are steep.”

He was puffing as he led them up. Shafts of sun coming in through arrow slits deep in the stone lit tiny landings, each with its arched door.