Ariana Franklin - Mistress of the Art of Death

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When Christian children are being kidnapped and murdered in 12th century Cambridge, England, Adelia is sent to seek out the truth, and hopefully absolve the Jews being blamed for the crimes, before the townspeople take matters into their own hands. During a time when women are second-class citizens at best, and the practice of scientific autopsies is considered blasphemous, Adelia is the most skilled “speaker for the dead” hailing from progressive Naples – yet she is forced to masquerade as the meek assistant to her colleagues during their frantic search for the real child killer.
From The Washington Post
It's hard enough to produce a gripping thriller – harder still to write convincing historical fiction that recreates a living, breathing past. But this terrific book does both, and does it with a cast of characters so vivid and engaging that you'd be happy to read about them even if they weren't on the track of a sexually depraved serial child-murderer.
Mistress of the Art of Death opens with a clever takeoff on Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, which introduces the central players, a group of pilgrims returning from the shrine of the newly canonized St. Thomas à Becket: a prior and a prioress (from rival abbeys); two knights, lately returned from the Crusades; an overweight but very shrewd tax collector; a gaggle of citizens; and three Gypsies, who are in fact secret investigators sent by the king of Sicily to discover the truth behind a series of gruesome murders near Cambridge.
Four children have been found dead and mutilated. The Jews of Cambridge have been blamed for the murders, the most prominent Jewish moneylender and his wife have been killed by a mob, and the rest of the Jewish community is shut up in the castle under the protection of the sheriff.
As the only group allowed to commit usury – that is, to lend money at interest – the Jews are prosperous, and thus the king of England considers them his prize cash cows. He wants them cleared of suspicion and released, so they can go back to paying him high taxes. To this end, he appeals to his cousin, the king of Sicily, to send his best master of the art of death: a doctor skilled in "reading" bodies. Enter Vesuvia Adelia Rachel Ortese Aguilar, 25, the best mistress of death that the medical school at Salerno has ever produced. With Simon of Naples, a Jewish "fixer," and Mansur, a eunuch with a mean throwing-ax, it's her job to find a murderer before he – or she – can kill again.
Adelia comes onstage when she meets the prior under dramatic circumstances on the road, saving him from a burst bladder caused by a swollen prostate by thrusting a hollow reed up his penis. Not every man would follow up on an introduction like this, but the prior wants the mystery solved, too – and if the solution happens to ace out the rival abbey, so much the better.
Adelia finds 12th-century England a barbarous place. England finds Adelia a jaw-dropping anomaly. And Franklin exploits the contrast brilliantly. We're on Adelia's side from the start, identifying with her quite modern sensibilities – but at the same time, as she begins to know the English inhabitants as people, we sympathize with them, too. And a small but nice romantic subplot develops as the celibate, married-to-science Adelia discovers to her horror that live bodies have minds of their own.
Though the story is set in Cambridge, the Crusades run through the culture. We see both the corruption and the idealistic faith of the period, and while the Jews come off by far the best, Christians and Muslims are portrayed with evenhanded understanding. Beyond this, the story's background is a wonderful tapestry of the paradoxes and struggles of the times: Christianity and Islam, Christians and Jews, science and superstition, and the new power of Henry II's rule of law versus the stranglehold of the Church.
There are also fascinating details of historical forensic medicine, entertaining notes on women in science (the medical school at Salerno is not fictional), and a nice running commentary on science and superstition, as distinct from religious faith. Franklin does this subtly, by showing effects, rather than by beating us over the head with her opinions. These are clear enough but expressed with artistry rather than political correctness.
Franklin likewise balances cynicism, humanity and objectivity well. Adelia feels horror, fury and sympathy on behalf of the victims and the bereaved, but she doesn't let that get in the way of finding the truth. And the story makes it clear that the motives of those who want a solution to the crime are not necessarily purer than the motives of those who want to conceal it.
Mistress of the Art of Death is wonderfully plotted, with a dozen twists – and with final rabbits pulled out of not one hat but two, as both the mystery and the romance reach satisfactorily unexpected conclusions. It's a historical mystery that succeeds brilliantly as both historical fiction and crime-thriller. Above all, though, Franklin has written a terrific story, whose appeal rests on the personalities of the all-too-human beings who inhabit it.
– Diana Gabaldon, author of a series of historical novels, including "Outlander" and "A Breath of Snow and Ashes."

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“I think they die too quickly for him,” Simon said. “I think he wants their attention even after they are dead.”

Adelia turned her head away and watched midges dancing in a shaft of sun.

“I know what parts I’ll cut off when we catch him, inshallah, ” Mansur said.

“I shall assist you,” Simon agreed.

Two men so different. The Arab, looming in his chair, dark face almost featureless against the white folds of his headdress; the Jew, the sun catching the line of his cheek, leaning forward, his fingers turning and turning his flagon. Both in accord.

Why did men think that was the worst thing? Perhaps, for them, it was. But it was trivial, like castrating a rogue animal. The harm done by this particular creature was too vast for human reprisal, the pain it had caused spread too far. Adelia thought of Agnes, mother of Harold, and her vigil. She thought of the parents who’d gathered round the little catafalques in Saint Augustine ’s church. Of two men in Chaim’s cellar, praying as they did violence to their nature by ridding themselves of a fearful burden. She thought of Dina and the shadow fallen over her that could never be lifted.

It accounted for the wish for eternal damnation, she thought, that there could be no reparation made to such dead, nor for the living they’d left behind. Not in this life.

“Do you agree with me, Doctor?”

“What?”

“My theory on the mutilations.”

“It is not in my brief. I am not here to understand why a murderer does what he does, merely to prove that he did it.”

They stared at her.

“I apologize,” she said more quietly, “but I will not enter his mind.”

Simon said, “We may have to do that very thing before this business is finished, Doctor. Think as he thinks.”

“Then you do it,” she said. “You’re the subtle one.”

He took in a sad breath; they were all gloomy this evening. “Let us consider what we know of him so far. Mansur?”

“No killings here before the saint boy. Maybe he came new to this place a year ago.”

“Ah, then you think he’s done this before, somewhere else?”

“A jackal is always a jackal.”

“True,” Simon said. “Or he could be a new recruit to the armies of Beelzebub, just starting to slake his desires.”

Adelia frowned; that the killer should be a very young man did not accord with her sense of him.

Simon’s head came up. “You don’t think so, Doctor?”

She sighed; she was to be drawn in despite herself. “Are we supposing?”

“We can do little else.”

Reluctantly, because the apprehension came from less than a shadow glimpsed in a fog, she said, “The attacks are frenzied, which argues youth, but they are planned, which argues maturity. He lures them to a special and isolated place, like the hill; I think that must be so because nobody hears their torture. Possibly, he takes his time, not in the case of Little Peter-he was more hurried there-but with the subsequent children.”

She paused because the theory was hideous and founded on such little proof. “It may be that they are kept alive for some time after their abduction. That would argue a perverted patience and a love of prolonged agony. I would have expected the corpse of the most recent victim, considering the day he was taken, to have displayed more advanced decomposition than it did.”

She glared at them. “But that could be due to so many causes that, as a proposition, it bears no weight at all.”

“Ach.” Simon pushed his cup away as if it offended him. “We are no further. We shall, after all, have to inquire into the movements of forty-seven people, whether they wear black worsted or not. I shall have to write to my wife and tell her I will not be home yet.”

“There is one thing,” Adelia said. “It occurred to me today when I talked with Mistress Dina. That poor lady believes all the killings are the result of a conspiracy to blame her people…”

“They are not.” Simon said. “Yes, he tries to implicate the Jews with his Stars of David, but that is not why he kills.”

“I agree. Whatever the prime motive for these murders, it is not racial; there is too much sexual ferocity involved.”

She paused. Having sworn not to enter the mind of the killer, she could feel it reaching out to enmesh her. “Nevertheless, he may see no reason why he should not gain from it. Why did he cast Little Peter’s body on Chaim’s lawn?”

Simon’s eyebrows went up; the question didn’t need asking. “Chaim was a Jew, the eternal scapegoat.”

“It worked damn well, too,” Mansur said. “No suspicion on the killer. And”-he dragged a finger across his throat-“good-bye, Jews.”

“Exactly,” said Adelia. “Good-bye, Jews. Again, I agree it is probable that the man wanted to implicate the Jews while he was about it. But why choose that particular Jew? Why not put the body near one of the other houses? They were deserted and dark that night because all Jewry was attending Dina’s wedding. If he were in a boat-and presumably he was-the killer could have lain the corpse here; this house, Old Benjamin’s, is near the river. Instead, he took unnecessary risk and chose Chaim’s lawn, which was well lighted, to throw the body onto.”

Simon leaned even further forward until his nose almost touched one of the table’s candlesticks. “Continue.”

Adelia shrugged. “I merely look at the end result. The Jews are blamed; a mob is fired into madness; Chaim, the biggest moneylender in Cambridge, is hanged. The tower holding the records of all those owing money to the usurers goes up in flames, Chaim’s with it.”

“He owed money to Chaim? Our killer having satisfied his perversion also wants his debt canceled?” Simon considered it. “But could he have reckoned on the mob burning the tower down? Or that it would turn on Chaim and hang him, for that matter?”

“He is in the crowd,” Mansur said, and his boy’s voice went into a shriek: “Kill the Jews. Kill Chaim. No more filthy usury. To the castle, people. Bring torches.”

Startled by the sound, the head of Ulf peeped over the rail of the gallery, a white and unruly dandelion clock in the growing darkness. Adelia shook a finger at it. “Go to bed.”

“Why you talking that foreign gobble?”

“So you can’t eavesdrop. Go to bed.”

More of Ulf appeared over the rail. “You reckon the Judes didn’t do for Peter and them after all, then?”

“No,” Adelia told him and added, because, after all, it was Ulf who had discovered and shown her the drain, “Peter was dead when they found him on the lawn. They were frightened and put him into the drain to take suspicion off themselves.”

“Mighty clever of ’em, weren’t it?” The boy gave a grunt of disgust. “Who did do for him, then?”

“We don’t know. Somebody who wanted to see Chaim blamed, perhaps someone who owed him money. Go to bed.”

Simon held up his hand to detain the boy. “We do not know who, my son. We try to find out.” To Adelia he said in Salernitan, “The child is intelligent; he has already been of use. Perhaps he can scout for us.”

“No.” She was surprised by her own vehemence.

“I can help.” Ulf left the balustrade to come pattering down the stairs in a rush. “I’m a tracker. I got my hoof all over this town.”

Gyltha came in to light the candles. “Ulf, you get to bed afore I feed you to the cats.”

“Tell ’em, Gran,” Ulf said desperately. “Tell how I’m a fine tracker. And I hear things, don’t I, Gran? I hear things nobody else don’t acause nobody don’t notice me, I can go places… I got a right, Gran, Harold and Peter was my friends.”

Gyltha’s eyes met Adelia’s and the momentary terror in them told Adelia that Gyltha knew what she knew: The killer would kill again.

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