Ariana Franklin - Mistress of the Art of Death

What human soul was so tormented that it would knife and knife a sheep?

Only one. Pray God, only one.

“Here we go.” Ulf had uncovered an elongated skull.

“Well done.” On her side of the pit they’d made, Adelia’s fingers also encountered bone. “It’s the hindquarters we want.”

Old Walt had made it easy for them; in his attempt to give peace to the spirits of his sheep, he had arranged the corpses neatly in rows, like dead soldiers on a battlefield.

Adelia dragged out one of the skeletons and, sitting back, laid its tail end across her knees, brushing away chalk. She had to wait for another shower to pass before the light was bright enough to examine it. At last it was.

She said, quietly, “Ulf, fetch Master Simon and Mansur.”

The bones were clean, the wool no longer clinging to them, consistent with them having lain here for a long time. There was terrible damage to what, in a pig-the only animal skeleton with which she was familiar-would have been the pelvis and pubes. Old Walt had been right; no toothmarks, these. Here were stab wounds.

When the boy had gone, she felt for her purse, loosened the drawstring, brought out the small traveling slate that went everywhere with her, opened it, and began to draw.

The gouges in these bones corresponded to those inflicted on the children; not caused by the same blade, perhaps, but by one very similar, crudely faceted like the end of a flattish piece of wood that had been whittled to a point.

What in hell’s weaponry was it? Certainly not wood. Not a steel blade, not necessarily iron, too roughly shaped. Sharp, though, hideously sharp-the animal’s spine had been severed.

Was this where the killer’s shocking sexual rage had first shown itself? On defenseless animals? Always the defenseless with him.

But why the hiatus between six, seven years ago and this last year? Compulsions like his could surely not be held in for so long. Presumably, they hadn’t been; other animals had been killed elsewhere and their death put down to a wolf. When had animals ceased to satisfy him? When had he graduated to children? Was Little Saint Peter his first?

He moved away, she thought. A jackal is always a jackal. There have been other deaths in other places, but that hill up there is his favored killing place. It is the ground where he dances. He’s been away, and now he’s come back.

Carefully, Adelia closed the slate against the rain, put the skeleton aside, and lay down on her front so that she could reach into the pit for more bones.

Somebody bade her good morning.

He’s come back.

For a moment she was very still, then she rolled over, awkward and exposed, her hands on the skeletons in the pit behind her in order to support her upper body from collapsing on top of them.

“Talking to bones again?” the tax inspector asked with interest. “What will these say? Baa? ”

Adelia became aware that her skirt had ridden up to show a considerable amount of bare leg, and she was in no position to pull it down.

Sir Rowley leaned down to put his hands under her armpits and raise her like a doll. “A lady Lazarus from the tomb,” he said, “complete with gravedust.” He began patting at her person, releasing clouds of sour-smelling chalk.

She pushed his hand away, no longer frightened but angry, very angry. “What do you do here?”

“Walking for my health, Doctor. You should approve.”

He gleamed with health and good humor; he was the most defined thing in the gray landscape, ruddy cheeks and cloak; he looked like an oversized robin. He swept off his cap to bow to her and in the same movement picked up her slate. With apparent clumsiness, he knocked it open, exposing the drawings for him to look at.

Geniality went. He bent down to peer at the skeleton. Slowly, he straightened. “When was this done?”

“Six or seven years ago,” she said.

She thought, Was it you? Is there madness behind those jaunty blue eyes?

“So he began with sheep,” he said.

“Yes.” A swift intelligence? Or the cunning to assume it, knowing what she had surmised already?

His jaw had tightened. It was a different, much less good-natured man, who stood in front of her now. He seemed to have gotten thinner.

The rain was increasing. No sign of Simon or Mansur.

Suddenly he had her by the arm and was pulling her along. Safeguard, having given no warning of the man’s approach, scampered happily behind them. Adelia knew she should be afraid, but all she felt was outrage.

They stopped under a sheltering beech tree, where Picot shook her. “Why are you ahead of me each time? Who are you, woman?”

She was Vesuvia Adelia Rachel Ortese Aguilar, and she was being manhandled. “I am a doctor of Salerno. You will show me respect.”

He looked at his big hands that were clutching her arms and released her. “I beg your pardon, Doctor.” He tried smiling. “This won’t do, will it?” He took off his cloak, laid it carefully at the foot of the tree, and invited her to sit on it. She was glad to do so; her legs were still shaking.

He sat down beside her, talking reasonably. “But do you see, I have a particular interest in discovering this killer, yet each time I follow a thread that might take me into the depth of his labyrinth, I find not the Minotaur but Ariadne.”

And Ariadne finds you, she thought. She said, “May I ask what thread it was led you here today?”

Safeguard lifted a leg against the tree trunk, then settled itself on an unoccupied corner of the cloak.

“Oh, that,” Sir Rowley said. “Easily explained. You were good enough to employ me in writing down the story those poor bones told you in the hermit’s hut, their removal from chalk to silt. A moment’s reflection even suggested when that removal took place.” He looked at her. “I assume your menfolk are searching the hill?”

She nodded.

“They won’t find anything. I know damn well they won’t, because I’ve been prowling it myself for the last two evenings and believe me, lady, it is no place to be when night comes down.”

He slammed his fist down on the stretch of cloak between them, making Adelia jump and Safeguard look up. “But it’s there, goddammit. The clue to the Minotaur leads there. Those poor youngsters told us it did.” He looked at his hand as if he hadn’t seen it before, uncurling it. “So I made my excuses to the lord sheriff and rode over to have yet another look. And what do I find? Madam Doctor listening to more bones. There, now you know all about it.”

He’d become cheery again.

Rain had been pattering while he talked; now the sun came out. He’s like the weather, Adelia thought. And I don’t know all about it.

She said, “Do you like jujubes?”

“Love ’em, ma’am. Why? Are you offering me one?”

“No.”

“Oh.” He squinted at her as at someone whose mind shouldn’t be disturbed further, then spoke slowly and kindly. “Perhaps you would tell me who sent you and your companions on this investigation?”

“The King of Sicily,” she said.

He nodded cautiously. “The King of Sicily.”

She began to laugh. It might have been the Queen of Sheba or the Grand Inquisitor; he couldn’t recognize the truth because he didn’t use it. He thinks I am mad.

As she laughed the sun sent its light through the young beech leaves to fall on her like a shower of newly minted copper pennies.

His face changed so that she sobered and looked away from him.

“Go home,” he said. “Go back to Salerno.”

Now she could see Ulf leading Simon and Mansur toward them from the direction of the sheep pit.

The tax collector was all reasonableness again. Good day, good day, my masters. Having attended the good doctor while she was performing the postmortem on the poor children…he, like them, had suspected the hill as being the site of…had searched the ground yet found nothing…Should they not, all four, exchange what knowledge they possessed to bring this fiend to justice?