Ariana Franklin - Mistress of the Art of Death

Prior Geoffrey must say grace. Wine cups must be filled for the dedicatory toast to Thomas of Canterbury and his new recruit to martyred glory, Little Peter of Trumpington, the raisons d’être of the feast. A curious custom, Adelia thought, as she stood to drink to the health of the dead.

A discordant shriek cut across the respectful murmurs. “The infidel insults our holy saints.” Roger of Acton was pointing in triumphant outrage at Mansur. “He drinks to them in water.”

Adelia closed her eyes. God, don’t let him stab the swine.

But Mansur stayed calm, sipping his water. It was Sir Joscelin who administered a rebuke clear to the entire hall: “By his faith, this gentleman forswears liquor, Master Roger. If you cannot hold yours, may I suggest you follow his example.”

Nicely done. Acton collapsed onto his bench. Adelia’s opinion of her host rose.

Do not be charmed, though, she told herself. Memento mori. Literally, remember death. He may be the killer; he is a crusader. So is the tax collector.

And so was another man on the top table; Sir Gervase had watched every step of her progress into the hall.

Is it you ?

Adelia was assured now that the man who had murdered the children had been on crusade. It was not merely identification of the sweetmeat as an Arab jujube, but that the hiatus between the attack on the sheep and the one on the children coincided exactly with a period when Cambridge had responded to the call of Outremer and sent some of its men to answer it.

The trouble was that there had been the absence of so many…

“Who left town in the Great Storm year?” Gyltha had said when applied to. “Well, there was Ma Mill’s daughter as got herself in the family way by the peddler…”

“Men, Gyltha, men.”

“Oh, there was a mort of young men went. See, the Abbot of Ely called for the country to take the Cross.” By “country” Gyltha meant “county.” “Must of been hundreds went off with Lord Fitzgilbert to the Holy Places.”

It had been a bad year, Gyltha said. The Great Storm had flattened crops, flood swept away people and buildings, the fens were inundated, even the gentle Cam rose in fury. God had shown His anger at Cambridgeshire’s sins. Only a crusade against His enemies could placate Him.

Lord Fitzgilbert, looking for lands in Syria to replace his drowned estates, had planted Christ’s banner in Cambridge ’s marketplace. Young men with livelihoods destroyed by the storm came to it, and so did the ambitious, the adventurous, rejected suitors, and husbands with nagging wives. Courts gave criminals the option of going to prison or taking the Cross. Sins whispered to priests in confession were absolved-as long as the perpetrator joined the crusade.

A small army marched away.

Lord Fitzgilbert had returned pickled in a coffin and now lay in his own chapel under a marble effigy of himself, its mailed legs crossed in the sign of a crusader. Some arrived home and died of the diseases they carried with them, to lie in less exalted graves with a plain sword carved into the stone above. Some were merely a name on a mortuary list carried by survivors. Some had found a richer, drier life in Syria and opted to stay there.

Others came back to take up their former occupation so that, according to Gyltha, Adelia and Simon must now take a keen look at two shopkeepers, several villeins, a blacksmith, and the very apothecary who supplied Dr. Mansur’s medicines, not to mention Brother Gilbert and the silent canon who had accompanied Prior Geoffrey on the road.

“Brother Gilbert went on crusade?”

“That he did. Nor it ain’t no good suspecting only them as came back rich like sirs Joscelin and Gervase,” Gyltha had said relentlessly. “There’s lots borrow from Jews, small amounts maybe but big enough to them as can’t pay the interest. Nor it ain’t certain a fellow yelling for the Jew to swing was the same devil killed the little uns. There’s plenty like to see a Jew’s neck stretch and they call theyselves Christians.”

Daunted by the size of the problem, Adelia had grimaced at the housekeeper for her logic even as she’d acknowledged it as inescapable.

So now, looking around, she must attach no sinister significance to Sir Joscelin’s obvious wealth. It could have been gained in Syria, rather than from Chaim the Jew. It had certainly transformed a Saxon holding into a flint-built manor of considerable beauty. The enormous hall in which they ate possessed a newly carved roof as fine as any she’d seen in England. From the gallery above the dais issued music played with professional skill on recorder, vielle, and flute. The personal eating irons that a guest usually took to a meal had been made redundant by a knife and spoon laid at each place. Saucers, finger bowls waiting on the table were of exquisite silverwork, the napkins of damask.

She expressed her admiration to her companions. Hugh the huntsman merely nodded. The little man on her left said, “But you ought to’ve seen that in old days, wonderful wormy barn of a place near to falling down that was when Sir Tibault had un, him as was Joscelin’s father. Nasty old brute he was, God rest him, as drank hisself to death in the end. Ain’t I right, Hugh?”

Hugh grunted. “Son’s different.”

“That he is. Different as chalk and cheese. Brought the place back to life, Joscelin has. Used un’s gold well.”

“Gold?” Adelia asked.

The little man warmed to her interest. “So he told me. ‘There’s gold in Outremer, Master Herbert,’ he said to me. ‘Hatfuls of it, Master Herbert.’ See, I’m by way of being his bootmaker; a man don’t fib to his bootmaker.”

“Did Sir Gervase come back with gold as well?”

“A ton or more, so they say, only he ain’t so free with his money.”

“Did they acquire this gold together?”

“Can’t answer for that. Probable they did. They ain’t hardly apart. David and Jonathan, them.”

Adelia glanced toward the high table at David and Jonathan, good-looking, confident, so easy together, talking over the prioress’s head.

If there were two killers, both in accord…It hadn’t crossed her mind, but it should have. “Do they have wives?”

“Gervase do, a poor, dribblin’ little piece as stays home.” The bootmaker was happy to display his knowledge of great men. “Sir Joscelin now, he’s atrading for the Baron of Peterborough’s daughter. Good match that’d be.”

A shrill horn blasted away all talk. The guests sat up. Food was coming.

AT THE HIGH TABLE, Rowley Picot allowed his knee to rub against that of the sheriff’s wife, keeping her happy. He also winked at the young nun seated at the trestle below to make her blush, but found that his eyes were more often directed toward little Madam Doctor down among the toilers and hewers. Washed up nicely, he’d give her that. Creamy, velvety skin disappeared into that saffron bodice, inviting touch. Made his fingertips twitch. Not the only thing to twitch, either; that gleaming hair suggested she was blonde all over…

Damn the trollop-Sir Rowley shook off a lubricious reverie-she was finding out too much, and Master Simon with her, relying on their bloody great Arab for protection, a eunuch, for God’s sake.

T O HELL , thought Adelia, there’s more.

For the second time, a blast on the horn had announced another course from the kitchen, led by the marshal. More and even larger platters, piled like petty mountains, each needing two men to carry them, were greeted with cheers from the merry diners, who were getting merrier.

The wreckage from the first course was removed. Gravy-stained trenchers were put into a wheelbarrow and taken outside to where ragged men, women, and children waited to fall on them. Fresh ones took their place.