Ariana Franklin: Mistress of the Art of Death

She set off across the grass. Simon threw himself forward and stopped her. “May we pursue this logic a little further, Doctor? You are about to perform an operation, it may be a dangerous operation…”

“Yes. Yes, I suppose it is.”

“…on a prelate of some importance. His friends await him there”-Simon of Naples pointed down the darkening hill-“not all of them rejoicing at our interference in this matter. We are strangers to them, we have no standing in their eyes.” To continue, he had to dodge in front of her, for she would have gone on toward the cart. “It could, I’m not saying it will, but it could be that those friends have a logic of their own, and, should this prior die, they will hang the three of us like logical washing on a clothesline. I say again, should we not let nature take its course? I merely ask it.”

“The man is dying, Master Simon.”

Then the light of Mansur’s lanterns fell on her face and he stood back, defeated. “Yes, my Becca would do the same.” Rebecca was his wife, the standard by whom he judged human charity. “Proceed, Doctor.”

“I shall need your assistance.”

He raised his hands and then let them drop. “You have it.” He went with her, sighing and muttering. “Would it be so bad if nature took its course, Lord? That’s all I’m asking.”

Mansur waited until the two had climbed into the cart, then settled his back against it, folded his arms, and kept watch.

The last ray from the dying sun went out, but no compensating moon had yet taken its place, leaving fen and hill in blackness.

DOWN ON THE ROADSIDE VERGE, a bulky figure detached itself from the companionship round the pilgrims’ fire, as if to answer a call of nature. Unseen in the blackness, it crossed the road and, with an agility surprising in the weighty, leaped the ditch and disappeared into the bushes by the side of the track. Silently cursing the brambles that tore its cloak, it climbed toward the ledge on which the cart rested, sniffing to allow the stink of the mules to guide it, sometimes following a glimpse of light through the trees.

It paused to try and listen to the conversation of the two knights who stood like forbidding statuary on the track out of sight of the cart, the nosepieces of their helmets rendering the one indistinguishable from the other.

It heard one of them mention the Wild Hunt.

“…the devil’s hill, no doubt of it,” the companion replied clearly. “No peasant comes near the place, and I could wish we hadn’t. Give me the Saracens any day.”

The listener crossed himself and climbed higher, picking his way with infinite care. Unseen, he passed the Arab, another piece of statuary in the moonlight. Finally he had reached a point from which to look down on the cart, its lanterns giving it the appearance of a glowing opal on black velvet.

He settled himself. Around him, the undergrowth rustled with the comings and goings of uncaring life on the woodland floor. Overhead, a barn owl shrieked as it hunted.

There was a sudden gabble from the cart. A light, clear voice: “Lie back; this shouldn’t hurt. Master Simon, if you would lift up his skirts…”

Prior Geoffrey was heard to say sharply, “What does she do down there? What’s in her hand?”

And the man addressed as Master Simon: “Lie back, my lord. Close your eyes; be assured this lady knows what she’s about.”

And the prior, panicking: “Well, I don’t. I am fallen to a witch. God have mercy on me, this female will snatch my soul through my pizzle.”

And the lighter voice, sterner, concentrating: “Keep still, blast you. Do you want a burst bladder? Hold the penis up, Master Simon. Up, I need a smooth passageway.”

There was a squeak from the prior.

“The bowl, Simon. The bowl, quick. Hold it there, there .”

And then a sound, like the splash of a waterfall into a basin, and a groan of satisfaction such as a man makes in the act of love, or when his bladder is relieved of a content that has been torturing it.

On the ledge above, the king’s tax collector opened his eyes wide, pursed his lips in a moue of interest, nodded to himself, and began his descent.

He wondered if the knights had heard what he’d heard. Probably not, he thought; they were nearly out of earshot of the cart, and the coifs that cushioned their heads from the iron of their helmets deadened sound. Only he, then, apart from the cart’s occupants and the Arab, was in possession of an intriguing piece of knowledge.

Returning the way he had come, he had to crouch in shadow several times; it was surprising, despite the darkness, how many pilgrims were venturing on the hill this night.

He saw Brother Gilbert, presumably attempting to find out what was going on in the cart. He saw Hugh, the prioress’s huntsman, either on the same business or maybe investigating coverts, as a huntsman should. And was the indistinct shape slipping into the trees that of a female? The merchant’s wife looking for somewhere in private in which to answer a call of nature? A nun on the same errand? Or a monk?

He couldn’t tell.

Dawn lighted on the pilgrims by the side of the road and found them damp and irritable. The prioress railed at her knight in discontent when he came to ask how she had passed the night: “Where were you, Sir Joscelin?”

“Guarding the prior, madam. He was in the hands of foreigners and might have needed assistance.”

The prioress didn’t care. “Such was his choice. I could have proceeded last night if you had been with us for protection. It is only four miles more to Cambridge. Little Saint Peter is waiting for this reliquary in which to lodge his bones and has waited long enough.”

“You should have brought the bones with you, madam.”

The prioress’s trip to Canterbury had been a pilgrimage not only of devotion but also to collect the reliquary that had been on order from Saint Thomas à Becket’s goldsmiths for a twelvemonth. Once the skeleton of her convent’s new saint, which was lying in an inferior box in Cambridge, was interred in it, she expected great things from it.

“I carried his holy knuckle,” she snapped, “and if Prior Geoffrey possessed the faith he should, it would have been enough to mend him.”

“Even so, Mother, we could not have left the poor prior to strangers in his predicament, could we?” the little nun asked gently.

The prioress certainly could have. She had no more liking for Prior Geoffrey than he had for her. “He has his own knight, does he not?”

“It takes two to stand guard all night, madam,” Sir Gervase said. “One to watch while the other sleeps.” He was short-tempered. Indeed, both knights were red-eyed, as if neither had rested.

“What sleep did I have? Such a disturbance there was with people coming and going all around. And why does he demand a double guard?”

Much of the ill feeling between Saint Radegund’s convent and Saint Augustine ’s canonry of Barnwell was because Prioress Joan suspected jealousy on the prior’s part for the miracles already wrought by Little Saint Peter’s bones at the nunnery. Now, properly encased, their fame would spread, petitioners to them would swell her convent’s income, and the miracles would increase. And so, without doubt, would Prior Geoffrey’s envy. “Let us be on our way before he recovers.” She looked around. “Where’s that Hugh with my hounds? Oh, the devil, he’s surely never taken them onto the hill.”

Sir Joscelin was off after the recalcitrant huntsman on the instant. Sir Gervase, who had his own dogs among Hugh’s pack, followed him.

THE PRIOR WAS REGAINING strength after a good night’s sleep. He sat on a log, eating eggs from a pan over the Salernitans’ fire, not knowing which question to ask first. “I am amazed, Master Simon,” he said.