Ariana Franklin - Mistress of the Art of Death

Adelia sat up as a cowled figure punted past. “Who’s that?”

Ulf peered through the fading light. “Him? That’s old Brother Gil.”

Brother Gilbert, eh? “Where’s he going?”

“Taking the host to the hermits. Barnwell’s got hermits, same as the nuns, and near all of ’em live along the banks upriver in the forests.” Ulf spat. “Gran don’t hold with them. Dirty old scarecrows, she reckon, cuttin’ theyselves off from everybody else. Ain’t Christian, Gran says.”

So Barnwell’s monks used the river to supply the recluses just as the nuns did.

“But it’s evening,” Adelia said. “Why do they go so late? Brother Gilbert won’t be back in time for Compline.”

The religious lived by the tolling of holy hours. For Cambridge generally, the bells acted as a daytime clock; appointments were made by them, sandglasses turned, business begun and closed; they rang laborers to their fields at Lauds, sent them home at vespers. But their clanging by night allowed sleeping laity the schadenfreude of staying in bed while nuns and monks were having to issue from their cells and dorters to sing vigils.

An appalling knowingness spread over Ulf’s unlovely little features. “That’s why,” he said. “Gives ’em a night off. Good night’s sleep under the stars, bit of hunting or fishing next day, visit a pal, maybe, they all do it. ’Course the nuns take advantage, Gran says, nobody don’t know what they get up to in them forests. But…”

Suddenly, he was squinting at her. “Brother Gilbert?”

She squinted back, nodding. “He could be.” How vulnerable children were, she thought. If Ulf with all his mother-wit and knowledge of the circumstances was slow to suspect someone of standing that he knew, the others had been easy prey.

“He’s grumpy, old Gil, I grant,” the child said, reluctant, “but he speaks fair to young ’uns and he’s a cru-” Ulf clapped his hands over his mouth and for the first time Adelia saw him discomposed. “Oh my arse, he went on crusade.”

The sun was down now and there were fewer boats on the Cam; those that were had lanterns at the prow so that the river became an untidy necklace of lights.

Still the two of them sat where they were, reluctant to leave, attracted and repelled by the river, so close to the souls of the children it had taken that the rustle of its reeds seemed to carry their whispers.

Ulf growled at it. “Why don’t you run backwards, you bugger?”

Adelia put her arm round his shoulders; she could have wept for him. Yes, reverse nature and time. Bring them home.

Matilda W.’s voice shrieked for them to come in for their supper.

“How’s about tomorrow, then?” Ulf asked as they walked up to the house. “We could take old Blackie. He punts well enough.”

“I wouldn’t dream of going without Mansur,” she said, “and if you don’t show him respect, you will stay behind.”

She knew, as Ulf did, that they must explore the river. Somewhere along its banks there was a building, or a path leading to a building, where such horror had occurred that it must declare itself.

It might not have a sign outside to that effect, but she would know it when she saw it.

THAT NIGHT, there was a figure standing on the far bank of the Cam.

Adelia saw it from her open solar window when she was brushing her hair and was so afraid she could not move. For a moment, she and the shadow under the trees faced each other with the intensity of lovers separated by a chasm.

She backed away, blowing out her candle and feeling behind her for the dagger she kept on her bedside table at night, not daring to take her eyes off the thing on the other bank in case it leaped across the water and in through the window.

Once she had steel in her hand she felt better. Ridiculous. It would need to have wings or a siege ladder to reach Old Benjamin’s windows. It couldn’t see her now; the house was in darkness.

But she knew it watched as she closed the lattice. Felt its eyes piercing the walls as she padded on bare feet downstairs to make sure everywhere was bolted, Safeguard reluctantly following.

Two arms raised a weapon above her head as she reached the hall.

“Gor bugger,” said Matilda B. “You gone and scared the shit out of I.”

“Likewise,” Adelia told her, panting. “There’s somebody across the river.”

The maid lowered the poker she’d been holding. “Been there every night since your lot went to the castle. Watching, always watching. And little Ulf the only man in the place.”

“Where is Ulf?”

Matilda pointed toward the stairs to the undercroft. “Safe asleep.”

“You’re sure?”

“Certain.”

Together the two women peered through a pane in the rose window.

“Gone now.”

That the figure had disappeared was worse than if it were still there.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Adelia wanted to know.

“Reckon as you had enough on your shoulders. Told the watch, though. Shit lot of good they were. Didn’t see nobody nor nothin’, not surprising, the rumpus they made marching over the bridge to get there. Peeping Tom, they reckoned it was.”

Matilda B. went to the middle of the room to replace the poker. For a second, it vibrated against the bars of the fire grate as if the hand that held it was shaking too much to release it. “Ain’t a Peeping Tom, though, is it?”

“No.”

The next day, Adelia moved Ulf into the castle tower to stay with Gyltha and Mansur.

You will not go without me,” Sir Rowley said, struggling out of bed and falling. “Ow, ow, God rot Roger of Acton. Give me a cleaver and I’ll chop his privates for him, I’ll use them for fish bait, I’ll…”

Trying not to laugh, Adelia and Mansur raised her patient from the floor and put him back to bed. Ulf retrieved his nightcap and replaced it on his head.

“It will be safe enough with Mansur and Ulf-and we are going in daylight,” she said. “You, on the other hand, will indulge in light exercise. A gentle walk round the room to strengthen the muscles, that is all you are capable of at the moment, as you see.”

The tax collector let out a snarl of frustration and hammered his bedclothes, an action that caused another moan, this time of pain.

“Stop that nonsense,” Adelia told him. “Anyway, it wasn’t Acton who wielded the cleaver. I’m not sure who it was, there was such a confusion.”

“I don’t care. I want him hanged before the assize judges look at his bloody tonsure and let him go.”

“He should be punished,” she said. Acton was certainly responsible for whipping into a frenzy the group that had forced their way in to desecrate Simon’s grave. “But I hope he is not hanged.”

“He attacked a royal castle, woman, he damn near neutered me, he needs basting over a slow fire with a spit up his arse.” Sir Rowley shifted his position and looked at her sideways. “Have you at all dwelt on the fact that you and I were the only ones to receive injury in the melee? Apart from the likely lads I put out of action, I mean.”

She had not. “In my case, a broken nose hardly merits the title of injury.”

“It could have been a great deal worse.”

It could, but it had been accidental; in a sense, her own fault for running into battle.

“Moreover,” Rowley said, still cunning, “the rabbi remained unhurt.”

She was becoming confused. “Are you implicating the Jews?”

“Of course not. I am merely pointing out that the good rabbi was not set upon. What I’m saying is that only two people remain inquiring into the death of the children now that Simon is dead. You and I. And we were hurt.”