Ariana Franklin - Mistress of the Art of Death

“Jews’ money,” Adelia said. “He owed it to the Jews.”

He sighed. “I suppose it was. Well, at least our friends in the tower have been absolved.”

“And is the town to be made aware that they are absolved?” Adelia jerked an inelegant thumb toward the room in which the nun was housed. “She will be put on trial?” She was getting restive; there was a reservation, a fogginess, in some of the prior’s answers.

He went to the window and opened the shutter a crack. “They said it would rain. The dawn was a true shepherd’s warning, apparently. Well, the gardens need it after a dry spring.” He closed the shutter. “Yes, an announcement declaring the Jews’ innocence shall be trumpeted in full assize-thank heaven it is still in progress. But as for the…female…I have asked for a convocation of all those concerned to get to the truth of the matter. They are gathering now.”

“A convocation? Why not a trial?” And why at nighttime?

As if she hadn’t spoken, he said, “I expected it to meet at the castle, but the clerk of the assize deemed that an inquiry be better held here so that the legal processes should not be confused. And after all, it is here that the children are buried. Well, we shall see, we shall see.”

Such a good man, her first friend in England and she had not thanked him. “My lord, I owe you my life. If it hadn’t been for your gift of the dog, bless him…Did you see what was done to him?”

“I saw.” Prior Geoffrey shook his head, then smiled a little. “I ordered his remnants gathered and given to Hugh, whom Brother Gilbert suspects of secretly burying his hounds in the priory graveyard when no one is by. The Safeguard may well lie with human beings who are less faithful.”

It had been a small grief among all the rest but a grief nevertheless; Adelia was comforted.

“However,” the prior went on, “as you and I know, you also owe your life to someone with more right to it, and, in part, I am here for him.”

But her mind had reverted to the nun. They’re going to let her go. None of us saw her kill: not Ulf, not Rowley, not me. She’s a nun; the Church fears a scandal. They’re going to let her go.

“I won’t have it, Prior,” she said.

Prior Geoffrey’s mouth had been shaping words that obviously pleased him; now it stopped, open. He blinked. “A somewhat hasty decision, Adelia.”

“People must know what was done. She must be brought to trial, even if she is adjudged too mad for sentence. For the children’s sake, for Simon’s, for mine; I found their lair and was near killed for it. I will have justice-and it must be seen to be done.” Not from blood-lust, nor even revenge, but because, without a completion, the nightmares of too many people would be left open-ended.

Then something the prior had said caught up with her. “I beg your pardon, my lord?”

Prior Geoffrey sighed and began again. “Before he was forced to return to the assize-the king has arrived, you know-he approached me. For lack of anyone else, he seems to regard me as in loco parentis…”

“The king?” Adelia wasn’t keeping up.

The prior sighed once more. “Sir Rowley Picot. Sir Rowley has asked me to approach you with a request-indeed, his manner suggested it to be a foregone conclusion-for your hand in marriage.”

It was all one with this extraordinary day. She had gone down into the pit and been raised from it. A man had been torn to death. Next door was a murderess. She had lost her virginity, gloriously lost it, and the man who had taken it now reverted to etiquette, using the good offices of a surrogate father to request her hand.

“I should add,” Prior Geoffrey said, “that the proposal is made at some cost. At the assize, the king offered Sir Rowley the bishopric of Saint Albans, and with my own ears I heard Picot reject the position on the grounds that he wished to remain free to marry.”

He wants me as much as that?

“King Henry was not pleased,” the prior went on. “He has a particular wish to appoint our good tax collector to the see of Saint Albans, nor is he used to being thwarted. But Sir Rowley was not to be moved.”

Now it was Adelia’s mouth that remained paused over the answer she had known she must make, unable to make it.

With the rush of love came fear that she would accept because she so very much wanted to, because this morning Rowley had soothed away the mental damage done and purified it. Which, of course, was the danger in itself. He has made such sacrifice for me. Isn’t it right, and beautiful, that I make similar sacrifice for him?

Sacrifice.

Prior Geoffrey said, “He may have disappointed King Henry, but he charges me to tell you that he is still well regarded and marked for high position so that there can be no disadvantage to you by the match.” When Adelia still didn’t answer, he went on: “Indeed, I have to say I would be content to see you bound to him.”

Bound.

“Adelia, my dear.” Prior Geoffrey took her hand. “The man deserves an answer.”

He did. She gave it.

The door opened and Brother Gilbert stood on the threshold, rendering the scene before him-his superior in the company of two women in a bedroom-into something naughty. “The lords are assembled, Prior.”

“Then we must attend them.” The prior raised Adelia’s hand and kissed it, but it was his wink at Gyltha-who winked back-that was naughty.

THE CONVOKED LORDS were met in the monastery’s refectory rather than its church so that the canons were free to keep the hours of vigil where and when they always did; nor, having taken supper and it being some hours until breakfast, need they disturb the convocation at its business.

Or even know it has taken place, Adelia thought.

They called it a convocation, but it was, in effect, a trial. Not of the young nun who stood suitably chaperoned between her prioress and Sister Walburga, her head modestly bowed and her hands meekly folded.

The accused was Vesuvia Adelia Rachel Ortese Aguilar, a foreigner, who, according to an angry Prioress Joan called from her bed, had made an unwarranted, obscene, devilish accusation against an innocent and godly member of the holy order of Saint Radegund, and must be whipped for it.

Adelia stood in the middle of the hall with the imps that studded the beams of its hammer roof grinning down at her. Its long table with its benches had been pushed to one side against a wall, so that the line of chairs at the far end in which the judges sat was off-center, skewing the room’s otherwise lovely proportions for her and giving another scrape to nerves already quivering from disbelief, anger, and, it had to be said, plain fear.

For facing her were three of the several justices in eyre who had come to Cambridge for its assize-the Bishops of Norwich and Lincoln, and the Abbot of Ely. They represented England’s legal authority. They could close their jeweled fists and crush Adelia like a pomander. Also, they were cross at being summoned from a sleep they deserved after the long day’s hearings at the assize, at traveling from the castle to Saint Augustine’s in darkness and pouring rain-and at her. She could feel hostility emanating from them strong enough to blow the floor’s rushes down its length and into a pile at her feet.

Most hostile of all was an Archdeacon of Canterbury, not a judge but someone who regarded himself, and, apparently, was regarded by the others, as a mouthpiece for the late, sainted Thomas à Becket and seemed to think that any attack on a member of the Church-such as Adelia’s denunciation of Veronica, sister of Saint Radegund-was comparable to Henry II’s knights spilling Becket’s brains on his cathedral floor.