Ariana Franklin - Mistress of the Art of Death

That they were all churchmen had taken Prior Geoffrey aback. “My lords, I’d hoped that some lords temporal might also attend.”

They silenced him; they were, after all, his spiritual superiors. “It is purely a Church matter.”

With them was a young man in nonclerical dress, slightly amused by the whole proceeding and using a portable writing desk to make notes of it on a parchment. Adelia knew his name only because one of the others addressed him by it-Hubert Walter.

Behind their chairs were ranged a selection of assize attendants, two clerks, one of them asleep where he stood, a man-at-arms who’d forgotten to take off his nightcap before putting on his helmet, and two bailiffs with manacles at their belt, each carrying a mace.

Adelia stood apart and alone, though for a while Mansur had stood beside her.

“What is…that, Prior?”

“He is Mistress Adelia’s attendant, my lord.”

“A Saracen?”

“A distinguished Arab doctor, my lords.”

“She has no need of either a doctor or an attendant. Nor have we.”

Mansur had been banished from the room.

Prior Geoffrey was standing to one side of the line of chairs with Sheriff Baldwin-Brother Gilbert behind them both.

He had done his best, bless him; the dreadful story had been told, Adelia’s and Simon’s part in it explained, their discoveries and Simon’s death recounted, the evidence delivered of the prior’s own eyes as to what lay beneath Wandlebury Hill-and he had outlined the charge against Sister Veronica.

He had carefully mentioned neither Adelia’s examination of the children’s bodies nor her qualification for it-a neglect for which she thanked God; she was in enough trouble, she knew, without facing an accusation of witchcraft.

Hugh the hunter had been called into the refectory with his frank-pledges, the men who, under England’s legal system, answered for his honesty. He’d stood with his hat on his heart to state that, looking down the shaft, he had seen a bloody, naked figure that he recognized as Sir Joscelin of Grantchester. That he had later descended into the tunnels. That he had examined the flint knife. That he had recognized the dog collar attached to the chain in the womblike chamber…

“’Twas Sir Joscelin’s, my lords. I’d seen it a dozen times on his own hound in former days-had his seal embossed in its leather, so it did.”

The dog collar was produced, the seal examined.

No doubt that Sir Joscelin of Grantchester had killed the children-the judges had been appalled. “Joscelin of Grantchester shall be declared base felon and murderer. The remains of his corpse shall hang in Cambridge market square for all to see and shall not be accorded Christian burial.”

As for Sister Veronica…

There was no direct evidence against her, because Ulf was not allowed to give it.

“How old is the child, Prior? He may not be accorded frankpledge until he is twelve.”

“Nine, my lord, but a percipient and honest boy.”

“Of what degree?”

“He is free, my lords, not a villein. He works for his grandmother and sells eels.”

At this point, there was an interjection from Brother Gilbert, who whispered treacherously into the ear of the archdeacon with every sign of satisfaction.

Ah, the grandmother was not married, never had been, possibly the progenitor of illegitimate children. The boy was likely a bastard, then, of no degree whatsoever: “The law does not recognize him.”

So Ulf, like Mansur, was banished to the kitchen that lay behind the refectory, with Gyltha’s hand over his mouth to stop him from shouting out, both of them listening on the other side of the open hatch from which a smell of bacon and broth came to mingle with that of the rich, rain-dampened ermine lining the judges’ cloaks, while Rabbi Gotsce, also in the kitchen, translated into English for them proceedings that were being held in Latin.

The court had been scandalized by his very presence.

“You would bring a Jew before us, Prior Geoffrey?”

“My lords, the Jews of this town have been grossly maligned. It can be shown that Sir Joscelin was one of their chief debtors, and it was part of his wickedness to see them accused of murder and their tallies burned.”

“Has the Jew evidence of this?”

“The tallies were destroyed, my lord, as I said. But surely the rabbi is entitled to…”

“The law does not recognize him.”

The law didn’t recognize, either, that a nun whose purity of soul shone in her face could do what Adelia had said she had done.

Her prioress spoke for her…

“Like Saint Radegund, our beloved foundress, Sister Veronica was born in Thuringia,” she said. “But her father, a merchant, settled in Poitiers, where she was offered to the convent at the age of three and sent to England while still a child, though one whose devotion to God and His Holy Mother was in evidence then and has been ever since.”

Prioress Joan had tempered her voice; her rein-callused hands were in her sleeves; she was every inch the superior of a well-ordered house of God. “My lords, I stand for this nun’s modesty and temperance and her devotion to the Lord-many a time when the other nuns were at recreation, Sister Veronica has been on her knees beside our blessed little saint, Peter of Trumpington.”

There was a muffled squeak from the kitchen.

“Whom she lured to his death,” Adelia said.

“Hold your tongue, woman,” the archdeacon told her.

The prioress turned on Adelia, finger pointing, her voice a hunting horn. “ Judge, my lords. Judge between that, a slandering viper, and here, this exemplar of saintliness.”

It was a pity that the dress Gyltha had brought her from Old Benjamin’s was the one Adelia had worn to the Grantchester feast, too low in the bodice and too high in color to compare well with the nuns’ sleekly sober black and white. A pity, too, that in her joyous fluster over Ulf’s return, Gyltha had forgotten to bring a veil or cap and that, therefore, Adelia, whose previous cap lay somewhere under Wandlebury Hill, was as bareheaded as a harlot.

No one except Prior Geoffrey spoke for her.

Not Sir Rowley Picot; he wasn’t there.

The Archdeacon of Canterbury rose to his feet, which were still in slippers. He was a tiny old man, full of energy. “Let us expedite this matter, my lords, that we may return to our beds and, should we find it has been raised out of malice”-the face he turned on Adelia was that of a malevolent monkey-“let those responsible be sent to the whipping post. Now, then…”

One by one, the bricks on which Adelia had built her case were examined and discarded.

The word of an eel-selling bastard minor to condemn a bride of Christ?

The good sister’s familiarity with the river? But who was not familiar with boatmanship in this waterlogged town?

Laudanum? Was it not generally available at any apothecary’s?

Spending the occasional night away from her convent? Well…

For the first time, the young man called Hubert Walter raised his voice, and his head from his note-taking: “Perhaps that does call for explanation, my lord. It is…unusual.”

“If I may speak, your lordships.” Prioress Joan stepped forward again. “Taking supplies to our anchorites is an act of charity that exhausts Sister Veronica’s strength-see how frail she is. Accordingly, I have allowed her permission to spend such nights in rest and contemplation with one of our lady eremites before returning to the convent.”

“Laudable, laudable.” The eyes of the judges rested appreciatively on Sister Veronica’s willow-wand figure.