Ariana Franklin - Mistress of the Art of Death

Instead, the judges looked at Sister Veronica.

Adelia held her breath. It’s not conclusive; she can make a hundred excuses. It’s clever, but it’s not proof.

It was proof for Prioress Joan; she was staring at her protégée in agony.

It was proof for Veronica. For a moment, she was still. Then she shrieked, raising her head and two shaking hands. “Protect me, my lords. You think he was eaten by dogs, but he’s up there. Up there. ”

Every eye followed hers to the rafters where the gargoyles laughed back at them from the shadows, then down again to Veronica. She had fallen to the floor, squirming. “He’ll hurt you. He hurts me when I don’t obey him. He hurt when he entered me. He hurts. Oh, save me from the devil.”

The air in the room heated and became heavy. Men’s eyelids half closed, their mouths went slack and their bodies rigid. Veronica gyrated among the rushes on the floor, pulling at her habit, pointing to her vagina, shrieking that the devil had entered her there, there.

It was as if the featherweight token had proved a final weight on guilt so heavy and so vast that she assumed it all lay exposed. A door had been broken open and something fetid was coming out of it.

“I prayed to the Mother…save me, save me, dear Mary…but he speared me with his horn, here, here. How it hurt…he had antlers…I couldn’t…sweet Son of Mary, he made me watch him do things…horrible things, horrible…there was blood, such blood. I thirsted for the blood of the Lord, but I was the devil’s slave…he hurt, he hurt …he bit my breasts, here, here, he stripped me…beat me…he put his horn in my mouth…I prayed for sweet Jesus to come…but he is the Prince of Darkness…his voice in my ears telling me to do things…I was afraid…stop him, don’t let him…”

Prayers, abasement. It went on and on.

But so did your alliance with the beast, Adelia thought. On and on. Months of it. Child after child procured, its torture observed, and never an attempt to break free. That’s not enslavement.

If she was exposing her soul, Veronica was also exposing her young body: her skirt was above her hocks; her slight breasts showed beneath the rents in her habit.

It’s a performance; she’s blaming the devil; she killed Simon; she’s enjoying it. It’s sex, that’s what it is.

A glance at the judges showed them enthralled, worse than enthralled: the Bishop of Norwich’s hand was on his crutch; the old archdeacon was puffing. Hubert Walter’s mouth dribbled. Even Rowley was licking his lips.

In a moment’s pause while Veronica gasped for breath, a bishop said, almost reverently, “Demonic possession. As clear a case as I ever saw.”

So the demons did it. Another attempt by the Prince of Darkness to undermine Mother Church, a regrettable but understandable incident in the war between sin and sanctity. Only the devil to blame. In despair, Adelia glanced up and into the face of the one man in the room who was looking on with sardonic admiration.

“She killed Simon of Naples,” Adelia said.

“I know.”

“She helped to kill the children.”

“I know,” the king said.

Veronica was crawling along the floor now, worming her way to the judges. She clasped the archdeacons’ slippers, and her soft, dark hair cascaded over his feet. “Save me, my lord, let him not force me again. I thirst for the Lord; give me back to my Redeemer. Send the devil away.” Reasonless, disheveled, the innocence had gone and sexual beauty had taken its place, older and more bruised than what it replaced but beauty nevertheless.

The archdeacon was reaching down to her. “There, there, my child.”

The table shook as Henry bounced off it. “Do you keep pigs, my lord Prior?”

Prior Geoffrey dragged his eyes away. “Pigs?”

“Pigs. And somebody get that woman to her feet.”

Instructions were given. Hugh left the room. The two men-at-arms raised Veronica so that she hung between them. “Now then, mistress,” Henry said to her, “you may help us.”

Veronica’s eyes as they slid up to his showed a moment’s calculation. “Return me to my Redeemer, my lord. Let me wash my sins in the blood of the Lord.”

“Redemption is in the truth, and therefore in telling us how the devil killed the children. In what manner. You must show us.”

“The Lord wants that? There was blood, so much blood.”

“He insists on it.” Henry held up a warning hand to the judges, who were on their feet. “She knows. She watched. She shall show us.”

Hugh came in with a piglet that he displayed to the king, who nodded. As the hunter carried it past her toward the kitchen, a bewildered Adelia glimpsed a small, rounded, snuffling snout. There was a smell of farmyard.

One of the men-at-arms went by, steering Veronica in the same direction, followed by the other, who held a leaf-shaped knife ceremonially on his outstretched palms, the flint knife, the knife.

Is that what he means to happen? God save us, dear God save us all.

The judges, everybody, Walburga blinking, were crowding toward the kitchen. Prioress Joan would have held back, but King Henry grasped her elbow and took her with him.

As Rowley passed her, Adelia said, “Ulf mustn’t see this.”

“I’ve sent him home with Gyltha.” Then he’d gone, too, and Adelia stood in an empty refectory.

Was it planned? There was more to this than proving Veronica’s guilt: Henry was after the Church that had condemned him for Becket.

That, too, was horrible. A trap laid by an artful king, not just for the creature that might or might not fall into it according to how artful it was, but to show his greater enemy its own weakness. And however vile the creature it was laid for, a trap was always a trap.

Comings and goings had left the door to the cloister open. Dawn was breaking and the canons were chanting, had been chanting all the time. As she listened to the unison weaving back order and grace, she felt the night air cooling tears on her cheeks that she hadn’t known were there.

From the kitchen she heard the king’s voice: “Put it on the chopping block. Very well, Sister. Show us what he did.”

They were putting the knife in Veronica’s hand…

Don’t use it, there’s no need…just tell them.

The nun’s voice came clear through the hatch. “I will be redeemed?”

“The truth is redemption.” Henry, inexorable. “Show us.”

Silence.

The nun’s voice again: “He didn’t like them to close their eyes, you see.” There came the first squeal from the piglet. “And then…”

Adelia covered her ears, but her hands couldn’t keep out another squeal, then another, shriller now, another…and the female voice rising over it: “Like this, and then this. And then…”

She’s mad. If there was cunning before, it was the cunning of the insane. Even that has left her now. Dear God, what is it like inside that mind?

Laughter? No, it was giggling, a manic sound and growing, sucking life out of the life it was taking, Veronica’s human voice turning non-human, rising over the dying shrieks of the piglet until it was a bray, a sound that belonged to big, grass-stained teeth and long ears. It went out into the night’s normality to fracture it.

It hee-hawed.

THE MEN-AT-ARMS brought her back into the refectory and threw her on the floor where the piglet’s blood soaking her robe puddled into the rushes. The judges made a wide circle to pass her, the Bishop of Norwich brushing absentmindedly at his splashed gown. Mansur’s and Rowley’s expressions were fixed. Rabbi Gotsce was white to the lips. Prioress Joan sank onto the bench and buried her head in her arms. Hugh leaned against the doorjamb to stare into space