Ariana Franklin - Mistress of the Art of Death

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When Christian children are being kidnapped and murdered in 12th century Cambridge, England, Adelia is sent to seek out the truth, and hopefully absolve the Jews being blamed for the crimes, before the townspeople take matters into their own hands. During a time when women are second-class citizens at best, and the practice of scientific autopsies is considered blasphemous, Adelia is the most skilled “speaker for the dead” hailing from progressive Naples – yet she is forced to masquerade as the meek assistant to her colleagues during their frantic search for the real child killer.
From The Washington Post
It's hard enough to produce a gripping thriller – harder still to write convincing historical fiction that recreates a living, breathing past. But this terrific book does both, and does it with a cast of characters so vivid and engaging that you'd be happy to read about them even if they weren't on the track of a sexually depraved serial child-murderer.
Mistress of the Art of Death opens with a clever takeoff on Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, which introduces the central players, a group of pilgrims returning from the shrine of the newly canonized St. Thomas à Becket: a prior and a prioress (from rival abbeys); two knights, lately returned from the Crusades; an overweight but very shrewd tax collector; a gaggle of citizens; and three Gypsies, who are in fact secret investigators sent by the king of Sicily to discover the truth behind a series of gruesome murders near Cambridge.
Four children have been found dead and mutilated. The Jews of Cambridge have been blamed for the murders, the most prominent Jewish moneylender and his wife have been killed by a mob, and the rest of the Jewish community is shut up in the castle under the protection of the sheriff.
As the only group allowed to commit usury – that is, to lend money at interest – the Jews are prosperous, and thus the king of England considers them his prize cash cows. He wants them cleared of suspicion and released, so they can go back to paying him high taxes. To this end, he appeals to his cousin, the king of Sicily, to send his best master of the art of death: a doctor skilled in "reading" bodies. Enter Vesuvia Adelia Rachel Ortese Aguilar, 25, the best mistress of death that the medical school at Salerno has ever produced. With Simon of Naples, a Jewish "fixer," and Mansur, a eunuch with a mean throwing-ax, it's her job to find a murderer before he – or she – can kill again.
Adelia comes onstage when she meets the prior under dramatic circumstances on the road, saving him from a burst bladder caused by a swollen prostate by thrusting a hollow reed up his penis. Not every man would follow up on an introduction like this, but the prior wants the mystery solved, too – and if the solution happens to ace out the rival abbey, so much the better.
Adelia finds 12th-century England a barbarous place. England finds Adelia a jaw-dropping anomaly. And Franklin exploits the contrast brilliantly. We're on Adelia's side from the start, identifying with her quite modern sensibilities – but at the same time, as she begins to know the English inhabitants as people, we sympathize with them, too. And a small but nice romantic subplot develops as the celibate, married-to-science Adelia discovers to her horror that live bodies have minds of their own.
Though the story is set in Cambridge, the Crusades run through the culture. We see both the corruption and the idealistic faith of the period, and while the Jews come off by far the best, Christians and Muslims are portrayed with evenhanded understanding. Beyond this, the story's background is a wonderful tapestry of the paradoxes and struggles of the times: Christianity and Islam, Christians and Jews, science and superstition, and the new power of Henry II's rule of law versus the stranglehold of the Church.
There are also fascinating details of historical forensic medicine, entertaining notes on women in science (the medical school at Salerno is not fictional), and a nice running commentary on science and superstition, as distinct from religious faith. Franklin does this subtly, by showing effects, rather than by beating us over the head with her opinions. These are clear enough but expressed with artistry rather than political correctness.
Franklin likewise balances cynicism, humanity and objectivity well. Adelia feels horror, fury and sympathy on behalf of the victims and the bereaved, but she doesn't let that get in the way of finding the truth. And the story makes it clear that the motives of those who want a solution to the crime are not necessarily purer than the motives of those who want to conceal it.
Mistress of the Art of Death is wonderfully plotted, with a dozen twists – and with final rabbits pulled out of not one hat but two, as both the mystery and the romance reach satisfactorily unexpected conclusions. It's a historical mystery that succeeds brilliantly as both historical fiction and crime-thriller. Above all, though, Franklin has written a terrific story, whose appeal rests on the personalities of the all-too-human beings who inhabit it.
– Diana Gabaldon, author of a series of historical novels, including "Outlander" and "A Breath of Snow and Ashes."

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In the sheriff’s family garden, in which Simon of Naples lay buried, Henry II, who’d been to hell and returned, was sitting cross-legged on the same grass bank where she had sat and listened to Rowley Picot tell of his crusade. He was mending a hunting glove with needle and twine as he dictated to Hubert Walter, who knelt by his side, a portable writing table round his neck.

“Ah, mistress…”

Adelia flung herself at his feet. After all, a king might do. “They’ve walled her up, my lord. I beg you, stop it.”

“Who’s walled up? What am I to stop?”

“The nun. Veronica. Please, my lord, please. They’ve walled her up alive.

Henry regarded his boots, which were being clutched at. “They told me they’d sent her to Norway. I thought that was odd. Did you know this, Hubert?”

“No, my lord.”

“You’ve got to let her out, it’s obscene, an abomination. Oh my God, my God, I can’t live with this. She’s mad. It’s her madness that’s evil.” In her agony, Adelia’s hands thumped the ground.

Hubert Walter lifted the little desk from his neck and then Adelia to sitting position on the bank, speaking gently as if to a horse, “Quietly, mistress. Steady. There, there, calmly now.”

He passed her an inky handkerchief. Adelia, fighting for control, blew her nose on it. “My lord…my lord. They have walled up her cell in the convent with her inside. I heard her screaming. Whatever she did, this cannot… cannot be allowed. It is a crime against heaven.”

“Seems a bit harsh, I must say,” Henry said. “That’s the Church for you. I’d have just hanged her.”

“Well, stop it ,” Adelia shouted at him. “If she’s without water…without water the human body can still survive three or four days, the suffering .”

Henry was interested. “I didn’t know that. Did you know that, Hubert?” He took the handkerchief from Adelia’s fist and wiped her face with it, very sober now. “You realize I can’t do anything, don’t you?”

“No, I don’t. The king is the king.”

“And the Church is the Church. Were you listening last night? Then listen to me now, mistress.” He slapped her hand as she turned her head away, then took it in his own. “ Listen to me.” He raised both their hands so that they pointed in the direction of the town. “Down there is a crazed tatterdemalion they call Roger of Acton. A few days ago, the wretch incited a mob to attack this castle, this royal castle, my castle, in the course of which your friend and my friend, Rowley Picot, was injured. And I can do nothing. Why? Because the wretch wears a tonsure on his head and can spout a paternoster, thus making him a clerk of the Church and entitled to benefit of clergy. Can I punish him, Hubert?”

“You kicked his arse for him, my lord.”

“I kicked his arse for him, and even for that, the Church takes me to task.”

Adelia’s arm bobbed up and down as the king made his point with it. “After those damned knights interpreted my anger as instruction and rode to kill Becket, I had to submit to scourging by every member of Canterbury Cathedral’s chapter. Humiliation, baring my back to their whips, was the only way to prevent the Pope laying all England under interdict. Every bloody monk-and believe me, those bastards can lay it on.” He sighed and dropped Adelia’s hand. “One day this country will be rid of papal rule, God willing. But not yet. And not through me.”

Adelia had stopped listening, absorbing the gist perhaps but not the words. Now she got up and began to walk down the garden path toward the place where they’d buried Simon of Naples.

Hubert Walter, shocked by such lèse-majesté, would have gone after her but was restrained. He said, “You take great pains over that rude and recalcitrant female, my lord.”

“I have a use for the useful, Hubert. Phenomena like her don’t fall into my lap every day.”

May was becoming itself at last, and the sun had emerged to enliven a garden refreshed by rain. Lady Baldwin’s tansy had taken, bees were busy among the cowslips.

A robin that was perched on the grave hopped away at her approach, though not far. Stooping, Adelia used Hubert Walter’s handkerchief to brush off its droppings.

We are among barbarians, Simon.

The wooden board had been replaced by a handsome slab of marble incised with his name and the words: May his soul be bound up in the bond of life eternal.

Kindly barbarians, Simon said to her now. Fighting their own barbarity. Think of Gyltha, Prior Geoffrey, Rowley, that strange king…

Nevertheless, Adelia told him, I cannot bear it.

She turned and, collected now, walked back up the path. Henry had returned to mending his glove and looked up at Adelia’s approach. “Well?”

Bowing, Adelia said, “I thank you for your indulgence, my lord, but I can stay here no longer. I must return to Salerno.”

He bit off the thread with his strong little teeth. “No.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“I said no.” The glove was put on, and Henry waggled his fingers, admiring the mending. “By the Lord, I’m clever. Must get it from the tanner’s daughter. Did you know I had a tanner in my ancestry, mistress?” He smiled up at her. “I said no, you can’t go. I have a need for your particular talents, Doctor. There are plenty of dead in my realm that I would wish to be listened to, by God there are, and I want to know what they say.”

She stared at him. “You can’t keep me here.”

“Hubert?”

“I think you will find that he can, mistress,” Hubert Walter said apologetically. “ Le roi le veut. Even now on my lord’s instructions, I am penning a letter to the King of Sicily, asking if we may borrow you a while longer.”

“I’m not an object,” Adelia shouted. “You can’t borrow me, I’m a human being.”

“And I’m a king,” the king said. “I may not be able to control the Church, but, by my soul’s salvation, I control every bloody port in this country. If I say you stay, you stay.”

His face as he looked at her had a kindly disinterest, even in its pretended anger, and she saw that his amiability, the frankness so charming, was a mere tool helping him rule an empire and that, to him, she was nothing more than a gadget that might one day come in useful.

“I also am to be walled up, then,” she said.

He raised his eyebrows. “I suppose you are, though I hope you will find your confines somewhat larger and more pleasing than…well, we won’t talk of it.”

Nobody will talk of it, she thought. The insect will buzz in its bottle until it falls silent. And I shall have to live with the sound for the rest of my life.

“I’d let her out if I could, you know,” Henry said.

“Yes. I know.”

“In any case, mistress, you owe me your services.”

How long will I have to buzz before you let me out? she wondered. The fact that this particular bottle has become beloved to me is neither here nor there.

Though it was.

She was recovering now and able to think; she took time to do it. The king waited her out-an indication, she thought, of her value to him. Very well, then, let me capitalize on it. She said, “I refuse to stay in a country so backward that its Jews are afforded only the one burial ground in London.”

He was taken aback. “God’s teeth, aren’t there any others?”

“You must know there are not.”

“I didn’t, actually,” he said. “We kings have a great deal to concern ourselves with.” He snapped his fingers. “Write it down, Hubert. The Jews to have burial grounds.” And to Adelia: “There you are. It is done. Le roi le veut.

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