Ariana Franklin - Mistress of the Art of Death

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. ”