Mistress of the Art of Death (3 page)

They did themselves well, these doctors. Mordecai ignored the fact that his own palazzo in Palermo was floored with marble and gold.

He sat himself down on the stone bench that ran round an open balustrade overlooking the town below and, beyond it, the turquoise Tyrrhenian Sea.

Gordinus, ever alert as a doctor if nothing else, said, "His lordship will require a cushion, Gaius."

A cushion was fetched. So were dates. And wine. Gaius asked nervously, "This is acceptable, my lord?" The king's entourage, like the kingdom of Sicily and southern Italy itself, consisted of so many faiths and races--Arabs, Lombards, Greeks, Normans, and, as in Mordecai's case, Jews--that an offer of refreshment could be an offense against some religious dietary law or another.

His lordship nodded; he felt better. The cushion was a comfort to his backside, the breeze from the sea cooled him, and the wine was good. He shouldn't be offended by an old man's directness; in fact, when his business was over, he would indeed bring up the subject of his piles; Gordinus had cured them last time. This was, after all, the town of healing, and if anyone could be described as the doyen of its great medical school, it was Gordinus the African.

He watched the old man forget that he had a guest and return to the manuscript he'd been reading, the drooping, brown skin of his arm stretching as his hand dipped a quill in ink to make an alteration. What was he? Tunisian? Moor?

On arrival at the villa, Mordecai had asked the majordomo if he should remove his shoes before entering, adding, "I have forgotten what your master's religion is."

"So has he, my lord."

Only in Salerno,
Mordecai thought now,
do men forget their manners and their god in the greater worship of the sick.

He wasn't sure he approved; very wonderful, no doubt, but eternal laws were broken, dead bodies dissected, women relieved of threatening fetuses, females allowed to practice, the flesh invaded by surgery.

They came in the hundreds: people who'd heard the name of Salerno and yet journeyed to it, sometimes on their own account, sometimes carrying their sick, blundering across deserts, steppes, marshes, and mountains, to be healed.

Looking down on a maze of roofs, spires, and cupolas, sipping his wine, Mordecai marveled, not for the first time, that this town of all towns--and not Rome, not Paris, not Constantinople, not Jerusalem--had developed a school of medicine that made it the world's doctor.

Just then the clang of the monastery bells sounding for nones clashed with the call to prayer from the muezzin of mosques and fought with the voice of synagogue cantors, all of them rising up the hill to assault the ears of the man on the balcony in an untidy blast of major and minor keys.

That was it, of course. The mix. The hard, greedy Norman adventurers who'd made a kingdom out of Sicily and southern Italy had been pragmatists, but far-seeing pragmatists. If a man suited their purpose, they didn't care which god he worshipped. If they were to establish peace--and therefore prosperity--there must be integration of the several peoples they'd conquered. There would be no second-class Sicilians. Arab, Greek, Latin, and French were to be the official languages. Advancement for any man of any faith, as long as he was able.

Nor should I complain,
he thought. After all, he, a Jew, worked with Greek Orthodox Christians along with popish Catholics for a Norman king. The galley he'd disembarked from was part of the Sicilian royal navy in the charge of an Arab admiral.

In the streets below, the jellabah brushed against knightly mail, the kaftan against monkish habit, their owners not only
not
spitting at one another but exchanging greetings and news--and, above all, ideas.

"Here it is, my lord," Gaius said.

Gordinus took the letter. "Ah yes, of course. Now I remember.
'Simon Menahem of Naples to set sail on a special mission...'
Nymm, nymmm.
'...the Jews of England being in a predicament of some danger...native children are put to torture and death...'
Oh, dear.
'...and blame falling on the Jews...'
Oh dear, dear.
'You are commanded to discover and send with the aforementioned Simon a per son versed in the causes of death, who speaks both English and Hebrew yet gossips in neither.
'"

He smiled up at his secretary. "And I did, didn't I?"

Gaius shifted. "There was some question at the time, my lord...."

"Of course I did, I remember perfectly. And not just an expert in the morbid processes but a speaker of Latin, French, Greek, as well as the languages specified. A fine student. I told Simon so because he seemed a little concerned. 'You can't have anyone better,' I told him."

"Excellent." Mordecai rose. "Excellent."

"Yes." Gordinus was still triumphant. "I think we met the king's specification exactly, didn't we, Gaius?"

"Up to a point, my lord."

There was something in the servant's manner--Mordecai was trained to notice such things. And why, now that he came to think of it, had Simon of Naples been concerned at the choice of the man who was to accompany him?

"How is the king, by the way?" Gordinus asked. "That little trouble clear up?"

Ignoring the king's little trouble, Mordecai spoke directly to Gaius: "Who did he send?"

Gaius glanced toward his master, who'd resumed reading, and lowered his voice. "The choice of person in this case was unusual, and I did wonder..."

"Listen, man, this mission is extremely delicate. He didn't choose an Oriental, did he? Yellow? Stick out like a lemon in England?"

"No, I didn't." Gordinus's mind had rejoined them.

"Well, who did you send?"

Gordinus told him.

Incredulity made Mordecai ask again, "You sent...who?"

Gordinus told him again.

Mordecai's was another scream to rend that year of screams:
"You stupid, stupid old fool."

Two

O
ur prior is dying," the monk said. He was young and desperate. "Prior Geoffrey is dying and has nowhere to lay his head. Lend us your cart in the name of God."

The whole cavalcade had watched him quarreling with his brother monks over where their prior should spend his last earthly minutes, the other two preferring the prioress's open traveling catafalque, or even the ground, to the covered cart of heathenish-looking peddlers.

In fact, the press of black-clad people on the road attending to the prior so hemmed him in where he reeled in his pain, pecking at him with advice, that they might have been crows fluttering around carrion.

The prioress's little nun was urging some object on him. "The saint's very finger knuckle, my lord. But apply it again, I beg. This time, it's miraculous property..."

Her soft voice was almost drowned in the louder urgings of the clerk called Roger of Acton, he who had been importuning the poor prior for something ever since Canterbury. "The true knuckle of a true saint crucified. Only believe..."

Even the prioress was trumpeting concern of a sort. "But apply it to the afflicted part with stronger prayer, Prior Geoffrey, and Little Saint Peter shall do his bit."

The matter was settled by the prior himself, who, between bellows of profanity and pain, was understood to prefer anywhere, however heathenish, as long as it got him away from the prioress, the pestering damn cleric, and the rest of the gawking bastards who were standing around watching his death throes. He was not, he pointed out with some vigor, a bloody sideshow. (Some passing peasants had stopped to mingle with the cavalcade and were regarding the prior's gyrations with interest.)

The peddlers' cart it was. Thus, the young monk made his appeal to the cart's male occupants in Norman French and hoped they'd understand him--until now, they and their woman had been heard gabbing in a foreign tongue.

For a moment, they seemed at a loss. Then the woman, a dowdy little thing, said, "What is the matter with him?"

The monk waved her off. "Get away, girl, this is no matter for women."

The smaller of the two men watched her retreat with some concern but said, "Of course...um?"

"Brother Ninian," said Brother Ninian.

"I am Simon of Naples. This gentleman is Mansur. Of course, Brother Ninian, naturally our cart is at your service. What ails the poor holy man?"

Brother Ninian told them.

The Saracen's facial expression did not change, probably never did, but Simon of Naples was all sympathy; he could imagine nothing so bad. "It may be that we can be of even more assistance," he said. "My companion is from the school of medicine at Salerno..."

"A doctor? He's a doctor?" The monk was off and running toward his prior and the crowd, shouting as he went. "They're from Salerno. The brown one's a doctor. A doctor from Salerno."

The very name was a physic; everyone knew it. That the three came from Italy accounted for their oddity. Who knew what Italians looked like?

The woman rejoined her two men at the cart.

Mansur was regarding Simon with one of his looks, a slow form of ocular flaying. "Gabblemouth here said I was a doctor from Salerno."

"Did I say that? Did I say that?" Simon's arms were out. "I
said
my companion..."

Mansur turned his attention to the woman. "The unbeliever can't piss," he told her.

"Poor soul," said Simon. "Not for eleven hours. He exclaims he will burst. Can you conceive of it, Doctor? Drowning in one's own fluids?"

She could conceive of it; no wonder the man capered. And he would burst, or at least his bladder would. A masculine condition; she'd seen it on the dissecting table. Gordinus had performed a postmortem on just such a case, but he had said that the patient could have been saved if...if...yes, that was it. And her stepfather had described seeing the same procedure in Egypt.

"Hmmm,"
she said.

Simon was on it like a raptor. "He can be helped? Lord, if he might be healed, the advantage to our mission would be incalculable. This is a man of influence."

Be damned to influence; Adelia saw only a fellow creature that suffered--and, unless there was intervention, would continue to suffer until poisoned by his own urine. Yet if she were wrong in the diagnosis? There were other explanations for retention. If she fumbled?

"Hmmm,"
she said again, but her tone had altered.

"Risky?" Simon's attitude had also altered. "He could die? Doctor, let us consider our position...."

She ignored him. She almost turned and opened her mouth to ask Margaret's opinion before deadening loneliness overtook her. The space that had been occupied by the bulk of her childhood nurse was empty, would remain empty; Margaret had died at Ouistreham.

With desolation came guilt. Margaret should never have attempted the journey from Salerno, but she had insisted. Adelia, overfond, needing female companionship for propriety's sake, dreading any but this valued servant's, had acquiesced. Too hard. Near a thousand miles of sea voyaging, the Bay of Biscay at its worst, it had been too hard on an old woman. An apoplexy. The love sustaining Adelia for twenty-five years had withdrawn into a grave in a tiny cemetery on the banks of the Orne, leaving her to face the crossing to England alone, a Ruth among the alien corn.

What would that dear soul have said to this?

"I don't know why you'm asking, you never take no heed anyway. You'm going to take the chance with the poor gentleman, I know you, flower, so don't you bother with my opinion, the which you never do."

The which she never did.

Adelia's mouth became gentle as the remembered rich Devonian syllables sang in her head; Margaret had only ever been her sounding board. And her comfort.

"Perhaps we should leave well alone, Doctor," Simon said.

"The man is dying," she said. She was as aware as Simon of the danger to them if the operation failed; she had felt little but desolation in this unfamiliar country since they landed, its strangeness giving even the most jovial company a seeming of hostility. But in this matter, the possible threat was of as little account as the possible benefit to them if the prior could be mended. She was a doctor; the man was dying. There was no choice.

She looked around her. The road, probably Roman, ran straight as a pointing finger. To the west, on her left, was flatness, the beginning of the Cambridgeshire fens, darkening meadow and wetland meeting a linear sunset in vermilion and gold. On her right, the wooded side of a hill of no great height and a track leading up to it. Nothing habitable anywhere, not a house, not a cottage, not a shepherd's hut.

Her eyes rested on the ditch, almost a dike, that ran between the road and the rise of the hills; she'd been aware of what it contained for some time, as she was aware of all nature's goodies.

They'd need privacy. Light too. And some of the ditch's contents.

She gave her instructions.

The three monks approached, supporting their suffering prior. A protesting Roger of Acton trotted alongside, still urging the efficacy of the prioress's relic.

The oldest monk addressed Mansur and Simon: "Brother Ninian says you are doctors from Salerno." His face and nose could have sharpened flint.

Simon looked toward Mansur over the head of Adelia, who stood in the middle of them. With strict adherence to the truth, he said, "Between us, sir, we have considerable medical knowledge."

"Can you help me?" The prior yelled it at Simon, jerkily.

There was a nudge in Simon's ribs. Bravely, he said, "Yes."

Even so, Brother Gilbert hung on to the invalid's arm, reluctant to surrender his superior. "My lord, we do not know if these people are Christians. You need the solace of prayer; I shall stay with you."

Simon shook his head. "The mystery about to be performed must be performed in solitude. Privacy is a necessity between doctor and patient."

"For the sake of Christ, give me
relief
." Again, it was Prior Geoffrey solving the matter. Brother Gilbert and his Christian solace were knocked into the dust, the other two monks pushed aside and told to stay, his knight to stand guard. Flailing and staggering, the prior reached the cart's hanging tailboard and was heaved up it by Simon and Mansur.