Mistress of the Art of Death (35 page)

Tributaries flowed into the Cam, some of them mere streams, some of considerable size and navigable. These great flatlands, Adelia realized, were veined with waterways; causeways, bridges, roads were ill-kept and often impassable, but anybody could go anywhere with a boat.

While Safeguard chased birds, the other three explorers ate some of the bread and cheese and drank half the cider that Gyltha had provided, sitting on a bank by the boathouse at Grantchester where Sir Joscelin stored his punts.

Water sent quiet, wobbling reflections onto walls that held oars, poles, and fishing tackle; nothing spoke of death. In any case, a look toward the great house in the distance showed that, like all manors, Sir Joscelin's was too occupied for horror to take place unnoticed. Unless dairymaids, cowherds, stablers, fieldhands, and the house servants were all complicit in the children's abduction, the crusader was not a murderer in his own home.

Going back down the river toward town, Ulf spat into the water. "Waste of bloody time that was."

"Not entirely," Adelia told him. The excursion had brought home something she should have recognized before. Whether they went willingly with their abductor or not, the children would have been seen. Every boat on these stretches below the Great Bridge had a shallow draft and low gunwales, making it impossible to conceal the presence of anyone bigger than a baby--unless he or she were lying flat under the thwarts. Therefore, either the children had hidden themselves or they had been rendered unconscious and a coat, a piece of sacking, something, had been thrown over them for the journey that had taken them to the place of their death.

She pointed this out in Arabic and English.

"He does not use a boat, then," Mansur said. "The devil throws them across his saddle. Takes a route across country unseen."

It was possible; most habitation in this part of Cambridgeshire was on a waterway, its interior virtually deserted apart from grazing cloven-hoofed beasts, but Adelia didn't think so; the predominance of the river in each child's disappearance argued against it.

"Then it is the thebaicum," Mansur suggested.

"Opium?" That was more likely. Adelia had been gratified by how extensively the Eastern poppy was grown in this unlikely area of England and by the availability of its properties, but also alarmed. The apothecary, he who visited his mistress by night, distilled it in alcohol, calling it Saint Gregory's Cordial, and sold it to anybody, though keeping it below his counter out of sight from clerics who condemned the mixture as godless for its ability to relieve pain, an attribute that should be left exclusively to the Lord.

"That's it," Ulf said. "He gives 'em a drop of the Gregory's." He crinkled up his eyes and exposed his teeth.
"Take a sip of this, my pretty, and come along of me to paradise."

It was a caricature of wheedling malevolence that chilled the warmth of spring.

A
DELIA WAS CHILLED AGAIN
when, next morning, she sat in the sanctum of a leaded-windowed countinghouse on Castle Hill. The room was stacked with documents and chests bound by chains with locks, a hard-cornered, masculine room built to intimidate would-be borrowers and to accommodate women not at all. Master De Barque, of De Barque Brothers, received her into it with reluctance and met her request with a negative.

"But the letter of credit was in the name both Simon of Naples and myself," Adelia protested and heard her voice being absorbed into the walls.

De Barque extended a finger and pushed a roll of vellum with a seal on it across the table to her. "Read it for yourself, mistress, if you are capable of understanding Latin."

She read it. Among the "heretofores" and "wherebys" and "compliance therewith" the Luccan bankers in Salerno, the issuers, promised to pay on behalf of the applicant, the King of Sicily, to the Brothers De Barque of Cambridge such sums as Simon of Naples, the beneficiary, should require. No other name was mentioned.

She looked up into the fat, impatient, disinterested face. How vulnerable to insult you were if you lacked money. "But it was understood," she said. "I was Master Simon's equal in the enterprise. I was chosen for it."

"I am sure you were, mistress," Master De Barque said.

He thinks I came along as Simon's strumpet. Adelia sat up, squaring her shoulders. "An application to the Salerno bank or to King William in Sicily will verify me."

"Then make it, mistress. In the meantime..." Master De Barque picked up a bell on the table and rang it to summon his clerk. He was a busy man.

Adelia sat where she was. "It will take months." She didn't have enough money to pay even what it would cost to send the letter. There had been only a few clipped pennies in Simon's room when she'd gone to look; either he had been preparing to apply to these bankers for more or he had kept what he had in the wallet his killer had taken. "May I borrow until--"

"We do not lend to women."

She resisted the clerk taking her by the arm to lead her out. "Then what am I to do?" There was the apothecary's bill to pay, Simon's headstone to be inscribed by a stonemason, Mansur needed new boots,
she
needed new boots...

"Mistress, we are a Christian organization. I suggest you apply to the Jews. They are the king's chosen usurers, and I understand you are close to them."

There it was, in his eye. She was a woman and a Jew lover.

"You know the Jews' situation," she said desperately. "At present they have no access to their money."

For a moment the flesh on Master De Barque's face creased into warmth. "Have they not?" he said.

A
S THEY WENT UP THE HILL
, Adelia and Safeguard were passed by a prison cart containing beggars; the castle beadle was rounding them up ready for sentence at the coming assize. A woman was shaking its bars with skeletal hands.

Adelia stared after her. How powerless we are when we're destitute.

Never in her life had she been without money.
I must go home. But I cannot, not until the killer is found, and even then, how can I leave?
She turned her mind from the name; she would have to leave him sooner or later....
In any case, I cannot travel. I have no money.

What to do? She was a Ruth amid alien corn. Ruth had solved her situation by marrying, which was not an option in this case.

Could she even exist? Patients had been redirected to the castle while she'd been there, and, in between looking after Rowley, she and Mansur had attended to them. But nearly all were too poor to pay cash.

Her anxiety was not placated when, on entering the castle's tower room with Safeguard, she found Sir Rowley up and dressed, sitting on the bed, and chatting with Sir Joscelin of Grantchester and Sir Gervase of Coton. As she bustled toward him, she said irritably to Gyltha, who stood sentinel-like in a corner, "He's supposed to be resting." She ignored the two knights who had risen at her entrance--Gervase reluctantly and only at a signal from his companion. She took the patient's pulse. It was steadier than her own.

"Don't be angry with us, mistress," Sir Joscelin said. "We came to sympathize with Sir Rowley. It was God's mercy you and the doctor were by. The wretch Acton...we can only hope the assize will not allow him to escape the rope. We are all agreed hanging's too good for him."

"Are you, indeed?" she snapped.

"The lady Adelia does not countenance hanging; she has crueler methods," Rowley said. "She'd treat all criminals with a hearty dose of hyssop."

Sir Joscelin smiled. "Now that
is
cruel."

"And your methods are effective, are they?" Adelia asked. "Blinding and hanging and cutting off hands makes us all safer in our beds, does it? Kill Roger of Acton and there will be no more crime?"

"And the killer of the children, mistress," Sir Joscelin asked gently. "What would you have done to him?"

Adelia was slow to answer.

"She hesitates," Sir Gervase said with disgust. "What sort of woman is she?"

She was a woman who regarded legislated death as an effrontery by those imposing it--so easily and sometimes for so little cause--because life, to her, who wished to save it, was the only true miracle. She was a woman who never sat with the judge or stood with the executioner but always clung to the bar with the accused.
Would I have come to this place in his or her circumstances? Had I been born to what he or she was born to, would I have done differently? If someone other than two doctors from Salerno had picked up the baby on Vesuvius, would it cower where this man or woman cowers?

For her, the law should be the point at which savagery ended because civilization stood in its path. We do not kill because we stand for betterment. She supposed the killer had to die and most certainly would, the putting down of a rabid animal, but the doctor in her would always wonder why it had turned rabid and grieve for not knowing.

She turned away from them to go to the medicine table and noticed for the first time how rigidly Gyltha was standing. "What's the matter?"

The housekeeper looked worn, suddenly aged. Her hands were flat and supporting a small reed casket in much the same manner as the faithful received consecrated bread from the priest before putting it into the mouth.

Rowley called from his bed, "Sir Joscelin has brought me some sweetmeats, Adelia, but Gyltha won't let me have them."

"Not I," Joscelin said. "I am merely their porter. Lady Baldwin asked me to carry them up the stairs."

Gyltha's eyes held Adelia's, then looked down at the casket. Letting it rest on one hand, she raised its lid slightly with the other.

Inside, lying on pretty leaves, like eggs in a nest, was an assortment of colored, scented, lozenge-shaped jujubes.

The two women stared at each other. Adelia felt ill. With her back to the men, she silently shaped the word:
"Poison?"

Gyltha shrugged.

"Where's Ulf?"

"Mansur,"
Gyltha mouthed back.
"Safe."

Adelia said slowly, "The doctor has forbidden Sir Rowley confits."

"Hand them round to our visitors, then," Rowley called from his bed.

We can't hide from Rakshasa,
Adelia thought.
We are targets; wherever we are, we stand exposed like straw men for him to shoot at.

She nodded her head toward the door and turned to the men, while behind her, Gyltha left the room, carrying the casket with her.

The medicines.
Hurriedly, Adelia checked them. All stoppers were in place, the boxes piled neatly as she and Gyltha always left them.

You are being absurd,
she thought;
he is somewhere outside; he cannot have tampered with anything.
But last night's horror of a Rakshasa with wings was on her and she knew she would change every herb, every syrup on the table before administering them.

Is
he outside? Has he been here?
Is he here now?

Behind her, the conversation had turned to horses as it always did among knights.

She was aware of Gervase lolling in his chair because she felt
his
awareness of
her.
His sentences were grunted and abstracted. When she glanced at him, his look turned to a deliberate sneer.

Killer or not,
she thought,
you're a brute and your presence is an insult.
She marched to the door and held it open. "The patient is tired, gentlemen."

Sir Joscelin rose. "We are sorry not to have seen Dr. Mansur, aren't we, Gervase? Pass on our compliments to him, if you would."

"Where is he?" Sir Gervase demanded.

"Improving Rabbi Gotsce's Arabic," Rowley told him.

As he passed her on his way out, Gervase muttered, as if to his companion, "That's rich, a Jew and a Saracen in a royal castle. Why to hell did we go on crusade?"

Adelia slammed the door behind him.

Rowley said crossly, "Damn it, woman, I was edging the talk round to Outremer to find out who was where and when; one might let something slip about the other."

"Did they?" she demanded.

"You ushered them out too fast, damn it." Adelia recognized the irritability of recuperation. "Oddly enough, though, Brother Gilbert admitted to being in Cyprus at about the right time."

"Brother Gilbert was here?"

And Prior Geoffrey
and
Sheriff Baldwin
and
the apothecary--with a concoction he'd sworn would heal a wound within minutes--
and
Rabbi Gotsce. "I'm a popular man. What's the matter?" For Adelia had slammed a box of powdered burdock so hard on the table that its lid came off, emitting a cloud of green dust.

"You are not popular," she said, teeth gritted. "You are a corpse. Rakshasa would poison you."

She went back to the door, calling for Gyltha, but the housekeeper was already coming up the stairs, still holding the casket. Adelia snatched it from her, opened it, and shoved it under Rowley's nose. "What are those?"

"Dear Christ," he said. "Jujubes."

"I been asking round," Gyltha said. "Little girl handed 'em to one of the sentries, saying as they was from her mistress for the poorly gentleman in the tower. Lady Baldwin was going to carry 'em up, but Sir Joscelin said he'd save her legs. Always the polite gentleman, he is, not like t'other."

Gyltha didn't hold with Sir Gervase.

"And the little girl?"

"Sentry's one of them sent from London by the king to help guard the Jews. Barney, his name is. Didn't know her, he says."

Mansur and Ulf were summoned so that the matter could be gone over in conference.

"They could be merely jujubes, as they seem," said Rowley.

"Suck one an' see," Ulf told him sharply. "What you think, missus?"

Adelia had picked one up in her tweezers and was smelling it. "I can't tell."

"Let's test them," Rowley said. "Let's send them down to the cells for Roger of Acton, with our compliments."

It was tempting, but instead Mansur took them down to the courtyard to throw the casket on the smithy fire.