Dawn lighted on the pilgrims by the side of the road and found them damp and irritable. The prioress railed at her knight in discontent when he came to ask how she had passed the night: “Where were you, Sir Joscelin?”
“Guarding the prior, madam. He was in the hands of foreigners and might have needed assistance.”
The prioress didn’t care. “Such was his choice. I could have proceeded last night if you had been with us for protection. It is only four miles more to Cambridge. Little Saint Peter is waiting for this reliquary in which to lodge his bones and has waited long enough.”
“You should have brought the bones with you, madam.”
The prioress’s trip to Canterbury had been a pilgrimage not only of devotion but also to collect the reliquary that had been on order from Saint Thomas à Becket’s goldsmiths for a twelvemonth. Once the skeleton of her convent’s new saint, which was lying in an inferior box in Cambridge, was interred in it, she expected great things from it.
“I carried his holy knuckle,” she snapped, “and if Prior Geoffrey possessed the faith he should, it would have been enough to mend him.”
“Even so, Mother, we could not have left the poor prior to strangers in his predicament, could we?” the little nun asked gently.
The prioress certainly could have. She had no more liking for Prior Geoffrey than he had for her. “He has his own knight, does he not?”
“It takes two to stand guard all night, madam,” Sir Gervase said. “One to watch while the other sleeps.” He was short-tempered. Indeed, both knights were red-eyed, as if neither had rested.
“What sleep did I have? Such a disturbance there was with people coming and going all around. And why does he demand a double guard?”
Much of the ill feeling between Saint Radegund’s convent and Saint Augustine ’s canonry of Barnwell was because Prioress Joan suspected jealousy on the prior’s part for the miracles already wrought by Little Saint Peter’s bones at the nunnery. Now, properly encased, their fame would spread, petitioners to them would swell her convent’s income, and the miracles would increase. And so, without doubt, would Prior Geoffrey’s envy. “Let us be on our way before he recovers.” She looked around. “Where’s that Hugh with my hounds? Oh, the devil, he’s surely never taken them onto the hill.”
Sir Joscelin was off after the recalcitrant huntsman on the instant. Sir Gervase, who had his own dogs among Hugh’s pack, followed him.
THE PRIOR WAS REGAINING strength after a good night’s sleep. He sat on a log, eating eggs from a pan over the Salernitans’ fire, not knowing which question to ask first. “I am amazed, Master Simon,” he said.
The little man opposite him nodded sympathetically. “I can understand, my lord. ‘Certum est, quia impossibile.’”
That a shabby peddler should quote Tertullian amazed the prior further. Who were these people? Nevertheless, the fellow had it exactly; the situation must be so because it was impossible. Well, first things first. “Where is she gone?”
“She likes to walk the hills, my lord, studying nature, gathering herbs.”
“She should take care on this one; the local people give it a wide berth, leaving it to the sheep; they say Wandlebury Ring is the haunt of the Wild Hunt and witches.”
“Mansur is always with her.”
“The Saracen?” Prior Geoffrey regarded himself as a broad-minded man, also grateful, but he was disappointed. “Is she a witch, then?”
Simon winced. “My lord, I beg you… If you could avoid mentioning the word in her presence… She is a doctor, fully trained.”
He paused, then added, “Of a sort.” Again, he stuck to the literal truth. “The Medical School of Salerno allows women to practice.”
“I had heard that it did,” the prior said. “ Salerno, eh? I did not believe it any more than I credited cows with the ability to fly. It appears that I must now look out for cows overhead.”
“Always best, my lord.”
The prior spooned some more eggs into his mouth and looked around him, appreciating the greenery of spring and the twitter of birdsong as he had not for some time. He was reassessing matters. While undoubtedly disreputable, this little company was also learned, in which case it was not at all what it seemed. “She saved me, Master Simon. Did she learn that particular operation in Salerno?”
“From the best Egyptian doctors, I believe.”
“Extraordinary. Tell me her fee.”
“She will accept no payment.”
“Really?” This was becoming more extraordinary by the minute; neither this man nor the woman appeared to have a shilling to bless themselves with. “She swore at me, Master Simon.”
“My lord, I apologize. I fear her skills do not include the bedside manner.”
“No, they do not.” Nor any womanly wiles, as far as the prior could see. “Forgive an old man’s impertinence but, so that I may address her correctly, to which of you is she…attached?”
“Neither of us, my lord.” The peddler was more amused than offended. “Mansur is her manservant, a eunuch-a misfortune that befell him. I myself am devoted to my wife and children in Naples. There is no attachment in that sense; we are merely allies through circumstance.”
And the prior, though not a gullible man, believed him, which also increased his curiosity. What the devil were the three doing here?
“Nevertheless,” he said out loud and sternly, “I must tell you that, whatever your purpose in Cambridge, it will be compromised by the peculiarity of your ménage. Mistress Doctor should have a female companion.”
This time it was Simon who was surprised, and Prior Geoffrey saw that the man did indeed see the woman as merely a colleague. “I suppose she should,” Simon said. “There was one in attendance when we started out on this mission, her childhood nurse, but the old woman died on the way.”
“I advise you to find another.” The prior paused, then asked, “You make mention of a mission. May I inquire what it is?”
Simon appeared to hesitate.
Prior Geoffrey said, “Master Simon, I presume that you have not traveled all the way from Salerno merely to sell nostrums. If your mission is delicate, you may tell me with impunity.” When the man still hesitated, the prior clicked his tongue at having to point out the obvious. “Metaphorically, Master Simon, you have me by the balls. Can I betray your confidence when you are in a position to counter such betrayal merely by informing the town crier that I, a canon of Saint Augustine, a person of some consequence in Cambridge, and, I flatter myself, in the wider realm also, did not only place my most private member in the hands of a woman but had a plant shoved up it? How, to paraphrase the immortal Horace, would that play in Corinth?”
“Ah,” Simon said.
“Indeed. Speak freely, Master Simon. Sate an old man’s curiosity.”
So Simon told him. They had come to discover who was murdering and abducting Cambridge ’s children, he said. It must not be thought, he said, that their mission was intended as a usurpation of local officials, “only that investigation by authority sometimes tends to close more mouths than it opens, whereas we, incognito and disregarded…” Being Simon, he stressed this at length. It was not interference. However, since discovery of the murderer was protracted-obviously a particularly cunning and devious killer-special measures might fit the case…
“Our masters, those who sent us, appear to think that Mistress Doctor and I have the appropriate skills for such a matter…”
Listening to the tale of the mission, Prior Geoffrey learned that Simon of Naples was a Jew. He felt an immediate surge of panic. As master of a great monastic foundation, he was responsible for the state of the world when it must be handed over to God on the Day of Judgment, which might be anytime soon. How to answer an Almighty who had commanded that the one true faith be established in it? How to explain at the throne of God the existence of an unconverted infection in what should be a whole and perfect body? About which he had done nothing?
Humanism fought the training of the seminary-and won. It was an old battle. What could he do? He was not one of those who countenanced extermination; he would not see souls, if Jews had souls, severed and sent into the pit. Not only did he countenance the Jews of Cambridge, he protected them, though he railed mightily against other churchmen for encouraging the sin of usury in borrowing from them.
Now he, too, was in debt to one such-for his life. And, indeed, if this man, Jew or not, could solve the mystery that was causing Cambridge ’s agony, then Prior Geoffrey was his to command. Why, though, had he brought a doctor, a female doctor, with him?
So Prior Geoffrey listened to Simon’s story, and where he had been amazed before, he was now floundered, not least by the man’s openness, a characteristic he had not come across in the race until now. Instead of canniness, even cunning, he was hearing the truth.
He thought, Poor booby, he takes little persuasion to unload his secrets. He is too artless; he has no guile. Who has sent him, poor booby?
There was silence when Simon had finished, except for a blackbird’s song from a wild cherry tree.
“You have been sent by Jews to rescue the Jews?”
“Not at all, my lord. Really, no. The prime mover in this matter appears to be the King of Sicily-a Norman, as you know. I wondered at it myself; I cannot but feel that there are other influences at work; certainly our passports were not questioned at Dover, leaving me to opine that English officialdom is not unaware of what we are about. Be assured that, should the Jews of Cambridge prove guilty of this most dreadful crime, I shall willingly lay my hands to the rope that hangs them.”
Good. The prior accepted that. “But why was it necessary for the enterprise to include this woman doctor, may I ask? Surely, such a rara avis, if she is discovered, will attract most unwelcome attention.”
“I, too, had my doubts at first,” Simon said.
Doubts? He’d been appalled. The sex of the doctor who was to accompany him had not been revealed to him until she and her entourage boarded the boat to take them all to England, by which time it was too late to protest, though he had protested-Gordinus the African, greatest of doctors and most naïve of men, taking his gesticulations as waves of farewell and fondly waving back as the gap between taffrail and quay took them away from each other.
“I had my doubts,” he said again, “yet she has proved modest, capable, and a proficient speaker of English. Moreover”-Simon beamed, his creased face crinkling further in pleasure, taking the prior’s attention away from a sensitive area; there would be time to reveal Adelia’s particular skill, and it was not yet-“as my wife would say, the Lord has His own purposes. Why else should she have been on hand in your hour of greatest need?”
Prior Geoffrey nodded slowly. That was undoubted; he’d already been on his knees in thanks to Almighty God for putting her in his way.
“It would be helpful, before we arrive in the town,” pursued Simon of Naples, gently, “to learn what we can of the killing of the murdered child and how it came about that two others are missing.” He let the sentence hang in the air.
“The children,” Prior Geoffrey said at last, heavily. “I have to tell you, Master Simon, that by the time we set off for Canterbury, the number of those missing was not two, as you have been told, but three. Indeed, had I not vowed to make this pilgrimage, I would not have left Canterbury for dread the number might rise again. God have mercy on their souls; we all fear the little ones have met the same fate as the first child, Peter. Crucified.”
“Not at the hands of Jews, my lord. We do not crucify children.”
You crucified the Son of God, the prior thought. Poor booby. Admit to being a Jew where you are going and they will tear you to pieces. And your doctor with you.
Damn it, he thought, I shall have to take a hand in the business.
He said, “I must tell you, Master Simon, that our people are much aroused against the Jews, they fear that other offspring may be taken.”
“My lord, what inquiry has been made? What evidence that Jews are to blame?”
“The charge was made almost immediately,” said Prior Geoffrey, “and, I am afraid, with reason…”
It was Simon Menahem of Naples ’s genius as agent, investigator, go-between, reconnoiterer, spy-he was used in all such capacities by such of the powerful as knew him well-that people took him to be what he seemed. They could not believe that this puny, nervous little man of such eagerness, even simplicity, who spilled information-all of it trustworthy-could outwit them. Only when, the deal fixed, the alliance sealed, the bottom of the business uncovered, did it occur to them that Simon had achieved exactly what his masters wanted. But he is a booby, they would tell themselves.
And it was to this booby, who had judged the prior’s character and newfound indebtedness to the last jot and tittle, that a subtle prior found himself recounting everything the booby wished to know.
It had been just over a year ago. Passiontide Friday. Eight-year-old Peter, a child from Trumpington, a village on the southwest edge of Cambridge, was sent by his mother to gather pussy willow, “which, in England, replaces the palm in decoration for Palm Sunday.”
Peter had shunned willows near his home and trotted north along the Cam to gather branches from the tree on the stretch of riverbank by Saint Radegund’s convent, which was claimed to be especially holy, having been planted by Saint Radegund herself.
“As if,” said the prior, bitterly interrupting his tale, “a female German saint of the Dark Ages would have tripped over to Cambridgeshire to plant a tree. But that harpy”-thus he referred to the prioress of Saint Radegund’s-“will say anything.”
It happened that, on the same day, Passiontide Friday, several of the richest and most important Jews in England had gathered in Cambridge at the house of Chaim Leonis for the marriage of Chaim’s daughter. Peter had been able to view the celebrations from the other side of the river on his way to gather branches of willow.
He had not, therefore, returned home the same way but had taken the quicker route to Jewry by going over the bridge and passing through the town so that he could see the carriages and caparisoned horses of the visiting Jews in Chaim’s stable.
“His uncle, Peter’s uncle, was Chaim’s stabler, you see.”
“Are Christians allowed to work for Jews here?” Simon asked, as if he didn’t know the answer already. “Great heavens.”
“Oh, yes. The Jews are steady employers. And Peter was a regular visitor to the stables, even to the kitchens, where Chaim’s cook-who was a Jew-sometimes gave him sweetmeats, a fact that was to count against the household later as enticement.”
“Go on, my lord.”
“Well. Peter’s uncle, Godwin, was too busy with the unusual influx of horses to pay attention to the boy and told him to be off home, indeed thought he had. Not until late that night, when Peter’s mother came inquiring to town, did anyone realize the child had disappeared. The watch was alerted, also the river bailiffs-it was likely the boy had fallen into the River Cam. The banks were searched at dawn. Nothing.”
Nothing for more than a week. As townsfolk and villagers crawled on their knees to the Good Friday cross in the parish churches, prayers were addressed to Almighty God for the return of Peter of Trumpington.
On Easter Monday the prayer was granted. Hideously. Peter’s body was discovered in the river near Chaim’s house, snagged below its surface under a pier.
The prior shrugged. “Even then blame did not fall on the Jews. Children tumble, they fall into rivers, wells, ditches. No, we thought it an accident-until Martha the laundress came forward. Martha lives in Bridge Street and among her clients is Chaim Leonis. On the evening of Little Peter’s disappearance, she said, she had delivered a basket of clean washing to Chaim’s back door. Finding it open, she’d gone inside-”
“She delivered laundry so late in the day?” Simon expressed surprise.
Prior Geoffrey inclined his head. “I think we must accept that Martha was curious; she had never seen a Jewish wedding. Nor have any of us, of course. Anyway, she went inside. The back of the house was deserted, the celebrations having moved to the front garden. The door to a room off the hall was slightly open-”
“Another open door,” Simon said, apparently surprised again.
The prior glanced at him. “Do I tell you something you already know?”
“I beg pardon, my lord. Continue, I beseech you.”
“Very well. Martha looked into the room and saw-says she saw-a child hanging by his hands from a cross. She was given no chance to be other than terrified because, just then, Chaim’s wife came down the passageway, cursed her, and she ran off.”
“Without alerting the watch?” Simon asked.
The prior nodded. “Indeed, that is the weakness in her story. If, if, Martha saw the body when she says, she did not alert the watch. She alerted nobody until after Little Peter’s corpse was discovered. Then, and only then, did she whisper what she had seen to a neighbor, who whispered it to another neighbor, who went to the castle and told the sheriff. After that, evidence came thick and fast. A branch of pussy willow was found dropped in the lane outside Chaim’s house. A man delivering peat to the castle testified that from across the river on Passiontide Friday, he saw two men, one wearing the Jewish hat, toss a bundle from Great Bridge into the Cam. Others now said they had heard screams coming from Chaim’s house. I myself viewed the corpse after it had been dragged from the river and saw the stigmata of crucifixion on it.” He frowned. “The poor little body was horribly bloated, of course, but there were the marks on the wrists, and the belly had been split open, as if by a spear, and…there were other injuries.”
There had been immediate uproar in the town. To save every man, woman, and child in Jewry from slaughter, they had been hurried to Cambridge Castle by the sheriff and his men, acting on behalf of the king, under whose protection the Jews were.
“Even so, on the way, Chaim was seized by those seeking vengeance and hanged from Saint Radegund’s willow. They took his wife as she pleaded for him and tore her to pieces.” Prior Geoffrey crossed himself. “The sheriff and myself did what we could, but we were outdone by the townsfolk’s fury.” He frowned; the memory pained him. “I saw decent men transform into hellhounds, matrons into maenads.”
He lifted his cap and passed his hand over his balding head. “Even then, Master Simon, it might be that we could have contained the trouble. The sheriff managed to restore order, and it was hoped that, since Chaim was dead, the remaining Jews would be allowed to return to their homes. But no. Now onto the floor steps Roger of Acton, a cleric new to our town and one of our Canterbury pilgrims. Doubtless you noticed him, a lean-shanked, mean-featured, whey-faced, importunate fellow of dubious cleanliness. Master Roger happens”-the prior glared at Simon as if finding fault with him-“happens to be cousin to the prioress of Saint Radegund, a seeker after fame through the scribbling of religious tracts that reveal little but his ignorance.”
The two men shook their heads. The blackbird went on singing.
Prior Geoffrey sighed. “Master Roger heard the dread word ‘crucifixion’ and snapped at it like a ferret. Here was something new. Not merely an accusation of torture such as Jews have ever inspired…I beg your pardon, Master Simon, but it has always been so.”
“I fear it has, my lord. I fear it has.”
“Here was a reenactment of Easter, a child found worthy to suffer the pains of the Son of God and, therefore, undoubtedly, both a saint and a miracle-giver. I would have buried the boy with decency but was denied by the hag in human form who poses as a nun of Saint Radegund.”
The prior shook his fist toward the road. “She abducted the child’s body, claiming it as hers by right merely because Peter’s parents dwell on land belonging to Saint Radegund. Mea culpa, I fear we wrangled over the corpse. But that woman, Master Simon, that hellcat, sees not the body of a little boy deserving Christian burial but an acquisition to the den of succubae she calls a convent, a source of income from pilgrims and from the halt and the lame looking for cure. An attraction, Master Simon.” He sat back. “And such it has become. Roger of Acton has spread the word. Our prioress was seen taking advice from the money changers of Canterbury on how to sell Little Saint Peter relics and tokens at the convent gate. Quid non mortalia pectora cogis, auri sacra fames! To what do you not drive human hearts, cursed craving for gold!”
“I am shocked, my lord,” Simon said.
“You should be, Master Simon. She has a knuckle taken from the boy’s hand that she and her cousin pressed on me in my travail, saying it would mend me in the instant. Roger of Acton, do you see, wishes to add me to the list of cures, that my name might be on the application to the Vatican for the official sainting of Little Saint Peter.”
“I see.”
“The knuckle, which, such was my pain, I did not scruple to touch, was ineffective. My deliverance was from a more unexpected source.” The prior got up. “Which reminds me, I feel the urge to piss.”
Simon put out a hand to detain him. “But what of the other children, my lord? The ones still missing?”
Prior Geoffrey stood for a moment, as if listening to the blackbird. “For a while, nothing,” he said. “The town had sated itself on Chaim and Miriam. The Jews in the castle were preparing to leave it. But then another boy disappeared and we did not dare to move them.”
The prior turned his face away so that Simon could not see it. “It was on All Souls’ Night. He was a boy from my own school.” Simon heard the break in the prior’s voice. “Next, a little girl, a wildfowler’s daughter. On Holy Innocents Day, God help us. Then, as recently as the Feast of Saint Edward, King and Martyr, another boy.”
“But, my lord, who can accuse the Jews of these disappearances? Are they not still locked in the castle?”
“By now, Master Simon, Jews have been awarded the ability to fly over the castle crenels, snatching up the children and gnawing them before dropping their carcasses in the nearest mere. May I advise you not to reveal yourself. You see”-the prior paused-“there have been signs.”
“Signs?”
“Found in the area where each child was last seen. Cabalistic weavings. The townsfolk say they resemble the Star of David. And now”-Prior Geoffrey was crossing his legs-“I have to piss. This is a matter of some moment.”
Simon watched him hobble to the trees. “Good fortune, my lord.”
I was right to tell him as much as I did, he thought. We have gained a valuable ally. For information, I traded information-though not all of it.
THE TRACK TOWARD the brow of Wandlebury Hill had been made by a landslip that breached part of the great ditches dug out by some ancient peoples to defend it. The passage of sheep had evened it out and Adelia, a basket on her arm, climbed to the summit in minutes without losing breath-to find herself alone on the hilltop, an immense circle of grass dotted currantlike with sheep droppings.
From a distance, it had appeared bald. Certainly the only high trees were down its side, with a clump along one easterly edge, and the rest was covered with shrubby hawthorn and juniper bushes. The flattish surface was pitted here and there with curious depressions, some of them two or three feet deep and at least six feet across. A good place to wrench your ankle.
To the east, where the sun was rising, the ground fell away gently; to the west, it dropped fast to the flat land.
She opened her cloak, clasped her hands behind her neck, stretching, letting the breeze pierce the despised tunic of harsh wool bought in Dover that Simon of Naples had begged her to wear.
“Our mission lies among the commoners of England, Doctor. If we are to mingle with them, learn what they know, we must appear as they do.”
“Mansur looks every inch a Saxon villein, naturally,” she’d said. “And what of our accents?”
But Simon had maintained it was a matter of degree that three foreign medicine peddlers, always popular with the herd, would hear more secrets than a thousand inquisitors. “We shall not be removed by class from those we question; it is the truth we want, not respect.”
“In this thing,” she’d said of the tunic, “respect will not be forthcoming.” However, Simon, more experienced in deception than she, was the leader of this mission. Adelia had put on what was basically a tube, fastened at the shoulders with pins but retaining her silk undershift-though never one to swim in the stream of fashion, she’d be damned if, even for the King of Sicily, she tolerated sackcloth next to the skin.
She closed her eyes against the light, tired from a night spent watching her patient for signs of fever. At dawn the prior’s skin had proved cool, his pulse steady; the procedure had been successful for the moment; it now remained to be seen whether he could urinate without help and without pain. So far so good, as Margaret used to say.
She started walking, her eyes searching for useful plants, noticing that her cheap boots-another blasted disguise-sent up sweet, unfamiliar scents at each step. There were goodies here among the grass, the early leaves of vervains, ale-hoof, catmint, bugle, Clinopodium vulgare, which the English called wild basil, though it neither resembled nor smelled like true basil. Once she had bought an old English herbal that the monks of Saint Lucia had acquired but couldn’t read. She’d given it to Margaret as a reminder of home, only to reappropriate it to study for herself.
And here they were, its illustrations, growing in real life at her feet, as thrilling as if she’d encountered a famed face in the street.
The herbalist author, relying heavily on Galen, like most of his kind, had made the usual claims: laurel to protect from lightning, all-heal to ward off the plague, marjoram to secure the uterus-as if a woman’s uterus floated up to the neck and down again like a cherry in a bottle. Why did they never look?
She began picking.
All at once she was uneasy. There was no reason for it; the great ring was as deserted as it had been. Clouds changed the light as their shadows chased one another briskly across the grass; a stunted hawthorn assumed the shape of a bent old woman; a sudden screech-a magpie-sent smaller birds flying.
Whatever it was, she had an apprehension that made her want to be less vertical in all this flatness. So foolish she’d been. Tempted by its plants and the apparent isolation of this place, tired of the chattering company she’d been surrounded with since Canterbury, she’d committed the error, the idiocy, of venturing out alone, telling Mansur to stay and care for the prior. A mistake. She had abrogated all right to immunity from predation. Indeed, without the company of Margaret and Mansur, and as far as men in the vicinity were concerned, she might as well be wearing a placard saying “Rape me.” If the invitation were accepted, it would be regarded as her fault, not the rapist’s.
Damn the prison in which men incarcerated women. She’d resented its invisible bars when Mansur had insisted on accompanying her along the long, dark corridors of the Salerno school, making her look overprivileged and ridiculous as she went from lecture to lecture, and marking her out. But she’d learned-oh, she’d learned-her lesson, that day when she’d avoided his chaperonage: the outrage, the desperation with which she’d had to scrabble against a male fellow student; the indignity of having to scream for help, which, thank God, had been answered; the subsequent lecture from her professors and, of course, Mansur and Margaret, on the sins of arrogance and carelessness of reputation.
Nobody had blamed the young man, although Mansur had afterward broken his nose by way of teaching him manners.
Being Adelia and still arrogant, she forced herself to walk a little farther, though in the direction of the trees, and pick a plant or two more before looking around.
Nothing. The flutter of hawthorn blossom on the breeze, another sudden dimming of light as a cloud chased across the sun.
A pheasant rose, clattering and shrieking. She turned.
It was as if he had sprung out of the ground. He was marching toward her, casting a long shadow. No pimply student this time. One of the pilgrimage’s heavy and confident crusaders, the metal links of his mail hissing beneath the tabard, the mouth smiling but the eyes as hard as the iron encasing head and nose. “Well, well, now,” he was saying with anticipation. “Well, well, now, mistress.”
Adelia experienced a deep weariness-at her own stupidity, at what was to come. She had resources; one of them, a wicked little dagger, was tucked in her boot, given to her by her Sicilian foster mother, a straightforward woman with the advice to stick it in the assailant’s eye. Her Jewish stepfather had suggested a more subtle defense: “Tell them you’re a doctor and appear concerned by their appearance. Ask if they’ve been in contact with the plague. That’ll lower any man’s flag.”
She doubted, though, whether either ploy would prevail against this advancing mailed mass. Nor, considering her mission, did she want to broadcast her profession.
She stood straight and tried loftiness while he was still a way off. “Yes?” she called sharply. Which might have been impressive had she been Vesuvia Adelia Rachel Ortese Aguilar in Salerno, but on this lonely hill, it did little for a poorly dressed foreign trull known to travel in a peddler’s cart with two men.
“That’s what I like,” the man called back. “A woman who says yes.”
He came on. No doubt about his intention now; she dropped, groping into her boot.
Then two things happened at once-from different directions.
Out of the clump of trees came the whoom-whoom sound of air being displaced by something whirling through it. A small ax buried its blade in the grass between Adelia and the knight.
The other was a yell from across the hill. “In the name of God, Gervase, call your bloody hounds and go down. The old girl’s champing at her bit.”
Adelia watched the knight’s eyes change. She leaned forward and, with an effort, pulled the ax from the ground and stood up with it, smiling. “It must be magic,” she said in English.
The other crusader was still shouting for his friend to find his dogs and go down to the road.
The discomfiture in this one’s face changed to something like hatred, then, deliberately, to disinterest as he turned on his heel and strode away to join his fellow.
You’ve made no friend there, Adelia told herself. God, how I loathe being afraid. Damn him, damn him. And damn this damned country; I didn’t want to come in the first place.
Ill-tempered because she was shaking, she walked toward a shadow under the trees. “I told you to stay with the cart,” she said in Arabic.
“You did,” Mansur agreed.
She gave him back his ax-he called it Parvaneh (butterfly). He tucked it into the side of his belt so as to be out of sight under his robe, leaving his traditional dagger in its beautiful scabbard on display at the front. The throwing ax as a weapon was rare among Arabs but not for the tribes, and Mansur’s was one of them, whose ancestors had encountered the Vikings that had ventured into Arabia where, in exchange for its exotic goods, they had traded not only weapons but also the secret of how to make the superior steel of their blades.
Together, mistress and servant made their way down the hill through the trees, Adelia stumbling, Mansur striding as easily as on a road.
“Which of the goats’ droppings was that?” he wanted to know.
“The one they call Gervase. The other’s name is Joscelin, I think.”
“Crusaders,” he said, and spat.
Adelia, too, had little opinion of crusaders. Salerno was on one of the routes to the Holy Land and, whether going out or coming back, most soldiers of the crusading army had been insufferable. As pig-ignorant as they were enthusiastic for God’s work, those going out had disrupted the harmony in which different creeds and races lived in Sicily ’s kingdom by protesting against the presence of Jews, Moors, and even Christians whose practices were different from their own, often attacking them. On the way back, they were usually embittered, diseased, and impoverished-only a few had been rewarded with the fortune or holy grace they’d expected-and, therefore, just as troublesome.
She knew of some who’d not gone to Outremer at all, merely staying in Salerno until they’d exhausted its bounty before returning home to gain the admiration of their town or village with a few tall tales and a crusading cloak they’d bought cheap in Salerno ’s market.
“Well, you scared that one,” she said now. “It was a good throw.”
“No,” the Arab said, “I missed.”
Adelia turned on him. “Mansur, you listen to me. We are not here to slaughter the populace…”
She stopped. They had come to a track, and just below them was the other crusader, the one called Joscelin, protector of the prioress. He had found one of the hounds and was bending down, attaching a leash to its collar, berating the huntsman who was with him.
As they came up, he raised his head, smiling, nodded at Mansur, and wished Adelia good day. “I am glad to see you accompanied, mistress. This is no place for pretty ladies to wander alone, nor anyone else for that matter.”
No reference to the incident on the top of the hill, but it was well done; an apology for his friend without directly apologizing, and a reproof to her. Though why call her pretty when she was not, nor, in her present role, did she set out to be? Were men obliged to flirt? If so, she thought reluctantly, this one probably had more success than most.
He had taken off his helmet and coif, revealing thick, dark hair curled with sweat. His eyes were a startling blue. And, considering his status, he was showing courtesy to a woman who apparently had none.
The huntsman stood apart, unspeaking, sullenly watching them all.
Sir Joscelin inquired after the prior. She was careful to say, indicating Mansur, that the doctor believed his patient to be responding to treatment.
Sir Joscelin bowed to the Arab, and Adelia thought that, if nothing else, he’d learned manners on his crusade. “Ah, yes, Arab medicine,” he said. “We gained a respect for it, those of us who went to the Holy Land.”
“Did you and your friend go there together?” She was curious about this disparity between the two men.
“At separate times,” he said. “Oddly enough, though both of us are Cambridge men, we did not meet up again until our return. A vast place, Outremer.”
He had done well out of it, to judge from the quality of his boots and the heavy gold ring on his finger.
She nodded and walked on, remembering only after she and Mansur had passed that she ought to have curtsied to him. Then she forgot him, even forgot the brute who was his friend; she was a doctor, and her mind was directed to her patient.
WHEN THE PRIOR CAME BACK in triumph to the camp, it was to find that the woman had returned and was sitting alone by the remains of the fire while the Saracen packed the cart and harnessed the mules.
He’d dreaded the moment. Distinguished as he was, he had lain, half-naked and puling with fear, before a woman, a woman, all restraint and dignity gone.
Only indebtedness, the knowledge that without her ministration he would have died, had stopped him from ignoring her or stealing away before they could meet again.
She looked up at his step. “Have you passed water?”
“Yes.” Curtly.
“Without pain?”
“Yes.”
“Good,” she said.
It was…he remembered now. A vagabond woman had gone into a difficult labor at the priory gates, and Brother Theo, the priory infirmarian, had perforce attended her. Next morning, when he and Theo had visited mother and baby, he wondering which would be most ashamed by their encounter-the woman, who’d revealed her most intimate parts to a man during the birth, or the monk, who’d had to involve himself with them.
Neither. No embarrassment. They had looked on each other with pride.
So it was now. The bright brown eyes regarding him were briskly without sex, those of a comrade-in-arms; he was her fellow soldier, a junior one perhaps; they had fought against the enemy together and won.
He was as grateful to her for that as for his deliverance. He hurried forward and took her hand to his lips. “Puella mirabile.”
Had Adelia been demonstrative, which she wasn’t, she would have hugged the man. It had worked then. Not having practiced general medicine for so long, she had forgotten the incalculable pleasure of seeing a creature released from suffering. However, he had to be aware of the prognosis.
“Not as mirabile as all that,” she told him. “It could happen again.”
“Damn,” the prior said, “damn, damn it.” He recovered himself. “I beg your pardon, mistress.”
She patted his hand and sat him down on the log, settling herself on the grass, her legs tucked beneath her. “Men have a gland that is accessory to the male generative organs,” she said. “It surrounds the neck of the bladder and the commencement of the urethra. In your case, I believe it to be enlarged. Yesterday it pressed so hard that the bladder could not function.”
“What am I to do?” he asked.
“You must learn to relieve the bladder, should the occasion arise, as I did-using a reed as a catheter.”
“Catheter?” She’d used the Greek word for a tube.
“You should practice. I can show you.”
Dear God, he thought, she would. Nor would it mean anything to her but a medical procedure. I am discussing these things with a woman; she is discussing them with me.
On the journey from Canterbury he’d barely noticed her, except as one of the ragtag-though, now that he came to think of it, during the overnight rests at the inns she had joined the nuns in the women’s quarters rather than staying in the cart with her men. Last night, when she had frowned down on his privates, she might have been one of his scribes concentrating on a difficult manuscript. This morning, her professionalism sustained them both above the murky waters of gender.
Yet she was a woman and, poor thing, as plain as her talk. A woman to blend so well into a crowd as to disappear, a background woman, a mouse among mice. Since she was now in the forefront of his attention, Prior Geoffrey felt an irritation that this should be so. There was no reason for such homeliness; the features were small and regular, as was what little he could see of her body beneath an enveloping cloak. The complexion was good, with the dusky, downy fairness to be found sometimes in northern Italy and Greece. Teeth white. Presumably there was hair beneath the cap with its rolled brim pulled down to her ears. How old was she? Still young.
The sun shone on a face that eschewed prettiness for intelligence, shrewdness taking away its femininity. No trace of artifice, she was clean, he gave her that, scrubbed like a washboard, but, while the prior was the first to condemn paint on women, this one’s lack of artifice was very nearly an affront. A virgin still, he would swear to it.
Adelia saw a man overfed, as so many monastic superiors were, though in this case gluttony was not the result of an appetite for food compensating for the deprivation of sex; she felt safe in his company. Women were natural beings for him; she knew that in an instant because it was so rare, neither harpies nor temptresses. The desires of the flesh were there but not indulged, nor kept in check by the birch. The nice eyes spoke of someone at ease with himself, worldliness living cheek by jowl-too much jowl-with goodness, a man who tolerated petty sins, including his own. He found her curious, of course-everybody did once they’d noticed her.
Nice as he was, she was becoming irritated; she’d been up most of the night attending to him; the least he could do was attend to her advice now.
“Are you listening to me, my lord?”
“I beg pardon, mistress.” He sat up straight.
“I said I can show you the use of a catheter. The procedure is not difficult when you know how to do it.”
He said, “I think, madam, we will wait upon the necessity.”
“Very well.” It was up to him. “In the meantime, you carry too much weight. You must take more exercise and eat less.”
Stung, he said, “I hunt every week.”
“On horseback. Follow the hounds on foot instead.”
Domineering, Prior Geoffrey thought. And she comes from Sicily? His experience of Sicilian women-it had been short but unforgettable-remembered the allures of Araby: dark eyes smiling at him above a veil, the touch of hennaed fingers, words as soft as the skin, the scent of…
God’s bones, Adelia thought, why do they attach such importance to frippery? “I can’t be bothered,” she said snappily.
“Eh?”
She sighed with impatience. “I see you are regretting that the woman, like the doctor, is unadorned. It always happens.” She glared at him. “You are getting the truth of both, Master Prior. If you want them bedecked, go elsewhere. Turn over that stone”-she pointed to a flint nearby-“and you will find a charlatan who will dazzle you with the favorable conjunction of Mercury and Venus, flatter your future, and sell you colored water for a gold piece. I can’t be bothered with it. From me you get the actuality.”
He was taken aback. Here was the confidence, even arrogance, of a skilled artisan. She might be a plumber he’d called in to mend a burst pipe.
Except, he remembered, that she’d stopped his particular pipe from bursting. However, even practicality could do with ornamentation. “Are you as direct with all your patients?” he asked.
“I don’t have patients usually,” she said.
“I’m not surprised.”
And she laughed.
Entrancing, the prior thought. He remembered Horace: Dulce riden tem Lalagen amabo. I will love Lalage, who laughs so sweetly. Yet laughter in this young woman gave her instant vulnerability and innocence, being at such odds with the stern lecturing she’d assumed before, so that his sudden welling affection was not for a Lalage but for a daughter. I must protect her, he thought.
She was holding something out to him. “I have prescribed a diet for you.”
“Paper, by the Lord,” he said. “Where did you obtain paper?”
“The Arabs make it.”
He glanced at the list; her writing was abominable, but he could just decipher it. “Water? Boiled water? Eight cups a day? Madam, would you kill me? The poet Horace tells us that nothing of worth can come from drinkers of water.”
“Try Martial,” she said. “He lived longer. Non est vivere, sed valere vita est. Life’s not just being alive but being well.”
He shook his head in wonder. Humbly, he said, “I beg you, tell me your name.”
“Vesuvia Adelia Rachel Ortese Aguilar,” Adelia said. “Or Dr. Trotula, if you prefer, which is a title conferred on women professors in the school.”
He didn’t prefer. “Vesuvia? A pretty name, most unusual.”
“Adelia,” she said, “I was merely found on Vesuvius.” She was stretching out her hand as if to hold his. He held his breath.
Instead she took his wrist, her thumb on its top, the other fingers pressed into its soft underpart. Her fingernails were short and clean, like the rest of her. “I was exposed on the mountain as a baby. In a crock.” She talked absently, and he saw that she was not really informing him, merely keeping him quiet while she sounded his pulse. “The two doctors who found and raised me thought it possible I was Greek, exposure having been a Greek custom with an unwanted daughter.”
She let go of his wrist, shaking her head. “Too fast,” she said. “Truly, you should lose weight.” He must be preserved, she thought. He would be a loss.
Peculiarity after peculiarity was making the prior’s head reel. And while the Lord might exalt those of low degree, there was no necessity for her to display her ignoble beginnings to all and sundry. Dear, dear. Away from her milieu, she would be as exposed as a snail without its shell. He asked, “You were raised by two men?”
She was affronted, as if he suggested her upbringing had been abnormal. “They were married,” she said, frowning. “My foster mother is also a Trotula. A Christian-born Salernitan.”
“And your foster father?”
“A Jew.”
Here it was again. Did these people blurt it to the fowls of the air? “So you were brought up in his faith?” It mattered to him; she was a brand, his brand, a most precious brand, to be saved from the burning.
She said, “I have no faith except in what can be proved.”
The prior was appalled. “Do you not acknowledge the Creation? God’s purpose?”
“There was creation, certainly. Whether there was purpose, I don’t know.”
My God, my God, he thought, do not strike her down. I have need of her. She knows not what she says.
She was standing up. Her eunuch had turned the cart ready for its descent to the road. Simon was walking toward them.
The prior said, because even apostates had to be paid, and he pitied this one with all his heart, “Mistress Adelia, I am in your debt and would weight my end of the scales. A boon and, with God’s grace, I will grant it.”
She turned and regarded him, considering. She saw the nice eyes, the clever mind, the goodness; she liked him. But the command of her profession was for his body-not yet, but one day. The gland that had restricted the bladder, weigh it, compare it…
Simon broke into a run; he’d seen that look of hers before. She had no judgment other than in medicine; she was about to ask the prior for his corpse when he died. “My lord, my lord.” He was panting. “My lord, if you would grant a kindness, prevail upon the prioress to let Dr. Trotula view Little Saint Peter’s remains. It may be that she can throw light on the manner of his passing.”
“Indeed?” Prior Geoffrey looked at Vesuvia Adelia Rachel Ortese Aguilar. “And how may you do that?”
“I am a doctor to the dead,” she said.