Mistress of the Art of Death (23 page)

But Simon was at the castle, closeted with the Jews in an effort to discover whose indebtedness might have spurred Chaim's death.

"He'll say as you all got to go," Gyltha told her.

He probably would; with almost everyone they suspected gathered under one roof, tongues loosened by drink, it would be an opportunity to find out who knew what about whom.

"Nevertheless, send Ulf to the castle to ask him."

Truth to tell, now that she thought about it, Adelia was not unwilling to go. Death had overlain her days in Cambridge with the murdered children, also with some of her patients; the little one with the cough had given way to pneumonia, the ague had died, so had the kidney stone, so had a new mother brought in too late. Adelia's successes--the amputation, the fever, the hernia--were discounted in the sum of what she regarded as her failures.

It would be nice, for once, to forgather with the living healthy at play. As usual, she could hide in the background; she would not be noticed. After all, she thought, a feast in Cambridge could not compete with the sophistication of its Salerno equivalent in the palaces of kings and popes. She need not be daunted by what, inevitably, would be a bucolic affair.

And she wanted that bath. Had she known that such a thing were possible, she would have demanded one before now; she'd assumed that preparing baths was one of the many things Gyltha didn't hold with.

She had no choice, anyway; Gyltha and the two Matildas were determined. Time was short; an entertainment that could last six or seven hours began at noon.

She was stripped and plunged into the lessiveuse. Washing lye was poured in after her, along with a handful of precious cloves. She was scrubbed with a bathbrick until nearly raw and held under while her hair was attacked with more lye and a brush before being rinsed with lavender water.

Hauled out, she was wrapped in a blanket and her head inserted into the bread oven.

Her hair was a disappointment, more had been expected of its emergence from the cap or coif she always wore; she habitually sheared it off at shoulder length.

"Color's all right," Gyltha said grudgingly.

"But that's too short," Matilda B. objected. "Us'll have to put that in net pockets."

"Net costs."

"I don't know that I'm going yet," Adelia shouted from the oven.

"You bloody are."

Oh, well. Still on her knees at the oven, she directed her tiring women to her purse. Money was plentiful; Simon had been provided with a letter of credit on Luccan merchant bankers with agents in England and had drawn on it for them both.

She added, "And if you're for the market, it's time you three had new kirtles. Buy an ell of best camlet for yourselves." Their goodwill made her ashamed that they should be shabby while she was resplendent.

"Linen'll do," Gyltha said shortly, pleased.

Adelia was pulled out, put into her shift and underdress, and set on a stool to have her hair brushed until it gleamed like white gold. Silver net had been purchased and stitched into little pockets that were now being pinned over the plaits round her ears. The women were still working on it when Simon arrived with Ulf.

At the sight of her, he blinked. "
Well.
Well, well, well..."

Ulf's mouth had fallen open.

Embarrassed, Adelia said crossly, "All this fuss, and I don't know if we should go at all."

"Not go? Dear Doctor, if Cambridge were denied the sight of you now, the very skies would weep. I know of only one woman as beautiful, and she is in Naples."

Adelia smiled at him. Subtle little man that he was, he knew she would be comfortable with a compliment only if it was without coquetry. He was always careful to mention his wife, whom he adored, not just to point out that
he
was out-of-bounds but to reassure her that she, Adelia, was out-of-bounds to him. Anything else would have jeopardized a relationship that was close of necessity. As it was, it had allowed them to be comrades, he respecting her professionalism, she respecting his.

And it was nice of him, she thought, to put her on a par with the wife whom he still saw in his mind's eye as the slim, ivory-skinned maiden he had married in Naples twenty years before--though, probably, having since borne him nine children, the lady was not as slim as she had been.

He was triumphant this morning.

"We shall soon be home," he told her. "I shall not say too much until I have uncovered the requisite documents, but there
are
copies of the burned tallies. I was sure there must be. Chaim had lodged them with his bankers and, since they are extensive--the man seems to have lent money to all East Anglia--I have taken them to the castle in order that Sir Rowley may assist me in perusing them."

"Is that wise?" Adelia asked.

"I think it is, I think it is. The man is versed in accounting and as eager as we are to discover who owed what to Chaim and who regretted it so mightily as to want him dead."

"Hmm."

He would not listen to Adelia's doubts; Simon thought he knew the sort of man Sir Rowley was, crusader or not. A hasty change into his best clothes so as to be ready for Grantchester and he was out of the door, heading back to the castle.

Left to herself, Adelia would have put on her gray overdress in order to tone down the brightness of the saffron that would therefore only show at bosom and sleeves. "I don't want to attract attention."

The Matildas, however, plumped for the only other item of note in her wardrobe, a brocade with the colors of an autumn tapestry, and Gyltha, after a short waver, agreed with them. It was slid carefully over Adelia's coiffure. The pointed slippers Margaret had embroidered with silver thread went on with new white stockings.

The three arbiters stood back to consider the result.

The Matildas nodded and clasped their hands. Gyltha said, "Reckon as she'll do," which was as near as she approached to hyperbole.

Adelia's brief glimpse of her reflection in the polished but uneven bottom of a fish kettle showed something like a distorted apple tree, but obviously she passed muster with the others.

"Ought to be a page as'll stand behind Doctor's at the feast," Matilda B. said. "Sheriff and them allus takes a page to stand behind their chairs. Fart-catchers, Ma calls them."

"Page, eh?"

Ulf, who had been staring at Adelia without closing his mouth, became aware that four pairs of eyes rested on him. He began running.

The ensuing chase and battle were terrible. Ulf's screams brought neighbors round to see if another child was in danger of its life. Adelia, standing well back in case she be splashed by the lessiveuse's turmoil, was in pain from laughing.

More cash was expended, this time at the business premises of Ma Mill, whose ragbags contained an old but serviceable tabard of almost the right size that responded nicely to a rub with vinegar. Dressed in it and with his flaxen hair bobbed around a face like a gleaming, discontented pickled onion, Ulf too passed muster.

Mansur eclipsed them both. A gilded agal held the veil of his kaffiyeh in place; silk flowed long and light around a fresh white woollen robe. A jeweled dagger flashed on his belt.

"O Son of the Noonday," Adelia said, bowing.
"Eeh l-Halaawa di!"

Mansur inclined his head, but his eyes were on Gyltha, who took a poker to the fire, face averted. "Girt great maypole," she said.

Oh ho,
Adelia thought.

T
HERE WAS MUCH
to smile at in the aping of fine manners, at the reception of hoods, swords, and gloves from guests whose boots and cloaks were muddied by the walk from the river--nearly everybody had been punted from town--at the stiff use of titles by those who had known each other intimately for years, at the rings on female fingers toughened by the making of cheese in their owner's home dairy.

But there was also much to admire. How friendlier it was to be greeted at the arched door with its carved Norman chevrons by Sir Joscelin himself than announced by an ivory-wanded, high-chinned majordomo. To be handed warming spiced wine on a cool day, not iced wine. To smell mutton, beef, and pork sizzling on spits in the courtyard rather than to pretend with one's host, as one did in southern Italy, that food was being conjured by a wave of the hand.

Anyway, with the scowling Ulf and Safeguard at her heels rather than the lapdogs carried by pages attendant on some of the other ladies, Adelia was in no position to be supercilious.

Mansur, obviously, had gained status in Cambridge's eyes, and his dress and height came in for attention. Sir Joscelin welcomed him with a graceful salute and a
"Salaam alaikum."

The matter of his kard was also resolved with charm. "The dagger is not a weapon," Sir Joscelin told his porter, who was struggling to wrest it from Mansur's belt and put it with the guests' swords. "It is a decoration for such a gentleman as this, as we old crusaders know."

He turned to Adelia, bowing, and asked her to translate his apology to the good doctor for the tardiness of their invitation. "I feared he would be bored by our rustic amusements, but Prior Geoffrey assured me otherwise."

Though he had always shown her civility, even when she must have seemed to him to be a foreign trollop, Adelia realized that Gyltha had circulated word that the doctor's assistant was virtuous.

The prioress's welcome was offhand through lack of interest, and she was taken aback by her knight's greeting to both Mansur and Adelia. "You have had dealing with these people, Sir Joscelin?"

"The good doctor saved the foot of my thatcher, ma'am, and probably his life." But the blue eyes, amused, were directed at Adelia, who feared that Sir Joscelin knew who had performed the amputation.

"My dear girl, my dear girl." Prior Geoffrey's grip on her arm propelled her away. "How beautiful you look.
Nec me meminisse pigebit Adeliae, dum memor ipse mei, dum spiritus hos regit artus.
"

She smiled up at him; she had missed him. "Are you well, my lord?"

"Pissing like a racehorse, I thank you." He bent toward her ear so that she should hear him above the noise of conversation. "And how goes the investigation?"

They had been remiss not to keep him informed; that they had been able to investigate as much as they had was due to this man, but they'd been so busy. "We have made ground and hope to make more tonight," she told him. "May we report to you tomorrow? Particularly, I want to ask you about..."

But there was the tax collector himself, two yards away and staring at her over the head of the crowd. He began to wade through an intervening group toward her. He looked less plump than he had.

He bowed. "Mistress Adelia."

She nodded to him. "Is Master Simon with you?"

"He is delayed at the castle." He gave her a conspiratorial wink. "Having to escort the sheriff and his lady here, I was forced to leave him to his studies. He begged me to tell you he will attend later. May I say..."

Whatever he wished to say was interrupted by a trumpet call. They were to dine.

Her fingers raised high on his, Prior Geoffrey joined the procession to take Adelia into the hall, Mansur at his side. There they had to separate, he to the top table that stood across the dais at one end, she and Mansur to their more lowly position. She was interested to see where this would be; precedence was a formidable concern for host and guest alike.

Adelia had witnessed her Salerno aunt near to collapse from the worry of placing highborn guests at table in an order that would not mortally offend one or the other. Theoretically, the rules were clear: a prince to equal an archbishop, bishop to an earl, baron in fief before a visiting baron, and so on down the line. But suppose a legate, equal to a visiting baron, was papal--where did he sit? What if the archbishop had crossed the prince, as was so often the case? Or vice versa? Which was even more frequent. Fisticuffs, feuds could result from the unintended insult. And the poor host always to blame.

It was a matter that had exercised even Gyltha, whose vicarious honor was involved, and who had also been called to Grantchester for the night to do interesting things with eels in its kitchens. "I'll be a-watching, and if Sir Joscelin do put any of you below the salt, that's the last barrel of eels he do get from me."

As she entered, Adelia glimpsed Gyltha's head poking out anxiously from behind a door.

She could sense tension, see eyes glancing left and right as Sir Joscelin's marshal ushered the guests to their places. The lower pecking orders, particularly self-made men whose ambition outran their birth, were as sensitive as the high, perhaps more so.

Ulf had already done some scouting. "He's up here, and you're down there," he said, jerking a thumb back and forth between Adelia and Mansur. He adopted the slow, careful baby talk he always used to Mansur. "You. Sitty. Here."

Sir Joscelin had been generous, Adelia thought, relieved for Gyltha's sake--and also for her own; Mansur was touchy about his dignity, and, decoration or not, he had a dagger in his belt. While he hadn't been put at the top table with the host and hostess, prior, sheriff, et cetera, nor could he expect to be, he was quite near it on one of the long trestles that ran the length of the great hall. The lovely young nun who had allowed Adelia to look at Little Saint Peter's bones was on his left. Less happily, Roger of Acton had been placed opposite him.

Positioning the tax collector must have called for considerable reflection, she thought. Unpopular in his calling, but nevertheless the king's man and, at the moment, the sheriff's right hand. Sir Joscelin had opted for safety as far as Sir Rowley Picot was concerned. He was next to the sheriff's wife, making her laugh.

As ostensibly a mere female potion-mixing doctor's attendant, and foreign at that, Adelia found herself on another of the trestles in the body of the hall toward its lower end--though several positions above the ornate salt cellar that marked the division between guests and those serfs who were present to fulfill Christ's command that the poor be fed. The even poorer were gathered in the courtyard round a brazier, waiting for the scraps.