He turned round in order to snatch a minute in prayer at the altar, but a large shadow detached itself from one of the nave’s pillars, startling him and making him angry. It had a roll of vellum in its hand.
“What do you here, Sir Rowley?”
“I was about to plead for a private view of the bodies, my lord,” the tax collector said, “but it seems I have been preempted.”
“That is the job of the coroner, and he’s done it. There will be an official inquest in a day or two.”
Sir Rowley nodded toward the side door. “Yet I heard you instructing that lady to examine them further. Do you hope for her to tell you more?”
Prior Geoffrey looked around for help and found none.
The tax collector asked with apparent genuine interest, “How might she do that? Conjurement? Invocation? Is she a necromancer? A witch?”
He’d gone too far. The prior said quietly, “Those children are sacred to me, my son, as is this church. You may leave.”
“I apologize, my lord.” The tax collector didn’t look sorry. “But I too have a concern in this matter, and I have here the king’s warrant whereby to pursue it.” He waved a roll so that the royal seal swung. “What is that woman?”
A king’s warrant trumped the authority of a canonry prior, even one whose word was next to God’s. Sullenly, Prior Geoffrey said, “She is a doctor versed in the morbid sciences.”
“Of course. Salerno . I should have known.” The tax collector whistled with satisfaction. “A woman doctor from the only place in Christendom where that is not a contradiction in terms.”
“You know it?”
“Stopped there once.”
“Sir Rowley.” The prior raised his hand in admonition. “For the safety of that young woman, for the peace of this community and town, what I have told you must remain within these walls.”
“Vir sapit qui pauca loquitur, my lord. First thing they teach a tax collector.”
Not so much wise as cunning, the prior decided, but probably able to keep silent. What was the man’s purpose? At a sudden thought, he held out his hand. “Let me see that warrant.” He examined it, then handed it back. “This is merely the usual tax collector’s warrant. Is the king taxing the dead now?”
“Indeed not, my lord.” Sir Rowley seemed affronted by the idea. “Or not more than usual. But if the lady is to conduct an unofficial inquest, it might subject both town and priory to punitive taxes-I don’t say it will, but the regular amercements, confiscation of goods, et cetera, might apply.” The plump cheeks bunched in an engaging smile. “Unless, of course, I am present to see that all is correct.”
The prior was beaten. So far Henry II had withheld his hand, but it was fairly certain that at the next assize, Cambridge would be fined, and fined heavily, for the death of one of the king’s most profitable Jews.
Any infringement of his laws gave the king an opportunity to fill his coffers at the expense of the infringers. Henry listened to his tax collectors, the most dreaded of royal underlings; if this one should report to him an irregularity connected with the children’s deaths, then the teeth of that rapacious Plantagenet leopard might tear the heart out of the town.
“What do you want of us, Sir Rowley?” Prior Geoffrey asked wearily.
“I want to see those bodies.” The words were spoken quietly, but they flicked at the prior like a lash.
APART FROM THE FACT that its three-foot-thick walls kept it cool, and its situation in a glade at the far end of Barnwell’s deer park was isolated, the cell in which the Saxon anchoress Saint Werbertha had passed her adult life-until, that is, it had been ended somewhat abruptly by invading Danes-was unsuitable for Adelia’s purposes. For one thing, it was small. For another, despite the two lamps the prior had provided, it was dark. A slit of a window was shut by a wooden slide. Cow parsley frothed waist-high around a tiny door set in an arch.
Damn all this secrecy. She would have to keep the door open in order to have enough light-and the place was already beset by flies trying to get in. How did they expect her to work in these conditions?
Adelia put her goatskin bag on the grass outside, opened it to check its contents, checked them again-and knew she was putting off the moment when she would have to open the door.
This was ridiculous; she was not an amateur. Quickly, she knelt and asked the dead beyond the door to forgive her for handling their remains. She asked to be reminded not to forget the respect owed to them. “Permit your flesh and bone to tell me what your voices cannot.”
She always did this; whether the dead heard her she was unsure, but she was not the complete atheist her foster father was, though she suspected that what lay ahead of her this afternoon might convert her into one.
She rose, took her oilcloth apron from the bag, put it on, removed her cap, tied the gauze helmet with its glazed eyepiece over her head, and opened the cell door…
SIR ROWLEY PICOT enjoyed the walk, pleased with himself. It was going to be easier than he’d thought. A mad female, a mad foreign female, was always going to be forced to succumb to his authority, but it was unexpected bounty that someone of Prior Geoffrey’s standing should also be under his thumb through association with the same female.
Nearing the anchorage, he paused. It looked like an overgrown beehive-Lord, how the old hermits loved discomfort. And there she was, a figure bending over something on a table just inside its open door.
To test her, he called out, “Doctor.”
“Yes?”
Ah, hah, Sir Rowley thought. How easy. Like snatching a moth.
As she straightened and turned toward him, he began, “You remember me, madam? I am Sir Rowley Picot, whom the prior-”
“I don’t care who you are,” the moth snapped. “Come in here and keep the flies off.” She emerged, and he was presented with an aproned human figure with the head of an insect. It tore a clump of cow parsley from the ground and, at his approach, shoved the umbellifers at him.
It wasn’t what Sir Rowley had in mind, but he followed her, squeezing through the door to the beehive with some difficulty.
And squeezing out again. “Oh my God.”
“What’s the matter?” She was cross, nervy.
He leaned against the arch of the doorway, breathing deeply. “Sweet Jesus, have mercy on us all.” The stench was appalling. Even worse was what lay exposed on the table.
She tutted with irritation. “Stand in the doorway then. Can you write?”
With his eyes closed, Rowley nodded. “First thing they teach a tax collector.”
She handed him a slate and chalk. “Put down what I tell you. In between times, keep fanning the flies away.”
The anger went out of her voice, and she began speaking in monotone. “The remains of a young female. Some fair hair still attached to the skull. Therefore she is”-she broke off to consult a list she’d inked onto the back of her hand-“Mary. The wildfowler’s daughter. Six years old. Disappeared Saint Ambrose, that is, what, a year ago? Are you writing?”
“Yes, ma’am.” The chalk squeaked over the slate, but Sir Rowley kept his face to the open air.
“The bones are unclothed. Flesh almost entirely decomposed; what there is has been in contact with chalk. There is a dusting of what appears to be dried silt on the spine, also some lodged in the rear of the pelvis. Is there silt near here?”
“We’re on the edge of the silt fens. They were found on the fen edge.”
“Were the bodies lying faceup?”
“God, I don’t know.”
“Hmm, if so, it would account for the traces on the back. They are slight; she wasn’t buried in silt, more likely chalk. Hands and feet tied by strips of black material.” There was a pause. “There are tweezers in my bag. Give them to me.”