Adelia had stopped listening, absorbing the gist perhaps but not the words. Now she got up and began to walk down the garden path toward the place where they’d buried Simon of Naples.
Hubert Walter, shocked by such lèse-majesté, would have gone after her but was restrained. He said, “You take great pains over that rude and recalcitrant female, my lord.”
“I have a use for the useful, Hubert. Phenomena like her don’t fall into my lap every day.”
May was becoming itself at last, and the sun had emerged to enliven a garden refreshed by rain. Lady Baldwin’s tansy had taken, bees were busy among the cowslips.
A robin that was perched on the grave hopped away at her approach, though not far. Stooping, Adelia used Hubert Walter’s handkerchief to brush off its droppings.
We are among barbarians, Simon.
The wooden board had been replaced by a handsome slab of marble incised with his name and the words: May his soul be bound up in the bond of life eternal.
Kindly barbarians, Simon said to her now. Fighting their own barbarity. Think of Gyltha, Prior Geoffrey, Rowley, that strange king…
Nevertheless, Adelia told him, I cannot bear it.
She turned and, collected now, walked back up the path. Henry had returned to mending his glove and looked up at Adelia’s approach. “Well?”
Bowing, Adelia said, “I thank you for your indulgence, my lord, but I can stay here no longer. I must return to Salerno.”
He bit off the thread with his strong little teeth. “No.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“I said no.” The glove was put on, and Henry waggled his fingers, admiring the mending. “By the Lord, I’m clever. Must get it from the tanner’s daughter. Did you know I had a tanner in my ancestry, mistress?” He smiled up at her. “I said no, you can’t go. I have a need for your particular talents, Doctor. There are plenty of dead in my realm that I would wish to be listened to, by God there are, and I want to know what they say.”
She stared at him. “You can’t keep me here.”
“Hubert?”
“I think you will find that he can, mistress,” Hubert Walter said apologetically. “Le roi le veut. Even now on my lord’s instructions, I am penning a letter to the King of Sicily, asking if we may borrow you a while longer.”
“I’m not an object,” Adelia shouted. “You can’t borrow me, I’m a human being.”
“And I’m a king,” the king said. “I may not be able to control the Church, but, by my soul’s salvation, I control every bloody port in this country. If I say you stay, you stay.”
His face as he looked at her had a kindly disinterest, even in its pretended anger, and she saw that his amiability, the frankness so charming, was a mere tool helping him rule an empire and that, to him, she was nothing more than a gadget that might one day come in useful.
“I also am to be walled up, then,” she said.
He raised his eyebrows. “I suppose you are, though I hope you will find your confines somewhat larger and more pleasing than…well, we won’t talk of it.”
Nobody will talk of it, she thought. The insect will buzz in its bottle until it falls silent. And I shall have to live with the sound for the rest of my life.
“I’d let her out if I could, you know,” Henry said.
“Yes. I know.”
“In any case, mistress, you owe me your services.”
How long will I have to buzz before you let me out? she wondered. The fact that this particular bottle has become beloved to me is neither here nor there.
Though it was.
She was recovering now and able to think; she took time to do it. The king waited her out-an indication, she thought, of her value to him. Very well, then, let me capitalize on it. She said, “I refuse to stay in a country so backward that its Jews are afforded only the one burial ground in London.”
He was taken aback. “God’s teeth, aren’t there any others?”
“You must know there are not.”
“I didn’t, actually,” he said. “We kings have a great deal to concern ourselves with.” He snapped his fingers. “Write it down, Hubert. The Jews to have burial grounds.” And to Adelia: “There you are. It is done. Le roi le veut.”
“Thank you.” She returned to the matter in hand. “As a matter of interest, Henry, in what way am I in your debt?”
“You owe me a bishop, mistress. I had hopes of Sir Rowley taking my fight into the Church, but he has turned me down to be free to marry. You, I gather, are the object of his marital affections.”
“No object at all,” she said wearily. “I, too, have turned him down. I am a doctor, not a wife.”
“Really?” Henry brightened and then assumed a look of mourning. “Ah, but I fear neither of us will have him now. The poor man is dying.”
“What?”
“Hubert?”
“So we understand, mistress,” Hubert Walter said, “the wound he received in the attack on the castle has reopened, and a medical man from the town reports that-”
He found himself addressing empty air; lèse majesté again. Adelia had gone.
The king watched the gate slam. “Nevertheless, she’s a woman of her word and, happily for me, she won’t marry him.” He stood up. “I believe, Hubert, that we may yet install Sir Rowley Picot as Bishop of Saint Albans.”
“He will be gratified, my lord.”
“I think he’s going to be-any moment now, lucky devil.”
THREE DAYS AFTER THESE EVENTS, the insect stopped buzzing. Agnes, mother of Harold, dismantled her beehive hut for the last time and went home to her husband.
Adelia didn’t hear the silence. Not until later. At the time, she was in bed with the bishop-elect of Saint Albans.
THERE THEY GO, the justices in eyre, taking the Roman road from Cambridge toward the next town to be assized. Trumpets sound, bailiffs kick out at excited children and barking dogs to clear the way for the caparisoned horses and palanquins, servants urge on mules laden with boxes of closely written vellum, clerks still scribble on their slates, hounds respond to the crack of their masters’ whip.
They’ve gone. The road is empty, except for steaming piles of manure. A swept and garnished Cambridge breathes a sigh of relief. At the castle, Sheriff Baldwin retires to bed with a wet cloth over his head while, in his bailey, corpses on the gallows move in a May breeze that flutters blossoms over them like a benison.
We have been too busied with our own events to watch the assize in action, but, if we had, we should have witnessed a new thing, a wonderful thing, a moment when English law leaped high, high, out of darkness and superstition into light.
For, during the course of the assize, nobody has been thrown into a pond to see if they are innocent or guilty of the crime of which they stand accused. (Innocence is to sink, guilt to float.) No woman has had molten iron placed in her hand to prove whether or not she has committed theft, murder, et cetera. (If the burn heals within a certain number of days, she is acquitted. If not, let her be punished.)
Nor has any dispute over land been settled by the God of Battles. (Champions representing each disputant fight until one or other is killed or cries “craven” and throws down his sword in surrender.)
No. The God of Battles, of water, of hot iron, has not been asked for His opinion as He always has before. Henry Plantagenet does not believe in Him.
Instead, evidence of crime or quarrel has been considered by twelve men who then tell the judge whether or not, in their opinion, the case is proved.
These men are called a jury. They are a new thing.
Something else is new. Instead of the ancient, jumbled inheritance of laws whereby each baron or lord of the manor can pronounce sentence on his malefactors, hanging or not according to his powers, Henry II has given his English a system that is orderly and all of a piece and applies throughout his kingdom. It will be called Common Law.