Mistress of the Art of Death Read online

  Mistress of the Art of Death

  Ariana Franklin

  When Christian children are being kidnapped and murdered in 12th century Cambridge, England, Adelia is sent to seek out the truth, and hopefully absolve the Jews being blamed for the crimes, before the townspeople take matters into their own hands. During a time when women are second-class citizens at best, and the practice of scientific autopsies is considered blasphemous, Adelia is the most skilled “speaker for the dead” hailing from progressive Naples – yet she is forced to masquerade as the meek assistant to her colleagues during their frantic search for the real child killer.

  From The Washington Post

  It's hard enough to produce a gripping thriller – harder still to write convincing historical fiction that recreates a living, breathing past. But this terrific book does both, and does it with a cast of characters so vivid and engaging that you'd be happy to read about them even if they weren't on the track of a sexually depraved serial child-murderer.

  Mistress of the Art of Death opens with a clever takeoff on Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, which introduces the central players, a group of pilgrims returning from the shrine of the newly canonized St. Thomas à Becket: a prior and a prioress (from rival abbeys); two knights, lately returned from the Crusades; an overweight but very shrewd tax collector; a gaggle of citizens; and three Gypsies, who are in fact secret investigators sent by the king of Sicily to discover the truth behind a series of gruesome murders near Cambridge.

  Four children have been found dead and mutilated. The Jews of Cambridge have been blamed for the murders, the most prominent Jewish moneylender and his wife have been killed by a mob, and the rest of the Jewish community is shut up in the castle under the protection of the sheriff.

  As the only group allowed to commit usury – that is, to lend money at interest – the Jews are prosperous, and thus the king of England considers them his prize cash cows. He wants them cleared of suspicion and released, so they can go back to paying him high taxes. To this end, he appeals to his cousin, the king of Sicily, to send his best master of the art of death: a doctor skilled in "reading" bodies. Enter Vesuvia Adelia Rachel Ortese Aguilar, 25, the best mistress of death that the medical school at Salerno has ever produced. With Simon of Naples, a Jewish "fixer," and Mansur, a eunuch with a mean throwing-ax, it's her job to find a murderer before he – or she – can kill again.

  Adelia comes onstage when she meets the prior under dramatic circumstances on the road, saving him from a burst bladder caused by a swollen prostate by thrusting a hollow reed up his penis. Not every man would follow up on an introduction like this, but the prior wants the mystery solved, too – and if the solution happens to ace out the rival abbey, so much the better.

  Adelia finds 12th-century England a barbarous place. England finds Adelia a jaw-dropping anomaly. And Franklin exploits the contrast brilliantly. We're on Adelia's side from the start, identifying with her quite modern sensibilities – but at the same time, as she begins to know the English inhabitants as people, we sympathize with them, too. And a small but nice romantic subplot develops as the celibate, married-to-science Adelia discovers to her horror that live bodies have minds of their own.

  Though the story is set in Cambridge, the Crusades run through the culture. We see both the corruption and the idealistic faith of the period, and while the Jews come off by far the best, Christians and Muslims are portrayed with evenhanded understanding. Beyond this, the story's background is a wonderful tapestry of the paradoxes and struggles of the times: Christianity and Islam, Christians and Jews, science and superstition, and the new power of Henry II's rule of law versus the stranglehold of the Church.

  There are also fascinating details of historical forensic medicine, entertaining notes on women in science (the medical school at Salerno is not fictional), and a nice running commentary on science and superstition, as distinct from religious faith. Franklin does this subtly, by showing effects, rather than by beating us over the head with her opinions. These are clear enough but expressed with artistry rather than political correctness.

  Franklin likewise balances cynicism, humanity and objectivity well. Adelia feels horror, fury and sympathy on behalf of the victims and the bereaved, but she doesn't let that get in the way of finding the truth. And the story makes it clear that the motives of those who want a solution to the crime are not necessarily purer than the motives of those who want to conceal it.

  Mistress of the Art of Death is wonderfully plotted, with a dozen twists – and with final rabbits pulled out of not one hat but two, as both the mystery and the romance reach satisfactorily unexpected conclusions. It's a historical mystery that succeeds brilliantly as both historical fiction and crime-thriller. Above all, though, Franklin has written a terrific story, whose appeal rests on the personalities of the all-too-human beings who inhabit it.

  – Diana Gabaldon, author of a series of historical novels, including "Outlander" and "A Breath of Snow and Ashes."

  Ariana Franklin

  Mistress of the Art of Death

  The first book in the Mistress of the Art of Death series, 2007

  Frontmatter map by Red Lion

  TO HELEN HELLER,

  MISTRESS OF THE ART OF THRILLERS

  ***

  One

  ENGLAND, 1171

  Here they come. From down the road we can hear harnesses jingling and see dust rising into the warm spring sky.

  Pilgrims returning after Easter in Canterbury. Tokens of the mitered, martyred Saint Thomas are pinned to cloaks and hats-the Canterbury monks must be raking it in.

  They’re a pleasant interruption in the traffic of carts whose drivers and oxen are surly with fatigue from plowing and sowing. These people are well fed, noisy, exultant with the grace their journey has gained them.

  But one of them, as exuberant as the rest, is a murderer of children. God’s grace will not extend to a child-killer.

  The woman at the front of the procession-a big woman on a big roan mare-has a silver token pinned to her wimple. We know her. She’s the prioress of Saint Radegund’s nunnery in Cambridge. She’s talking. Loudly. Her accompanying nun, on a docile palfrey, is silent and has been able to afford only Thomas à Becket in pewter.

  The tall knight riding between them on a well-controlled charger-he wears a tabard over his mail with a cross showing that he’s been on crusade, and, like the prioress, he’s laid out on silver-makes sotto voce commentaries on the prioress’s pronouncements. The prioress doesn’t hear them, but they cause the young nun to smile. Nervously.

  Behind this group is a flat cart drawn by mules. The cart carries a single object; rectangular, somewhat small for the space it occupies-the knight and squire seem to be guarding it. It’s covered by a cloth with armorial bearings. The jiggling of the cart is dislodging the cloth, revealing a corner of carved gold-either a large reliquary or a small coffin. The squire leans from his horse and pulls the cloth straight so that the object is hidden again.

  And here’s a king’s officer. Jovial enough, large, overweight for his age, dressed like a civilian, but you can tell. For one thing, his servant is wearing the royal tabard embroidered with the Angevin leopards and, for another, poking out of his overloaded saddlebag is an abacus and the sharp end of a pair of money scales.

  Apart from the servant, he rides alone. Nobody likes a tax gatherer.

  Now then, here’s a prior. We know him, too, from the violet rochet he wears, as do all canons of Saint Augustine.

  Important. Prior Geoffrey of Saint Augustine’s, Barnwell, the monastery that looks across the great bend of the River Cam opposite Saint Radegund’s and dwarfs it. It is understood that he and the prioress don’t get
on. He has three monks in attendance, and also a knight-another crusader, judging from his tabard-and a squire.

  Oh, he’s ill. He should be at the procession’s front, but it seems his guts-which are considerable-are giving him pain. He’s groaning and ignoring a tonsured cleric who’s trying to engage his attention. Poor man, there’s no help for him on this stretch, not even an inn, until he reaches his own infirmary in the priory grounds.

  A beef-faced citizen and his wife, both showing concern for the prior and giving advice to his monks. A minstrel, singing to a lute. Behind him there’s a huntsman with spears and dogs-hounds colored like the English weather.

  Here come the pack mules and the other servants. Usual riffraff.

  Ah, now. At the extreme end of the procession. More riffraffish than the rest. A covered cart with colored cabalistic signs on its canvas. Two men on the driving bench, one big, one small, both dark-skinned, the larger with a Moor’s headdress wound round his head and cheeks. Quack medicine peddlers, probably.

  And sitting on the tailboard, beskirted legs dangling like a peasant, a woman. She’s looking about her with a furious interest. Her eyes regard a tree, a patch of grass, with interrogation: What’s your name? What are you good for? If not, why not? Like a magister in court. Or an idiot.

  On the wide verge between us and all these people (even on the Great North Road, even in this year of 1171, no tree shall grow less than a bowshot’s distance from the road, in case it give shelter to robbers) stands a small wayside shrine, the usual home-carpentered shelter for the Virgin.

  Some of the riders prepare to pass by with a bow and a Hail Mary, but the prioress makes a show of calling for a groom to help her dismount. She lumbers over the grass to kneel and pray. Loudly.

  One by one and somewhat reluctantly, all the others join her. Prior Geoffrey rolls his eyes and groans as he’s assisted off his horse.

  Even the three from the cart have dismounted and are on their knees, though, unseen at the back, the darker of the men seems to be directing his prayers toward the east. God help us all-Saracens and others of the ungodly are allowed to roam the highways of Henry II without sanction.

  Lips mutter to the saint; hands weave an invisible cross. God is surely weeping, yet He allows the hands that have rent innocent flesh to remain unstained.

  Mounted again, the cavalcade moves on, takes the turning to Cambridge, its diminishing chatter leaving us to the rumble of the harvest carts and the twitter of birdsong.

  But we have a skein in our hands now, a thread that will lead us to that killer of children. To unravel it, though, we must first follow it backward in time by twelve months…

  …TO THE YEAR 1170. A screaming year. A king screamed to be rid of his archbishop. Monks of Canterbury screamed as knights spilled the brains of said archbishop onto the stones of his cathedral.

  The Pope screamed for said king’s penance. The English Church screamed in triumph-now it had said king where it wanted him.

  And, far away in Cambridgeshire, a child screamed. A tiny, tinny sound, this one, but it would reach its place among the others.

  At first the scream had hope in it. It’s a come-and-get-me-I’m-frightened signal. Until now, adults had kept the child from danger, hoisted him away from beehives and bubbling pots and the blacksmith’s fire. They must be at hand; they always have been.

  At the sound, deer grazing on the moonlit grass lifted their heads and stared-but it was not one of their own young in fear; they went on grazing. A fox paused in its trot, one paw raised, to listen and judge the threat to itself.

  The throat that issued the scream was too small and the place too deeply isolated to reach human help. The scream changed; it became unbelieving, so high on the scale of astonishment that it achieved the pitch of a huntsman’s whistle directing his dogs.

  The deer ran, scattering among the trees, their white scuts like dominoes tumbling into the darkness.

  The scream was pleading now, perhaps to the torturer, perhaps to God, please don’t, please don’t, before crumbling into a monotone of agony and hopelessness.

  The air was grateful when eventually the child fell silent and the usual night noises took over again; a breeze rustling through bushes, the grunt of a badger, the hundred screams of small mammals and birds as they died in the mouths of natural predators.

  AT DOVER, an old man was being hurried through the castle at a rate not congenial to his rheumatism. It was a huge castle, very cold and echoing with furious noises. Despite the rate he had to go, the old man remained chilled-partly because he was frightened. The court sergeant was taking him to a man who frightened everybody.

  They went along stone corridors, sometimes past open doors issuing light and warmth, chatter and the notes of a lyre, past others that were closed on what the old man imagined to be ungodly scenes.

  Their progress sent castle servants cowering or flung them out of the way so that the two of them left behind them a trail of dropped trays, spattered piss pots, and bitten-off exclamations of hurt.

  One final circular staircase and they were in a long gallery of which this end was taken up by desks lining the walls and a massive table with a top of green felt partitioned into squares. There were varying piles of counters on the squares. Thirty or so clerks filled the room with the scratch of quills on parchment. Colored balls flicked and clicked along the wires of their abaci so that it was like entering a field of industrious crickets.

  In the whole place, the only human being at rest was a man sitting on one of the windowsills.

  “Aaron of Lincoln, my lord,” the sergeant announced.

  Aaron of Lincoln went down on one painful knee and touched his forehead with the fingers of his right hand, then extended the palm in obeisance to the man on the windowsill.

  “Do you know what that is?”

  Aaron glanced awkwardly behind him at the vast table and didn’t answer; he knew what it was, but Henry II’s question had been rhetorical.

  “It ain’t for playing billiards, I’ll tell you that,” the king said. “It’s my Exchequer. Those squares represent my English counties, and the counters on them show how much income from each is due to the Royal Treasury. Get up.”

  He seized the old man and took him to the table, pointing to one of the squares. “That’s Cambridgeshire.” He let Aaron go. “Using your considerable financial acumen, Aaron, how many counters do you reckon are on it?”

  “Not enough, my lord?”

  “Indeed,” Henry said. “A profitable county, Cambridge -usually. Somewhat flat, but it produces a considerable amount of grain and cattle and fish, and pays the Treasury well-usually. Its sizable Jewish population also pays the Treasury well-usually. Would you say the number of counters on it at the moment do not present a true representation of its wealth?”

  Again, the old man did not reply.

  “And why is that?” Henry asked.

  Aaron said wearily, “I imagine it’s because of the children, my lord. The death of children is always to be lamented…”

  “Indeed it is.” Henry hoisted himself up on the edge of the table, letting his legs dangle. “And when it becomes a matter of economics, it’s disastrous. The peasants of Cambridge are in revolt and the Jews are…where are they?”

  “Sheltering in its castle, my lord.”

  “What’s left of it,” Henry agreed. “They are indeed. My castle. Eating my food on my charity and shitting it out immediately because they’re too scared to leave. All of which means they’re not earning me any money, Aaron.”

  “No, my lord.”

  “And the revolting peasants have burned down its east tower, which contains all records of debts owed to the Jews, and therefore to me-to say nothing of the tax accounts-because they believe the Jews are torturing and killing their children.”

  For the first time, a whistle of hope sounded among the execution drums in the old man’s head. “But you do not, my lord?”

  “Do not what?”

  “Yo
u do not believe Jews are killing these children?”

  “I don’t know, Aaron,” the king said pleasantly. Without taking his eyes off the old man, he raised his hand. A clerk ran forward to put a piece of parchment in it. “This is an account by a certain Roger of Acton saying that such is your regular practice. According to the good Roger, Jews usually torture at least one Christian child to death at Easter by putting it in a hinged barrel inwardly pierced by nails. They always have, they always will.”

  He consulted the parchment. “‘They do place the child into the barrel, then close the barrel so that the pins do enter his flesh. These fiends do then catch the blood as it seeps into their vessels to mix with their ritual pastries.’”

  Henry II looked up: “Not pleasant, Aaron.” He returned to the parchment. “Oh, and you laugh a lot while you’re doing it.”

  “You know it is not true, my lord.”

  For all the notice the king took, the old man’s interjection might have been another click on an abacus.

  “But this Easter, Aaron, this Easter, you’ve started crucifying them. Certainly, our good Roger of Acton claims that the infant who’s been found was crucified-what was the child’s name?”

  “Peter of Trumpington, my lord,” supplied the attendant clerk.

  “That Peter of Trumpington was crucified, and therefore the same fate may well overcome the other two children who are missing. Crucifixion, Aaron.” The king spoke the mighty and terrible word softly, but it traveled along the cold gallery, accreting power as it went. “There’s already agitation to make Little Peter a saint, as if we didn’t have enough of them already. Two children missing and one bloodless mangled little body found in my fenland so far, Aaron. That’s a lot of pastries.”

  Henry got down from the table and walked up the gallery, the old man following, leaving the field of crickets behind. The king dragged a stool from under a window and kicked another in Aaron’s direction. “Sit down.”