The younger woman shook her head, put her own fingers into the fur and bent toward it, inhaling deeply.
“Dog!” She sat up, a flash of triumph in her wide green eyes. “Those marks are too far set for a fox; besides, I got a definite whiff of rosewater, so I might even go so far as to suggest that the culprit is, in fact, Emma’s greyhound.”
The older woman grinned and rocked back on her heels, clapping her hands in delight.
“Very good, Allie darling!” Adelia said, marveling, as she so often had, at the efficiency of her daughter’s nose. “Which might also explain why it wasn’t eaten, I suppose. But dead for how long, do you think?”
Allie shook her head and stood up, wiping her muddy hands down the front of her cloak. “God’s blood, Ma!” she said. “Isn’t that enough? Can’t we go home now? It’s freezing.”
Adelia gave an involuntary groan as she rose stiffly to her feet. “No need to look at me like that,” she snapped when she saw Allie’s look of concern. “I’m just getting old. I can’t help it.”
“Well don’t!” Allie said, threading her arm through her mother’s and squeezing it. “You’re not to. I won’t have it.”
They turned their backs on the hare and set off through the orchard to the common land where a herd of cows grazed contentedly on the wheat stubble.
It was late morning, but other than a group of women in the distance hefting sacks of grain to the mill house, the estate was deserted.
“Do you know what we really need?” Adelia asked brightly, and rhetorically, as they started the long climb up the hill to their cottage. “Some more pigs. It’s been a while, hasn’t it? I think I’ll have a word with Ernulf.”
More pigs!
Allie’s heart sank. It had been some time since the anatomy of the pig had held any mystery for her.
Ever since she could remember, pig carcasses of every shape, size, age and stage of decomposition had been dragged by Ernulf—usually under the cover of darkness, and always without Lady Emma’s knowledge—to the small lean-to withy hut behind their cottage for her mother to dissect. Her childhood memories were littered with them: buried pigs, drowned pigs, diseased pigs, pigs savaged by wolves, pigs who had simply dropped dead mysteriously in their sties; sows, piglets and boars of every shape and size, all homogenized in death by the seething maggots and buzzing flies of the process of putrefaction, which so fascinated Adelia.
“But, darling,” she would say when she saw Allie’s little nose wrinkle in disgust as yet another festering carcass was slapped onto the makeshift catafalque in front of her, “pigs are the nearest approximation to human flesh and bone. How else are you going to learn medicine?”
It was, after all, the way she herself had learned, almost a lifetime ago and more than a thousand miles away, at the medical school in Salerno in her native Italy.
And as soon as she was able, she had weaned her daughter on the stories of the death farms run by her tutor Gordinus and the pigs he kept there for his students to dissect, telling her proudly about how all the students had quailed at the sight of the flesh flies, blowflies and maggots and fallen away entirely at the stench of the rotting flesh—all, that is, except for Adelia herself, who saw not the horror and decay of death but instead the wonder of the process that reduced a cadaver to nothing. This, she told Allie proudly, was how she had trained to be a doctor and to learn the language of the dead in order to reveal their secrets.
In her day she was known as Dr. Trotula, the mistress of the art of death, one whose reputation had once spread so far and wide that one day, many, many years ago now, it had reached the ear of Henry, king of England, who, when he heard it, summoned her to his realm to investigate the murders of four Cambridgeshire children. When she solved them, he rewarded her by refusing to allow her ever to leave.
“That Plantagenet has a lot to answer for,” Adelia would often be heard grumbling, and indeed, he had—not least, of course, Allie’s existence.
It was during that Cambridgeshire investigation that the young Rachel Adelia Ortese Aguilar met the young Sir Rowley Picot—who was then the king’s tax inspector—and fell madly in love with him.
Like most things in Adelia’s life, the courtship had been unorthodox—in its early stages she had even suspected him of involvement in the crimes, until, of course, the real culprit was revealed and Rowley’s charm and innate goodness won her heart. And yet, when Allie was conceived and he begged her to marry him, she refused, citing the independence she valued above all else as the reason why. Whether or not she would have capitulated eventually was anybody’s guess, but Henry made it impossible shortly afterward when he anointed him bishop of St. Albans.
Oh yes, Henry had a lot to answer for all right, but he was dead now. It was more than two years since the messenger came from Chinon with the news, extinguishing the indefinable spark of whatever it was that only Henry could ignite in Adelia forever.
Then as now, Allie wondered about the nature of her mother’s relationship with the king, a conundrum not founded on romantic intrigue but rather a mutual admiration for one another’s competence and, in Henry’s case, an abiding appreciation of Adelia’s usefulness to his various purposes.
Allie was watching her now through the cottage window, pottering around in her beloved herb garden, gathering plants for her various infusions, and noticed again the streaks of gray in her hair, the first of which had appeared when she heard the news of his death, as though his passing had somehow leached the color from her.
The long note of a huntsman’s horn sounded from somewhere deep within the forest, distracting Allie from her melancholic meditation at the window and, on the other side of the demesne, Lady Emma of Wolvercote from the endless information her reeve was heaping on her like a penance.
In fact she was trying very hard to control her right foot, which was twitching in its elegant calfskin boot—from a desire not to inflict pain, per se, but to administer a disincentive he might remember. She was also trying hard to remember that, when all was said and done, Wat Hardle was a good man, as honest and meticulous as any she could find, who knew his men and the workings of the estate like the back of his hand . . . But oh dear! She took a deep breath, feeling her foot flex again . . . The extraordinary detail of his annual accounting was a torment she dreaded from one year to the next.
It didn’t help that, by necessity, it had to be conducted outside in the cold around a post on which the unlettered Wat habitually carved the notches and tallies of his daily business and that, by this point in the proceedings, boredom and incipient hypothermia had combined.
She took another deep, improving breath . . . It couldn’t be too much longer now . . . And then, at long last, her prayers were answered and he turned away from the post.
“Think that’s about everythin’ then, mistress, unless—”
“Thank you, Wat.” Emma nodded, gathering up the hem of her skirts to make a hasty retreat when she saw him scratch his head as though to stimulate it for a forgotten detail. “That will do nicely, Wat,” she added quickly before he could remember whatever it was. “I think that will be all for the time being. A fulsome account, if I may say so . . . But now, I fear, I must go and see Osbert about supper.” And without waiting for a response, she turned on her heel and set off at a trot toward the house.
She was happy in the fact that she wasn’t lying about Osbert, either. There was a great deal she needed to discuss with him. This evening’s supper was a surprise she was planning for Adelia, and because, from the sound of it, the huntsmen would be back any moment now with fresh meat for the pot—God’s teeth! She was already sick to death of salted beef and winter hadn’t even begun yet—she wanted to discuss the preparation of it with her chef. Besides, among her many duties, it was the one she enjoyed most, and at least the kitchen was warm.
Wat stood at his post watching the elegant, ermine-clad figure of his mistress recede into the distance and scratched his head again, wondering, although not for the
first time, why she always seemed to be in such a hurry.
Chapter 4
A loud knock summoned Allie to the door. When she opened it, a gust of wind thrust both a swirling eddy of leaves and a small figure, wrapped from head to foot in a large winnowing sheet, into the room. Despite the fact that only a pair of sharp brown eyes was visible above the swaddling, Allie nonetheless recognized them as belonging to the tanner’s wife.
“That you, Gonilda?” she asked as the figure bustled past her in a determined bid for the fire. “Everything all right, is it?”
“No. It ain’t.” Gonilda shook her face free of the sheet and blew out her cheeks like a frog. “It’s Albin.”
“Oh,” said Allie. “I see. That tooth playing him up again, is it?”
Gonilda nodded. “Needs to see the mistress,” she said.
When Adelia had been summoned from the garden and the necessary infusions collected from her store in the withy hut, they wrapped themselves up in their warmest mantles and set off after Gonilda along the frost-rutted track to the village.
The journey took longer than usual because every few yards or so they had to stop as one or another of them extended a steadying hand to the perambulatory bundle, who seemed in constant danger of tripping over her own feet.
“Remind me to look out for that old mantle of mine, will you?” Adelia whispered when they had righted Gonilda for the umpteenth time. “It might not be the most beautiful thing in the world but the lining’s still good and it’s a damned sight better than that old thing. At least she won’t go breaking her neck in it.”
By the time they reached the tall manure heaps that marked the outskirts of the village, the light was beginning to fade and there were rushlights flickering in the windows of the reed-thatched cottages. Halfway down the main street they startled a large kite scavenging for scraps in the foul-smelling gully running beside it. Gonilda shrieked at it and it flapped off languorously into the gloaming.
The tanner’s cottage was at the furthest end of a row of timber-framed shacks, distinguishable from its neighbors by the animal hides that were strewn across its roof and, today at least, the low-level groaning sound emitting from it.
The moment she heard it, Gonilda clutched her hand to her breast and stepped up the pace.
“She’s coming, Albin,” she called out. “Mistress is coming.”
When they got to the cottage, Gonilda flung the door open and stood on the threshold to harry them into a dimly lit room, where they found the stricken tanner lying in one corner and a large sow grunting welcome from another.
Ignoring both the sow and a rather mangy-looking lurcher with a forlorn expression that lifted its lip as she passed, Adelia made immediately for Albin and knelt down on the floor beside him.
“Now, now, Albin,” she said, taking his hand. “If you can make this much noise I’ll have to assume it’s not as bad as all that, won’t I?”
Albin turned his face to her, revealing a cheek that had swollen to the size of a stuffed pig’s bladder.
“Bloody is . . . ’ook!” he said.
“Been praying to that St. Apollonia for days,” said Gonilda, hovering anxiously behind her. “But it ain’t got no better.”
“So I see.” Adelia pursed her lips. She had little truck with the curative powers of St. Apollonia, or any of the martyrs, come to that, and a tendency toward impatience with those who did. “I suspect she’s rather busy at the moment. There’s been a lot of it about.”
She stood up; raised her finger to Albin, who had started groaning again; and began to unpack her medicine bag with the solemnity of a priest unpacking the contents of his chrismatory box, except—as she liked to point out—the items carried in her own bag were a damn sight more effective.
Albin watched transfixed while she and Allie arranged the various cloths and bottles that issued from it on the trestle table beneath the window, and only started moaning again in earnest when he saw her pick up a small iron vise.
“What you goin’ to do wiv that?” he wailed. “You ain’t comin’ near me wiv that, you’re not!” Then, clamping his hands across his mouth, he rolled facedown onto his palliasse and refused to move.
“Albin!” Adelia stamped her foot. “We don’t have time for any fuss, we’re losing the light, so unless you want to spend the rest of your miserable life in pain, that tooth has to come out. Now shut up and turn over.”
There were few people brave enough to gainsay Adelia when she was in foot-stamping mode and Albin wasn’t one of them; realizing that the game was up, he turned over meekly, got to his feet and followed her over to the window.
“Drink this,” Adelia said, thrusting a vial of poppy-head tea at him. “Take a good slug, now, and I promise you won’t feel a thing.”
With a stifled groan and shaking hands, Albin did as he was told and drank it down.
“Now open your mouth,” Adelia said, taking his face in her hands and twisting it gently to the light. “I said open! . . . Good . . . Now, close your eyes . . . Albin, I said close them . . . Thank you. Now . . . Oh, Allie, darling, hold those damned hands of his still for me, would you . . . And . . . there we are!” She inserted the clamp and, with one dexterous flick of her wrist, extracted Albin’s tooth.
“There,” she said, waggling the blackened remnant at him. “Wasn’t so bad, was it! Now, I ought to warn you that the cavity might bleed for a while but a salt gargle twice a day for a week ought to see you right as rain.”
But Albin wasn’t listening. Allie could tell from the vacant expression and uninhibited drool soaking his chin that the poppy-head tea had done its work and that it would be some time before he would be able to hear or feel anything at all.
By the time they left, the Whitcroft Abbey bells were sounding for vespers.
“Come,” Allie said, grabbing Adelia’s arm. “We must hurry or else we’ll be late.”
“Late for what?” Adelia asked.
“Emma, remember? Supper?” Allie replied, ignoring the weary sighs.
“Oh, that. Do you think she’d mind terribly if I didn’t go? I’m awfully tired and really not remotely hungry.”
Allie turned to look at her and saw that she did, indeed, look exhausted. There was no doubt she needed a good rest, but it just couldn’t be this evening.
“But you have to go,” she said, tightening her grip as she stepped up the pace. “You can’t let Emma down, not tonight. She’s got a surprise for you.”
Chapter 5
Adelia’s surprise was himself also exhausted, running late and increasingly tetchy.
He’d been riding for two days; his arse was sore and his back ached. Two afflictions reminding him, as though he needed reminding, that he wasn’t getting any younger.
He grimaced as he stood up in his stirrups to relieve the discomfort in his nether regions and thought how not so very long ago, he could have completed this journey in half the time and without the physical punishment. The fact that this was no longer the case depressed him. On the other hand, he doubted if there was a rider in the land who could get anywhere in a hurry on a nag like this! His own horse, a more biddable, forward-going creature, had let him down badly that morning when it trotted up lame.
“Built for stamina, not speed, my lord,” the groom told him when he saw Rowley’s face fall as he led the replacement out of the abbey stables.
Too right! Rowley thought bitterly. The bloody thing had sides like steel; even before they reached the abbey gates his heels had been aching from nagging at them!
He leaned out of his saddle to pluck an encouraging twig from the hedgerow they were ambling beside.
“Move!” he growled, striking the makeshift whip across the horse’s rump, but apart from an irritable flick of its ears and a languid rise in its back end, there was no discernible quickening of its pace.
“Bugger!”
He dropped the twig with a weary sigh and slumped back into his saddle, the discomfort and accidie he felt now tinged with
shame.
After all, he really shouldn’t lose his temper with the horse; it wasn’t responsible for the way he felt. A whole constellation of events had conspired toward this particular episode of misery. It was just that, thanks to this animal’s obduracy, he had been given time to dwell on them.
It didn’t help, of course, that, when he had arrived at Aynsham Abbey last night, hungry, exhausted and salivating at the prospect of the seven-course supper for which that establishment was famed, he had found, to his horror, that the abbot’s newly embraced asceticism had reduced the menu to a mere three. This disappointment was only compounded when, as he retired for the evening, looking forward to the plump pillows and sumptuous mattresses he remembered so fondly from previous visits, he discovered they, too, had fallen afoul of the wretched man’s austerity measures, which had ruined what ought to have been decent night’s sleep.
And last night, of all nights, Rowley had badly needed to sleep.
He had spent the previous day freezing to death on a rain-sodden bridge in the godforsaken hamlet of Loddon, near Reading, with a host of other bishops and barons, all summoned there by John, the Count of Mortain, younger brother of the king, to decide once and for all the fate of the troublesome William Longchamp, bishop of Ely.
The standoff between the two—which was already well established and included at least two sieges—would, Rowley hoped, culminate in the count’s favor on the bridge that day.
Only it hadn’t. At the very last minute, Longchamp had refused to turn up, barricading himself inside Windsor Castle instead.
Rowley’s relief that a battle had been averted—after all, he was much too old and too weary for fighting these days—had been tempered by the fact that, since nothing had been resolved, there would have to be another assembly. And it was this that occasioned such deep melancholy, as he envisaged his future, or what little remained to him, playing out in a series of interminable meetings.
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