His” was law. Grace was bestowed on the giver rather than the receiver.
Adelia remembered one old man who’d driven her foster mother’s sister to distraction by his refusal to say thank you for the meals he’d taken in her kitchen. “Do I eat what is yours?” he used to ask. “I eat what is God’s.”
The sheriff’s charity to his unwanted guests, it appeared, was not so munificent. They were thin. The castle kitchen, Adelia thought, was unlikely to accord with the dietary laws, and therefore its meals would in many cases remain uneaten. The clothes in which these people had to hurry from their homes the year before were beginning to tatter.
Some of the women looked up expectantly as she and the others crossed the bailey. Their men were too deep in discussion to notice.
With the younger soldier from the gate leading the way, the three passed over the moat bridge, under the portcullis, and across another court.
The hall was cool, vast, and busy. Trestle tables stretched down its length, covered with documents, rolls, and tallies. Clerks poring over them occasionally broke off to run to the dais, where a large man sat in a large chair at another table on which other documents, rolls, and tallies were growing at a rate threatening to topple them.
Adelia was unacquainted with the role of sheriff, but Simon had said that as far as each shire was concerned, this was the man of greatest importance next to the king, the royal agent of the county who, with the diocesan bishop, wielded most of its justice and alone was responsible for the collection of its taxes, the keeping of its peace, pursuing its villains, ensuring there was no Sunday trading, seeing to it that everybody paid church tithes and the Church paid its dues to the Crown, arranging executions, appropriating the hanged one’s chattels for the king, as well as that of waifs, fugitives, outlaws, ensuring that treasure trove went into the royal coffers-and twice a year delivering the resultant money and its accounting to the king’s Exchequer at Winchester, where, Simon said, a penny’s discrepancy could lose him his place.
“With all that, why does anyone want the job in the first place?” Adelia inquired.
“He takes a percentage,” Simon said.
To judge from the quality of the clothes the Sheriff of Hertfordshire was wearing and the amount of gold and jewels adorning his fingers, the percentage was a big one, but at the moment, it was doubtful whether Sheriff Baldwin thought it enough. “Harassed” hardly described him; “distracted” did.
He stared with manic vacancy at the soldier who announced his visitors. “Can’t they see I’m busy? Don’t they know the justices in eyre are coming?”
A tall and bulky man, who’d been bending over some papers at the sheriff’s side, straightened up. “I think, my lord, these people may be helpful in the matter of the Jews,” Sir Rowley said.
He winked at Adelia. She looked back at him without favor. Another as ubiquitous as Roger of Acton. And perhaps more sinister.
Yesterday a note had arrived for Simon from Prior Geoffrey, warning him against the king’s tax collector: “The man was in the town on two occasions at least when a child disappeared. May the good Lord forgive me if I cast doubt where none is deserved, but it behooves us to be circumspect until we are sure of our ground.”
Simon accepted that the prior had cause for suspicion, “but no more than for anyone else.” He’d liked what he had seen of the tax collector, he said. Adelia, made privy to what lay beyond the amiable exterior when Sir Rowley had forced his presence on her examination of the dead children, did not. She found him disturbing.
It appeared he had the castle in thrall. The sheriff was staring up at him for help, incapable of dealing with any but his own immediate troubles. “Don’t they know there’s an eyre coming?”
Rowley turned to Simon. “My lord wishes to know your business here.”
Simon said, “With the lord’s permission, we would speak to Yehuda Gabirol.”
“No harm in that, eh, my lord? Shall I show them the way?” He was already moving.
The sheriff grabbed at him. “Don’t leave me, Picot.”
“Not for long, my lord, I promise.”
He ushered the trio down the hall, talking all the way. “The sheriff’s just been informed that the justices in eyre are intending to hold an assize in Cambridge. Coming on top of the presentment he must make to the Exchequer, that means considerable extra work, and he finds himself somewhat, shall we say, overwhelmed. So do I, of course.”
He smiled chubbily down at them; a less overwhelmed man would have been difficult to find. “One is trying to discover what debts are owed to the Jews and, therefore, to the king. Chaim was the chief moneylender in this county, and all his tallies went up in the tower fire. The difficulty of recovering what is not there to speak for itself is considerable. However…”
He gave an odd little sideways bow to Adelia. “I hear Madam Doctor has been dabbling in the Cam. Not a doctorly thing to do, one would have thought, considering what pours into it. Perhaps you had your reasons, ma’am?”
Adelia said, “What is an assize?”
They had gone through an arch and were following Sir Rowley up the winding staircase of a tower, the Safeguard pattering behind them.
Over his shoulder, the tax collector said, “Ah, an assize. A judgment really, by the king’s traveling justices. A Day of Judgment-and nearly as terrible as God’s for those in its scales. Judgment of ale and punishment for the watering down of. Judgment of bread, ditto for the underweight of. Gaol delivery, guilt or innocence of prisoners therein. Presentments of land, ownership of, presentment of quarrels, justification for…the list goes on. Juries to be provided. Doesn’t happen every year, but when it does…Mother of God help us, these steps are steep.”
He was puffing as he led them up. Shafts of sun coming in through arrow slits deep in the stone lit tiny landings, each with its arched door.
“Try losing weight,” Adelia told him, her eyes presented with his backside as it ascended.
“I am a man of muscle, madam.”
“Fat,” she said. She slowed so that he rounded the next twist ahead of her and she could hiss at Simon at her rear, “He is going to listen in to what we have to say.”
Simon took his hands off the rail that had been aiding him upward and spread them. “He must know our business here already. He knows-Lord, he’s right about these stairs-who you are. Where’s the difference?”
The difference was that the man would draw conclusions from what was to be said to the Jews. Adelia distrusted conclusions until she had all the evidence. Also, she distrusted Sir Rowley. “But if he should be the killer?”
“Then he knows already.” Simon closed his eyes and groped for the rail.
Sir Rowley was waiting for her at the top of the stairs, much put out. “You think me fat, mistress? I’d have you know that when he heard I was on the march, Nur-ad-Din would pack up his tents and steal away into the desert.”
“You went on crusade?”
“The Holy Places couldn’t have done without me.”
He left them in a small circular room, of which the only amenities were some stools, a table, and two unglazed windows with spreading views, promising that Master Gabirol would attend them in minutes and that he’d send up his squire with refreshments.
While Simon paced and Mansur stood, a statue as usual, Adelia went to the windows, one facing west, the other east, to study the panorama afforded by each.