“Anywhere, take him anywhere,” she said.
THE NEXT MORNING, when a water bailiff came to tell Gyltha that Simon’s corpse was being delivered to the castle, Adelia knew she had been swearing as their punt passed his body where it had floated, face down, in the Trumpington reeds.
Ten
Is she hearing me?” Sir Rowley asked Gyltha.
“They’re hearing you in Peterborough,” Gyltha said. The tax collector had been shouting. “She just ain’t listening.”
She was listening, but not to Sir Rowley Picot. The voice she heard was that of Simon of Naples, clear as clear, and saying nothing significant, merely chatting as he’d used to chat in his light, busy tenor-actually, at the moment, about wool and its processes. “Can you conceive of the difficulty in achieving of the color black?”
She wanted to tell him that her difficulty now was of conceiving him to be dead, that she was delaying the moment because the loss was too great and must therefore be ignored, a life removed revealing a chasm that she had not seen because he’d filled it.
They were mistaken. Simon was not the sort of person to be dead.
Sir Rowley looked around Old Benjamin’s kitchen for help. Were all its women poleaxed? And the boy? Was she going to sit and stare into the fire forever?
He appealed to the eunuch, who stood with folded arms, staring out the doorway at the river.
“Mansur.” He had to go close so that their faces were level. “Mansur. The body is at the castle. Any minute the Jews are going to discover that it is there and bury it themselves. They know him to be one of their own. Listen to me.” He reached up to the man’s shoulders and shook him. “There’s no time for her to mourn. She must examine the corpse first. He was murdered, don’t you see?”
“You speak Arabic?”
“What do you think I’m speaking, you great camel? Wake her up, make her move.”
Adelia put her head on one side to consider the balance that had been maintained, the sexless affection and acceptance, respect with humor, a friendship so rare between a man and a woman that such a one was unlikely to be granted to her again. She knew now something of what it would be like to lose her foster father.
She grew angry, accusing Simon’s shade of culpability. How could you be so careless? You were of value to us all; it is a deprivation; dying in a muddy English river is so silly.
That poor woman he had loved so much. His children.
Mansur’s hand was on her shoulder. “This man is saying Simon was murdered.”
It took a minute, then she was on her feet. “No.” She was facing Picot. “It was an accident. That man, the waterman, told Gyltha it was an accident.”
“He’d found the tallies, woman, he knew who it was.” Sir Rowley clenched his teeth with exasperation, then began to speak slowly. “Listen to me. Are you listening?”
“Yes.”
“He came late to Joscelin’s feast. Are you hearing me?”
“Yes,” she said, “I saw him.”
“He came to the top table to make his apologies for being late. The marshal showed him to his place, but as he went by me, he stopped and patted a wallet on his belt. And he said…Are you listening? He said, ‘We have him, Sir Rowley. I have found the tallies.’ He spoke low, but that’s what he said.”
“‘We have him, Sir Rowley,’” Adelia repeated.
“That’s what he said. I’ve this minute seen his body. There’s no wallet on his belt. He was killed for it.”
Adelia heard Matilda B. squeaking with distress, Gyltha uttering a moan. Were she and Picot speaking English? They must be.
“Why should he tell you that?” she asked.
“Great heavens, woman, we’d been attending to it together all day. It was inconceivable that the only debt tallies were those that were burnt. The damned Jews could have laid their hands on them any day if they’d only realized it; they were with Chaim’s banker.”
“Don’t you say that about them.” She had a hand on his chest and was pushing him. “Don’t say it. Simon was a Jew.”
“Exactly.” He caught her hands. “It’s because he was a Jew that you must come with me now and examine his body before the Jews get hold of it.” He saw her expression and stayed remorseless. “What happened to him. When. From that, with even more luck, we may be able to deduce who. You taught me that.”
“He was my friend,” she said. “I cannot.” Her soul rebelled at the thought, and so would Simon’s-to be exposed, fingered, cut, and by her. Autopsy was against Jewish law in any case. She would defy the Christian Church any day, but, for Simon’s dear sake, she would not offend the Jewish.
Gyltha stepped in between them to peer carefully into the tax collector’s face. “What you’re saying. Master Simon was killed by him as killed the children? Is that right?”
“Yes, yes.”
“And she can tell from looking at his poor corpse?”
Sir Rowley recognized an ally and nodded. “She might.”
Gyltha addressed Matilda B. “Get her cloak.” And to Adelia, “We’ll go together.” And to Ulf, “You stay here, boy. Give the Matildas a hand.”
Between them, with Mansur and the Safeguard following, Adelia was hustled through the streets toward the bridge. She was still gabbling her protest. “It can’t have been the killer. He only attacks the defenseless. This is different, this is…” She slowed as she tried to think what it was. “This is everyday awfulness.”
To the water bailiff, who had come to tell them, bodies in his river were commonplace. Nor had she questioned his verdict of simple drowning, she who had examined so many waterlogged corpses on the marble table in Salerno ’s mortuary. People drowned in their baths; sailors fell overboard, like most sailors, unable to swim; freak waves plucked victims into the sea. Children, men, and women drowned in rivers, pools, fountains, puddles. People made tragic misjudgments, took an unwary step. It was an ordinary way of dying.
She heard the tax collector’s huff of impatience as he hurried her on. “Our man is a wild dog. Wild dogs leap for the throat when they’re threatened. Simon had become a threat.”
“He weren’t very big, neither,” Gyltha said. “Nice little man, but no more to un than a rabbit.”
No, there wasn’t. But to be murdered. Adelia’s mind fought against it. She and Simon had come to resolve a predicament that the people of a minor town in a foreign country had gotten themselves into, not to enter into the same predicament with them. She had regarded the two of them as excluded from it by some special dispensation given to investigators. And so, she knew, had Simon.
She halted in her tracks. “We’ve been at risk?”
The tax collector stopped with her. “Well, I’m glad you’ve seen it. Did you think you had exemption?”
They were bustling her on again, the two of them talking over her head.
“Did you see him leave, Gyltha?”
“Not to say leave. He looked into the kitchen with compliments to the cook and say good-bye to me.” Gyltha’s voice wavered for a moment. “Always the polite gentleman he was.”
“Was that before the dancing began?”
Gyltha sighed. It had been busy in Sir Joscelin’s kitchen last night.
“Beggared if I can remember. Might’ve been. He said as he must apply himself to study afore he went to bed, that I do recall. The which he was a-leaving early.”
“‘Apply himself to study.’”
“His very words.”
“He was going to look through the tallies.”
As usual, the bridge was crowded; they had trouble walking in line and, with Sir Rowley keeping a firm grip on her, Adelia was bumped into by passersby, most of them clerks, all in a hurry, each with a distinctive chain around his neck, lots of them. Officialdom had come to Cambridge. Vaguely, she wondered why.