Mistress of the Art of Death

Mistress of the Arth of Death

Ariana Franklin

MISTRESS
of the
ART
of
DEATH

ALSO BY ARIANA FRANKLIN

City of Shadows

MISTRESS
of the
ART
of
DEATH

A
RIANA
F
RANKLIN

G. P. P
UTNAM'S
S
ONS

New York

G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS
Publishers Since 1838
Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA *
Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario
M4P 2Y3, Canada (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.) *Penguin Books Ltd,
80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England * Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen's
Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd) * Penguin Group
(Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia
(a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd) * Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd,
11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi--110 017, India
Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA *
Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario
M4P 2Y3, Canada (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.) *Penguin Books Ltd,
80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England * Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen's
Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd) * Penguin Group
(Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia
(a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd) * Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd,
11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi--110 017, India
* Penguin
Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Mairangi Bay, Auckland 1311,
New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd.) * Penguin Books (South
Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa
* Penguin
Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Mairangi Bay, Auckland 1311,
New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd.) * Penguin Books (South
Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices:

80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

Copyright (c) 2007 by Ariana Franklin

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author's rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Franklin, Ariana.

Mistress of the art of death / Ariana Franklin.

p. cm.

ISBN: 1-4295-2403-0

1. Historical fiction. 2. Suspense fiction. I. Title.

PR6064.073M57 2007 2006024710

823'.92--dc22

Frontmatter map by Red Lion

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

While the author has made every effort to provide accurate telephone numbers and Internet addresses at the time of publication, neither the publisher nor the author assumes any responsibility for errors, or for changes that occur after publication. Further, the publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

T
O
H
ELEN
H
ELLER,

M
ISTRESS OF THE ART OF THRILLERS

Contents

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

ABOUTTHEAUTHOR

One

ENGLAND, 1171

H
ere 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 a 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.