Mistress of the Art of Death Read Free

from under a window and kicked another in Aaron's direction. "Sit down."
    It was quieter at this end; damp, bitter air coming through the unglazed windows made the old man shake. Of the two, Aaron was the more richly clothed. Henry II dressed like a huntsman with careless habits; his queen's courtiers oiled their hair with unguents and were scented with attars, but Henry smelled of horses and sweat. His hands were leathery; his red hair was cropped close to a head as round as a cannonball. Yet nobody, Aaron thought, ever mistook him for other than what he was--the ruler of an empire stretching from the borders of Scotland to the Pyrenees.
    Aaron could have loved him, almost did love him, if the man had not been so horrifyingly unpredictable. When this king was in a temper, he bit carpets and people died.
    "God hates you Jews, Aaron," Henry said. "You killed His Son."
    Aaron closed his eyes, waiting.
    "And God hates me."
    Aaron opened his eyes.
    The king's voice rose in a wail that filled the gallery like a despairing trumpet. "Sweet God, forgive this unhappy and remorseful king. Thou knowest how Thomas a Becket did oppose me in all things so that in my rage I called for his death. Peccavi, peccavi, for certain knights did mistake my anger and ride to kill him, thinking to please me, for which abomination You in Your righteousness have turned Your face from me. I am a worm, mea culpa, mea culpa, mea culpa. I crawl beneath Your anger while Archbishop Thomas is received into Your Glory and sitteth on the right hand of Your Gracious Son, Jesus Christ."
    Faces turned. Quills were poised in mid-account, abaci stilled.
    Henry stopped beating his breast. He said conversationally, "And if I am not mistaken, the Lord will find him as big a pain in the arse as I did." He leaned over, put a finger gently beneath Aaron of Lincoln's lower jaw, and raised it. "The moment that those bastards chopped Becket down, I became vulnerable. The Church seeks revenge, it wants my liver, hot and smoking, it wants recompense and must get it, and one of the things it wants, has always wanted, is the expulsion of you Jews from Christendom."
    The clerks had returned to their work.
    The king waved the document in his hand under the Jew's nose. "This is a petition, Aaron, demanding that all Jews be sent away from my realm. At this moment, a copy also penned by Master Acton, and may the hounds of hell chew his bollocks, is on its way to the Pope. The murdered child in Cambridge and the ones missing are to be the pretext for demanding your people's expulsion, and, with Becket dead, I shall be unable to refuse, because if I do, His Holiness will be persuaded to excommunicate me and put my whole kingdom under interdict. Does your mind encompass interdict? It is to be cast into darkness; babies to be refused baptisms, no ordained marriage, the dead to remain unburied without the blessing of the Church. And any upstart with shit on his trousers can challenge my right to rule."
    Henry got up and paced, pausing to straighten the corner of an arras that the wind had disarranged. Over his shoulder, he said, "Am I not a good king, Aaron?"
    "You are, my lord." The right answer. Also the truth.
    "Am I not good to my Jews, Aaron?"
    "You are, my lord. Indeed, you are." Again, the truth. Henry taxed his Jews like a farmer milked his cows, yet no other monarch in the world was fairer to them or kept such order in his tight little kingdom that Jews were safer in it than in almost any other country of the known world. From France, from Spain, from the crusade countries, from Russia, they came to enjoy the privileges and security to be found in this Plantagenet's England.
    Where could we go? Aaron thought. Lord, Lord, send us not back into the wilderness. If we can no longer have our Promised Land, let us live at least under this pharaoh, who keeps us safe.
    Henry nodded. "Usury is a sin, Aaron. The Church disapproves of it, doesn't let Christians sully their souls with it.