She let go of his wrist, shaking her head. “Too fast,” she said. “Truly, you should lose weight.” He must be preserved, she thought. He would be a loss.

Peculiarity after peculiarity was making the prior’s head reel. And while the Lord might exalt those of low degree, there was no necessity for her to display her ignoble beginnings to all and sundry. Dear, dear. Away from her milieu, she would be as exposed as a snail without its shell. He asked, “You were raised by two men?”

She was affronted, as if he suggested her upbringing had been abnormal. “They were married,” she said, frowning. “My foster mother is also a Trotula. A Christian-born Salernitan.”

“And your foster father?”

“A Jew.”

Here it was again. Did these people blurt it to the fowls of the air? “So you were brought up in his faith?” It mattered to him; she was a brand, his brand, a most precious brand, to be saved from the burning.

She said, “I have no faith except in what can be proved.”

The prior was appalled. “Do you not acknowledge the Creation? God’s purpose?”

“There was creation, certainly. Whether there was purpose, I don’t know.”

My God, my God, he thought, do not strike her down. I have need of her. She knows not what she says.

She was standing up. Her eunuch had turned the cart ready for its descent to the road. Simon was walking toward them.

The prior said, because even apostates had to be paid, and he pitied this one with all his heart, “Mistress Adelia, I am in your debt and would weight my end of the scales. A boon and, with God’s grace, I will grant it.”

She turned and regarded him, considering. She saw the nice eyes, the clever mind, the goodness; she liked him. But the command of her profession was for his body-not yet, but one day. The gland that had restricted the bladder, weigh it, compare it…

Simon broke into a run; he’d seen that look of hers before. She had no judgment other than in medicine; she was about to ask the prior for his corpse when he died. “My lord, my lord.” He was panting. “My lord, if you would grant a kindness, prevail upon the prioress to let Dr. Trotula view Little Saint Peter’s remains. It may be that she can throw light on the manner of his passing.”

“Indeed?” Prior Geoffrey looked at Vesuvia Adelia Rachel Ortese Aguilar. “And how may you do that?”

“I am a doctor to the dead,” she said.

Four

As they approached the great gate of Barnwell Abbey, they could see Cambridge Castle in the distance on the only height for miles around, its outline made ragged and prickly by the remains of the tower that had been burned the year before and the scaffolding now surrounding it. A pygmy of a fortress compared with the great citadels hung upon the Appenines that Adelia knew, it nevertheless lent a burly charm to the view.

“Of Roman foundation,” Prior Geoffrey said, “built to guard the river crossing, though, like many another, it failed to hold off either Viking or Dane-nor Duke William the Norman, come to that; having destroyed it, he had to build it up again.”

The cavalcade was smaller now; the prioress had hastened ahead, taking her nun, her knight, and cousin Roger of Acton with her. The merchant and his wife had turned off toward Cherry Hinton.

Prior Geoffrey, once more horsed and resplendent at the head of the procession, was forced to lean down to address his saviors on the driving bench of the mule cart. His knight, Sir Gervase, brought up the rear, scowling.

“ Cambridge will surprise you,” the prior was saying. “We have a fine School of Pythagoras, to which students come from all over. Despite its inland position, it is a port, and a busy one, nearly as busy as Dover -though blessedly more free of the French. The waters of the Cam may be sluggish, but they are navigable to their conjunction with the River Ouse that, in turn, discharges into the North Sea. I think I may say that there are few countries of the world’s East that do not come to our quays with goods that are then passed on by mule trains to all parts of England along the Roman roads that bisect the town.”

“And what do you send back, my lord?” Simon asked.

“Wool. Fine East Anglian wool.” Prior Geoffrey smirked with the satisfaction of a high prelate whose grazing provided a good proportion of it. “Smoked fish, eels, oysters. Oh, yes, Master Simon, you may mark Cambridge to be prosperous in trade and, dare I say it, cosmopolitan in outlook.”

Dare he say it? His heart misgave as he regarded the three in the cart; even in a town accustomed to mustached Scandinavians, Low Countrymen in clogs, slit-eyed Russians, Templars, Hospitallers from the Holy Lands, curly-hatted Magyars, snake charmers, could this trio of oddities go unremarked? He looked around him, then leaned lower and hissed. “How do you intend to present yourselves?”

Simon said innocently, “Since our good Mansur has already been credited with your cure, my lord, I thought to continue the deception by setting him up as a medical man with Dr. Trotula and myself as his assistants. Perhaps the marketplace? Some center from which to pursue our inquiries…”

“In that damned cart?” The indignation Simon of Naples had courted was forthcoming. “Would you have the lady Adelia spat on by women traders? Importuned by passing vagabonds?” The prior calmed himself. “I see the need to disguise her profession, lady doctors being unknown in England. Certainly, she would be considered outlandish.” Even more outlandish than she is, he thought. “We shall not have her degraded as some quacksalver’s drab. We are a respectable town, Master Simon, we can do better for you than that.”

“My lord.” Simon’s hand touched his forehead in gratitude. And to himself: I thought you might.

“Nor would it be wise for any of you to declare your faith-or lack of it,” the prior continued. “ Cambridge is a tightly wound crossbow, any abnormality may loose it again.” Especially, he thought, as these three particular abnormalities were determined on probing Cambridge ’s wounds.

He paused. The tax collector had come up and reined his horse to the mule’s amble, waving an obeisance to the prior, sending a nod to Simon and Mansur, and addressing Adelia: “Madam, we have been in convoy together, and yet we have not been introduced. Sir Rowley Picot at your service. May I congratulate you on effecting the good prior’s recovery?”

Quickly, Simon leaned forward. “The congratulations belong to this gentleman, sir.” He indicated Mansur, who was driving. “He is our doctor.”

The tax collector was interested. “Indeed? One was informed that a female voice was heard directing the operation.”

Was one, indeed? And by whom? Simon wondered. He nudged Mansur. “Say something,” he told him in Arabic.

Mansur ignored him.

Surreptitiously, Simon kicked him on the ankle “Speak to him, you lump.”

“What does the fat shit want me to say?”

“The doctor is pleased that he has been of service to my lord prior,” Simon told the tax inspector. “He says he hopes he may administer as well to anyone in Cambridge who wishes to consult him.”

“Does he?” Sir Rowley Picot said, neglecting to mention his own knowledge of Arabic. “He says it amazing high.”

“Exactly, Sir Rowley,” Simon said. “His voice can be mistaken for a woman’s.” He became confidential. “I should explain that the lord Mansur was taken by monks while yet a child, and his singing voice was discovered to be so beautiful that they…er…ensured it would remain so.”

“A castrato, by God,” Sir Rowley said, staring.

“He devotes himself to medicine now, of course,” Simon said, “but when he sings in praise of the Lord, the angels weep with envy.”

Mansur had heard the word “castrato” and lapsed into cursing, causing more angels’ tears by his strictures on Christians in general, and the unhealthy affection existing between camels and the mothers of the Byzantine monks who’d gelded him in particular-the sound issuing in an Arabic treble that rivaled birdsong and melted on the air like sweet icicles.