It was another matter if you were ill. Before she devoted herself to postmortem work, the sick had seen a side to Adelia that few others did, and still remembered her as an angel without wings. Recovering male patients had tended to fall in love with her, and it would have surprised the prior to learn that she’d received more requests for her hand in marriage than many a rich Salernitan beauty. All had been turned down. It was said in the school’s mortuary that Adelia was interested in you only if you were dead.

Cadavers of every age came to that long marble table in the school from all over southern Italy and Sicily, sent by signoria and praetori who had reason to want to know how and why they’d died. Usually, she found out for them; corpses were her work, as normal to her as his last to a shoemaker. She approached the bodies of children in the same way, determined that the truth of their death should not be buried with them, but they distressed her, always pitiful and, in the case of those who had been murdered, always shocking. The three awaiting her now were likely to be as terrible as any she had seen. Not only that, but she must examine them in secrecy, without the equipment provided by the school, without Mansur to assist her, and, most of all, without her foster father’s encouragement: “Adelia, you must not quail. You are confounding inhumanity.”

He never told her she was confounding evil-at least, not Evil with a capital E, for Gershom bin Aguilar believed that Man provided his own evil and his own good, neither the devil nor God having anything to do with it. Only in the medical school of Salerno could he preach that doctrine, and even there not very loudly.

The concession to allow her to carry out this particular investigation, in a backward English town where she could be stoned for doing it, was a marvel in itself and one that Simon of Naples had fought hard to gain. The prior had been reluctant to give his permission, appalled that a woman was prepared to carry out such work and fearing what would happen if it were known that a foreigner had peered at and prodded the poor corpses: “ Cambridge would regard it as desecration; I’m not sure it isn’t.”

Simon had said, “My lord, let us find out how the children died, for it is certain that incarcerated Jews could have had no hand in it; we are modern men, we know wings do not sprout from human shoulders. Somewhere, a murderer walks free. Allow those sad little bodies to tell us who he is. The dead speak to Dr. Trotula. It is her work. They will talk to her.”

As far as Prior Geoffrey was concerned, talking dead were in the same category as winged humans: “It is against the teaching of Holy Mother Church to invade the sanctity of the body.”

He gave way at last only on Simon’s promise that there would be no dissection, only examination.

Simon suspected that the prior’s compliance also arose less from belief that the corpses would speak than from the fear that, if she were refused, Adelia would return to the place from which she’d come, leaving him to face the next onslaught of his bladder without her.

So now, here, in a country she hadn’t wanted to come to in the first place, she must confront the worst of all inhumanities alone.

But that, Vesuvia Adelia Rachel Ortese Aguilar, is your purpose, she told herself. In times of uncertainty, she liked to recount the names that had been lavished on her, along with education and their own extraordinary ideas, by the couple that had picked her up from her lava-strewn cradle on Vesuvius and taken her home. Only you are fitted to do it, so do it.

In her hand was one of the three objects that had been found on the bodies of the dead children. One had been already delivered to the sheriff, one torn to pieces by a rampaging father. The third had been saved by the prior, who had quietly passed it to her.

Carefully, so as not to attract attention, she held it up to catch a shaft of light. It was made of rushes, beautifully and with great intricacy woven into a quincunx. If it was meant to be a Star of David, the weaver had left out one of the points. A message? An attempt to incriminate the Jews by someone poorly acquainted with Judaism? A signature?

In Salerno, she thought, it would have been possible to locate the limited number of people with skill enough to make it, but in Cambridge, where rushes grew inexhaustibly by the rivers and streams, weaving them was a household activity; merely passing along the road to this great priory, she had seen women sitting in doorways, their hands engaged in making mats and baskets that were works of art, men thatching rush roofs into ornate sculptures.

No, there was nothing the star could tell her at this stage.

Prior Geoffrey came bustling back in. “The coroner has looked at the bodies and ordered a public inquest-”

“What did he have to say?”

“He pronounced them dead.” At Adelia’s blink, he said, “Yes, yes, but it is his duty-coroners are not chosen for their medical knowledge. Now then, I’ve lodged the remains in Saint Werbertha’s anchorage. It is quiet there, and cold, a little dark for your purposes, but I have provided lamps. A vigil will be kept, of course, but it shall be delayed until you have made your examination. Officially, you are there to do the laying out.”

Again, a blink.

“Yes, yes, it will be regarded as strange, but I am the prior of this foundation and my law is second only to Almighty God’s.” He bustled her to the side door of the church and gave her directions. A novice weeding the cloister garden looked up in curiosity, but a click of his superior’s fingers sent him back to work. “I would come with you, but I must go to the castle and discuss eventualities with the sheriff. Between us, we have to prevent another riot.”

Watching the small, brown-clad figure trudge off carrying its goatskin bag, the prior prayed that in this case, his law and Almighty God’s coincided.

He turned round in order to snatch a minute in prayer at the altar, but a large shadow detached itself from one of the nave’s pillars, startling him and making him angry. It had a roll of vellum in its hand.

“What do you here, Sir Rowley?”

“I was about to plead for a private view of the bodies, my lord,” the tax collector said, “but it seems I have been preempted.”

“That is the job of the coroner, and he’s done it. There will be an official inquest in a day or two.”

Sir Rowley nodded toward the side door. “Yet I heard you instructing that lady to examine them further. Do you hope for her to tell you more?”

Prior Geoffrey looked around for help and found none.

The tax collector asked with apparent genuine interest, “How might she do that? Conjurement? Invocation? Is she a necromancer? A witch?”

He’d gone too far. The prior said quietly, “Those children are sacred to me, my son, as is this church. You may leave.”

“I apologize, my lord.” The tax collector didn’t look sorry. “But I too have a concern in this matter, and I have here the king’s warrant whereby to pursue it.” He waved a roll so that the royal seal swung. “What is that woman?”

A king’s warrant trumped the authority of a canonry prior, even one whose word was next to God’s. Sullenly, Prior Geoffrey said, “She is a doctor versed in the morbid sciences.”

“Of course. Salerno . I should have known.” The tax collector whistled with satisfaction. “A woman doctor from the only place in Christendom where that is not a contradiction in terms.”

“You know it?”

“Stopped there once.”

“Sir Rowley.” The prior raised his hand in admonition. “For the safety of that young woman, for the peace of this community and town, what I have told you must remain within these walls.”

“Vir sapit qui pauca loquitur, my lord. First thing they teach a tax collector.”