Simon accepted that the prior had cause for suspicion, “but no more than for anyone else.” He’d liked what he had seen of the tax collector, he said. Adelia, made privy to what lay beyond the amiable exterior when Sir Rowley had forced his presence on her examination of the dead children, did not. She found him disturbing.

It appeared he had the castle in thrall. The sheriff was staring up at him for help, incapable of dealing with any but his own immediate troubles. “Don’t they know there’s an eyre coming?”

Rowley turned to Simon. “My lord wishes to know your business here.”

Simon said, “With the lord’s permission, we would speak to Yehuda Gabirol.”

“No harm in that, eh, my lord? Shall I show them the way?” He was already moving.

The sheriff grabbed at him. “Don’t leave me, Picot.”

“Not for long, my lord, I promise.”

He ushered the trio down the hall, talking all the way. “The sheriff’s just been informed that the justices in eyre are intending to hold an assize in Cambridge. Coming on top of the presentment he must make to the Exchequer, that means considerable extra work, and he finds himself somewhat, shall we say, overwhelmed. So do I, of course.”

He smiled chubbily down at them; a less overwhelmed man would have been difficult to find. “One is trying to discover what debts are owed to the Jews and, therefore, to the king. Chaim was the chief moneylender in this county, and all his tallies went up in the tower fire. The difficulty of recovering what is not there to speak for itself is considerable. However…”

He gave an odd little sideways bow to Adelia. “I hear Madam Doctor has been dabbling in the Cam. Not a doctorly thing to do, one would have thought, considering what pours into it. Perhaps you had your reasons, ma’am?”

Adelia said, “What is an assize?”

They had gone through an arch and were following Sir Rowley up the winding staircase of a tower, the Safeguard pattering behind them.

Over his shoulder, the tax collector said, “Ah, an assize. A judgment really, by the king’s traveling justices. A Day of Judgment-and nearly as terrible as God’s for those in its scales. Judgment of ale and punishment for the watering down of. Judgment of bread, ditto for the underweight of. Gaol delivery, guilt or innocence of prisoners therein. Presentments of land, ownership of, presentment of quarrels, justification for…the list goes on. Juries to be provided. Doesn’t happen every year, but when it does…Mother of God help us, these steps are steep.”

He was puffing as he led them up. Shafts of sun coming in through arrow slits deep in the stone lit tiny landings, each with its arched door.

“Try losing weight,” Adelia told him, her eyes presented with his backside as it ascended.

“I am a man of muscle, madam.”

“Fat,” she said. She slowed so that he rounded the next twist ahead of her and she could hiss at Simon at her rear, “He is going to listen in to what we have to say.”

Simon took his hands off the rail that had been aiding him upward and spread them. “He must know our business here already. He knows-Lord, he’s right about these stairs-who you are. Where’s the difference?”

The difference was that the man would draw conclusions from what was to be said to the Jews. Adelia distrusted conclusions until she had all the evidence. Also, she distrusted Sir Rowley. “But if he should be the killer?”

“Then he knows already.” Simon closed his eyes and groped for the rail.

Sir Rowley was waiting for her at the top of the stairs, much put out. “You think me fat, mistress? I’d have you know that when he heard I was on the march, Nur-ad-Din would pack up his tents and steal away into the desert.”

“You went on crusade?”

“The Holy Places couldn’t have done without me.”

He left them in a small circular room, of which the only amenities were some stools, a table, and two unglazed windows with spreading views, promising that Master Gabirol would attend them in minutes and that he’d send up his squire with refreshments.

While Simon paced and Mansur stood, a statue as usual, Adelia went to the windows, one facing west, the other east, to study the panorama afforded by each.

To the west, among the low hills, she could see battlemented roofs from which flew a standard. Even miniaturized by distance, the manor that Sir Gervase held from the priory was larger than Adelia would have expected of a knight’s fee. If Sir Joscelin’s, held from the nuns, to the southeast and beyond either window’s view, was as big, both gentlemen appeared to have done well from their tenancies and crusading.

Two men came in. Yehuda Gabirol was young, his black earlocks cork-screwed against cheeks that were hollow and tinged with an Iberian pallor.

The uninvited guest was old and had found the climb hard. He clung to the doorpost, introducing himself to Simon in a wheeze. “Benjamin ben Rav Moshe. And if you’re Simon of Naples, I knew your father. Old Eli still alive, is he?”

Simon’s bow was uncharacteristically curt, as was his introduction of Adelia and Mansur, merely giving their names without explaining their presence.

The old man nodded to them, still wheezing. “Is it you occupying my house?”

Since Simon showed no sign of replying, Adelia said, “We are. I hope you don’t mind.”

“I should mind?” Old Benjamin said sadly. “In good shape is it?”

“Yes. Better for being occupied, I think.”

“You like the hall windows?”

“Very nice. Most unusual.”

Simon addressed the younger man. “Yehuda Gabirol, just before Passover a year ago, you married the daughter of Chaim ben Eliezer here in Cambridge.”

“The cause of all my troubles,” Yehuda said gloomily.

“The boy came all the way from Spain to do it,” Benjamin said. “I arranged it. A good marriage, though, I say it myself. If it turned out unfortunate, is that the fault of the shadchan?”

Simon continued to ignore him, his eyes on Yehuda. “A child of this town disappeared on that day. Perhaps Master Gabirol could cast light on what happened to him.”

Adelia had never seen this side of Simon; he was angry.

There was an outburst of Yiddish from both men. The young one’s thin voice rose over Benjamin’s deeper one: “Should I know? Am I the keeper of English children?”

Simon slapped him across the face.

A sparrow hawk landed on the west windowsill and took off again, disturbed by the vibration inside the room as the sound of Simon’s slap reverberated round the walls. Fingermarks rose on Yehuda’s cheek.

Mansur stepped forward in case of retaliation, but the young man had covered his face and was cowering. “What else could we do? What else?”

Adelia stood unnoticed by the window as the three Jews recovered themselves enough to drag three stools into the center of the room and sit down on them. A ceremony even for this, she thought.

Benjamin did most of the talking while young Yehuda cried and rocked.

A good wedding it had been, Old Benjamin said, an alliance between cash and culture, between a rich man’s daughter and this young Spanish scholar of excellent pedigree whom Chaim intended to keep as an eidem af kest, a resident son-in-law to whom he would give a dowry of ten marks…

“Get on,” Simon said.

A fine early spring day it was; the chuppah in the synagogue was decorated with cowslips. “I myself shattered the glass…”

“Get on.”

So back to Chaim’s house for the wedding banquet, which, such was Chaim’s wealth, had been expected to go on for a week. Fife, drums, fiddle, cymbals, tables weighed with dishes, wine cups filled and refilled, enthronement of the bride under white samite, speeches-all this on the riverside lawn because the house was scarcely big enough to entertain all the guests, some of whom had traveled more than a thousand miles to get there.