Free Mistress of the Art of Death by Ariana Franklin

catafalques in the nave, each covered with a violet cloth, and on the heads of the kneeling men and women in working clothes gathered round them.
    The remains of the children, all three, had been found on a sheep path near Fleam Dyke that morning. A shepherd had stumbled over them at dawn and was still shuddering. "Weren't there last night, I'll take my oath, Prior. Couldn't have been, could they? The foxes ain't been at them. Lying neat side by side they was, bless them. Or neat as they could be, considering..." He'd stopped to retch.
    An object had been laid on each body, resembling those that had been left at the site of each child's disappearance. Made from rushes, they resembled the Star of David.
    Prior Geoffrey had ordered the three bundles taken to the church, resisting one mother's desperate attempts to unwrap them. He had sent to the castle, warning the sheriff that it might be attacked again and requesting the sheriff's reeve in his capacity as coroner to view the remains immediately and order a public inquest. He'd imposed calm--though it rumbled with underlying heat.
    Now, resonating with certainty, his voice stilled the mother's shrieks into a quiet sobbing as he read the assurance that death would be swallowed up in victory. "We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump."
    Almost, the scent issuing in from the bluebells outside the open doors and the lavished incense from within them covered the stench of decay.
    Almost, the clear chant of the canons drowned out the buzz of trapped flies coming from under the violet mantles.
    Saint Paul's words assuaged a little of the prior's grief as he envisaged the souls of the children romping in God's meadows, yet not his anger that they had been catapulted into them before their time. Two of the children he did not know, but one of the boys was Harold, the eel seller's son, who had been a pupil at Saint Augustine's own school. Six years old and a bright child, learning his letters once a week. Identified by his red hair. A right little Saxon, too--he'd scrumped apples from the priory orchard last autumn.
    And I tanned his backside for him, the prior thought.
    From the shadow of a rear pillar, Adelia watched some comfort seep into the faces round the catafalques. The closeness between priory and town was strange to her; in Salerno, monks, even monks who went out into the world to perform their duties, kept a distance between themselves and the laity.
    "But we are not monks," Prior Geoffrey had told her, "we are canons." It seemed a slight dissimilarity: Both lived in community, both vowed celibacy, both served the Christian God, yet here in Cambridge the distinction made a difference. When the church bell had tolled the news that the children were found, people from the town had come running--to hug and to be hugged in commiseration.
    "Our rule is less rigid than Benedictine or Cistercian," the prior had explained, "less time given to prayer and choral duty and more to education, relief of the poor and sick, hearing confession, and general parish work." He'd tried to smile. "You will approve, my dear Doctor. Moderation in all things."
    Now she watched him come down from the choir after the dismissal and walk with the parents into the sunlight, promising to officiate at the funerals himself, "and discover the devil who has done this."
    "We know who done it, Prior," one of the fathers said. Agreement echoed like the growl of dogs.
    "It cannot be the Jews, my son. They are still secured in the castle."
    "They're getting out someways."
    The bodies, still under their violet cloths, were carried reverently on litters out a side door, accompanied by the sheriff's reeve, wearing his coroner's hat.
    The church emptied. Simon and Mansur had wisely not attempted to come. A Jew and a Saracen among these sacred stones? At such a time?
    With her goatskin carryall at her feet, Adelia waited in the shadow of one of the bays